“Let him go.”
The lieutenants split to flank him. Holding the gae bolg in his left hand and the remaining silver dagger in his right, James watched them both intently, waiting for an attempted attack. Every chance he dared he turned his attention back to Dother and Tony. The knife’s blade pressed harder and Tony felt a warm trickle begin to well against it as it broke his skin.
His blood spattered the grass below-
The fire, until that moment a rather modestly sized blaze, abruptly let loose a jet of orange flame that shot straight up into the clouds. The heat blast from the explosion ripped through the assembled; Tony shut his eyes lest they boil away in their sockets, and felt his skin wilt under the intensity of the flare. He expected to feel the knife’s blade sink into his flesh – surely Dother would choose this moment to strike, or simply be knocked backward by the blast and slash his throat involuntarily.
The blade did not descend.
He opened his eyes and the scene before him reassembled itself from searing-blue afterimages; the grass browned by the heat. The fire back to its former intensity. Dother no longer standing over him, nowhere to be seen. Judging from chunks of steaming flesh, the smell of charred meat, and the leg still in a business suit that was smouldering not five feet away, at least one of his lieutenants had not fared well. His father…where was-
There.
There he was, groggily picking himself up from where the explosion had tossed him like a ragdoll. Battered, bruised. Still alive.
Behind him, unseen, Dother’s last remaining underling was bearing down on him.
More out of reflex than anything else, Tony wrenched once more at his bonds even as he shouted a warning. With a rrrrriipppp and a jerk and an indescribable smell, his cocoon rent itself apart; it had absorbed so much of the heat thrown off by the explosion that its tensile strength had been fatally compromised. He hit the ground. Free, and apart from burning flash-damaged eyes and ringing ears, fairly unharmed.
His father had heeded the warning. As the faerie, business suit still smoking from the blast, tried to leap on his quarry, his father, silver dagger in his hand, simply leant into the lunge and added his own boost to his opponent’s momentum, accelerating him through the air.
Knowing what was about to happen, Tony was flat out sprinting for his father, arms and legs pumping. He had to get there in time, before-
The faerie screeched pitifully as it landed directly on the flames.
Tony barrelled into his father, knocking them both to the ground as the fire let loose with a second explosion. A wall of flame rolled over their bodies, washing out in all directions, sending another spout vertically up into the night sky.
The heat was incredible. Even as they lay flat and felt themselves cook, Tony knew that he shouldn’t even be alive; to be so close to two such blasts and to emerge with only singes and chars to show for it was impossible. Unless the flames weren’t entirely physical.
As if to prove his theory, the wall of fire stopped dead in its expansion, as if some cosmic force had pressed “pause”, and then promptly began to rewind in on itself, reversing with the whoooosssshhhhh of a thousand aircraft taking off simultaneously back to its humble source in the centre of the standing stones-
-and once there, it extinguished itself. The winds stopped. Dead. Silence fell, almost absurd in its completeness.
Something landed on the soil in front of Tony and his father. Something long, and sharp. Something silver.
“The sword,” Tony breathed, getting up, sucking in steadying breaths, his heart beating a tattoo in his chest. He nudged his father. “Da…the sword. Nuada’s sword. Should I take it?”
The silver light the sword was throwing off illuminated the scene around them. It was beautiful, ethereal. Otherworldly, for want of a less obvious phrase. Tony wanted very much to take the four steps forward and crouch down and scoop it up and hold it in his hand. It looked like the sort of weapon that should be held; that silvery light that suffused everything around he and his father in a regal glow seemed to beckon to him…
“Da?”
It was now that he saw what else the silver glow had revealed. Namely, the patch of darkening grass under his father’s body.
“Da!”
He rolled his father over, the sword forgotten. The strength fled from his legs and he crashed rubber-ankled to the ground, unable to stand.
Sticking from James’ Morrigan’s chest, buried to the hilt, was his own silver dagger.
Tony’s eyes bulged as his brain tried to process this fresh horror. He became hyper-aware of every passing instant; the feel of the air, the deathly quiet, every contour and curve of his father’s body, every angle and line of that dagger protruding obscenely from his chest, and the ragged, weak rising and falling of his father’s breathing. No.
No. No. No. No. No. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible! His father hadn’t had that when he had run toward him, when he had saved him by knock…
He had the silver dagger in hand. When I knocked him to the ground. Silver dagger in hand. Knocked him over. Me. Knocked him over. Silver dagger. Hit the ground hard. Had to run as fast as I could. Course I did. Cos he was dead otherwise.
Had to get to him in time. Knocked him over. Dagger in hand. He fell when I knocked into him. I had to. I did this. I did this. I…
A weak cough. Blood. Tony knelt by him. Cradled his head. Wiped away the blood.
“Son?”
“Da…”
“Don’t,” he said, his throat making bubbling noises, his chest heaving. His eyes tried to focus on Tony’s face. There was a light in his eyes, borne of determination to speak. “Don’t…”
It was a sentiment James Morrigan never got to finish.
Tony held his father’s head against his chest and he rocked back and forth and squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed for what felt like an age.
