Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  I was aware that the passage was narrowing, aware that when I had first reached for the wall I could barely touch it with both hands. Now my elbows had to stay awkwardly bent; I couldn’t stretch my arms at all.

  A terrible idea struck me. I might bump into Seth’s body, stuck like a cork in an impossibly narrow bottleneck. There might have been a rockfall. Something could have got stuck in the tunnel ages ago and died: an animal, a fish, a monster… Anything could have happened. I blinked hard, but the view didn’t change.

  Another couple of bubbles leaked out with my tiny cry of panic. I began to flail my limbs, kicking violently, but I only kicked solid rock, painfully hard.

  Behind me I was vaguely aware of Rory in the tunnel, but I couldn’t See him clearly for the panic in my head, my skull and brain tight and shrunken with cold. It occurred to me that if I stopped swimming Rory would die too, and that Seth would kill me, but that didn’t make a lot of sense.

  My lungs protested desperately, squeezed by a giant fist. They didn’t want the air inside them that was about to make them explode. They wanted a fresh lungful, they wanted me to breathe out and then breathe in again. I blew out a longer stream of bubbles, felt them tickle my face, and they were coming out of my nose now too. In a way it was bliss. Any second now I’d breathe out and then I could suck in a whole lungful of…

  Fingers closed hard around my wrist and I was tugged forward through the blackness. A last few agonising seconds, and then I was yanked clear of the water, dumped on dry land, and I hauled in a lungful of stale air with a high-pitched wheeze.

  It tasted so good. Best air I’d ever breathed. Seth let go of me but before he had time to plunge back into the water the surface of it broke, and another body erupted and tumbled forward onto dry land.

  ‘You two took your time,’ said Seth, relief in his voice. ‘What was the last thing I told you, Hannah?’

  ‘D-d-don’t panic,’ I gritted through chattering teeth.

  ‘Whoa, yes,’ came Rory’s voice. He was panting. ‘Glad I gave you a head start, there, Hannah. I was nearly bumping into your heels at one point.’

  ‘Thanks a million.’ I was shivering violently and I didn’t need my nose rubbed in my panic. I didn’t need the humiliation, not when I was already freezing to death.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Seth kindly, rubbing my arms.

  ‘I am.’ My teeth chattered. ‘Stop looking in–’

  I’d been about to say Stop looking in my head, but I realised in time it would be a pretty tactless thing to say when he couldn’t look in Rory’s. Glancing up, I saw the pinprick lights of his eyes, and instead I thought, ~ Sorry.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

  ‘Dad,’ said Rory. ‘The Veil starts to thicken here. We’re getting nearer the dun.’

  ‘Okay.’ Seth breathed hard. ‘Tear it, Laochan. Blocks up.’

  It was reassuring to know we were getting somewhere. The end was, if not in sight, then at least within reach, and being back on the dangerous side gave all of us a renewed sense of urgency. Anyway, it was better to be moving. Our clothes were soaking now and putting on speed kept away the worst of the biting cold.

  I tried to walk too fast, almost breaking into a jog in an effort to get warm, and several times I stumbled and fell. It was happening to the others too, though, and at one point even Seth sprawled on his face with a grunt of pain. When I fumbled to grab him and help him stagger to his feet, I felt the shuddering tremors of cold going through his body. He’d lost a lot of blood, of course, and he couldn’t run forever on adrenalin and bloody-mindedness.

  ‘Are you okay?’ It felt funny having to ask him out loud, and I realised I was growing used to having my mind read. I almost resented the effort of speaking, and I did not like the echo my voice made in the cavern.

  ‘Finn’s going to kill me when she sees the state of you,’ I added as Seth paused to catch his breath and recover his balance.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Seth’s voice shivered through gritted teeth. ‘She won’t be looking too great herself.’ Shaking himself audibly, he walked on.

  That’s probably true, I thought, guilty at forgetting. I was still picturing what must have happened between Finn and Eili and the Wolf, my imagination going into skidding overdrive in the dark, when I collided with Seth. He’d come to an abrupt halt. Rory in turn banged into me. His hand fumbled for mine in the darkness, and squeezed it reassuringly.

  ‘This is it,’ came Seth’s voice. ‘Now just hang on.’

