Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  ‘On the wall above the gate, last time I saw him.’ Jed’s voice was empty and exhausted. ‘Though that was six hours ago.’

  ‘And, Jed?’ Seth hesitated. ‘Burn the dead.’ As Jed and the captains stared at him in shock, he added quietly: ‘Make pyres and burn them. Did you get the patrol back?’

  ‘Only just. We concentrated on getting the living in first, so we only just had enough time to get Eorna’s patrol.’ Jed smiled without mirth. ‘Just as well we did. Kate would not have let us retrieve the bodies. It isn’t like that any more, Murlainn. No civilities.’

  ‘Thought not. Right, pile them all in the lanes with the livestock. Slaughter any cattle that are left, and use the furniture for kindling. If there’s any god and he’s got a shred of humanity he might forgive me, but I won’t let Kate desecrate their bodies. Sulaire? Check all the remaining supplies. Divide it up and destroy what we can’t carry. Uiseag, get together all the ropes and torches you can find. I’ll be with you to help soon but…’

  ‘Understood,’ murmured Jed. ‘Go on, go to her.’ He held out the key to Seth’s rooms and lifted an eyebrow dryly. ‘She won’t speak well of me, Seth. She was unconscious for three days and wanted to fight an hour after she woke up. I had to lock her in.’

  Seth shook his head, laughing, and took the key. Then he was gone, taking the stone stairs three at a time.

  SETH

  The key would barely turn, his hand shook so badly. When he swung open the door, Finn was sitting on a long low bench beneath the window, hugging her knees and staring down at the courtyard. She looked scarily thin. Her left hand hung down, scratching the throat of the black wolf that lay on the floor beside the bench. Branndair’s closed eyelids twitched in a half-dream.

  Seth tried to say something, but his voice stuck in his throat. Branndair lifted his head, sat up and made a tortured little growling sound, but he didn’t move from Finn’s side.

  Finn’s hand froze in his fur and she turned her head very slowly. Her eyes were remote, dull with the gleam of old pain, but as they fixed on Seth’s face, they opened very wide.

  She screamed.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. Stunned, he reached out a hand, but Finn backed harder against the wall, trembling. She put her fists to her eyes and ground them into the sockets.

  ‘Get away from me!’ she yelled. ‘I DON’T SEE YOU. GET AWAY FROM ME!’

  He started towards her, got halfway across the room and came to a halt again. Gods, had she gone mad? She wrapped her arms over her face, blocking her vision and pulling her head tight to her chest. ‘Not again, not again,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t see you.’

  And then he realised what was wrong. ‘Finn,’ he said softly. ‘Finn, it’s me.’

  She wasn’t listening, refused to hear. Branndair wasn’t helping; he only lifted his black head and gazed at Seth with extreme reproach. That he didn’t need. For the first time in his life Seth lost his temper with his own wolf.

  ‘You know it’s me!’ he yelled. ‘You might say hello, you hairy bad-tempered bastard!’

  Branndair drew his lips scornfully back from his teeth as Finn’s breath stopped and she glanced up between splayed fingers. The wolf backed closer to Finn and gave a small cross growl.

  ‘All right!’ Seth shouted. ‘You can LEAVE HER SIDE NOW!’

  The wolf bounded for him, leaping up and knocking him like a blade of grass to the floor. For long seconds Seth was incapable of coherent speech while Branndair kissed his face. Then somebody was shoving the wolf aside and doing the same as the wolf, only at least she didn’t lick, and her breath was a lot nicer.

  Finn drew away and knelt over him, grabbing his t-shirt. ‘You just stood there!’ she screamed. ‘You didn’t say anything! I thought you were a fetch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Finn, sorry. I forgot all about that.’ Seth winced as she shook him, and she released him more gently, staring down in shock.

  ‘And you look like hell,’ she whispered. ‘Did you get hit by a truck?’

  He shut one eye. ‘In a manner of speaking. Sort of a human truck. You should have seen me before the blood washed off in the tunnel.’

  ‘Not all of it, I can tell you.’ She looked him up and down. ‘I just hate to think.’

  ‘I’m fine. Really I am. Hey, you should see the other guy!’ At her scowl he sobered again. ‘Honestly, Finn, I’m sorry. I suppose I do look a bit, um… half-dead. I just didn’t think.’

