Warstalker's Track

by Tom Deitz

  His and Brock’s, ideally, since he doubted the kid had prospered from saving his life just now, which was the last thing he remembered before he’d gone out. Shielding himself from a particularly strong swath of spray, he freed himself from the bodies sprawled atop him, crawled over another, and finally reached the boy, who was lying face down in a shallow depression. He reached out and nudged him in the ribs with his free hand, oblivious to the blood dripping there.

  And almost threw up on the spot.

  “No way!” he mouthed, flinching away. “No fucking way!”

  The kid was dead! No way he’d be so limp otherwise. But…he’d just been alive! Alive enough to cleave a man’s head with an atasi!

  All at once the battle didn’t matter.

  Nor did he care when he rose shakily and began firing aimlessly into the corpse of the man who’d tried to skewer him, who, as best he could tell, had cost Brock his life. It was stupid, crazy, and dumb, and utterly irresponsible, here on the fringe of what logic suggested was no longer their battle. But he had to vent some anger right now, and the only live things he could access were on his side.

  The Beretta clicked on an empty chamber.

  David sat down with a thud, staring at nothing save Brock’s smooth, blood-spattered face. At least the kid’s eyes were closed and he looked fairly peaceful. He didn’t dare look at the awful gash in his shoulder, though, nor did he heed the steady trickle of his own blood down his arm. Or the ever-increasing pain.

  He didn’t notice when the sound of splashing diminished into the familiar rain-hiss and waterfall-rumble, and scarcely heeded more when all five gryphons, none the worse for wear, calmly knelt before a very confused-looking Aikin.

  He heard something about a debt fulfilled (there was a lot of that going around), and springs being to Silver Tracks as Pillars of Fire were to Gold, only not exactly because the water and Silver only touched, as opposed to there being an actual identity in the other case.

  And he flat didn’t give a damn, any more than he gave much of one about the fact that they’d apparently just won. As for the grandiose plan that had brought them here—well, Elyyoth and Aife were out of it, and Finno was AWOL entirely, though he’d been awfully close to the bad guys when the cavalry had arrived. No way they’d finish the Track stuff now. No way in hell Tir-Nan-Og would ever be moved—that way.

  Nor did he care when Aikin whispered something to the biggest gryphon, which promptly led the whole pack of them in a series of graceful dives back into the pool, whence they vanished as though sucked down a drain.

  And he cared little more when Liz uttered a strangled gasp and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her grip tightened, and he knew she’d also seen. “I got him killed,” David spat. “I fucking got him killed. He was just a kid and he—”

  “Don’t go there,” Liz warned shakily. “He knew what he was doing. If not for him, I wouldn’t be standing here saying”—she paused, swallowed—“saying we won.”

  David shook his head, which ached like a son of a bitch, never mind his arm. “Wasn’t for me, somebody wouldn’t be havin’ to call his sister and his mom sayin’ he wasn’t comin’ home again ever.”

  Silence. David was dully aware of the others collecting themselves, assessing the situation, tending wounds, inquiring after others. He supposed he ought to make an announcement: apprise them of their loss, which only Sandy among them had noticed. She’d withdrawn at once and now sat alone, grieving silently, but otherwise intact.

  His worst wound was inside. Oh, he had a nice graze along the side of his skull that’d make a handsome scar, and there were a pair of ugly red gouges on his left arm, one of which bled persistently. His throat felt tight, too, as though fingers still dug in there. But the worst pain was not of the flesh.

  Calvin staggered over to join them, took one look at Brock’s body and sat down abruptly. “Is he…?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “I loved that kid!” Calvin choked, gaze fixed stonily ahead.

  “Me too,” David managed, slapping a red-stained hand on Calvin’s thigh before burying his face in his hands. “Sure as hell didn’t deserve it!”

  “Nobody does. Neither did Elyyoth.”

  More silence, but for the hiss of rain, the lapping of troubled water, and the sound of someone rising from the pool to slosh clumsily toward them.

  “Just like the song,” David mumbled, because he had to keep talking or go crazy. “He’ll never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.”

  Calvin shook his head. “Think he made the second one.”

  “Two ends of time,” Liz quoted another song. “Neatly tied.”

