by Kevin Hearne
The creature groaned and reached out a hand. She dismounted and went to him, crying, and someone tried to stop her, to warn her away. She brushed past them. Both arms were open for an embrace, and when she hugged him, fitting herself between the shafts of arrows sticking out of his torso, the stag head groaned once more, rested its head on her shoulder, and then all the strength left the body. The arms fell slack, the knees buckled, and Gebhart’s revenant fell to the ground. When it hit, the stag’s head disengaged from the neck, though it was a bloodless affair.
“Spirit gone,” I said, and Gerlind wept. I hoped Gebhart’s spirit went somewhere pleasant after it spent its rage, but I had little idea of what afterlives the Chauci imagined for themselves.
The villagers were pretty confident I hadn’t murdered Gebhart, though, based on the witness of the revenant, so my bonds were cut and we put Gebhart’s body on Behrtoald’s horse, leaving the murderer where he lay. I led them to the murder scene, where we found Gebhart’s head and the stag’s body, along with Gebhart’s bloody knife on the ground. (I didn’t want to think too hard about how or why Gebhart’s spirit would cut off his own head and replace it with a stag’s, but perhaps it made some sense to the Chauci.) We had to shoo away some foxes, but thankfully the wolves hadn’t arrived yet.
After Gebhart was laid to rest, I stayed in the area just long enough to bring in my harvest, sell most of it, and pack up a wagon for the winter. I headed upriver and settled with the Semnones—or the Juthungi, depending on who’s writing the history—and remained with them long enough to absorb that language, a precursor to Old High German and maybe even Low German. They had a grove-based religion and I scrupulously avoided their ceremonies, for I knew they worshipped some god other than the ones I was used to, and powerful things could happen in a grove like that.
I knew that even without a grove—with just the love and will of a single man—extraordinary things could happen. Sometimes, the dead don’t stay dead.
* * *
—
“To this day,” Connor finished, “outside of vampires, that episode remains the only case of the dead avenging themselves that I’ve ever seen, though it’s not the only case I’ve heard of.”
We turned in for the evening, a bit unsure why he’d shared that with us. Usually there is a story behind the storytelling. Did he want us to think of vengeance or think of the dead coming back to life? Did we need to worry about Scott and Keith or the others?
It was too much for me to figure out. My brain felt fuzzy, since I’d been awake at that point for close to forty hours straight. With Connor assuring us we could sleep without fear, I drifted off to the sound of frogs and crickets.
We woke at dawn on Tuesday thanks to unidentified birdcalls, and I had really needed that sleep. My joints creaked and complained, the sort of omnipresent agony that crept up on one with age, even when in fairly decent shape. Progressive cellular decay, as they say, is a wee slice of hell every day.
The bush off the trail afforded us a modicum of privacy for morning ablutions, and our breakfast was a quick and raw affair composed of trail mix and water. We packed up and got moving as quickly as possible, since we all felt the urgency of finding Mei-ling and Shu-hua.
The trail remained wide and easy to follow, occasionally intersecting with others but steadily climbing toward Mount St. Leonard. The bush underneath the trees was a mixture of ferns and thorny berry bushes, with lots of fallen eucalypts providing fodder for carpenter ants and shelter for normal-sized spiders and so on. There were snakes out there, though, Ya-ping warned me, the unfriendly kind. Brown snakes and tiger snakes and copperheads, all of which could ruin your day or maybe end your life.
We’d been climbing long enough to get mildly winded and were nearing the Mount St. Leonard summit when a mixed group of authorities caught up to us. There were six in total; two of them were mounted police on beautiful black horses, and four were in bright-orange jumpsuits with reflective yellow hazard stripes on them and caps with a checkerboard pattern reminiscent of those of constables in the UK. These last were riding two-seater four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles, so we heard them coming well in advance of seeing them. We moved over to let them pass, but they hailed us as soon as they came into view, and it looked like we were going to have a meeting.
[Who are the orange folks?] I asked Ya-ping while we waited for them to catch up.
“That’s the Victoria SES. State Emergency Service. They coordinate with law enforcement and other agencies on all kinds of things like fires and earthquakes and so on, but they also help out tremendously in missing-persons cases. Which is probably why they’re here.”
[Yes. The missing park ranger, no doubt, and all the others. What’s the top federal security agency here? Who’d boss around the SES and the local police?]
“AFP. Australian Federal Police.”
“G’day,” the first mounted police officer said to us. He was a tanned white fellow wearing mirror sunglasses, his muscles straining at his shirt and the cut of his jaw so sharp it probably wounded the air. “Very sorry, folks, but the trail’s closed. We need you to head back and hike here another day.”
“Oh?” Connor said. “We didn’t see any signs saying the trail’s closed.”
“Closing it now. We’re getting reports of dangerous conditions ahead and some people have gone missing, so we don’t want you to go missing too. In fact”—he twisted in his saddle to look at the SES folks—“can one or two of you escort them back and make sure they get out of here okay?”
“Sure,” one of the orange-clad people said, and hopped off the back seat of the two-seater ATV. He was a rangy lad with blond sandpapery stubble on his face; a patch sewn on his chest declared him to be Rory. He gestured to the person on the back of the other vehicle and we suddenly had two escorts to lead us out of the park.
