The Bastard from Fairyland

by Phil Parker

  Those dark grey eyes of his bore into mine, there was no smile now. I had got under his skin, I hoped his plans for our impending nuptials might get cancelled as a result. He didn’t reply immediately but kept looking at me, even though it was uncomfortable, I didn’t avert my eyes. I kept smiling too. He realised he was giving away too much, he sighed and leaned his head to one side in a casual manner.

  ‘You are clearly unaware of recent events, my dear.’ The final two words delivered with sugary sweetness. ‘The High Lord imprisoned the lady because her aims did not match his. Hardly the behaviour of a gentleman. The High Lord appears more interested in waging war than in science and civilised behaviour, which is why I took it upon myself to provide the lady in question with more suitable accommodation, as my guest.’

  I feigned surprise.

  ‘I was unaware of these events, my lord. I commend your chivalry. I would like to visit Sibeal at the earliest opportunity to give her my assurances that she will remain safe from such behaviour in the future.’

  ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible, my dear. At least for the time being. The poor woman’s health deteriorated as a result of her incarceration. I’ve employed a nurse to help her recover but it is going to take some time.’

  ‘I’m sure she will appreciate even a brief visit from a friend though.’

  ‘Sadly no. She is very weak, it would only impede her recovery.’

  He gave a deep sigh. He was making ready to depart.

  ‘Where are my manners? You will want to change out of your riding habit, no doubt bathe as well. Don’t let me delay you. We can continue our conversation another day.’

  He lowered his head in a cursory bow, turned on his heels and strode out of the room, I listened until I could no longer hear his heels clicking on the floor. If I had held any doubts about the man, he’s confirmed them for me. He was a reptile.

  I took a deep breath to stifle the vomit that threatened to make a terrible mess on the polished floor and hurried to my rooms. I had no intention of marrying such an odious creature. My grandmother might have a different opinion and I needed to find a way to change it, without telling her what I’d done.

  Chapter 16

  I woke from a dream where I’d been pursued by something dark and deadly. Outside the shack the world had turned white; a thin topping of snow, like icing on a cake, lay on the sleeping wyvern. Oisin lay huddled up next to the smouldering remains of the fire.

  I peered into the centre of the demolished ramshackle community, now shrouded in white.

  Something was wrong.

  I stood, picked up my sword from my backpack and stepped outside warily. For a moment or two I wondered if I was spooking myself with the thought of dead bodies lying beneath the snow but my instincts were seldom wrong. I’d learned long ago the body is amazing, it senses things without the conscious mind realising it. Alec had once explained how his body did the same but to a higher degree; where his ability was a genetic abnormality, mine was borne of rigorous and painful training.

  I stepped carefully so as not to tread on bodies or anything else that could cause me to lose my footing, any distraction would trigger an attack by an assailant. Derelict and burned out remains of wooden shacks, their timbers leaning against each other like drunken comrades, offered limited cover. I scanned each one. Nothing. Yet the feeling was growing stronger with every step I took.

  The jumble of stone blocks which formed the portal archway remained where they were the night before, snow partly covering the blackened blast marks. No one had rebuilt it overnight. Then, there, on the opposite side of the pile. Fresh footprints.

  I followed them as they circled the settlement. On the edge of the escarpment, where a cold wind scoured the ground and pushed snow into drifts the size of a man, the footsteps vanished. I looked around but the clay was frozen solid and left no clues.

  Too late I realised I’d been taken for a fool.

  I rushed back to the shack. The wyvern remained inert, oblivious of Oisin kneeling in front of the dying fire with a sword held to his throat.

  My jaw must have dropped because it made the figure holding him smile.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ I said as I struggled to process what my eyes told me.

  The smile widened. The parchment skin creased, wrinkling into ugly yellow folds.

  ‘Hello Robin. I see the two of you couldn’t stay apart. Foolish to abandon him.’

  I focused my concentration, the next few seconds were critical, I couldn’t behave like Death had come to visit. He had, but I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted, that was what he wanted.