  “I can’t stand this!” David gritted—and stood.

  Fionchadd appeared from the shallows. He was dripping wet but none the worse for wear. “It is working—I think!” he breathed. “I must help Aife.”

  David blinked at him and saw that the sloshing had been the Faery woman’s approach. She stood before them now, looking gaunt, grim, and haunted—and tired unto death; yet still beautiful for all of it. Blood oozed from the shoulder that had taken the bullet, spreading into the wet fabric of her tunic. Alec was beside her, nearly invisible behind Fionchadd, but supporting her all the same. The wound in his forearm glistened darkly, but was minor or he’d be tending to it. “Sacred water has drunk deep tonight,” Aife whispered, as though that effort cost her deep as well. “Yet as best I can tell, all this blood, from friend and foe alike, has called a Track, bound it to us, and set it to working that which was in my mind when we were attacked. Our enemies have aided us unaware.”

  Myra scowled at her from where she was helping Piper tend a protesting LaWanda. “So let me get this straight, we only needed a little blood, and got—”

  “A river. Maybe too much. Maybe more than I can control. But for better or worse, Tir-Nan-Og is moving.”

  “Yeah, but where?” Liz wondered.

  Aife’s face went grimmer still, if that were possible. Certainly she showed no sign of her recent victory. “Where I wanted, maybe. Or perhaps it will go where the Track takes it. Perhaps Tir-Nan-Og will be torn apart and destroyed.”

  “By a bunch of fucked-up mortals tryin’ to save it,” Scott growled.

  “Tryin’ to save our World,” David corrected bitterly—even good news left him numb right now. “At a price nobody’s ever gonna know.”

  “Goddamn it!” Alec shouted. “Can’t you people fucking hear? She says she’s not done. She’s gotta try to control it—and she’s worn out!”

  “We all are,” Myra sighed, patting LaWanda’s leg and rising. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll try.”

  “Better make it snappy,” Kirkwood broke in, gazing toward the overlook behind them. “We got more company.”

  “Good!” David snarled. Steeling himself, he reached over and eased the atasi from Brock’s lifeless fingers, then rose to his full height and stared at what was approaching. “I feel like killing right now.”

  *

  For Alec, it was another case of déjà vu. Once before—the same night they’d blundered out of the Tracks in the cliff and heard the Horn of Annwyn summon Ailill’s doom—he’d stood up here with his friends watching ships burn their way out of thin air to hover just beyond the precipice, supported by nothing. Those had been Lugh’s ships; their errand, mercy and conciliation. This armada of baleful, dark-hulled vessels bore the arms of Arawn of Annwyn upon their billowing sails. And Arawn had no love for them at all.

  Aife inhaled sharply, though from pure frustrated alarm, or the pain in her shoulder, he couldn’t tell. “Help me,” she mumbled. “Others will deal with Arawn, but the Tracks must be mastered now.”

  Alec glared at her. “I already said I’m with you.”

  “Give your strength of will, then, for mine may not suffice.” She gazed down at the water that swirled about their feet. “Of blood, beyond hope, we have enough.”

  “But the ships!”

  “Others will deal with them. Now ai
d me or ignore me, but come. We have no grace any longer. Fionchadd, I need you—and anyone else. Now!”

  Alec spared one final glance at the fleet massing beyond the precipice, noting that a tall red-haired man with somewhat the look of Lugh, though sterner and angrier, stood in the prow of the nearest vessel. Arawn, Lord of Annwyn, without a doubt.

  And then Aife took his hand and led him into deeper water, oblivious to both their wounds.

  Kirkwood hesitated barely a second, then strode up to stand beside Calvin, Scott, Aikin, and a very wild-eyed David where they faced the armies of Annwyn across a gap of air he could’ve leapt when he was younger. Cal and Dave had atasi, as did he. Aikin had his shotgun; Scott, Elyyoth’s sword. A ragtag bunch they were, too: bloody and dirty and wet. Yet here they stood, staring down the king of a country that two days ago, in spite of what Cal had told him, he’d never believed existed.