  No, I thought, I’m not hanging on any more. Elbowing the obstruction that was Seth out of the way, I barged forward. Some instinct made me turn my face aside at the last instant, or I’d have broken my nose. It was my cheek that connected with solid stone, and my knuckles, and one knee. I knew I’d drawn blood in all those places but I no longer cared. All I cared about was finding the gap.

  There wasn’t one. My fingers scratched at the blank stone, feeling above my head and out to the side and down to where the wall met the floor, but there wasn’t so much as a crack.

  ‘IT’S BLOCKED!’ I screamed.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Seth quietly. ‘I said hang on.’ His fingertips knocked into my shoulder, then travelled down my arm till they found the hand Rory wasn’t holding, and wound tightly into my fingers. ‘Don’t lose it, Hannah,’ he said. ‘Not now. Rory?’

  ‘I’m here, Dad.’

  It suddenly occurred to me why this blackness was nothing to them. It didn’t panic them because it was all external darkness, and the darkness inside was a lot worse. This was what it was like in their minds. Blackness, blindness, where there should have been constant light and an unbreakable connection. It seemed such an unspeakably evil thing to have done to them. I felt an awful pity, and anger. I squeezed Seth’s fingers with one hand and Rory’s with the other.

  ‘Is there a way through?’ I asked more calmly.

  ‘There was thirty years ago.’ Seth released my hand.

  ‘Oh.’ I swore.

  ‘Language,’ said Seth absently, but he was concentrating too hard on something to say any more. ‘Got it,’ he whispered at last, just as I was beginning to think we would at least be united in our unpleasant deaths.

  ‘Got what?’ I asked sceptically.

  His eyelight gleamed. ‘Keep blocking. Both of you. Rory, you’re sure the hole in the Veil will stay open?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Rory’s eyes sparked in the darkness. ‘Long enough, anyway.’

  Seth began to laugh. ‘You still know what I’m thinking, Laochan. Despite Kate. Now, Hannah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want out of this tunnel? Just you walk with me.’

  THE DUN

  Sulaire MacTorc was getting lonely in his job. On a normal day there were at least three cooks working at any one time. He liked his work and he liked the company, but these were not normal times. Not only was there no-one spare to work with, they all had to take their turn on the ramparts, fighting back the unremitting assaults. One of the cooks was already dead with a dagger in his throat. It wasn’t reassuring. It was bloody sad, since he’d been a good friend, but they’d all be joining him soon.

  At least there was plenty of food. Bit unusual, that, for a siege, but the full-mortal Cuilean had taken the decision to let them eat well. That was nice, but everyone knew what it meant in reality. It meant they weren’t going to last long enough to starve.

  He was a good man, Cuilean, humane and brave, and at least he was trying to keep their spirits high. Dolefully Sulaire stared at the side of bacon he was to turn into breakfast for the next shift. Plenty eggs, too. On the whole he’d rather be using his ingenuity with starvation rations, if it meant they had a cat’s chance in hell, but they didn’t. Cuilean knew it, the other captains knew it, they all knew it. They were going to die, that much was obvious, and anyone left alive beyond the battle was going to die horribly when Kate broke through, but it was nice to eat well in the meantime. Breakfast was unlikely to make things brigh
ter, but he’d get on with it anyway. It wasn’t just his job, it was his calling.

  Sulaire wondered what had happened to Murlainn and his gorgeous wee boy. Well, not wee any more; it was just that it seemed like yesterday when Rory Bhan had been hanging around the kitchens sweet-talking Sulaire into giving him chocolate. Sulaire hoped they were okay, though it seemed unlikely. They were well out of this, anyway. He hoped they hadn’t come to the same end as Murlainn’s brother, the man Sulaire had worshipped, the man he would have happily died for and over whose death he had wept for days. He hoped they hadn’t come to the same end as his father Torc, who had died with Cù Chaorach, and whose death had quite simply broken his heart.

  He had just reached for a boning knife when he heard a low grinding sound, and he froze.

  This was it, was it? His time had finally come.

  They were under strict orders from the full-mortal Cuilean to block fully all the time, no exceptions. Kate NicNiven’s abilities had taken a quantum leap over the last decade, he’d told them, sucking the strength out of defeated fighters like the witch she was. And Eili MacNeil had had Kate in her head for months without knowing it; Kate’s telepathy was powerful and extreme and the witch was more than willing to misuse it. They didn’t know all she was capable of but don’t let her in your head.

