by C. E. Murphy
Forests sang, back home. They twittered and chirped and whistled, an’ they buzzed and whispered and cracked. Here all I heard was the sound of my own feet pressing against moss that sprang back again as soon as my weight left it, and my own breath sighing in and out of my chest. Cernunnos’s country was empty, lifeless, an’ felt like it’d been that way a long time. I said, “C’mon, sweetheart,” to the space between trees. “You out there waiting for me to ask nicely? I’m askin’. How ‘bout you and me go for a ride with Horns, and kick a bad guy in the teeth?”
A nicker that coulda been a laugh bounced through grey-greenery, light enough I kinda thought it wasn’t a horse at all. I couldn’t say if I was disappointed when one made its way through the trees, rather than a critter with a spiral horn on its forehead. It wasn’t like Cernunnos’s horse, power pared down to bare lines. This one felt more human, more normal, if a grey mare coming through a misty alien forest could be normal. She walked right up to me and lowered her head, so I put my forehead against hers. She whuffed a green-smelling breath, an’ I rubbed my hand under her forelock. She liked that, pressing against me, an’ I had to brace to keep my feet. “You real, sweetheart, or are you like one of Jo’s spirit quest animals?”
She snorted another breath, this time leavin’ me wet with grass drool. I chuckled and rubbed her forehead again. “All right, then. If you’re real I’ll have to give you a name. How’s Imelda?”
Imelda lifted her head to look at me with one big brown eye, then the other. I guessed that meant the name would do. Me and her walked outta the forest together, her pickin’ her feet up high and placing them down delicate again, and carryin’ her neck in a show horse’s arch. She was a pretty girl, and I never knew a pretty girl who didn’t like to be praised for it, so I kept my hand under her mane, rubbing and patting.
Cernunnos’s riders were spread up and down the beach when we got back, most of ‘em hardly more than shadows in the mist. Horns himself was waitin’ on us, as was the kid, sittin’ on a hunk of deadwood that shoulda been bleached of color, but was rich red like a living sycamore. He held Jo’s rapier across his knees. Cernunnos glared at it, then at me. “There you are. That was—”
The kid gave him a look, and the god’s mouth puckered up like he was suckin’ lemons. “That was more quickly done than I might have imagined,” he admitted grudgingly. “The land senses the magic you are touched with. She will serve you well. So will this.”
He tossed me a tangle of leather. For a couple seconds it didn’t mean anything, but then it resolved into pieces I recognized: a double-looped belt, one loop with a long slim sheath and the other with a smaller one. Cernunnos’s expression tightened up even more when I looked at him. “The shaman took my sword,” he said prissily. “She failed to take its sheath and belt.”
“Or the main gauche.” I waggled the smaller sheathe, which was as empty as the long one. “Where’d it go?”
“The sword has never had one to match. I wore it in hopes.”
“And then you lost the rapier, so no way would Nuada ever make you the knife to go with.” I wanted to grin but I wasn’t sure the boy’s stern looks would keep Cernunnos in line if I did. Instead I said, “Thanks.”
Cernunnos nodded, still scowling. “You would do well to wear armor as well.”
“You don’t. They don’t.” I nodded at the others.
“I am a god, and they have stepped beyond such mortal considerations. Dead men cannot die a second time. You, however, are vulnerable.”
“Only armor I know anything about is Army helmets and flak jackets, Horns. Nobody ever meant Kevlar to stop a sword, and anything else is just gonna weigh me down.”
“Find him suitable armor,” Cernunnos said to the boy. “I will not explain his loss to Joanne over a matter so simply arranged. You will hardly know you wear it,” he said to me, “and you will return it when this battle is done. I do not mean to make a gift of it to you as I have made a gift of that sword to Joanne Walker.”
I still had a tingle at the back of my mind, one that kept sayin’ this soft green land was home. Feelin’ that, I muttered, “No problem, buddy. I don’t need any more gifts from you right now.”
Cernunnos’s eyes narrowed. “Clever,” he said. “Clever, that you choose not to refuse all gifts, but only those offered now.”