  Arawn gazed at them hungrily, likely weighing their strengths, as Kirkwood had seen opposing sides of anetsa games do as part of their pregame psyching. He glared right back, refusing to be baited. No one spoke, as though each side conceded first move to the other. A pair of tall warriors eased up to flank Arawn. Both wore helms and cloaks and carried swords, which they unsheathed together and laid casually on their shoulders, at rest but still a warning. Arawn likewise raised his, still not speaking.

  “What do you want?” David demanded at last, a hard, impatient edge in his voice. Kid sounded fey, if truth were known; not that Kirkwood blamed him. “Fight us. Help us. Or leave. I really don’t care right now. Just do it and get it over.”

  Arawn’s lips curled; his eyes narrowed angrily. “I see we missed the battle we came to witness, so perhaps you should provide us with another.”

  “Whatever!” David retorted recklessly.

  Faery eyes flashed in more than one face. “You fought the ashes,” Arawn purred. “Would you now face the fire?”

  “Whatever,” David repeated. (Stalling, Kirkwood realized. Buying time for Aife. He hoped that was his only agenda.)

  “I could burn you to ash where you stand, little mortal!” Arawn hissed. “Lugh has spoiled you, but not all the Sidhe are like him. Even now he fights for his throne. If he wins and we slay you, we rid him of the last impediment to his plan. If Turinne wins, we remove a nuisance from his borders.”

  “We’ve got steel!” David warned. “We’ve got stuff you never even heard of!”

  A brow quirked upward. “And we do not?”

  David squared his shoulders and took another step forward, which brought him perilously near the edge. He was scared of heights, too, Cal said. So, good for him. “I’ll fight you, then,” David challenged. “Man to man. But only if I can name the weapons.”

  “That choice by rights is mine,” Arawn drawled. “Yet I am curious.” He leaned forward expectantly, hands draped across the quillions of his sword.

  David swallowed. “No steel from my World. No Power from yours. Weapons neither of us truly know, but with both force and Power in ’em.”

  “What would these weapons be?”

  David flourished his atasi, bright with more than one kind of blood. “War clubs from another World, that take a man’s skill and strength to wield, yet which contain their own Power.”

  Kirkwood’s mouth popped open. What the hell was Sullivan trying to do? The kid no more knew how to “wield” an atasi than the man in the moon. Shoot, he barely knew how to use one himself, and most of the flash stuff tonight had been desperation more than skill.

  Arawn, however, seemed to be considering the possibility. Good. Maybe Dave had bought Aife some time—if only he didn’t wind up paying for it later.

  And still Arawn considered.

  *

  Aife’s hand was cold where Liz held it fast, adding what strength she could to the woman’s own. It was failing strength, too, but in that she was no different from the rest and better off than some—like poor little Brock. Or Elyyoth, whom she’d barely known, or LaWanda, who was shot so full of holes she might never walk again without limping. It was a miracle no one had been permanently maimed, and only two had died.

  It was more of a miracle she was standing here up to her butt in cold mountain water when the love of her life was over on that ledge bullshitting the King of the Annwyn Faeries, who was also in some screwy way a Lord of the Dead. She wondered what a bullet from this nice little revolver in her belt would do to all that arrogance.

  Blow things all to hell, probably. Besides, it wasn’t her fight. She’d thrown her lot where strength was needed most: in helping Aife control her spell.

  It was an odd sensation, actually; rather like bleeding to death. It hurt, but required no effort to maintain, leaving her free to observe, though her head felt strange, almost like being high. Mostly, she watched David. But sometimes, too, she gazed at Piper and LaWanda, who were off by themselves consoling each other over the death of Brock. Or at Alec, across from her, who’d aged a decade in the last hour and looked as rough as she’d ever seen him. Finno was simply there; slack-faced but unwounded. Sandy and Myra were present as well, and Aik had veered their way before choosing to stand with David.

  A yawn ambushed her. She closed her eyes against the slow, steady rain she’d all but tuned out, it had become so pervasive. And immediately lost herself in Aife’s effort. Indeed, it was as though the border between them had dissolved, so that she felt with Aife’s fingers and saw with the Faery woman’s inward eye.

  And what she saw! Silver Tracks: a dozen at least; all twisting, merging, surging like a spiral river toward Tir-Nan-Og, then through it and beyond to another place whose position in space and time she couldn’t comprehend.

