Warstalker's Track

by Tom Deitz

  “Blood,” David added quietly. “Bone fragments. Severed tendons and nerves. Ruptured organs—and let me tell you, viscera stinks.”

  “Right,” Aikin agreed. “But you freeze up, it’s your ass and mine. I had a cousin fucked up in the Gulf, and an uncle who lost his sight in ’Nam. Dave had his favorite uncle in the whole wide world blown to shit and back with a hand grenade somebody was playin’ with. Never mind John Devlin, who could sure as hell tell you a thing or two if he was here.”

  “Don’t forget that Dale had front row center for World War Twice,” Big Billy put in, clearly relieved to find familiar ground. “And I did a tour of ’Nam myself.”

  “Damned straight,” Aikin affirmed. “Now, Brock-boy, you think the pointy-ears are gonna let you off with a warnin’?”

  David rose from his seat, not alone at being taken aback by his friend’s outburst. God knew Aik wasn’t one to give speeches when a word would suffice. Only LaWanda spoke up in the boy’s defense. “So what’re you gonna do, hunter-boy?”

  Aikin stared thoughtfully at his handiwork. Time passed. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Reckon I’ll do…what I have to. If it’s a choice of us or them, that’ll make it easier.” His gaze swept past David to settle on Fionchadd. “But I’d sure as hell want to be sure about the rules of engagement. Like, who are our enemies? How do we tell ’em from the good guys? Do we bluff, or do we shoot first and let the god of their choice sort ’em out? If we shoot, do we shoot to scare, disable, or…kill, given that we’re dealin’ with iron now. What about it, Finno; any advice?”

  Fionchadd met the mortal’s hard stare evenly. “Fine questions, young hunter, and to be sure, our code of war makes no provisions for such arms as you wield. By rights, this should fall under the Morrigu’s province, yet she is with us no longer. Still, our situation is desperate; we must therefore act accordingly. First of all, any who oppose us should be treated as enemies. If you wound a friend in ignorance, they will likely recover, and there will be time for those mightier than either of us to explain things later—assuming we succeed. Should our adversaries find us, however, they will be on us swiftly. Unless I warn you otherwise, do not hesitate. Strike hard, for to one of our kind a wound is easily dealt with; death takes longer to overcome.”

  “’Specially from steel shot,” David noted dryly.

  Fionchadd tensed. “Yes…especially. But do not forget: our foes commit treason against King and Land, and such traitors deserve a traitor’s death—the Death of Iron.”

  David’s glance strayed to Aife, who was staring silently at the deck while Fionchadd went on obliviously. “Those we seek see mortals as mere nuisances, or at best as resources to be exploited. Your arms will be a threat unexpected—and such a deadly power as your new weapons wield may be unheard of. The first blow they feel will be the sharpest. I doubt not your skill in arms, Aikin, nor your mettle.”

  Apparently mollified, Aikin resumed his work, and after a flurry of strokes, a two-foot section of gun barrel clunked onto the deck. He tried a few practice swings before declaring it a success, then handed it to David, who likewise tested the weapon: shouldering it and sweeping an arc across the sea before centering it on the shield. His first shot, after loading, took half the top away.

  For the next hour and a half (at a guess; watches always misbehaved in other Worlds), everyone on board gave themselves over to target practice. Brock embraced it with the wholehearted passion of the young with some new toy, and wouldn’t rest until he’d tried every last theme and variation of available ordnance. Big Billy worked silently and methodically—and with intense, if workmanlike, confidence. LaWanda was as easy and relaxed as with anything else. Does nothing scare her? David wondered, then answered his own question when he recalled her devotion to Piper. By and large he was encouraged about their competency, as far as armed combat was concerned—though, he admitted sourly, he’d never be Aikin’s equal.

  They even offered the weapons to their Faery companions, stressing that some had wooden stocks or handles and at least one had almost no steel content at all. Aife made a minimal effort, but shook her head and returned the pistol after one round of shots, saying sword and Power had served her for nigh on a thousand years and would suffice a little longer.