“I’m an old dog, Horns. Most old dogs got a few tricks.” I untangled the sword belt and put it on. It was made for Cernunnos, who was a fair bit narrower in the hip and waist than an old ex-linebacker, but the belt fit anyway. I chalked it up to magic, sheathed the sword, and took a few steps, getting used to the feel of it. Not bad, for a guy who’d never really worn a sword.
Cernunnos cottoned on to that, and sounded accusing: “You told Joanne you could use that weapon.”
I shrugged. “I said I’d make do. I will. I learned how ta fight a long time ago, Horns. S’the difference if you’re doin’ it with a stick or a sword?”
“One has edges.”
So did his voice. I said, “Don’t worry, Horns. I can take care of myself. I ain’t gonna give you anything to apologize to Jo about.”
“You had best not.” He whistled sharply and the dogs came to him at a run, bouncing and slobbering when they reached his side. The riders and the rooks came more slowly, apparating outta the mist already on horseback. One of ‘em carried a saddle that the boy put on my mare, and she took a bridle without complaint. No bit, though. None of the Hunt’s horses wore bits. I didn’t figure a piece of metal in their mouths was what made ‘em ride the skies anyway, so I couldn’t see that it mattered. Another of the riders had the armor Cernunnos had been talkin’ about. Chain mail, though it didn’t seem right that a god who was around before chain mail was invented oughta have any. ‘course, by that logic he shouldn’t had a rapier, either. Guess even a god followed trends.
“It’s cunningly made, but you will not want to wear it against your skin,” he said to me, so I shrugged off my plaid shirt and tugged the mail on over my white undershirt. It weighed less than I thought it would, and didn’t pinch as bad as I expected.
“What is it, mithrail?”
Cernunnos’s eyes darkened like I’d offended him. “It is the very silver that sword is made of,” he said sharply, “and there is no word to encompass that. It will protect you from a great deal, but I still would not advise taking a direct strike.”
“Buddy, I got no plans to take a direct hit.” I buttoned my shirt over the armor and clambered up on the mare. Cernunnos looked pained and Imelda blew an exasperated breath, like she thought I was making a mess of things on purpose. I grinned and patted her neck. One of the dogs howled, and half a second later we were running for the moon.
CHAPTER THREE
Somehow I expected to come out on the battle already met. Expected we’d arrive in the thick of it all, like heroes riding to the rescue, an army of wild men comin’ over the ridge to save the weary soldiers. I guessed I’d been watching too many old Westerns, though, ‘cause when we rode outta the sky, there was no fight going on below.
There was a big ol’ mostly-flat hilltop, though. Mountaintop, I guessed, by local standards. At my end of time, it was called Knocknaree, and its claim to fame was a stone age pile of rocks called Maeve’s Tomb that stood a good thirty feet tall. It wasn’t here yet. Lots of others were—they were gravemarkers of some kind, called cairns, and they were all over Ireland, but Maeve’s Tomb hadn’t been built yet. We’d gone a long damned way back in time if a Neolithic building wasn’t there yet, but that was about the last of my worries, ‘cause there was somebody waiting for us, and I had a job to do for her.
Brigid, the Irish mother goddess of healing, childbirth and song. Or somethin’ like that. Jo was always impressed with how much magic mojo knowledge I had, but the truth was I was barely a step ahead of her, and didn’t always remember the details.
By my reckoning, it had only been a few minutes since I’d seen Brigid. She’d taken a hell of a hit, one mea
nt for Joanne. One that woulda stopped Jo from getting to me in time to heal my cut throat, so I owed the lady one. More than one, ‘cause Jo mighta died too, if Brigid hadn’t gotten in the way. I wasn’t traipsing around with Cernunnos just ‘cause Jo didn’t dare ride with him again: I had debts to pay.
I hadn’t really seen what’d gone on, thanks to the afore-mentioned cut throat. I’d just seen the aftermath, with Brigid sinking against the Lia Fáil like she was dying of a wasting disease. She looked better now, her color stronger and her face not so gaunt. Red knotwork tattoos stood out on her exposed upper arms like bloody scars. Before, her copper hair had been worn loose, and her white robes had been kirtled with gold leather. Now she wore her hair in a tight braid and had a brown leather sword belt with a broad-tipped blade in its sheath. She’d seemed gentle before, but now she was fierce.
