by Kildare
Gabriel stepped beside him. “No. You know too much already. We do not bring Earthlings here. This is our first exception. There will not be another. Cillian, you have a choice before you. You can help us, or not, but you may be the only human who can save your world.”
“I have one request.”
“Name it,” Michael said.
“I want a black duster.”
“One will be provided.”
Cillian took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Then I’ll do it. I released Loki, so I’ll help you recapture him.”
“Then we will send you back to Símhin. You must understand there are things we cannot reveal to you. Not yet. But Símhin is where you will discover how to capture Loki. You will be sent to a time and place most advantageous to achieveing that end. One more thing. Because your soul is in this new body, if it dies, you die. There is no coming back from that. So be careful.”
Cillian turned back to the window. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
III
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7
Enormous redwood trees towered over the steep mountainside as far as Cillian could see. Tiny shards of gray sky in the green canopy above, tall pillars of red blurring away in the distance. He heard voices and ducked down into tall ferns, thick green in the dark-red earth. The ground was soft and he crawled forward to a down-fallen log and hunkered up against the wood. Even standing he couldn’t have seen over the giant tree, but the voices were definitely coming from somewhere nearby on the other side.
“We have to go back,” a man said in Norwegian. “It’s getting too dangerous here.”
“I agree,” another man said, also in Norwegian. “We’re too few. And after this last discovery, we’re no longer safe. We need to get back to our own lands.”
Norwegian? Was he now in Norway? He’d thought the angels were sending him back to Símhin.
Neither of Cillian’s parents’ native language was English. Cillian had learned Norwegian from his father, and Gaelic from his mother, along with enough French that he’d picked up the language with ease in college. He had also learned to read and write Latin in college, adding up the languages he knew to five. But for that knowledge, he wouldn’t understand any of these people. It would seem too strange to be coincidence if not for stranger elements of this whole adventure.
“We’ve been searching for two weeks without finding a single sign,” the first man said. “We know you don’t want to abandon this search, but we have no choice. We tried, but he’s vanished.”
“Is this everyone’s opinion?” a female voice asked.
A jumble of voices all answered in the affirmative. It sounded like the party numbered between six and ten. Cillian wished he knew what they were discussing. Why had it become too dangerous? And who had vanished? He needed more information. Without knowing who these people were, strolling into their midst could place himself in great danger.
“How far are we from the borderlands?” the woman asked. The log muffled her voice, but Cillian thought he recognized it. Hard as he tried, he could put no name or face with the voice.
“Two days’ ride to the nearest outpost.”
“Which path do you propose we take, Kjartan?” the woman asked.
“We head toward Abhainn an Chapaill Fhiáin,” a man with a deep voice barely audible answered. Odd. Though they spoke in Norwegian, the name was said in Gaelic. It meant Wild Horse River.
“Should that become too dangerous a route, we may have to attempt Bearna an Bhéir Bhriste and enter Ildathach.”
The Broken Bear Pass and the Multicolored Plain were also Gaelic names. Why were they speaking Norwegian, but using Gaelic words for the local geography? He wasn’t in Ireland. Stranger yet, Ildathach was another name for the Otherworld in Celtic mythology.
“You’d have us try our luck with the Tuath Dé?” a man asked.
“If our choice is the Tuath Dé or the trolls, I’ll take my chances with the Tuath Dé.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to make that choice,” another man said.
“I place little comfort in hope,” the man named Kjartan answered in a gruff voice. “They’ve already found our old tracks once. It’s only a matter of time before they find newer tracks. Distance is our only savior.”
“Why are the trolls this far south?” the woman asked. “How could the Tuath Dé not know they’re operating along their borders?”
“I don’t know, but everything feels wrong. Trolls don’t cross the mountains so close to the lands of the Tuath Dé. Another reason it’s so important we get back to the borderlands. We must raise the alarm in preparation for something worse. Then maybe we can come back with reinforcements to discover the trolls’ purpose. But right now, Niamh, if we’re all agreed, we must get out of these mountains as quickly as possible.”
