by Kevin Hearne
Malina agreed, said she looked forward to it, and we rang off. The greasy man asked me if I had access to medical marijuana as an apothecary, and I pasted a sorrowful expression on my face and told him no as I rang up the incense he needed to mask the stink of his habit.
Drug addicts perplex me. They’re a relatively recent development, historically speaking. Everyone has their theories—monotheists like to blame it on Godlessness—but I think it was a plague that developed in the sooty petticoats of the Industrial Revolution and its concomitant division of labor. Once people specialized their labors and separated themselves from food production and the daily needs of basic survival, there was a hollow place in their lives that they did not know how to fill. Most people found healthy ways to fill it, with hobbies or social clubs or pseudo-sports like shuffleboard and tiddlywinks. Others didn’t.
Perry finally found some time to mess around with the Tarot decks and had a serviceable display up by closing time. I rode quickly to the widow’s house after locking up the store and retrieved the push mower from her shed in the backyard.
“Ah, yer a fine boy, Atticus, and that’s no lie,” she said, saluting me with her whiskey glass as she came out to the front porch to watch me work. She liked to sit in her rocking chair and sing old Irish songs to me—old for her, anyway—over the whirl of the lawnmower blades. Sometimes she would forget the words and simply hum the tune, and I enjoyed that just as much. When I was finished, I always spent a pleasant time with her, hearing stories of her younger days in the old country. That day, as the sun was setting and the shadows were lengthening, she was telling me something about running around the streets of Dublin with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. “This was all before I met me husband, o’course,” she made sure to add.
I had Oberon stationed as sentinel on the edge of the lawn, close to the street. As the widow regaled me with tales of her Golden Age debauchery, I was depending on him to tell me of approaching danger.
Is he a stranger? I had put Fragarach aside while I talked with the widow, but now I stood and slung the scabbard back over my head, causing the widow to frown.
Uh-oh. That’s not good. Stay still and try not to make any noise.
“Excuse me, Mrs. MacDonagh,” I said, “someone’s coming and he might not be friendly.”
“What? Who is it? Atticus?”
I couldn’t answer yet, so I didn’t. I kicked off my sandals and drew power from the widow’s lawn even as I walked toward the street and peered northward. One of the charms on my necklace has the shape of a bear on it, and its function is to store a bit of magical power for me that I can tap when I’m walking on concrete or asphalt. I topped off the magical tank as a possible antagonist approached.
A tall, armored figure clanked noisily on the asphalt a couple of houses away, and it raised a hand to hail me when I came into view. I activated a different charm that I call “faerie specs,” a sort of filter for my eyes that lets me see through Fae glamours and detect all sorts of magic juju. It showed me the normal spectrum, but then there was also a green overlay that revealed what was going on magically, and right now the two layers showed me the same thing. So whoever he was, I was looking at his true form. If he had something similar to my faerie specs, he might be able to see through Oberon’s camouflage, but then again, he might not.
He was wearing rather gaudy bronze armor that no one would have worn in the old days. The cuirass, faced in hardened leather dyed with woad, covered too much and restricted movement. He had leaf-shaped tassets hanging down over a bronze mail skirt. He also had five-piece pauldrons and matching vambraces and greaves. It would have been hot enough to wear such armor in Ireland, but here the temperature was still in the low nineties, and he must have been broiling in it. His helmet was beyond ridiculous: It was one of those medieval barbutes that didn’t become popular until a thousand years after his halcyon days of slaughter, and he must have been wearing it as a joke, though I did not find it especially funny. A sword hung in a scabbard at his side, but thankfully he did not carry a shield.
“I greet you, Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin,” he said. “Well met.” He flashed a smug grin at me through his helmet, and I wanted to slay him on the spot. I kept my faerie specs on, because I simply didn’t trust him. Without some way to pierce his glamour, he could make my eyes think he was standing three feet away with his hands on his head while he was really plunging a dagger into my belly.
“Call me Atticus. I greet you, Bres.”
“Not well met?” He tilted his head a bit to the right, as much as the barbute would let him.
“Let’s see how the meeting goes. It’s been a long time since we have seen each other, and I wouldn’t have minded if it were longer. And by the way, the Renaissance Festival doesn’t arrive here until next February.”
“That’s not very hospitable,” Bres said, frowning. Oberon was right: He smelled of salt and fish. As a god of agriculture, he should smell of earth and flowers, but instead he retained the stink of the dockside, owing perhaps to his Fomorian ancestors, who lived by the sea. “I could take offense if I wished.”
“So take it already and be done. I can’t imagine why else you would be here now.”
“I am here at the request of an old friend,” he said.
“Did he request that you dress like that? Because if he did, he’s not your friend.”
“Atticus, who is that?” the widow MacDonagh called from her porch. I didn’t take my eyes off Bres as I called back to her.
“Someone I know. He won’t be staying long.” Time to set up my flanking maneuver. Speaking mind to mind, I said to Oberon, Remain still. But when I say, get behind him, grab a leg, and just yank him off his feet. Once he’s down, jump clear.
Bres continued as if the widow had never spoken. “Aenghus Óg wants the sword. Give it to me and you’ll be left alone. It’s that simple.”