Eventually the world began to move again. Shadows fell over him. One human-sized. One much larger. The sword was retrieved from where it lay on the grass. Dother turned it over and over in his hands admiringly. Beside him, Sarah, in her full-spider form, waited for the order to come to strike at the pathetic figure before them.
“You’ve done me a favour, Tony,” Dother said. “I owe you this sword. You see…” and he knelt, addressing the sobbing youth, the glowing weapon laid across his palms, “…that little heroic show back there? All a bit of a glammer, I’m afraid. The Morrigan – the real deal – she placed a charm on this magnificent specimen. Only one Morrigan killing another could summon it forth. I just had to conjure up a situation where your own over-eagerness and crippling ineptitude would bring that about. So just like your father…you didn’t disappoint me.”
Tony’s sobbing had ceased. He raised his head to look at Dother. There was nothing in his eyes but hatred and heartbreak in equal measure.
“I’m going to be the one who kills you.”
Dother’s smile was so ever-present it may as well have been painted on. “No,” he stated simply. “Not as simple as that. You see, your little…mistake…will have consequences for you Tony my boy. You’ll find out what those are, in time, and when you do…” he lifted the sword, as if about to strike, “…you’ll be the one to come to me and to ask for my help.”
With a barely-human bellow, the paralysis of grief left the young man and he launched forward, intent on nothing in the world other than getting his hands around Dother’s neck and squeezing until the life left his body.
Idly, Sarah flicked out a leg. Tony was unconscious before his body hit the ground.
Dother ran his fingers lovingly over the sword’s blade.
“Your mother will be pleased,” Sarah remarked.
At that, Dother’s smile finally vanished. “Yes,” he replied, in a strange tone. “Yes, of course she will. Come, Sarah. We have much to accomplish, and you must be at my side.”
“Of course. I remain your sentinel.”
He tilted his head. “Hmm. Yes, sentinel.
Partly that I suppose.”
“Partly that?” she echoed, puzzled.
“Tell me, how are your typing skills…?”
**
Co. Wexford, Ireland, 43 AD
Time had moved on, by several days; he knew it without having the Morrigan tell him. The bodies of those killed by the Formorian raid on the village had been removed. He didn’t know where they’d been taken – what did the people of this time do? Bury immediately? Put them in a burial chamber? He couldn’t even remember that much, couldn’t bring to mind what any half-remembered history book or teacher had said about this time period.
They remained in the centre of the village during the slight time shift, as if anchored there. As the world swung into regular motion again, he saw that it wasn’t only the bodies that had vanished. Gone was the hubbub of the place. When he’d first come here, to this little collection of huts and hovels in a clearing in the woods, he’d been struck at once by how completely alien it was to Regent Street and yet how a few things were familiar; the occasional streaking past of a few kids, the cursory nods exchanged between neighbours. Accoutrements changed over centuries. Humans, it seemed, not so much.
All that was different now.
The streets – or rather, street; this place was like a one-horse town that had eaten its horse – was markedly less crowded. Understandable perhaps given that probably almost half of the population had perished in that terrible afternoon. But those that remained were almost universally the males; of the women and children, he could see nothing. The men themselves had changed. Each one he could see carried a weapon of some sort about his person. The nods were still there, but there was a jumpy quality to them.
This was a place still raw with shock and terrible grief.
He was about to ask the Morrigan where the women and children were secreting themselves – in their homes, presumably – when he saw examples of both, walking out of their home and toward the central well. It was the younger Morrigan with Glon and Gaim, and all three carried empty buckets.
Silence descended so quickly it took his breath away. The men who had been going to and fro about their daily errands slowed as the newcomers were noticed, and then one after another they began to come to a halt altogether. Looks were exchanged between them.
The younger Morrigan, of course, was neither blind nor stupid. Outwardly, however, she made no indication of having noticed the ripple of paralysis that the presence of she and her sons had caused. Glon and Gaim, younger and more naïve, tugged at their mother’s tunic for attention, obviously wanting to ask questions. Danny saw Glon start to wave at one man only for his mother to snap her hand out and slap down his wrist before the gesture was complete. She spoke, quickly and sternly, and the three of them hurried onward to the well and began to fill their buckets.
Like a noose tightening, the men standing in the streets around began to walk, slowly, deliberately, toward the three figures.
One man was moving faster than the others. His trajectory took him past the pair of ghostly observers, and as he passed within only a few feet of Danny a truly incredible smell wafted from the man, almost enough to make Danny gag.
“What the fuck was that?” he hissed.
The older Morrigan’s face was a study in emotionless agony. She glanced at him. “See any pubs around here?” she said pointedly. “It’s what passes for Carlsberg in 43 AD.”
Pissed. That explained the crab-walk; Danny had thought he’d been trying to sneak up on the trio at the well, but in actuality the man was simply smashed off his face and it was all he could do to stay even roughly on course.
The effect might even have been comic – if not for the short, rusted and altogether diseased looking blade he clutched in his right hand.
As if sensing his approach, the Morrigan’s hands slipped the shoulders of her sons. They had filled the buckets, but the noose had tightened to a degree where there was no way back where they’d come without going past at least five of the assembled men.