That name. Cillian recognized the voice. Niamh was the tall woman with East Asian features who had led him by chariot to the Imperator. He leapt up—pausing at the tangled mass of roots and earth at the stump—before stepping forward into the camp.
“Hallo,” he cried out in Norwegian.
In an instant, swords were unsheathed and arrows nocked and drawn. Just as quickly, the weapons were lowered again. They recognized him, though he only knew Niamh. All the rest were men, powerfully built, most taller than Cillian, a couple by over half a foot. None were shorter than six feet. Compared to the shorter soldiers of the city, they looked like giants. They appeared to be scouts or some other type of military unit that preferred speed over combat. They carried longswords or battle axes, and short, thick bows. They wore trousers and light leather armor over tunics—everything black.
Black paint ringed their eyes. Tattoos inked nearly every bare patch of skin—runes and images of creatures both real and mythological. The Vikings had tattooed incantations on joints to ward off pain or hold evil spirits at bay. Did these runes serve a similar purpose?
All had beards, with some bound in braids drooping to their sternums. Most had long hair. A few were shaved to the scalp, their heads marked with even more ink. They lacked the uniformity of appearance Cillian had witnessed among the soldiers at the triumph. Were they a different army?
Niamh walked forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. “God’s grace returns you,” she said, switching to Gaelic. “It’s good to see you’re still alive. We’ve been searching for you for two weeks.”
A man stepped to her side. “Explanations must wait, Niamh,” Kjartan said in Gaelic. “We’ve delayed here too long already.” To Cillian, he said brusquely, “You can ride one of the spare horses. We must leave. Now.”
The others had little to gather from their temporary camp. No fire or other sign indicated they had stopped long. The spot seemed to have only been used for the group to decide their next course of action. Soon everyone was ready and mounting their horses. They numbered nine, ten with Cillian. Kjarten gave Cillian a black horse to ride.
Cillian realized he was wearing a black duster as he was about to climb up into the saddle. It looked good. If only he had a mirror. He had one foot in the saddle, and was dragging up the other, when a sharp whistle and dull thud spooked the horse forward. He managed to throw himself into the saddle before he lost his balance. The blow from the collision with another spooked horse knocked him in the other direction. Only the pommel saved him. He looked for the cause of the panicked horses and saw a man sprawled out in the red earth, an arrow sunk deep in his chest. He wasn’t moving. The aim had been true. Cillian ducked at the whistling of two more arrows. A thud in a tree and a quick fade out of the other.
“Ride! Ride!” Kjartan yelled in Norwegian. “Follow me!”
Cillian spun his horse around and chased after Kjartan, who led the way down the steep slope. Cillian looked back as an arrow streaked overhead. There was no one else behind him. He was the rearguard, an unsettling realization. Vague shapes dashed down the mountainside, covered in some kind of dark camouflage, s
mall among the giants of the forest, but at least as big as a human. Maybe bigger. Were these the trolls? In legends their appearances varied so much Cillian had no idea what one actually looked like. Any other time such a thought would have been absurd.
The ground leveled and was without rock or fallen deadwood. The troops spread out to move faster. Their pursuers faded beyond vision. A distant horn blared. Kjartan urged speed, a look of fear in his eyes. The dark figures were too slow to keep pace, yet the fear of the others was rising. Why? Something else pursued. Something faster.
They changed course at a shallow stream silently winding through a wide trough of denser, shorter pines. The gloom of shadow cloaked the woods, a sulking slate sky in the gaps above. Deadfall littering the ground slowed their pace, the path constricting into a confusing labyrinth, their progress measured by each foot. Several times they reached a dead end, a fight to turn the horses in such confined spaces, the caboose now leading in search of another way. Would they ever escape?
A ghastly scream jerked the whole troop to a halt. The riders froze in half-finished motions, the horses wide-eyed, ears tipped forward. Cillian shivered, a wave of goosebumps rippling across his skin. It sounded again, some freakish fusion of a wolf’s howl and a cougar’s scream. Another cold shiver slid down his spine. It was the most dreadful sound he had ever heard. The scream faded to silence.