  It terrified Sulaire, and he had obeyed Cuilean every minute of every day, but for the first time the young cook was seriously tempted to drop his block. He wanted to know what was behind him – probably an entire division of Kate’s troops breaking in through a wall – and he’d rather know without having to look. All the same, he was too afraid of Cuilean’s reaction to disobey siege orders. Instead he clenched his teeth to stop them chattering, and reached for a second knife. And then, slowly, he turned.

  Oh. My. Dear. Gods, thought Sulaire.

  Clearly it was some trick of Kate’s. How else would the larder shelving be grinding slowly out from the wall? For a moment Sulaire shut his eyes, wondering why his father had backed the wrong horse at such clearly impossible odds. Then he remembered how much Torc had hated Kate and her gratuitous cruelty, and he opened his eyes again and set his jaw. Since there was no question he was going to die, there was no point dying like a coward.

  The black gap opened wider, and Sulaire felt a breath of cold dank air that made him shudder. He gripped his knives tighter, one in each hand. He had to leave himself enough time to drop his block and alert the dun. Maybe it was time to do it.

  ‘Don’t drop your block.’

  The gasping man who shoved through the gap didn’t seem to be armed, was Sulaire’s first thought. His second was that the man was temporarily blinded, his arm over his eyes with the shock of the light, which gave him a moment’s breathing space to think about this.

  Sulaire swallowed hard and raised the knives threateningly. If they could cut pig they could cut person, and Sulaire was no slouch at cutting pig. The intruder seemed to know that, because as he lowered his arm, his watering eyes creased narrow, he stood very still. Blinking furiously, he extended his palms, placating.

  Sulaire snarled. He could be up to nothing good, this bloody bearded man with the ripped t-shirt and jeans, half his face bruised purple, the other half hacked with slashes; his eye blackened and a hideous barely-healed scar running from his temple to his jaw. Patches of blood had dried on his face and matted his hair into dreadlocks, despite the fact that he and his clothes were soaking wet. Whatever had soaked his t-shirt certainly hadn’t been enough to wash out the great stain of Sithe lifeblood on it. Sulaire’s lip twisted in hatred and he drew back his knives to disembowel the assassin.

  ‘Sulaire!’ the assassin hissed, just catching his right hand as it slashed down. ‘Don’t you dare!’ He blinked desperately, eyes streaming, his fingers locked round Sulaire’s wrist, and the muscles of both their arms trembled with the strain. ‘I bought you those knives in the otherworld and they cost me a fortune.’

  Flummoxed, Sulaire stared at the bloody apparition. And then another figure pushed between the man and the black gaping hole.

  ‘Rory Bhan? Laochan?’ Sulaire stared at the boy, and then at the redhead who appeared behind him. Rory and the girl were blinking too but they’d had longer to get used to the light, and they looked more like human beings anyway. In disbelief Sulaire looked back at the assassin.

  ‘Murlainn! Oh, my god!’

  ‘“Oh, my Captain” will do fine,’ said Seth.

  The knives clattered to the stone floor and Sulaire flung himself forward to hug Seth. ‘Oh, Murlainn, I’m sorry. I didn’t recognise – I’m sorry. Where’d you – how did you–’

  ‘Later. Oh, please, Sulaire, later. Just get me Jed. I need to see Cuilean right now.’ An arm round his shoulder, Seth drew him to the door between the kitchens and the great hall and shoved the door open. ‘But, laddie, do not drop your block.’

  Sulaire turned to run, but he was too late, because Jed was already coming into the hall with five of the other captains. He was talking intently to them and for a moment he didn’t look up, but Rory gasped at the sight of him. He was hacked and bloody and thin, and he had days of beard growth, but Rory didn’t care. He was alive, still alive, and Rory realised in that instant how afraid he had been that he wouldn’t be.

  At the sound of his gasp Jed’s head jerked up, and then he was running straight for them, not bothering to swerve round tables and chairs. He simply leaped them, knocking plates and cups flying as he ran the length of the hall and grabbed Rory into his arms.

  ‘Rory,’ he mumbled into his filthy blond hair. Jed’s t-shirt was as ripped as Seth’s and Rory could see the ugly slash a sword had made across his ribcage, and the gouge of an arrow that had narrowly missed its aim. Neither had been healed, not even roughly, and black blood crusted them. There was pus in the arrow wound, Rory noticed with alarm, and Jed winced as Rory brushed it by mistake. Rory pulled away and looked up at his brother in alarm.