  Do not try! Aife demanded. I alone must aim the spell. A little longer, and Tir-Nan-Og will be anchored. Only then dare we rest.

  Liz scowled, having caught something darker, there in the back of Aife’s mind. A second agenda, perhaps? Or merely a misgiving?

  Only a little longer, Aife repeated. Pray the others can forestall the Dark King.

  Dark King. Liz pondered the phrase absently, realizing how little she knew about any of this beyond its impact on her own life. Dark King. Was Lugh therefore the Light?

  Abruptly, there was light—and thunder, too, as lightning struck close by.

  Reflex opened her eyes. She saw Alec only in passing, as her gaze darted first to the standoff at the precipice, then to what had drawn every other set of eyes.

  She didn’t see the man initially, lost in rain and shadow as he was. But then the rain was swept away, and the shadows by the woods clarified, and what she’d taken for a shrub by the entrance to the trail stepped into the sputtering torchlight.

  A tall, muscular man clad in black buckskin studded with patterns of polished hematite, with an atasi at least a yard long in hands far blacker than this or any night.

  “Asgaya Gunnagei!” she breathed. The Black Man of the West. Chief of Usunhiyi, the Darkening Land, in which lay Tsusginai, the Ghostcountry.

  Who was also a Lord of the Dead.

  They had come! The Chiefs of the Quarters! One was here now, and the rest were surely close behind. It really was going to happen! They really were going to move a World, even if Aife failed—which might well happen, the way she was fading.

  Sparing the barest glance toward the group in the pool, Asgaya Gunnagei strode toward the confrontation at the cliff. David and Aikin eased aside, relinquishing their place on the precipice. He accepted it without acknowledgment and stood there, staring at Arawn.

  “The dead of this place,” he said coldly. “Are mine!”

  *

  David didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. Beyond hope, someone had stepped in at the last instant to save their asses. Or maybe not the last instant, given that the Chiefs of Galunlati had oracular stones, a tendency to spy, and a vested interest in events in the Lands of Men.

  And a promise made to aid them.

  It was all going to be all right!

/>   Or were two Lords of the Dead about to come to blows? “This is not your Land!” Arawn snapped.

  “Nor yours,” the Black Man replied amiably. “The dead are another matter.”

  “The dead themselves choose most often, so I have heard. My kind do not die that way, and in spite of what mortals say, I have little traffic with their dead.”

  “It appears that you would make some,” the Black Man noted.

  “It appears,” Arawn hissed back, “that they have made a fair number themselves!”

  “Only one of which concerns me…now.”

  “You would make an interesting foe, Asgaya Gunnagei,” Arawn drawled, leaning back casually. David wondered if he was scared or merely assessing.

  “As would you, Arawn of Annwyn,” the Black Man echoed. “Perhaps we shall test each other someday. Or perhaps our armies will. War one day, games the next. Anetsa and hurley: they are not so different. Or maybe toli.”

  “Perhaps,” Arawn agreed.

  The Black Man cleared his throat and tapped his atasi meaningfully. “It would seem to me, oh Outland King, that your attention might better be placed elsewhere. What happens here is beyond your stopping or mine. What happens there could go either way. Perhaps you should…observe.”

  “Perhaps,” Arawn conceded with a mocking bow, “I will.”

  “Now might be advisable.”

  David didn’t hear the word Arawn gave his fleet, though the anger that drove it throbbed in his skull like a decade of colds borne all at once. It was clearly an order to withdraw, however, for every ship in that fleet—and in the second that had stealthily massed behind it—slowly pivoted around its center. Those behind Arawn’s flagship parted for their King to sail through and closed behind them. The air shimmered, though it was hard to see, for the rain had returned beyond the ledge. And then, like salt dissolving, they were gone.

  Leaving David standing behind Asgaya Gunnagei. “’Bout time,” he muttered recklessly, too tired to say other than what he thought.

  The Black Man rounded on him, knocking his atasi from his hands with one casual blow from his own. It crackled feebly, a spark where before it had commanded lightning. “I am not Uki!” the Black Man spat. “I come of my own time and choosing!”