The single note of a songbird roused them from their dread, set the troop in motion again. Now faster, more urgent. That look again in Kjartan’s eyes. Whatever had made that terrible sound was the something faster. And Kjartan had seen it before.
“What was that?” Cillian asked in Gaelic.
“A scéin na scáile,” Niamh said.
No such name existed in Gaelic, but the words meant: Shadow Tterror.
Cillian had never heard of such a beast in any legend, nor had he any interest in learning more. Anything with terror in its name provided more than enough warning. The dreadful cry sounded again from a different direction. More than one hounded them. They were being tracked.
“How are you with a bow?” Kjartan asked in Norwegian.
“It’s been a while.”
Kjartan handed Cillian a bow and quiver. “Relearn fast.”
Cillian nocked an arrow and drew back the string. The movement felt foreign. How long since he had fired a bow? Thirty years? Thirty-five? Worse, he had never fired an arrow from a horse. He would be lucky if he could hit an elephant and that was without the horse moving. A tightness settled in his chest, seemed to grip his heart. So much pressure. He didn’t want to fail these people, strangers though they were.
“How far are we from the Broken Bear Pass?” Niamh asked.
“About four hours,” Kjartan said. “We should reach the pass a couple of hours before sunset.”
From their reliance on Norwegian to communicate, Cillian realized that only Niamh and Kjartan understood Gaelic, and Niamh spoke only a broken Norwegian. They didn’t use Latin at all. So when Cillian spoke, he also used Norwegian.
The trees opened onto a broad meadow. Thickets of willows hedged a river ahead. They pushed the horses to a gallop for the first time since the attack. Cillian felt a surge of exhilaration, the green blur of the grassy earth passing by below. It roused a memory from his childhood, of him and his younger brother Otto racing across flat stretches of open prairie, bareback on their favorite mounts. Isabelle would berate later them for their recklessness, while Christian pretended to work. And, though Johnny Bad Gun never said much about it at all, Cillian knew he thought more highly of them as riders for ditching the saddles. It was the old way after all. The warrior’s way.
Those rides together so long ago were often impetuous and breakneck. Cillian had enjoyed few things more. Those had been hard, lean years in the depths of the Great Depression, the land withered by brutal heat, bitter cold, and the long, dry spells of the Dust Bowl. For fleeting moments, he would feel free, the troubles of the ranch fading out, as gray ships with white sails floated across the sky roads, their shadows chasing behind across the rippling prairie below, Cillian and Otto in dogged pursuit.
When he visited the farm—even decades later, too feeble and stooped to ride—he would walk out into the hills alone and remember those dashing rides, those brief flickers of a freedom he had sought for in vain for the rest of his life. He had never quite understood those feelings, only knew they were always lurking there, inescapable and indescribable, and brought a smile to his face every time.
The slowing of the horses at the river’s edge snapped Cillian back to the present. Kjartan was the first to fjord, the water deeper than it appeared. The horse struggled to keep a footing in the swift current. Once safely on the other side he urged the rest to follow. Halfway across, the horse ahead of Cillian slipped on the loose rock bed and stumbled. In an instant both horse and rider were being swept away. The rider—a stocky, muscular man—caught hold of a boulder and dragged himself out of the water, the reins clenched tight in his hand. He locked his legs on the rocks and leaned back, groaning as he swung the horse around enough to pull it free of the current and into slower waters where it stumbled to its feet. Though visibly shaken and exhausted, the man climbed quickly back into the saddle.
Another cry of a shadow terror shook the quiet. A reminder that even this brief delay was too much.
Ahead a mountain loomed, a sheer wall of gray rock, rent by a single, deep cleft, a smear of green beneath and two lower mountain ridges in front. This was Broken Bear Pass, their salvation if the others were correct. Beyond lay the land of the Tuath Dé, a word the Imperator had called Cillian for reasons he still didn’t understand. Many things about this world he didn’t understand. No time for questions now, and more by the minute. Maybe beyond the pass he would finally hear some answers.