Murmurs reached his ears. He did a quick three-sixty. As if by magic, the empty doorways that had been so universal only minutes before were now populated with the remainder of the village; the women with grey, hard faces, the children they shielded silent. Unnaturally silent.
The Morrigan stood with her two children, her back now to the well, facing them all. She did not look afraid. The same could not be said of Glon and Gaim, who were shrinking further and further behind their mother, their little mouths moving with silent and increasingly alarmed questions. Where was Caderyn, Danny wondered. Home with Coscar?
Still the men came closer, and closed the gaps between one another, until it was impossible to imagine even dodging between their reaches. Only the drunken man was not included in this rough formation; he was a few steps further ahead. His eyes shone. Danny realised the man was weeping.
His heart was pounding. In a way this was worse than the Formorian assault. That had been brutal and horrific, but it had been done by monsters out of…well, out of fairytales. You didn’t expect much from fuckers the size of houses with too many eyes, or too few. This was altogether different. The faces around him, not a smile between them, were all too human.
Speak, he silently implored her. Speak, or run, or fight. Do something!
“I am not one of them,” she spoke up, answering his summons.
“You are not…” the drunkard said, words surprisingly clear despite his condition, “one of us.”
“I have chosen to become like you,” she said. “Myself and my children, we will give up our heritage and live amongst you. That is all I want. Everything I want. Please. Allow me.”
“Give up?” the drunkard scoffed. “What have you given up? What have you sacrificed?”
With a start, Danny placed the man’s face. Saw him during the massacre, pleading with a Formorian looming large over him. Not for his own life, but for that of his family
“My wife. My little daughters. My babies,” and he sobbed openly now, almost stumbling to his knees before recovering his balance. The faces of the villagers watching were ashen. “Murdered. By your kind. Why? Why did they come here? WHY DID THEY COME HERE?”
“You have been on the hunting parties!” she replied desperately. “You know they have struck at other villages, other settlements!”
He lost it at this.
“THEY WERE LOOKING FOR YOU!”
The words, and the accusation behind them, echoed. So loud had he screamed that a few birds took off from a nearby roof.
“Do you deny it?” he whispered into the silence that followed.
“Please,” she said again, her voice pleading this time. Danny was walking towards her before he quite knew what was happening. He had made himself a promise during the Tuatha standoff not to stand by and watch more horror unfold, no matter how futile his efforts may be to make a difference in his ethereal state. Every instinct he had was screaming at him that something terrible was about to happen here.
“If we let her stay here, how long before those things return? To finish the job? And if she truly is becoming one of us, then who shall protect us?”
Murmurs of agreement. Nods. A rising current of electricity was passing between the men, a precursor to action to be taken. The men did not look excited at the prospect of what they were about to do; most looked grim, and a few looked on the verge of being physically ill. But none stepped back. None dropped weapons from readiness. None broke ranks.
“Stop this!” Danny demanded, willing himself into existence, drawing up all of that strange wellspring of power deep within himself he had tentatively begun to explore.
Nothing. No-one turned in his direction.
He walked to the drunkard, just as the man lifted his weapon to point at the woman and children before him. Shouted in his face. Did a dance. The man’s gaze never wavered. He took a step forward and Danny lunged for him and with a strange feeling of briefly being plunged into a hot ice bath, he was out and through the other side of
the man, now behind him. The drunkard didn’t seem to have noticed a damn thing.
Fifteen feet away, his guide stood like a statue. He cried out to her for help, begged her to make him corporeal. He may as well have been immaterial to her also for the complete lack of response he received.
And Glon, little Glon, seeing the net closing in and feeling his mother’s grip slacken for just a moment, decided to make a break for it.
“No!” his mother and his unseen would-be protector screamed in unison.
“Daddy!” Glon screamed, sprinting for his home and his father still within its walls, bounding on legs bandy from nervous energy as the circular formation of men made their move. Danny, redoubling his efforts, threw himself into a last-ditch dive. All he felt was hot ice, and then soil.
A little cry reached his ears. Not a dramatic scream, only a little ooommpfff that sounded as surprised as anything else.
Getting to his feet, he saw what he prayed he would not.
Glon swayed, his eyes wide and amazed, his skin pale. His mouth was open in a little round O. The man standing over him looked only slightly less sick. There was blood on the end of his spear. He saw it, reacted violently as if stung. The spear dropped to the ground.
“…Mammy?” he gasped at the Morrigan, standing in frozen mid-tussle with the drunkard. At her feet little Gaim cowered in terror. “Mammy…I’m hurt…?”
Behind him, attracted by the screams and the commotion, he could see Caderyn at the door of their home. He had seen it.
Down Glon went, in a tangle of arms and legs. A little puppet with its strings cut.
Time seemed to stretch. In the quarter-second or so it took Glon’s body to crumple to the ground, the Morrigan freed herself from her opponent.
The bright afternoon day with only a few scattered clouds darkened to blood red as though someone had blown out the sun as they would have a candle flame. The air went from crisp and clear to heavy, pregnant with magic, and all of it swirling around the figure of the woman clad in the humble rags of a simple peasant.
Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR) Page 20