The Good Hawk

by Joseph Elliott

  One of the deamhain holding Agatha pulls out a knife and turns toward her with bloodthirsty eyes. I have to free myself. Now. I bend my knees and push all my weight into the deamhan on my left. I’m not strong, but I catch him off guard, and he stumbles. Using his momentum, I force us closer to the nearest fire stand and swing my leg at it. I miss. The deamhain are trying to pull me back. I swing again. This time, the side of my foot clips the stand, shifting half of its base over the edge of the platform. It teeters. Come on, fall. Fall! It’s tipping. Yes! It plummets over the edge and our corner of the platform turns black. A flicker of a shadow later, unseen hands reach up and snatch the deamhain from either side of me. They are too shocked to call out as they disappear.

  One of them dropped a sword, which I grab as I stand. The deamhan with the knife is staring at the space that used to be occupied by her kinsmen. I swing the sword at her knife hand and chop it clean off. She stares at the stump, her mouth a black circle. I’m staring at it too. Did I really just do that? I blink in disbelief, then her howl shakes me back to my senses. I charge into her with my shoulder and shove her off the platform.

  There’s only one deamhan left on the platform now. He throws Agatha to the floor and squares up to me, pulling an ax from his belt. I retreat to where there’s no light, hoping he will follow. He hangs back; he saw what happened to the others.

  Agatha slides over to Nathara and cradles her in her arms. “I’m here for you, N-Nice Queen, I’m here for you. Please don’t die,” she says. Nathara does not respond.

  The deamhan flips the ax in his hand, preparing to throw it. I raise my sword, ready to defend myself. There is a loud screech behind him as several white bats fly down and start beating their wings at the fire on his right.

  “Å nein!” he says, swiping at them with his ax. It clips one of them on its wing, but it does not deter them. They flap even harder, until the fire dwindles to nothing.

  Only one fire remains on the platform, behind where Agatha and Nathara are lying on the floor. The deamhan strides over to it, puts the ax between his teeth, and lifts the entire fire stand. He makes it look so easy. He stalks toward me, holding the fire above his head.

  “Agatha — find some light!” I say, as she slips into shadow.

  Once he is within reach, the deamhan flicks his head, flinging the ax from his mouth straight at me. I thrust out my sword in front of me. The ax rebounds off it, sending tremors down my arms. The deamhan bares his teeth like a savage dog. Still holding the stand, he jumps in the air and kicks me square in the chest. Something cracks and pain floods in. I tumble backward, dropping the sword, which slides over the edge of the platform. The deamhan towers above me. He is easily twice my size. He lifts the fire stand, preparing to bring it down and crush my skull. Veins pulse along his arms.

  I whip my legs around and slam my feet into his ankles. He drops the stand, which misses my head by a crow’s breath. The fire spills, scattering flames onto the ground below. The platform is now completely dark. The deamhan’s eyes widen, and his breath catches in his throat. He knows what is about to happen, and he is powerless to stop it. Sgàil hands wind around his ankles, then force him down with a silent shudder. As he falls, he reaches out and grabs my shoulder, pulling me down with him. I hit the ground below the platform with a thud, crashing my teeth and rattling my skull.

  The deamhan is lying next to me. His eyes lock onto mine. We both see the dagger at the same time. It is in the space between us. I make a grab for it, but he is quicker. Its blade catches the last of the light as he raises it into the air. Pain pins me to the floor. He drives the dagger down, toward my head. All I can do is stare.

  At the last moment, I whip my arm in front of my face. The dagger collides with something metallic and slips away from me. My eyes focus on my wrist, on the bracelet that has just saved my life. The deamhan lifts the dagger for another strike, but before he gets a chance, his body starts convulsing. A sgàil has taken hold of his waist. He stabs at his own sides, trying to release its grip. The nails of his other hand scrape along the ground, resisting the pull. Every muscle in his body clenches, but the sgàil is too strong. A moment later, he is gone. His wailing drains away as he is dragged out of sight.