  ‘The last time we met, you abandoned me to go swimming in the Thames.’

  The smile on the face of Death vanished for a second but then returned, though the bloodshot eyes with enormous black irises, like dark mirrors, held no humour. Ankou stood upright, forcing Oisin to follow him as the sword dug into his throat, the black cloak he wore hung over them both.

  ‘An event for which I still harbour considerable resentment. It was to lead to hardship which I continue to suffer.’

  I smiled at him. ‘I can tell. You really need to use more moisturiser.’

  ‘Still the mischief-maker I see. I wonder if you’ll find it amusing when I slit your lover’s throat.’

  I nodded at the immobile wyvern praying that any minute it would leap into action.

  ‘I don’t recommend it. She’s possessive where Oisin is concerned.’

  Oisin’s eyes rolled. The decrepit figure of death sniggered.

  ‘You know little about reptiles Robin. In extreme cold their metabolism slows down so they become sleepy and sluggish, this wyvern poses no threat at all.’

  Shit.

  ‘So you’re here to pay me back because I encouraged you to go bathing?’

  Fiery embers and lengths of charred wood lay between us, the fire was still too large and hot to move through, circling it wasn’t an option. His arm moved sideways, ready for a slicing action.

  ‘Partly. But Llyr wants you returned to him and I accepted his commission.’

  With all my strength, I kicked two of the longer pieces of wood in his direction, they lifted about six inches, turned end over end and landed on the trailing edges of his cloak. Flames instantly licked at the cloth forcing Ankou backwards, in the process lowering his blade sufficiently for Oisin to fall to the ground and slither onto the snow to extinguish the hot embers on his trousers. Robbed of his hostage Ankou ripped off his cloak with one flick of his wrist, while readying himself for my attack with his other hand, swinging his sword into a defensive position. Not one to disappoint, I attacked.

  He looked decrepit, ancient beyond belief, his body almost skeletal but he fought like the young man I’d known so long ago; he’d lost none of his agility, speed of reflexes or his skill with a blade. The last time we’d fought, on London bridge, I’d resorted to conjuring Puck into the battle, not something I wanted to repeat if I could help it. I was never certain if I’d get that psychotic genie back into its bottle.

  Our blades clashed in a sequence of blurred images as we positioned ourselves knowing what was coming next, the stage where you test each other to see if anything’s changed. It hadn’t. We were equally matched.

  The fight took us outside, onto ground made slippery by wet snow. It was a tight exchange, we didn’t dare travel, the ground beneath our feet was too unpredictable, it left our blades and wrists to do the work. He’d know, as well as I did, that losing your footing meant death. In fights like this your attention is focused on where his blade will be in the next millisecond, he on yours, it’s not a fight to entertain audiences because all they see is a blur of blades, until that last second.

  It was when he changed position slightly, his attack coming from an acute angle rather than head on that I realised he was about to shift the rhythm of the fight. I’d been thinking of doing the same, when you’re so equally matched all you can expect is for exhaustion to become the c
ritical factor and we both knew that wasn’t imminent.

  He burst forwards, his sword like rotor blades, pushing me backwards against the wall of the shack. It was a risky strategy, getting that close, it left him open to attack from my foot or spare hand. I chose to kick his knee as I shifted my balance. He staggered slightly, lost his rhythm sufficiently to allow me to push him backwards, without any obstacle to stop me.

  What you don’t want in speedy exchanges like this is to retreat, you don’t know what’s behind you. Trouble is when the fight is so evenly balanced you have little choice, if I hadn’t had the shack to stop my retreat I’d have been in the same situation but a lesson you quickly learn in training is to find something to cover your back. There’s risks in that approach, you get trapped if your opponent is better than you.

  It was a strategy which hadn’t worked for my opponent and now I had him taking half steps backwards, with half an eye on what was around him. He increased his speed, I didn’t think it was possible our swordplay could get any faster and it started to worry me, this was exactly what had happened on the bridge. The difference this time meant there was no gap in the bridge for either of us to fall through. Deep in my brain Puck stirred, eager for slaughter.