Niamh and Kjartan were huddled together, arguing over something. Niamh pointed in the direction the stream flowed, Kjartan toward the gap in the mountains. Niamh nodded and then they split apart and were charging toward the gap. Some decision appeared to have been made. They went up out of the valley and back into the trees and crossed over a low ridge. On the other side another stream rushed broad and shallow. They stopped to water the exhausted horses, the belly of his own heaving with each suck of air. The horses couldn’t keep this pace much longer.
If there were any birds they had gone silent. Only the cries of the shadow terrors sounded. They were getting louder. Closer. Each glance back carried an expectance to see some foul creature bounding out of the trees. Similar thoughts were written on the faces of the others. Cillian had rarely seen a group so freaked out, and then only in war.
“A rider should follow this stream south to the borderlands and warn them,” Niamh said. “The rest of us will head for Broken Bear Pass. Hopefully the trolls will pursue us.”
“I’ll go,” a man volunteered.
“Stay in the water, Arinbjørn, until you’re sure the shadow terrors have crossed this stream and are east of you,” Kjartan advised. “They won’t be able to smell your trail if you stay in the water. In a couple miles this stream joins with the river we just crossed. Follow it and you’ll come to an outpost at the base of the mountains.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to split our forces?” Arinbjørn asked. “If you’re ambushed before the pass, there’ll be too few of you to defend yourselves.”
“If we’re ambushed before the pass, another sword will be of little use to us. Our best chance of someone reaching the outposts is to separate. If the alarm isn’t raised in time, the entire borderlands could be overrun.”
“Overrun?” one of the men asked. “You think this is more than a scouting force?”
“I don’t know,” Kjartan said. “A party of trolls is quite suspicious. I’m of like mind as Niamh. Their presence is a bad omen.”
Kjartan grasped hands with Arinbjørn. “Should we not meet again in this life, may we meet again in the next, kinsman.”
Arinbjørn nodded, wheeled his horse a
bout, and marched alone downstream. Cillian had a poor notion of the danger chasing them, but just the howl of the shadow terror was enough to unnerve all of them. For this one to march off into such danger alone was remarkable. He wished him a silent prayer and hoped they would meet again someday. Preferably in this world.
Niamh reined her horse up alongside Cillian and handed him the sheath holding Anbhás. “You may find this more useful than a bow.”
Their party reduced to nine, they wasted no time watching Arinbjørn depart. The aspen and birch along the stream dwindled, the giant redwoods returning. Little deadwood canvassed the dark-red earth and their pace quickened. He hoped the terrain held. Without roads or trails, even a log slowed their headway.
The last slope to climb was too steep for the horses to walk a straight line, so they zigzagged up, skirting the huge boulders strewn across the mountainside. Another shriek, another shiver. Cillian wasn’t getting any more used to the sound. If anything it had become more unnerving. So eerie, so unearthly.
“Stay together,” Kjartan commanded. “The shadow terrors will be upon us shortly.”
The slope steepened, the trees shrank, and the air thinned. The horse’s hooves left deep imprints. They wheezed, fighting the soft earth, too little oxygen, and the last of their energy. Much longer and they would collapse from exhaustion. Cillian quit spurring, but the horse needed no goading, just as terrified as him of the strange howls rising up from the valley floor.
The ground leveled and through a thin stand of pines he saw the gaping maw of the pass basked in sunlight. One last hillside to climb, twice the height of the trees. After the last ascent it was a short distance. Not a patch of dirt to be seen. The horses picked their way up the scree, testing each rock for grip before trying the next. Each dreadful scream paused the climb, snapping his horse’s head back toward the sound, its eyes wide and wild.
“When we get to the top of the pass there’ll be a ring of menhirs,” Kjartan said. “Get within as quickly as possible. The trolls won’t enter the stone ring.”