  Jed turned to Seth before Rory could ask any awkward questions, and they clasped each other in a ferocious hug.

  ‘Seth. Oh, brother. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘In your dreams.’ Seth’s voice was choked.

  ‘Seth. Rory.’ Tears made pale thin channels through the blood and dirt on Jed’s bearded face. He let go of Seth to hug Rory again, then pushed him away, holding him and staring at him. ‘You’ve grown, bruv. In a fortnight.’ He bit his lip. ‘Happy birthday.’

  ‘What?’ Rory’s eyes widened.

  ‘You turned fifteen while you were gone.’ Jed ruffled his hair. ‘Bloody Sithe never remember, do they? But I do.’

  Rory grinned. ‘What day?’

  Jed shut one eye and counted. ‘Wednesday.’

  Rory glanced at Hannah, flushing slightly. Grinning back, she mouthed Happy Birthday.

  Jed watched them both, frowning. When he stepped back his face was thoughtful and a little sad. Shaking himself, he turned back to Seth. ‘So how did you… where…’

  ‘Later.’ Seth gripped his arms and gazed at him, grinning. The other captains were around them now, hugging them and slapping their backs, yelling with delight, and Hannah found herself kissed by four burly men, and by the blonde woman with the long woven hair she’d first seen doing target practice from a horse in the arena. That had been just after she arrived. A lifetime ago.

  The blonde woman buried her face in Seth’s neck and wouldn’t let go, partly because tears were leaking helplessly from her eyes and she was trying to hide it. He was hugging her so hard it looked as if they might fuse. When she finally pulled away she hit him, feebly, on the shoulder, and then again. And then, ignoring his wince, again.

  ‘You bastard. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I love you too, Orach.’ He twisted her golden braid round one hand and reeled her back in to kiss her forehead. ‘Please stop hitting me.’

  As they wriggled awkwardly apart, someone thrust a sheathed sword into Seth’s hand. He sighed with delight as he drew it fro
m its scabbard and examined the blade. Then he blinked back at Jed. ‘Did you say a fortnight?’

  ‘Aye, the warp couldn’t have worked better for her. I reckon if she’s held back, she’s only been waiting for her pal Alasdair. Doesn’t want him to miss the fun.’ Jed’s face darkened, and the jubilant mood was snuffed out. He looked away, as if it pained him to look into Seth’s eyes. ‘They’ll be through in a few hours, Murlainn. Twelve at the most.’

  ‘Alasdair won’t be joining in the fun.’ Seth spat. ‘And now?’

  ‘Right now, she’s withdrawn. I reckon she’s gathering her clann for a last assault. Probably doing her hair for the occasion.’

  Seth muffled a snort. ‘And our clann?’

  ‘They’ve picked us off with arrows, they’ve made God knows how many assaults. Lost a lot of their own – we’ve made it expensive for them – but there’s so many of them. So many, and they have plenty healers. Ours can’t keep up.’ Jed looked desolate. ‘We miss Eili.’

  ‘Sionnach?’ asked Seth, rather as if he didn’t want to know the answer.

  ‘Orach, you saw him last,’ said Jed.

  ‘Sionnach’s doing his best to get killed,’ said Orach. ‘But he’s taking so many of them with him, he hasn’t quite managed it yet.’

  ‘I’ll get to work, then,’ muttered Hannah.

  Rory put an arm round her and returned their disbelieving stares with a touch of aggression. ‘She’s a healer,’ he said.

  Seth kissed the top of her head, and pushed her towards the captains. ‘Yes, she is, and a good one. Take her to Grian.’

  ‘But this is better news!’ Orach beamed and put a slender arm round Hannah’s shoulder and pushed her hurriedly towards the door. ‘Come on, strawberry-blondie.’

  ‘I like you,’ said Hannah, and they were gone.

  ‘Was that all it would have taken?’ Seth shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I wish I’d never called her Ginger. Right, keep everybody blocking. Kate mustn’t know I’m here. Get everybody to the hall as soon as you can. Leave as few as you can defending the walls, and get fires set round the whole place. Where’s Iolaire?’