  I stand up, sucking in shallow breaths. Dark outlines clash and struggle all around me. I can scarcely make out which are deamhain and which are sgàilean. My ears ring with the chaos of clanging weapons, tearing flesh, final breaths.

  Agatha! She was left in darkness. I have to get to her before the sgàilean do. I push past warring bodies, trying to find the steps leading up to her.

  I circle the platform once, possibly twice; it’s hard to tell in the dark. The steps are no longer there. I raise my arms to pull myself up, and pain explodes in my rib cage where the deamhan kicked me. I grit my teeth and heave. It takes three attempts before I manage to swing a leg over and drag myself up. Two bodies lie on the opposite side of the square, neither one moving. I rush to them and shake the first I reach. Nathara doesn’t respond. I put my hand on her heart. Nothing. She is dead. My eyes sting, but I blink it away. There is no time for remorse. I reach over to the second body.

  “Aggie, it’s me,” I say, shaking her shoulder.

  She fights to open her eyes. “J-Jaime!” she says. “You came back for me.”

  She is drenched in blood. I’m too late.

  “Of course I came back,” I say. “We’re a team, remember?” She tries to smile, her face contorted in pain. “We need to get you away. Into the light.”

  No sooner have I said it, than the final lantern is extinguished and darkness swallows us all. I drop beside Agatha and wrap my arms around her, trying my best to cover her with my body.

  “Stay with me,” I say.

  The sounds in the chamber intensify: vicious whispers, highpitched squeals, furious cries.

  Agatha tries to speak. Her voice is weak.

  “What is it, Aggie?”

  “Th-thank you for being my friend, Jaime,” she says.

  “You don’t need to thank me for that.”

  The whispering creeps in on us. I hold her even tighter, pressing her into my pain.

  There is a tug at her feet, which becomes stronger and more persistent.

  “Leave her alone,” I shout, kicking at the air.

  “I am not afraid, Jaime,” she says. “I am not afraid.”

  A final pull rips her from my arms.

  I scream, scrabbling in the darkness.

  “No. No!”

  She is gone.

  THE CHAMBER IS SILENT. HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN ASLEEP? I don’t remember closing my eyes. The fires are still out, but the high windows let in just enough daylight to see by. The platform is surrounded by more bodies than I can count. They lie sprawled at all angles, their faces torn and pleading.

  One of those bodies is Agatha’s. I can’t tell which.

  An abyss of sadness opens up inside me that I know will never disappear.

  Cold water runs beneath my fingertips. I lift my hands, but they are not wet. It is the sgàilean, flowing across the platform. For once they make no sound at all. They gather at Nathara’s body and swim in her blood.

  More sgàilean join, until there are so many that her body is completely obscured. The click of the onyx amulet cuts through the silence and, one by one, the sgàilean slip inside it. When the last one disappears, I reach over and snap the amulet shut. It hangs limp at the side of her neck. It is some relief, at least, that the sgàilean are once again contained.

  With the utmost care, I straighten Nathara’s body and place a single kiss on her forehead.

  “May you find peace in endless sleep,” I say.

  I stand up on weak legs. I need to find Agatha’s body as well, but the thought of looking for it is too unbearable right now. I’ll search for my clan first, then return for her on my way back through.

  What happened to Aileen and the others who were brought in to witness the executions? I lost track of them when the fight
broke out. The sgàilean shouldn’t have harmed them, but what if the deamhain did? A sudden panic forces me into action. I jump down from the platform. My ribs still throb, but the pain is bearable. I pick my way across the room, trying to look down as infrequently as possible.

  The sound of footsteps stops me midstride. People are approaching the chamber from one of the tunnels that feed into it. It must be deamhain from outside, returning to reclaim the mountain now that the sun has come up.

  I dive behind the nearest pillar. The footsteps get louder. There are voices, all talking at once. I peer out as the first people emerge from the tunnel.

  I gasp. I cannot believe it.

  It is my clan. All unchained, all unguarded.

  And at the very front, leading them, is Agatha.