  Fionchadd, however, seemed reasonably game—not surprising given that he was young indeed for a Faery—certainly young to have so much responsibility thrust upon him. David suspected it was a case of young male macho kicking in—the two races were not that dissimilar, and God knew he’d contended with his Faery friend before, when the stakes were higher. Fionchadd proved a competent shot, too, though not as good as David had expected—a function, he and Aikin surmised aloud, of the Faery’s ingrained aversion to iron, which made it all but impossible to maintain a steady hand.

  And then LaWanda yawned, and what passed for a sun grew too hot for anyone sane to remain on deck, and they all went inside for some much-needed repose. David’s ears were ringing.

  *

  It had been high noon when the drakkar left Sullivan Cove, but somehow it had become morning again—or the Faerie equivalent thereof—when the ship glided out of the swirled and twining fog that had embraced it all the way from Sullivan Cove and into a reality that included more than variations on a theme of white. Certainly the light that enflamed the sheer rock wall ahead held the same pink-gold quality morning light evoked, though a backward glance showed no sun to cast the black shadows that etched those glittering cliffs like some obscure ancient ogham.

  Cliffs they were, too, rising nigh out of sight above, like the Cliffs of Moher, on the west coast of Ireland, back in the Mortal World. A swatch of sky showed above them, cloudless and bright as blue glass overlying etched gold. Nor was the place entirely lifeless, for ferns, moss, vines, and other sturdy plants laced in and out of the cracks and crowned shelves and outcrops like a net of life cast across the petrified corpse of that which lived no longer.

  There was also a trail, visible as the ship eased closer: a shelf in the rocks an armspan wide that rose and fell along the rock face until it vanished into a golden haze to the right that could only be a Track. To the left, the cliff continued a ways, then simply…wasn’t, as though reality ended there. David looked away quickly, just as movement in the corner of his eye made him jump almost out of his skin. It was only Big Billy, who’d ambled silently up to stand beside him, a frown masking what David suspected was genuine fear.

  “Ain’t nothin’ over there,” Big Billy drawled. “I ain’t never seen nothin’—not sure I like seein’ it, either.”

  “Then don’t look behind you,” Aikin advised, joining them in the prow. The rest of their band followed, as the cliff face swept nearer. “Nothin’ back there either. Ditto down below.”

  David risked a glance over his shoulder. His friend was right: there really was nothing there—the same nothing one “saw” inside a Hole, save that this bore a faint filigree of gold before it, as though the merest veil of substance staved off that insanity. They had come here by way of a Track (though the ship did not require one in order to navigate between the Worlds), but not along a Track, he didn’t think.

  They were somewhere now, though, and that was major comfort. “Is this what I think it is?” Brock wondered, stroking the handle of the Blackhawk he’d thrust into his belt.

  David eyed him warily, relieved at not having to explain the unexplainable to his father. “I think so,” he replied, wishing Fionchadd were here for confirmation instead of back at the tiller adjusting the trim of what seemed clearer by the moment was to be landfall, and nowhere near Lugh’s palace. “It’s a bubble universe, basically an accretion of matter built up along the Track.”

  “Or something that has split off from a larger World and drifted here,” Aife countered. “That has occurred often in Tir-Nan-Og of late; I heard as much when Lugh kept me captive as an enfield. It is the result of happenings in your World. Iron eats through. Pieces…fall off. If they are connected
to a Track, sometimes they float down its length like a bead upon a string.” She studied the terrain critically. “This one, however—it is old, the rock is. Perhaps it has merely broken off the larger Land like the edge of a glacier wearing away in summer.”

  “And Nuada’s here?” David ventured.

  Aife shrugged. “It would be an odd place to find him.”

  “Maybe so,” LaWanda observed, padding over to join them, “but dust me with flour and call me white if that don’t look like him comin’ out of that crevice there.”

  Aife glanced around sharply, and David recalled that she had once been placed under judgment by the powers here—including Nuada—and had not yet served out her sentence. Was it any wonder that she dreaded this encounter? Still, she held her head high as the ship turned to angle closer to a section of ledge fronting a darker fissure than most, in the shadows of which a tall blond figure was standing with that odd light raising highlights along the metal that comprised his right arm, so that it looked like a limb of flame.