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I panicked.’ She kissed him fanatically. ‘But don’t you dare be rude to that wolf.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune.’ He grinned up at her.

  ‘Takes one to know one, anyway. Hairy bad-tempered bastards.’ She stroked the rough black stubble of his beard.

  ‘I’ll go and shave right now,’ he said.

  ‘No, you won’t. Don’t move. Stay there.’

  ‘Like I have an option?’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘How long for?’

  Finn buried her face in his neck. ‘Three days ought to do it. A week. No, two.’

  His face softened as his arms went round her. ‘We don’t have that kind of time, Finn. It’s over, we’ve lost.’

  ‘I knew it!’ she yelled, jerking back. ‘If that swine Jed had… Seth, you don’t know what he’s been like, he…’

  ‘Jed has my eternal gratitude for locking you up, you heidbanger.’ He eyed her crossly. ‘And he carried you back to this dun. How many did he have to fight to do it?’

  She averted her eyes, ashamed. ‘All right. I know. I’m sorry.’

  Seth wriggled up to a sitting position and faced her. ‘’Scuse me.’ He opened her shirt gently and drew it aside to stare at the brutal scar just above her heart, then trailed a fingertip across it. ‘That looks better.’ Tugging her shirt carefully down her shoulder, he turned her with a very light touch. ‘The exit wound too. Did Grian have a go at those?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Finn made a wry face. ‘I didn’t think there was a healer rougher than Eili, bless him.’

  ‘Hurt, did it? Good.’ Seth’s voice cracked slightly. ‘That’ll teach you to be more careful.’

  ‘Poor Grian. He hasn’t slept more than a few minutes at a time for a week.’ She lifted his t-shirt where the bloodstain was and gasped. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Right now we’re getting out of here. All of us.’ He stood up and drew her to her feet, then glanced up and went to the window. Smoke was rising from the courtyard in a black column, fires were leaping up around the ramparts and in a great semicircle around the gate. For a moment, he shut his eyes.

  ‘Look, Finn. Our dead are giving us some breathing space. Let’s not waste it.’

  RORY

  I sat on one of the huge oak tables, counting the clann as they stumbled through the hole in the kitchen wall. I did not like the total I’d reached, and there were very few of them left waiting their turn in the hall with their hastily gathered belongings. Even accounting for the men and women left on the ramparts, there were an awful lot missing. The missing, I supposed, were the ones piled in the great pyres that burned in every alleyway but one. The remaining pyre in that alleyway would be torched by Seth and Jed and the last guards as they withdrew. Even then I knew my father had doubts about the time they would buy.

  My father’s dun was burning. I wondered what Kate would be thinking right now. Probably that Seth’s people had despaired over the loss of their Captain and his son, that they had grown sick of the stench of smoke and death that hung over the place, that they had decided to kill themselves fast and cleanly rather than wait for Kate and her filthy imagination to do it.

  Finn said Kate’s greatest weakness was her vanity. All the same, how long would it take her to realise that mass suicide was not what the clann had in mind? Finn knew Kate, she’d been with her for a while, but I didn’t want to press Finn for any more answers. She was sitting on the floor at the other side of the hall with her head in her han
ds, and she hadn’t spoken since Seth had gone out into the dun. He hadn’t let her follow; indeed he’d threatened to lock her up again if the notion so much as crossed her mind.

  He’d gone himself, though, despite his own wounds, and despite all Finn’s reasonable, logical, desperate begging. He didn’t want Kate to know he was there, but so what? From even a short distance he was unrecognisable, and any enemy who got too close did not live long enough to get over their shock and tell Kate.

  Hannah limped into the hall in an exhausted daze, Grian gripping her arm. She was bloodied up to the elbows.

  ‘Here, Rory,’ he called. ‘Take your friend. She’s earned the right to go now, and then some.’

  ‘I want to stay a bit longer,’ she said dully.

  ‘You’re not capable any more,’ Grian said as I clasped her hand in mine. ‘There’s nothing more to do anyway. Go.’