And fiercely confused, though she did a fair job of hiding it as the Hunt swept outta the sky toward her. She stood her ground as Cernunnos charged down to the earth and brought his stallion in a prancing dance around her. Brigid acknowledged him with a nod, but she was looking for Jo. Her eyes settled on me.
A guy doesn’t get to be my age without being able to hear controlled fear in somebody’s voice. Brigid said, “Has my sister defeated the shaman, then?” and just about managed to sound like she was only curious.
“Nah, sweetheart, Jo’s fine. She just couldn’t get here herself, so I came along instead.”
One string of tension loosened in her. She looked from me to the swarming Hunt, then back at me again with her eyebrows lifted. “Surely one of these riders might have shared his horse with her.”
“It ain’t that. This is Cernunnos—”
“Yes,” she said, “I know who he is.”
All of a sudden I saw that she was not looking at him in the same way Joanne used to not look at Mike Morrison. I let go a silent whistle. Jo had said that Brigid and the Morrígan weren’t really goddesses, even though that’s what everybody called ‘em in the Irish pantheon. She called ‘em avatars, like they’d been imbued with the ability to act in a god’s name. The Morrígan’s boss was the guy Jo called The Master, and he was some kinda death god. Maybe the death god, the one that all our legends and myths were tryin’ to represent when they gave him names like Hel and Hades and Anubis. Jo hadn’t known who Brigid was answering to, but from the way she was not looking at Horns, I kinda thought she’d thrown him over in favor of whoever’d made her his avatar.
And from the way he was looking at her, I kinda thought he was in it to win her back.
Jo was gonna hate that she was missin’ this.
I cleared my throat. “Right. So Jo’s ridden with Cernunnos a few times now—”
Brigid’s face went sharp, then slack, like she was tryin’ ta hide that she’d gotten all edgy. I hurried up with what I was saying, hoping it wouldn’t make things worse. “—and she says she can’t ride with the Hunt again, ‘cause it’s too…”
As fast as she’d sharpened, Brigid softened again. She said, “Yes,” a second time, an’ this time it had a whole world of understanding in it. I guessed it didn’t matter how she was interpreting riding with Cernunnos, ‘cause there was no doubt she knew what it was like. “I wonder that she could refuse,” Brigid said, and Cernunnos harrumphed.
“It is a talent of your line. Brigid, you are…”
“Well enough for what must be done.”
He leaned down, lowering his voice. “I think not.”
Brigid shrugged. She reminded me a little of Jo, facing off the god, except Jo’s restraint was like sparks, and Brigid’s was all inside, tied tight so nothing could get out. “We make our choices and do what must be done. I have the strength I need now, and will pay later, if I must.”
“I might take the burden from you, if you would allow it.”
“You know I will not. You have brought this man to me, and I need him, so I will ride with you to do what must be done. Nothing more.”
“Dare you?” Cernunnos asked, and I finally realized that the rest of the world had gone away for the two of them. It didn’t matter that a dozen of us were sittin’ around on horses not twenty feet away at most: it was just the two of ‘em alone together, in a romance that had gone all wrong. “Dare you?” he asked again. “You have ridden with me thrice already, Bríg NicFionntán. Dare you risk a fourth?”
She smiled, a tired pained smile that I’d seen too often on my own wife’s face in the last days of her life. “Bríg NicFionntán was a girl in another time, with another face. I am like you now, and have only one name, or so many that none of them matter, and I might now ride with you until the end of time. My heart may still be yours, but my soul is sworn to another. You have no power over me.”
Cernunnos straightened in his saddle, stripping away their intimacy and becoming the thing I’d seen him as first: a cold hard capricious bastard. “As well, then, that I do not do this only for you.”
He meant it to cut, and it did. Brigid’s chin came up, enough of a hit that I saw it clear as Cernunnos did. This time, though, her voice didn’t betray anything but cool curiosity: “Do you not?”
“I recall a far-future memory, a reckoning with your sister’s master. I have a score to settle, though in that future I have no recollection of such a mark made in my past. Perhaps we might change it all utterly, and you and I might yet pursue what we have lost.”