  David watched as the Faery raised that arm in greeting—or warning, for his other hand clutched the hilt of a wickedly gleaming sword.

  “That’s him sure enough,” David acknowledged, jogging across the deck to stand behind the gunwale nearest him.

  “Hail!” Nuada called as, without further protocol, he leapt lightly from the stone shelf to the oak boards that decked the vessel.

  “Hail,” David replied awkwardly, reaching out to steady his—he hoped—friend.

  Introductions followed to those who had not formally met the Faery Lord before, notably Big Billy, for LaWanda and Brock had encountered him first at Lugh’s council, then during their subsequent evacuation. Nuada murmured greetings as he took each hand in turn—a custom from the Mortal World at which he seemed perfectly adept. Only when he reached Aife did he pause. “Lady,” he breathed at last, “the world we know would seem to be changing. I trust there is a story behind your presence here in the form in which I greet you, and that the one I heard is true. I trust, also, that these good folk can likewise trust you. Were it not for the presence of Fionchadd, I would take this meeting with very hard bread indeed.”

  Aife’s chin went up. Her dark blue eyes were blazing. “Trust is a thing people have given me, then used against me, and a thing I too have abused. It did me no good and much ill. I have debts to pay on both sides of the World Walls. By coming here I hope to begin that payment…Lord.” A pause, then, in a voice cold as ice: “Or are you lord of anything now? Beyond cliffs and vines?”

  “There are things behind these cliffs few have seen,” Nuada answered. “And things within everyone here few have seen as well. But,” he added, “this is clearly no afternoon outing with young Fionchadd, or I do not know mortal weapons when I see them.”

  Fionchadd motioned toward the cabin. “Aye, Lord. But first, would you have some refreshment?”

  The Faery shook his head. “Knowledge is all I require now, though some things I already knew before your coming.”

  David’s brow wrinkled at that, before he noted the thin golden chain hanging around the Faery’s neck: a chain he himself had given him. Once it had supported a hologram pendant: cheap in Athens, but in Tir-Nan-Og, a wonder. Nuada had valued it, studied it, and improved on it, and finally made a sort of spy crystal using some of the same technology. “You used that, didn’t you?” he dared, not at all certain he liked the idea of anyone spying on his comings and goings.

  “One uses what tools one may,” Nuada gave back amiably, though his eyes flashed warning. “And what weapons. Is that not what you would make of me? A tool to your own devices? A weapon in your own plans?”

  “To save your king, you mean?” David retorted.

  “To save your Land, you mean!” Nuada snorted, but the tension that had ridden along his jaw had vanished.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Aikin broke in. “We can divvy up the tab later. Right now we need to get in and out, and frankly, anybody who can help would be useful.”

  “’Specially as we’re still not sure where we’re goin’,” LaWanda noted sourly.

  Nuada’s face registered honest surprise. “You came here with no notion of where he whom you seek might be?”

  David eyed him narrowly. “Obviously you didn’t spy enough, or you’d know.”

  “My Power has limits,” the Faery snapped. “I had other business—in your World, as it happens. I had but lately returned when you arrived.”

  David rolled his eyes at Fionchadd. “Good thing, or we’d have wound up farther from where we wanted to go ’stead of closer.”

  Fionchadd looked back at Nuada, nodding subtly at the chain. “I take it that you could use that to confirm Lugh’s whereabouts?”

  “Within limits.”

  “Time flies,” Fionchadd prompted. “This vessel merely…hovers.”

  “Aye,” Nuada sighed. “Well then, if you would find Lugh, let us all make ourselves comfortable, for this is best done without distractions.”

  *

  “Circle up, folks,” David said a moment later, motioning to the rug on which they had napped, which now lay spread upon the deck. His father, he noted, sat as far as civility allowed from the Faeries. Once they’d all arranged themselves, Nuada reached into the neck of his tunic and drew out a gold disk on a fine gold chain. A deft motion of his silver hand freed the disk; a tweak of those metal fingers set it spinning. A word, and it was glowing. Another woke images there.