  She edged so close to me as we stared round the hall together, I put my arm around her shoulder. ‘Was it awful?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said shortly. She gulped hard. ‘Rory? There’s a few won’t get through the flood in the tunnel. They just won’t make it.’ She hesitated, and slight hysteria crept into her voice. ‘I think that’s why Grian sent me away.’

  I put my other arm round her too. ‘They’re not going to want to wait for Kate,’ I mumbled. ‘That’s the thing.’

  She didn’t say any more, just stood and stared with me as the hall emptied. Distantly there were shouts, screams and the renewed crackle of flames. A deafening bang and short explosions signalled one of the wind turbines being dragged over.

  The pulse of my blood was a racing, powerful drumbeat. Hannah looked at me; I felt hers beat the same rhythm through her skin. And then I realised it wasn’t us; it was the sound of real drums, and a rising sinister howling.

  ‘She’s coming,’ I said.

  Finn’s head jerked up and we followed her gaze as the last defenders raced into the hall. Seth was last in, fresh blood on his sword, and he stood at the door counting heads, barking questions at Jed and the bloody, almost unrecognisable Iolaire. When he was satisfied with their answers and with his own head count, his eyes closed. I knew he was scanning the whole dun, and when he was finished he looked up and said, ‘Rory?’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Then we’re all here.’ He and Jed and Iolaire swung the doors shut and heaved the barricade into place. Half-blinded with blood, Iolaire staggered back, close to collapse, and Jed caught his arm. Jed flinched as Iolaire’s elbow brushed his arrow wound, and I frowned, but before I could say a word, Jed had turned to give me a ferocious warning glare. I took a step back and shut my mouth.

  Seth was still for a fleeting, tantalising moment more. Distantly, as someone Saw his mind, a monstrous screech of female rage rose above the turmoil, silencing even the drums and the war howls.

  ‘We have a few minutes,’ said my father with a note of satisfaction. ‘Get going.’

  ‘She’ll know where we are.’ There was panic in Hannah’s voice. ‘She’ll know where we’ve gone and she’ll come after us.’

  ‘She’ll work it out, but it’ll take her a while to find the tunnel. And when Rory’s sealed the Veil she can’t follow. She needs a watergate, like everybody else. Like everyone but Rory.’ Seth grinned at me.

  One man pushed forward through the remaining clann. ‘I’ll stay, Murlainn. It’ll give you a little extra time to get to the gap in the Veil.’ As Seth opened his mouth to argue, the man lifted his hand to his long brown hair and pushed it back from his temples and forehead, and whatever Seth had been going to say remained in his throat. Instead he stepped forward and embraced him tightly.

  ‘Righil.’ He stepped back. ‘Don’t let her take you.’

  ‘No way.’ Righil laughed unsteadily and caressed the handle of his dirk.

  ‘I’m staying too.’

  Another figure shoved past me to stand by Righil, and my breath stopped in my throat. Cadaverous where the others were thin, his body was bloodied and bruised and his eyes were sunk in deep dark hollows in his skull. His once-immaculate goatee had grown into a ragged dirty beard, but the hair on his head had been hacked off, leaving grotesque half-healed wounds in his scalp.

  Seth stared at him. ‘I see no grey on you, Sionnach.’

  Hannah gave a shocked cry, then tugged free of me and ran to Sionnach. ‘YOU’RE NOT STAYING!’ she yelled in his face.

  Just for an instant, shock thawed the blank freezing pain in his face, and something sparked in his brown eyes. Hannah seized her moment. Grabbing him by one bloody hand, she hauled him into the tunnel mouth. He cast one stunned look back at Seth, and then he was gone.

  Righil turned to face the barricaded door, unsheathing his sword as the screams of the frustrated attackers drew closer and something heavy crashed against the door. He glanced back over his shoulder as if unable to believe we were still standing there. ‘Go!’ he yelled. ‘Hurry!’

  I darted into the tunnel as my father grabbed the snarling Branndair by the scruff of the neck and yanked him in too. Lifting the last flashlight Seth took Finn’s hand, but Finn was looking up at him in shock as he pulled her after him. ‘Righil… why…’

  ‘Didn’t you see?’ Seth wasn’t looking at her as he hauled on a lever and shoved on the door with his shoulder. Beside him Finn and I shoved too, and it began to grind into place. ‘Grey hairs. Righil only has a few weeks left. He’d rather spend them now than run and rot in exile.’