  I was so intent on my opponent’s blade and where it was going to be microseconds before it entered that space, I didn’t see Oisin. My surprise must have reflected Ankou’s. Knowing he faced danger behind him caused him to lose focus for a second as he half-turned. Oisin brought a tree branch down hard on the grey skull, Ankou dropped to his knees. In that split second I plunged my blade so hard into his chest it pushed him backwards onto the snowy ground. He lay there panting, staring up at me. I twisted the sword, he grimaced though he didn’t take his eyes off me.

  Oisin stood with the tree branch in his hand, heaving for breath. He looked at his victim, blinked, shook his head as though he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He dropped the branch and swallowed hard.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. He shrugged and kept shaking his head.

  My blade lay buried in the chest now moving only slightly as death approached. I couldn’t help but think how ironic it was that the man who was known to so many humans as the epitome of Death should now be dying at my feet. I yanked the blade out hard, dragging it past ribs in the process, lifting the chest cavity slightly, I pushed it back down with my boot. A quick glance at my blade showed there was hardly any blood on it.

  That didn’t bother me, it was the smile on the bastard’s desiccated lips that worried me. Dying men don’t usually look happy about their situation.

  It remained there as yellow eye lids, like shreds of old leather, closed and the sinewy strands of the throat relaxed and rattled their announcement of death.

  I looked about the camp, half expecting a troop of spriggans to appear out of nowhere. Nothing, only the silence of the snow and the corpses beneath it.

  ‘Let’s get going.’

  The fight had delayed us, Purdey would already be on the road and heading for Burrow Mump. As I led the horses out of the ramshackle stable where they’d spent the night I wondered if Ankou had been sacrificed for that reason. Something still didn’t feel right but I couldn’t tell what. It irritated me.

  The wyvern stirred but only because Oisin brushed it with our blankets like he was polishing its scales.

  ‘Leave the bloody thing if it can’t wake up.’

  He looked at me as though I’d suggested killing it and serving it up for dinner. I didn’t say any more, he had helped me deal with Ankou after all. It took him five minutes of rigorous scale polishing to get the wyvern moving and alert, by then the bloody thing decided it was hungry and more time was wasted feeding it.

  The clock was against us and, to try to limit volcanic levels of anger building up in me, I tried to work out the role played by the man whose body I’d left lying in the snow. The fact Llyr was conscripting more help to capture me wasn’t good news, it proved we were being hunted. Ankou had to have come through the portal with the spriggans, avoided discovery by Brea, and hidden until he thought the time was right to attack. With the wyvern around he must have decided to wait until it fell asleep. It wouldn’t have been wise to attack in the darkness so he’d waited until dawn. If my battle senses hadn’t kicked in, he could have captured us.

  It certainly meant my good friend, Trevor Ratner, had gone back to Llyr and told him where Purdey was taking the kids. With a larger contingent of troops, the crazy bastard would have them by now, a good thing Brea had fought them off. I felt proud of her. When the few survivors of her fury got back to Llyr he’d relied on Ankou to capture me, no doubt use me as bait too.

  We set off finally, made our way to the wooden gates of the compound. I needed to get to Burrow Mump quickly. There could be a portal there too and if there was, Llyr would know to send through more troops, more than Brea could handle. And if that wasn’t enough pressure, even if there was no portal, Purdey would be taking the kids there to sell them as slaves.

  Artic blasts met our faces as we passed through the huge gates, the sky looked heavy with more snow, we couldn’t afford for it to slow us down.

  I sat on my horse feeling like all sorts of wrongs were being visited on me, despite my urge to begin our journey, something jarred in my head so that I couldn’t bring myself to leave Hamdon Hill. Oisin looked at me, uncertain whether to risk saying anything. I couldn’t waste time but my battle sense was telling me something and I knew not to ignore it.