  Something was wrong, David realized instantly. For while he’d rarely seen one of these devices in action, he could tell by the creases that barred Nuada’s brow that all was not well. Images did form—but they never clarified. It was like TV with interference. Once, David was certain, he caught a glimpse of Lugh’s face: tense, wild-eyed, and contorted with pain. Once, too, he glimpsed the body of a naked man, with chains running off into some obscure distance, but it dispersed as he watched, as though fire had burned it away. Indeed, fire was the most pervasive image, and eventually there was nothing but fire: a sphere of the stuff, like a small sun, with a sense of something bubbling and seething nearby.

  Nuada inhaled sharply, muttered another word, and the red glare vanished. The disk clinked to the deck, its glass totally dark.

  Nuada’s face was as grim as David had ever seen it. “I have not seen this place,” he whispered. “But I did glimpse Lugh; the bonds of friendship between us are strong enough to pierce even the Power of iron to show him to me. But it must be as Aife said: he must be prisoned by iron, for only iron could block my Power so; and only iron would appear as a flame in the disk.”

  Fionchadd coughed—perhaps in relief, perhaps to draw their attention to himself. “There is a reason we sought you, Lord,” he began, “beyond your Power, your advice, and your cunning, and that reason is this.”

  “Yes?”

  Fionchadd took a deep breath. “In order to bring this vessel to Lugh, it must have something to direct it there: something that belonged to Lugh, or better yet, something that bears his very substance, as it was your own blood on a bit of fabric that brought us here. I ask, Lord, if you have such a thing.”

  Nuada gnawed his lip. “Of gifts from Lugh, or things that belonged to him, alas, I own many but brought none with me out of Faerie. But there is something else that might serve better, though it might cost us as well, and myself not the least.”

  David’s brow furrowed, but before he could speak, Nuada had spread the silver gauntlet that comprised his right hand before Fionchadd’s face. It gleamed in the ruddy light: a marvel of workmanship; the joints that articulated it all but invisible, the range of flexion easily that of a mortal hand. Yet it was metal, made by Diancecht, the Faery master healer, if he remembered his mythology right. David had always wondered about it, for it was the main reason Nuada was not himself king of the Tuatha de Danaan. Kings must perforce be physically perfect, and he was not. That Nuada had not died and been reborn with all his limbs intact was a subject he had never
dared broach. Nor, he sensed, was this the time to venture into that.

  Still…Nuada scowled and did something David couldn’t catch with the little finger of the gauntleted hand—then raised his fleshly fingers for their inspection. Silver glittered there, and it took David a moment to realize it was the end joint of that metal digit: hollow, which surprised him. Nuada took it gingerly and upended it into his palm, as though to shake an object from a fabulously well made thimble. Something tumbled onto the metal: the merest crescent sliver of some pale material, like plastic.

  Fingernail. It was a fragment of fingernail.

  “When my arm was made,” Nuada said quietly, “it worked perfectly; every curve, twist, and articulation I desired was part of its design—but I had not strength enough on my own to wield it fully. Yet Lugh was my friend and saw my anguish, and he took a knife and pared off the end of his nail—no more than that did he dare, for fear of rendering himself imperfect—and put some of his own Power into that remnant, and set it here, and so was my arm empowered. ‘I may need this back, in time,’ he said. And now, I suppose, that time has come.” Nuada folded his fleshly fingers around the fragment and passed it to Fionchadd. “If this does not take us as close as this boat can come to my ancient comrade, nothing will.”

  “It will, Lord,” Fionchadd assured him, already stalking toward the figurehead. David wondered if he was the only one who saw Nuada’s silver hand tremble as he rose to join them in the prow. For already the dragon ship was turning.

  Scott Gresham’s Journal

  (Friday, June 27)

  Well, they’re gone, and it’s me and my friendly (?) neighborhood computer again—which I still don’t like, even after the week I’ve had to get used to the thing. And boy do I wish that was my only problem!