  ‘A few weeks?’ Enough weak light still filtered in from the kitchens for me to see that Finn had gone pale.

  My father looked hard at Finn as the door swung into place and they were shrouded in darkness. His voice quietened, but I heard the edge to his murmur. ‘I warned you, Caorann.’

  Seth switched on the flashlight, making our faces ghostly, and played the light across the blank stone, hesitating as if suddenly reluctant to leave. We could hear no sound beyond it, but I suspected that was because of the thickness of the stone, not because the noise had stopped. Then we turned and ran. It was easier with light.

  It didn’t seem so far this time, but neither Seth nor Finn were in good shape and they were gasping and panting in the cold stale air when they came to a halt. I was anxious about them both. Distantly there was a scraping of stone on stone, ferocious vengeful shouts, footsteps breaking into a run and swiftly joined by many more.

  Then I was concentrating on the Veil again, feeling in my bones the moment when we stepped through the gaping hole. In Seth’s torch beam still water glinted, a tiny tremor left on its surface from the last of our people to pass through the flood. I felt for the edge of the ripped Veil, but as my fingers closed on something we all hesitated, Branndair growling deep in his throat.

  The shouts had stopped, but the voiceless pack sounded louder now, deadlier, the pelting footsteps magnified by the tunnel and far closer already. Finn took a scared breath and held it in the echoing chamber, and we waited for what seemed an age too long.

  Seth said desperately, ‘I can’t drop my block again, Finn. Righil? I need to know.’

  A brief pause, and ‘He’s dead,’ she said. She was weeping but her voice was clear and steady. ‘Let’s go. Let’s go.’

  My father turned to me. ‘Rory,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Close the Veil.’

  EXILE

  ‘Dad,’ said Rory dangerously. ‘Dad, where did you get the boat?’

  Seth didn’t answer, too busy frowning at the chart in front of him and biting his nails, looking from the chart to the sea and back with unnerving frequency.

  Rory tried again. ‘Dad, did you steal this boat?’

  Seth affected a look of wounded shock. ‘We do not steal, Rory. We borrow. Rent. The owner will get it back, and there’ll be money in the cabin, and if he’s the superstitious type his grandchildren will be bored sick hearing about the night his boat was borrowed by the Little People. We’re doing him a favour.’ He winked. One hand on the wheel, he risked a glance up
at a fading moon streaked with cloud. ‘It’s almost morning.’

  It had taken a good many trips across the sea loch and back to get everyone to the other side, and Rory was glad this was the last time. Must have been a while since Seth sailed a boat anywhere but into the ocean off the dun, and anywhere at all on this side of the Veil. Rory hadn’t told Seth he was reading the sea chart upside down, in case it was too much of a blow to his father’s pride, but it didn’t seem to have made a disastrous difference. The kyle was deep and the tide was racing, but the engine was strong and they had hit no hidden shoals, and Seth was well used to the route by now.

  Hannah knelt at the stern, leaning over to watch the seals. She had parked herself there to be next to Sionnach. His eyes were empty and dazed as he stared into the middle distance, but Hannah was keeping up a stream of inane chatter in his ear and he occasionally glanced at her in a kind of bewildered shock.

  ‘Jed,’ said Seth. ‘Want to take over?’

  Jed’s skin had a sick greenish tinge, but he sounded cheerful enough. ‘I’ve never driven a boat with an engine.’

  ‘There’s a coincidence.’ Seth grinned, flexing his left hand. Wincing, he glanced down at it in surprise, and frowned.

  ‘Now you tell me.’ Jed raised his eyes skywards and took the wheel as Seth sat down beside Rory and stretched his arms. A woman close by was weeping over her sheathed sword as she wrapped it and her dead lover’s weapon in the same cloth. On the starboard side, someone quietly played on a whistle. Otherwise there was silence as almost all the Sithe on board stared back in the direction of their lost home.

  ‘Hey, Dad.’ Rory reached for his hand. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ growled Seth, drawing his other hand down over his face. ‘But tell Carraig if he doesn’t quit playing Farewell to Fiunary I’ll stab him with his own tin whistle.’