  I turned the horse’s head and galloped back into the camp, regardless of the corpses beneath the hooves of my mount. They were dead, they didn’t care. That’s what death did, it ended your connection to the living. You stopped any involvement with other people, death made you focus only on yourself. Except that smile on that leather-bound face was different, there was something in that smile that worried me.

  I reached the shack, where snow lay trampled, where the wyvern’s outline remained and where the fire was now just charred remains.

  Where there was no body.

  Ankou had gone. Disappeared. Resurrected like the Christian’s saviour. Except I doubted this was the work of any god.

  I cantered back to the entrance where Oisin and the wyvern waited.

  ‘He’s gone.’

  It took a few seconds of puzzled expressions for Oisin to work out what I meant while I searched the fort to make sure he wasn’t going to attack us again. I thought back to what he’d said about the hardship he continued to suffer, he’d survived drowning in the deadly currents and poisonous waters of the Thames and now he’d survived my blade.

  ‘This is fucking Oberon’s work!’ I screamed at the icy wind as I returned to the compound’s gates and Oisin’s expectant face. I’d been delayed still further and now I was being hunted by an assassin that couldn’t be killed. Fucking great.

  I set off down the hill screaming my fury at the flooded landscape. Oisin eventually caught up as I slowed my horse, realising only a fool rides an animal into the ground because of his temper. I wouldn’t get the twins back that way.

  ‘There were stories of Oberon’s shady work with blood chemistry. You know how it fascinated him.’

  ‘What stories?’

  Oisin glanced over at me, his expression anxious. ‘Rumours that Oberon used a ceremonial device, a cauldron of some kind, that could instil life. I heard he took creatures through this reanimation process and then used their blood to stop entropy.’

  ‘I heard those stories before I left Tir na nÓg. They were tales to scare children.’

  With a shake of his head Oisin’s expression told me otherwise.

  ‘The creatures were called the dreach-fhuola. “The ones with tainted blood”.’

  I’d heard of the term. It had even penetrated Celtic culture centuries ago. The Irish author Bram Stoker had used it to name his famous character Dracula, the undead creature that couldn’t be slayed. In Celtic mythology the monster had to be buried upside down with a heavy rock to weig
h down its corpse and stop it escaping.

  Oisin was watching me. ‘You think Ankou is one of these creatures.’

  I rode on. That smile on his face as he gasped his last breath declared Ankou wasn’t finished with me. I could kill him repeatedly but he’d still pursue me until he caught and returned me to Llyr. Or until he ended my life more easily than I could his, after all, I had no idea how to finish this creature.

  We rode in silence towards another lump on the horizon.

  Our route lay like a silver thread in the weak December sunlight, amidst the shimmering grey water that reflected the threat contained in the clouds above.

  We followed the route of what had once run parallel to the River Parrett, now more of a lake dissected by the raised causeway on which we travelled, to a bridge that brought us into the small market town of Langport. We needed food for the horses and I gambled on Purdey needing the same thing.

  Our diversion took us along deserted streets where houses watched our progress through the hollow sockets of smashed windows. The place had been systematically looted and what was left burned and destroyed so it offered no support for anyone else. The place spooked the horses and for a while I couldn’t understand why, not until I realised it was the absence of any noise, not even the sound of birds. I’d expected to find the occasional dog or cat but there was nothing, just the echoes of horses’ hooves on the crumbling tarmac road.

  ‘I don’t like this place,’ Oisin declared, head turning from side to side nervously.

  I felt the same but any other settlement was out of our way, Purdey would have stopped here for the same reason and probably disregarded the unease we felt. If Ankou hadn’t delayed us I’d planned on ambushing him here, its narrow streets made it ideal but that worked both ways. Nonetheless we trotted through the town without finding anywhere that offered help. Eventually, on its furthest edge, we stopped at a farm whose fields ran up to dense woodland. It commanded a good vantage point on a small hill, its buildings didn’t look damaged and I reasoned its owner might have repelled assaults until the need to find food moved him on. Perhaps there was at least something for the animals.