  I almost fall over in my haste to get to her. I throw my arms around her. She hugs me back, squeezing tight.

  “Be careful of Milkwort!” she says.

  The vole looks happy enough, perched on her left shoulder.

  “I thought you were dead,” I say.

  “I’m not, J-Jaime. I’m not dead.”

  “Well, I can see that! But the sgàilean took you. You were covered in blood.”

  “They took me away but they didn’t hurt me this time. And — and it wasn’t my blood. The blood was from the Nice — the Nice Queen Nathara.” Her voice falters as she says her name. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  I nod and we hug again.

  Maybe Nathara’s blood prevented the sgàilean from attacking Agatha somehow? That’s the only explanation I can think of.

  “Where did you go?” I ask her. “I was worried about you.”

  “When the noises stopped, you were being so — sleepy and sleeping so I went to find our clan, Jaime. And look — look, I found them!”

  I stare at the many hundreds of faces around us, at everyone we have saved. People I never thought I’d see again. And it is not just our clan who are there; Agatha has freed all of the prisoners in the mountain.

  “How did you —?” I ask.

  “It was easy for me,” she says. “Milkwort showed me the way. There wasn’t even anyone g-guarding them.”

  The guards must have come running into the chamber when the battle started and then suffered at the hands of the sgàilean. Either that or they ran away. Many of the freed prisoners look similar to us, but some look completely different. Some even look like deamhain, only without any tattoos.

  Maistreas Eilionoir steps forward and covers both my fists with her hands. There are flecks of crusted blood in her hair, where the deamhan hit her.

  “You’ve come a long way, Jaime-Iasgair,” she says in a slow, raspy voice, “and overcome many hardships. Clann-a-Tuath will forever be indebted to you.” Then she leans in close and whispers into my ear, “You truly are the bravest of us all.”

  “Guma fada buan, Jaime! Guma fada buan, Agatha!” someone shouts from the crowd. It becomes a chant, and before long, everyone is shouting our names in praise. The echoes reverberate to the top of the mountain, where they disturb the white bats from their slumber. They glide down majestically before returning to their perch.

  Everyone wants to greet me and clasp my fist. I am turned from person to person, from smile to smile. Exhilaration courses through my body.

  “You still wearing that ugly hunk of metal on your wrist?”

  I spin around.

  “Aileen!”

  She launches herself at me, and I fail to hide the wince as she knocks my chest.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She looks different. Older, maybe. But she still has the same spark in her eyes.

  “You’re alive,” I say. “I came for you.”

  “It took you long enough.” She punches my arm.

  I twist away from her and smile.

  I smile so much it hurts.

  “It is time for us to leave this damned-awful place,” Maistreas Eilionoir calls out above the hubbub. Everyone falls silent to listen to her. “Pick up arms from the fallen enemy; we do not know what to expect when we leave the mountain. Jaime, do you have a plan?”

  “Ask Agatha,” I say. “Her plans are usually the best.”

  Agatha beams. She runs the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip and then says, “We should go to where their boats are. We will take their boats and go — go home!” Everyone raises their fists in the air. “Follow me and J-Jaime. We are not afraid!”

  Another huge cheer breaks out. Agatha looks at me and I nod in agreement. I can’t believe it. We’re going back to the enclave. We’re going home. Who knows what we’ll find when we get there? If the islanders from Raasay think it belongs to them now, they’ve got another thought coming. It’s ours, and we’re taking it back. The way I feel now, there’s nothing we cannot do.

  People break away from the crowd and arm themselves with whatever weapons they can find. I ask some of them to help me lift Nathara’s body down from the platform. Then, with Aileen by my side, we all move as one, through the chamber and down the tunnels that will lead us out of the mountain, never to return.

  EVERYONE HAS TO ROW ON THE LONGBOAT. THAT IS HOW they go. I don’t have to because I am the hero. Maistreas Eilionoir said it. I was so clever to have the plan and I did it and it worked. I didn’t even die which I thought I would. Now we’re going home. Everyone is so happy and we did it.