“Why isn’t he here himself?”
“He’s nearby,” Bres said. That was calculated to ratchet my paranoia up a few levels. It worked, but I was determined it would not work in his favor.
“What’s your stake in this, Bres? And what’s with the armor?”
“That does not concern you, Druid. Your only concern is whether you will agree to give us the sword and live, or refuse and die.” The last fingers of the sun were waving good-bye over the horizon, and twilight was upon us. Faerie time.
“Tell me why he wants it,” I said. “It’s not like Ireland has a High King who needs the Tuatha Dé Danann to help him out uniting all the various tribes.”
“It is not for you to question.”
“Sure it is,” I said, “but I guess it’s not for you to answer. Fragarach is right here.” I gestured to the hilt peeking over my shoulder. “So if I give it to you now, you walk away, and I never hear from you or Aenghus again?”
Bres peered intently at the hilt for a few moments, then chuckled. “That is not Fragarach. I have seen it, Druid, and I have felt its magic. You have nothing in that scabbard but an ordinary sword.”
Wow. Radomila’s magical cloak just rocked.
And then the green overlay in my vision started to differ from the normal spectrum. Bres was pulling his sword out of his scabbard in a leisurely fashion and watching my face to see if I reacted, so I tried to stay relaxed and let him think I was clueless. Either he knew that I really had Fragarach on my back and he wanted to double-cross me, or he simply wanted to kill me to burnish his reputation. He’d make a fine tale of the battle, no doubt, in spite of the fact that he was planning the equivalent of a stab in the back.
“I assure you it’s the real thing,” I said to him, and to Oberon I said, Change in plan. Just lie down behind him when I say. I’ll push him over your
back so he falls down.
Bres’s glamour form shrugged and said, “You can give your cheap sword to me if you’d like. It will only delay things, and I’ll have to come back again with another offer. But I can guarantee that offer won’t be as generous as the one I’m giving you now.”
And that was when the true Bres on the green overlay grinned wickedly and raised his sword over his head in a two-handed grasp, ready to split me in two.
Now, Oberon, I said, keeping my face pensive as if I were thinking over Bres’s words. I started talking out loud to hopefully mask any sounds Oberon made as he moved.
“Bres, I think you’re missing something important,” I said, even as he brought his sword down with all his strength and I stepped out of the way to the right at the last instant. His glamour persona was still standing there, smirking, but I didn’t pay attention to that one anymore. The green one—the real Bres—had just tried to slay me. While he was hunched over awkwardly on his follow-through, I kicked at the nerve cluster in his wrist to make him drop the sword, then put another one in his face to make him stand back up. It didn’t get through his helmet, but any blow to the head is going to make you pull away. Then I pivoted on my left foot and spun clockwise, delivering a roundhouse into his solar plexus before he could set himself. He staggered backward and fell over Oberon in a tremendous clatter of bronze and hardened leather, still not hurt but pretty humiliated by this point. He gave up on the glamour, and the smirking Bres merged with the one on the ground, so that my faerie specs and my normal vision showed the same thing again.
I could have left it there. He was disarmed and no danger to me now, and if any of the Fae had been around to see him fall flat on his ass, he would be shamed in a legendary fashion. Except that he had tried to kill me with a glamour. He would never fight me fairly, because he could not win that way—he’d never been much of a terror on the battlefield. If I let him live, then he would send a series of assassins my way, just as Aenghus Óg had been doing for centuries. I didn’t need twice the headache I already had.
Plus, in the parlance of our times, he was a douche bag.
So I didn’t leave it there. While he was still on the ground, I whipped Fragarach out of its scabbard and plunged it straight through the center of his bronze cuirass, which offered no resistance to the magical blade. Bres’s eyes bulged and he stared at me in disbelief: After surviving the epic battles of ancient Ireland (in respectable armor), during which he could have died heroically, he was going to meet his end in a fight that lasted less than ten seconds because of his own overconfidence.
I didn’t gloat over him, because that’s how people get cursed. I yanked Fragarach out of him quickly, causing him to gasp in pain, and then I brought the sword down on his neck, severing his head before he could utter a death curse against me.
He took a swipe at me with his sword, I replied.
He didn’t see you either. Well done.
“Ye killed him,” I heard a tiny voice say. I turned to see the widow standing up, whiskey glass trembling in her hand before it slipped out and shattered on her porch. “Ye killed him.” Her voice quavered. “Are y’goin’ to kill me too now? Send me home to the Lord so I can be with me Sean?”
“No, Mrs. MacDonagh, no, of course not.” I re-sheathed Fragarach to remove the threat it represented, even though the blade wasn’t clean. “I have no reason to kill you.”
“I’m a witness to yer crime.”
“It wasn’t a crime. I had to kill him. It was self-defense.”
“Didn’t look like self-defense to me,” she said. “Ye kicked him and pushed him and then ye stabbed him and cut off his head.”
“I don’t think you saw the whole thing,” I replied, shaking my head, “because I was partially blocking your view. He tried to stab me with his sword. See it lying there on the ground? I didn’t pull that out of its scabbard. He did.” I stayed where I was and let her process it. When someone thinks you might kill them, the last thing you want to do is edge closer to them in an attempt to comfort them, but people always seem to do it in the movies.