“Thanks,” the police officer said. Squinting at his name badge, I caught the surname of Campbell. The other officer, also a white man, had a badge that read Baskin. The badges of the ATV drivers read Marcus and Thea. Campbell turned back to us and said, “Sorry again, everybody. Just want to make sure you stay safe today. You can come back another time to enjoy this area. And the dogs aren’t allowed, honestly, so leave them home next time.”
Ya-ping and Connor looked at me and I nodded agreeably, going along. Six people were far too many to try to sway all at once. I could get one or two, but the others would catch on that they shouldn’t look at my ID badge or they’d suddenly change their mission priorities based entirely on my unqualified say-so. Even if they did look at my badge, they’d be warned against it and resistant. And, in truth, I didn’t get a chance, because the officers and ATV drivers surprised me and advanced along the trail, clearly in a hurry, leaving us with Rory and the other SES volunteer, whose name badge announced her to be Cherise. She was a Black woman who smiled at us very briefly, because she wasn’t really interested in us at all.
“I know they’re not supposed to be here, right, but I love your dogs.” Her grin widened as she waved at Starbuck and said, a couple of octaves higher, “Hello, cutie! You’re such a good boy! Yes, you are.”
We all turned our backs on the trail ahead to make it appear like we were going to go with them, but after a few steps I pulled out my official ID and showed it to them, deploying a fake name.
“I’m Al Henshaw with the AFP. There is indeed a serious situation up ahead, and my colleagues and I are all undercover. We’ll take care of it. We have resources incoming, and this needs to remain secret. You must head back now. We’ll catch up with the others and send them back too, all right?”
Rory and Cherise not only blinked, they winced. This was a lot for them to process. “You just…want us to go back by ourselves?” Cherise asked.
“Yeah—can’t we help?” Rory added. Bless them both, that’s all they wanted to do: help.
“No, there’s
some national security involved as well. For your safety and ours, I need you to leave now. We’ll get the others. Don’t worry. Go.”
“Well, we can just call them on the wireless—” Rory began, trying to help anyway by busting out a walkie talkie, and I cut him off.
“No, that would compromise the operation. We need radio silence, because others may be listening—the terrorists, you know. Just head back and keep quiet about our presence here.”
Under that barrage of commands and the continued influence of the sigils, their resistance melted, and they turned to go on by themselves, slightly dazed. That, I hoped, was at least two lives saved. I hoped we could save the others too, though it might be a bit more difficult.
Connor walked up next to me and shook his head. “Those sigils are amazing. I’m going to have to ask Brighid how she came up with those.”
[You can do some pretty amazing things too. I like that camouflage thing. But we should try to catch up and send the others back.] We could still hear the drone of the ATV engines, but they had already disappeared from our sight, as the trail rose rather steeply and curved around behind a stand of eucalypts.
“Yeah, we should.”
The dull pop of firearms, the scream of horses, and the abrupt end of engine noise immediately followed.
“We really should. I’m going.” He paused only to grab his hatchet from his pack and re-sling it over his shoulder. “Oberon and Starbuck, stick with me.” And the Iron Druid sprinted uphill much faster than I’d ever be able to manage. I waved at Rory and Cherise to keep going, and once assured that they would, I broke open a Sigil of Agile Grace and used its power to hoof it uphill after Connor and the dogs. Ya-ping kept pace and withdrew her sai. Buck hoped aloud it wasn’t another one of those huge spiders.
“But I think I can help this time, at least. That rest did me good.”
When we crested the top of the ridge and saw the summit viewing platform standing next to a radio and weather tower, there was no little amount of chaos in progress underneath it all.
There were two human bodies sprawled on the ground—the officer named Baskin and the SES man named Marcus—and I felt that familiar cold clutch of fear and guilt seize my innards. There were also the bodies of strange creatures, about the size of bulls and mostly built like them, except that below the horns they had the oversized heads of eagles. Two of these had been shot in the head and succumbed to that. One was spinning, trying to keep an eye on Oberon and Starbuck, who were barking and threatening to nip at its legs, while the Iron Druid was in camouflage and taking whacks at its neck. Farther off down the trail, a figure in orange—Thea, I presumed—fled on foot from a fourth eagle bull, and it in turn was being chased by Officer Campbell on horseback, who fired rounds at it with his handgun in an attempt to save her. The eagle bull, to my horror, caught up with Thea and plowed into her from behind, goring her in the back. She flew bodily through the air and disappeared in the ferns. The bull kept going down the trail and Campbell pursued, no doubt to make sure it died and didn’t kill anyone else.
Ya-ping crept up to the eagle bull opposite the hounds and darted in, plunging both her sai into its flanks before leaping away. It screeched and turned to confront this new threat, but then its bulk shuddered and dissolved into ash as the sigils of Iron Gall on her weapons disintegrated its magical substance. That left me with nothing immediate to do except check on Thea and see if she could be healed.
I gestured at Buck to keep close, then I jogged over to where I’d seen her disappear into the ferns.