  The only sad thing is that the Queen Nathara is dead. That is why I wished I did my plan sooner so she didn’t get killed. That is the only thing.

  When we got to the boats there were deamhain there who didn’t want us to take them. They weren’t the ones from inside the mountain. They were different ones. Maistreas Eilionoir said to them, “Your king is dead. Your prince is dead. The people in the mountain have either perished or fled. We are no longer your prisoners. Let us go in peace and we will be merciful. Try to stop us, and it will be the end of you all.”

  After that the deamhain let us take the boats because they knew they couldn’t stop us. Also maybe they heard about the shadow things and they were scared. The shadow things are back in the necklace now and wouldn’t have come out because it was the daytime, but the deamhain didn’t know that. The other prisoners went on different boats because they are from different places.

  I didn’t want to do the rowing but I wanted to do an important job so Maistreas Eilionoir said I could be the lookout from the front of the boat like a Hawk, the most important one. My face is always salty and I lick it. I can see the land which Jaime says is Scotia again. We are not going across it like before. We are going around the top of it in the boats.

  I wonder what Crayton and the bull people are doing. I hope we will see them again one day and I can tell them that we beat the deamhain. They will be so happy to hear it.

  “How about here?” asks Jaime. He is standing next to me at the front of the boat.

  “Yes,” I say. “Here is a — good place.”

  We have been looking for somewhere to say goodbye to the Queen Nathara. We are going to put her in the sea because she liked it when it did the splashing. Jaime holds his hand up to the rowers to stop and they do. The other boats stop too. Four people carry the Queen Nathara’s body to the front. It is on a piece of wood like a bed. She looks pretty because I stroked her hair and put flowers in it from before we left.

  “None of you knew Queen Nathara,” Jaime says, “but it is because of her that you are all here now. Keep her name in your hearts and remember her forever. Caidil du bràth, Nathara.”

  “Caidil du bràth,” everyone says, and I say it too. It is one of the things in the old language that everyone knows. It is what you say when someone dies, and it means I hope you sleep forever with peace.

  Jaime bends down.

  “Where’s the necklace?” he says. He looks around her neck and inside her clothes.

  “What necklace?” asks the man who was one of the ones carrying her.

  “She was wearing a neckl
ace. A locket with a big black stone,” Jaime says. “Where’s it gone?” He means the necklace with the shadow things inside.

  “She wasn’t wearing it when we lifted her onto the boat,” the man says. “At least I don’t remember seeing it.”

  The other people who carried her shake their heads to say they didn’t see it too.

  “So where is it?” Jaime looks at Maistreas Eilionoir. “We agreed to bury it at sea. If it ends up in the wrong hands . . .”

  “It is no longer our concern,” Maistreas Eilionoir says. “The sgàilean cannot hurt us.”

  That is not true. They tried to get me once. I was lucky that they didn’t get me in the mountain, too. Jaime says it was because I had the Queen Nathara’s blood on me so they thought I was like her. I think it was because they realized I am Clann-a-Tuath and that I am not a foreign person like Knútr said. I do not like that necklace or the shadow things.

  Jaime stands up and nods at the people who carried the Queen Nathara. They pick up the piece of wood and lower her over the side of the boat. I look over so I can see it. She stays floating for a little bit and then she starts to sink. I wave goodbye to the Nice Queen and I say I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.

  Some birds are making squawk noises in the sky. I look at them and they are flying all around. When I look back at the water I cannot see the Queen Nathara anymore.

  “What happened to the necklace?” I ask to Jaime.

  “It must have fallen off at some point, back in Norveg,” he says.

  “I’m glad we left the shadow things behind,” I say.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “They won’t get you again.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  I shiver a little bit because it is cold. It is time for us to go now.

  Everyone starts to row again and the water splashes on both sides. In front of the boat, a gannet goes in and out of the water. It is the one with the Queen Nathara’s soul, I think. I hope it takes her somewhere nice.