The widow squinted at the dim outline of the sword, and I watched the doubt seep into her expression. “I thought I heard him threaten ye,” she said, “but I didn’t see him move until y’kicked him. Who was he? What did he want?”
“He’s an old enemy of mine—” I began, and the widow interrupted.
“Old enemy? Aren’t ye only twenty-one? How old could yer enemies be?”
Gods Below, she really had no idea. “He was old in the way I see things,” I said, and then I thought of a story to tell her. “He was really an old enemy of my father’s, so he’s been my enemy from the day I was born, if you see what I mean. And after my father passed away years ago, I became the target instead. That’s why I moved here, you know, to get away from him. But I heard a couple days ago that he had found me and was coming, so I started wearing this sword to protect myself.”
“Why didn’t ye get yerself a gun like all these American boys do?”
I grinned at her. “Because I’m Irish, Mrs. MacDonagh. And I’m your friend.” I modulated my expression to earnest pleading and clasped my hands together. “Please, you have to believe me, I had to kill him or be killed myself. And I hope you know that I would never, ever hurt you.”
She was still unconvinced but was wavering. “What was the nature of the argument he had with yer da?” she asked.
I couldn’t fabricate a plausible lie on the spot, so I told her a part of the truth. “It was about this sword, actually,” I said, jerking my thumb back to the hilt. “Da stole it from him long ago, but in a way it’s more like he brought it home. It’s an Irish sword, you know, but this bloke had it in his private collection, and it didn’t seem right, him being British and all.”
“He’s British?”
“Aye.” I felt ashamed for pushing the widow’s buttons like this, but I couldn’t afford to keep talking all night with a decapitated body in the street. Her husband had been in the Provos during the Troubles and was killed by the UVF, whom the widow had always assumed, rightly or not, to be puppets of the British.
“Ah, well then ye can bury the bastard in me backyard, and God damn the queen and all her hellish minions.”
“Amen,” I said, “and thank you.”
“Not at all, me boy,” the widow said, and then she laughed. “Ye know what me Sean used to say, God rest his soul? He said, ‘A friend will help ye move, Katie, but a really good friend will help ye move a body.’ ” She cackled hoarsely and clapped her hands together. “Not that I can help ye move a big bugger like that. D’ye know where the shovel is?”
“Aye, that I do. I wonder, Mrs. MacDonagh, if you would have some lemonade or something in the house? I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
“Oh, sure, me boy, I can whip something up. Ye just get busy and I’ll come out with a glass.”
“Thank you so much.” As she disappeared inside, I turned back to Oberon, who was still in camouflage. Think you can carry the head back to the backyard? We need to get this out of sight. Night had fallen, but the streetlamps were coming on, and anyone driving down the street would see a slight problem in their headlights.
Good enough, I said. As I bent down to pick up the body and Oberon began playing a macabre game of snout soccer, the battle crow showed up. It took one look at the carnage and squawked angrily at me.
“I know,” I said in an urgent whisper. “I’m in deep trouble. If you will follow me to the backyard, we should be able to speak privately there.” The crow squawked once more before launching itself into the air and flapping over the roof.
I hauled Bres off the street and slung him over my shoulder in a fireman’s
carry. I felt his blood oozing through the back of my shirt—I’d have to burn it.
When I got to the backyard, the Morrigan was already in human form, standing pale and silent with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were glowing. This wasn’t going to be a nice chat.
“When I agreed to your immortality, that did not give you permission to kill the Tuatha Dé Danann,” she spat.
“Surely I don’t need permission to defend myself?” I asked. “He tried to use his glamour to cut me down, Morrigan. If I hadn’t been wearing my necklace, I never would have seen the sword he pulled on me.”
“You would have survived,” the Morrigan pointed out.
“Aye, but in what condition? Forgive me if I do not wish to experiment with various levels of pain and disembowelment,” I said, as I lowered my shoulder and let Bres fall unceremoniously onto the widow’s Bermuda grass.
“Tell me precisely what happened, every word that passed between you.”
I told her, and she regarded me with stony silence, except for those red eyes. They finally dimmed when I told of how I had used a camouflaged dog to trip him and finish him off.
“Well, that was unforgivably arrogant of him. He deserved to die a fool’s death,” she said. “And look at that horrendous armor.” But then she looked at his head resting a yard to the right, and her eyes blazed red again. “When Brighid hears of this, she will want me to bring her your head! And I will have to tell her no! Do you know what position that puts me in, Druid?”
“I am sorry, Morrigan. But perhaps if you tell Brighid precisely how he died, she will be less inclined to demand blood for blood. Think of your own reaction to it: His death was the most dishonorable of any of the Tuatha Dé Danann. And why was he doing Aenghus’s bidding, anyway? Demanding restitution for one such as he would be almost ridiculous.”
Her eyes cooled down as she considered my words. “Hmm. You reason well. Perhaps we can avoid conflict if we present it to her properly.” She looked again at Bres’s headless body and his head sitting at Oberon’s feet. “Leave the body with me,” she said. “I will take care of it.”