Brigid stood silent a couple seconds, the sparks she’d buried comin’ close to burning through. Then she said, “Time’s passage does not alter in such a way, Cernunnos.”
His voice softened the same way hers had a minute earlier. “Time’s passage rarely alters that way, cuisle mo chroí. But even a god must try, else the long passage of the years would be unbearable with their sameness. Nothing is immutable, not even the stars. Will you ride with me?”
“I will ride with the boy.”
“Of course you will.” Cernunnos turned his stallion away, and the kid on the golden mare came to help Brigid mount. She thanked him, then lifted her voice, like all of us hadn’t been hangin’ on every word she and Horns had been saying.
“I have searched these hills while I have waited for you to come. East and north of Knocknaree lies a cavern reaching deep into the earth. There lies the cauldron which has stolen the lives of aos sí kings, and which will take even yours should my sister’s master gain the strength he desires. Master Muldoon has come from the other end of time to help us bind it. It is a binding I know succeeds, for he also helps to destroy it, and barely a dozen undead warriors rise to protect it. Make no mistake: when the magic is made to bind the thing, my sister and her master will come to protect it. You are hunters, but I would lead you to war. Will you ride with me?”
I’d done my time in the Army. I knew how much noise a dozen men could make when they put their minds to it. The Hunt outdid that, thanks to the baying dogs and calling rooks and the horses stamping their feet and raising their voices too. The only one not shouting was Cernunnos, who looked kinda like a captain whose troops had decided to take that hill over there whether he thought they should or not. I figured we were all gonna get court-martialed in the end, but what the hell, even a soldier’s gotta do something crazy once in a while or they’ll all go nuts. The kid swept his mare around, Brigid’s braid bouncing down her spine like a beacon, and the whole damned Hunt rode after them, cheering and waving their swords.
For once Cernunnos took up the rear. I nudged Imelda up next to Cernunnos’s stallion. “You said somethin’ about ‘your line’, meanin’ Jo and Bridey there?”
He answered like a man who thought he wouldn’t get any rest ‘til he did. “Brigid and the Morrígan are sisters, and Joanne is the Morrígan’s granddaughter, many times removed.”
“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
Cernunnos arched an eyebrow, wrinklin’ the flesh over his budding horns. I twitched, trying not to let it turn into a shudder. “All right, so you’re not kidding. Is that why you want Jo?
‘cause her great-aunt turned you down?”
In seventy-four years I’d never met anybody who could do disdain the way Horns could. His lip curled and he looked at me like I was somethin’ he mighta scraped off his shoe. “I hold her in higher esteem than that, and I would hope you do too.”
Smug with satisfaction, I let Imelda fall back from the stallion’s side. I didn’t mind a god being taken with my girl, just so long as it was her, and not some
cloud-chasing memory he was after.
After a couple minutes, the cloud-chased memory circled back around to me and let Cernunnos take the lead. I watched him ride forward, then gave Brigid a hairy eyeball. “Thought you were the one who knew where we were going.”
“There is no hole in the earth that doesn’t contain at least a few beasts, and he’s the master of them all. They’ll guide him there, whether they mean to or not.”
“And his fragile male ego is soothed by taking point?”
She gave me a perplexed glance that turned into laughter. “Something like that, aye. Is that a turn of phrase from your time? The ‘fragile male ego’? It seems appropriate.”
“Shh. We hear it alla time, but we don’t like to believe it. Ain’t good for our egos to think they’re fragile.”
“And yet,” she said, and I said “Shh” again. She smiled and nodded, but her smile faded faster than an old man wanted to see. “I had counted on Joanne Walker. Not that your presence isn’t appreciated…”
“But I’m no magic man.” I shrugged and nodded toward Horns, up at the front of the host. “He says I’m the next best thing. ‘course, I coulda told him that anyway.” I winked, and she laughed, quick as her smile had come. Least I could still get that out of a pretty girl, even if it was mercurial. “Jo put a whammy on me,” I said a bit more seriously. “Gave me her Second Sight, an’ it ain’t faded yet. Dunno why, ‘cause I thought it was only gonna work til sunset, but I’m still seeing straight into the bones of the world if I try to.”