“Wot we daein’? Lookin’ for the bird?” Buck asked, and I nodded at him. “Right. I s’pose ye want me tae get searchin’ underneath the ferns.” Another nod, and he pulled ahead of me and soon disappeared into the leafy cover. It was amazing how quickly he disappeared—anything low-slung could be hiding in there. So far we’d seen only large creatures, but what if that was by design? A swarm of smaller ones could attack us at nearly any point with very little warning and we’d be overwhelmed.
“Found her!” Buck’s voice called, and then immediately amended, “Wait. Naw, I didnae.”
[What is it?]
The hobgoblin waved his hand over his head so I’d see it sticking up over the fronds. When I got over there, he pointed to a crumpled pile of orange material.
“These are her clothes, are they no? But she isnae wearin’ them.”
[WTF.]
“Aye, MacBharrais, that’s what I’m thinking too, except no in acronyms. Fuck acronyms, awright? Try tae figure this out with me: A huge bloody monster gores ye in the spine and sends ye flyin’. Ye land in some ferns. And instead of callin’ for help or even sayin’ so much as Ooyah, ya bastard ye, that hurt! ye get naked and stroll intae the wild? And quick too. How’s that make any sense?”
[It doesn’t. Can you hold up the jumpsuit and see if there’s a hole in it?]
Buck grunted and did his best to find the back. There was a rather large blood-soaked hole left of center, a few inches above the belt. That would have gotten underneath her ribs. Punctured a kidney, perhaps, or a spleen, ripped up some intestines. Massive shock and pain. There was no earthly way she should be able to shimmy out of the jumpsuit after that in the space of thirty seconds or so and disappear without a trace. Though maybe she did leave a trace. I didn’t immediately see a trail of blood leading away from the spot, but perhaps Connor’s hounds could be of help.
[Drop it for now. Let’s go see if the dogs can track her.]
We walked back to the ambush site, where the Iron Druid was destroying evidence of the other eagle bull corpses by merely laying his hand on them. The cold iron aura that surrounded him and that was lethal to the Fae and all magic broke down the creatures into sodden ashes, and Buck shuddered.
I was about to wave to Connor to get his attention, when I spied movement in the trees past him and a familiar face hovering among the background of trees. It was Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite, now dressed in a green-and-brown sheath that provided some decent camouflage. As she’d promised, I’d forgotten she was around. I waved at her instead and she curled her fingers in return, grinned affably, and then sort of melted into the forest, her smile fading last, like the Cheshire cat.
Connor, kneeling next to the pile of ash he’d just created, saw me waving and tried to spy who I was looking at, but she was already gone.
“Who are you waving to, Al?”
[My receptionist, who is known affectionately as Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite.]
Connor frowned and stood abruptly. “Are you joking? Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite is your receptionist?”
[She is. Do you know her?]
“I know of her. Gods below, I remember now—when we met in Rome, you said your receptionist had seen some shite and her name was Gladys, but you didn’t tell me you were talking about the actual Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite. Did you bring her with you?”
[No. She came by herself. I don’t know how, though.]
“Oh, Al, this is extraordinarily bad. Are you aware of what she is?”
[She’s Canadian.]
Connor blinked. “She’s also Canadian, yes.” My hobgoblin immediately chuckled at this.
[Buck said the same thing. Tell me what else she is, then.]
He shook his head once. “I can’t tell you anything except what’s in her name. She doesn’t go anywhere except to see some more shite, you understand? So the fact that she crossed the Atlantic to take a job as your receptionist means she thinks she’s eventually going to see something truly remarkable go down in your office. And the fact that she’s watching now tells me something incredibly weird is going on out here, or she wouldn’t bother.” He looked at his wolfhound and then responded to an obvious query. “Yes, Oberon, even weirder than that time with the adult diapers, the snake, and the marshmallow crème.”
I did not ask him for clarificatio
n on that statement, because I could tell it would only lead to regret. He shook his head at his dog. “We’re not rehashing that time with the goat and the Roman skirt either.” He turned to me and said, “I’m going to try to speak to the elemental hereabouts and see if I can’t get a clue about the source of these creatures. It might be a while. Can we move a bit and take a small break?”
[Sure. But maybe your dogs can track Thea? We think she’s still alive, or was, anyway, a short while ago.]
“Okay. Oberon and Starbuck, will you go with Al and Buck to see if you can find this woman? I need to bury these bodies temporarily. If you wouldn’t mind helping me, Ya-ping?”
“No, of course not.”
We multitasked and had two separate conclusions at the end of ten minutes: The bodies of Officer Sam Baskin and Marcus Sandford were buried with the elemental’s help and marked with a small cairn to make them easy to find later, and Thea had inexplicably left no trail that the dogs could find. She had disappeared into the bush as effectively as Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite.
Connor relayed to us what they said. “They can’t find a trace of her scent more than five feet from where you found the clothes.”
“How is that possible?” Buck wondered aloud. “Some kind of magic tae disguise her scent?”
“Possible, I suppose,” Connor admitted, “but I don’t know why she’d bother or why an emergency volunteer in Australia would have access to such magic.”