by Gwynn White
He pointed. Ran looked. The gorse bushes were moving. One by one they picked themselves up and walked down the hill like huge green hedgehogs, leaving a trail of raw earth.
“I sacrificed a goat the other day,” Donnchla said. “Told Marigh the wyvern ate it.” He winked.
The gorse made a creaking noise as it moved, like a dragon chewing on bones. But the people below were so intent on their argument they didn’t notice.
Donnchla got up in a crouch and scuttled ahead. He lay flat behind a licheny rib of rock. Ran flung himself down at the man’s side.
“Still there? Not scared?”
A flat loud crack rang out. The people on the road scattered. The one called Big Ted O’Leary took shelter behind his car. Alyx and her friends ran up the hill towards the village. The rest of the visitors ran after them, firing their rifles in a ta-tata-ta-tata of noise. The big man, Ragherty, fearlessly stopped in his tracks and returned fire. One of the visitors halted, clutching his leg. But the other four chased Alyx into the village. The houses hid them.
“Perfect!” Donnchla said. “They’ve trapped themselves like flies in a bottle! We’ll cut off their escape at this end.”
The walking gorse bushes changed direction. They lumped and humped towards the top of the village.
Donnchla ran ahead, no longer bothering to look for cover. Ran followed.
They reached the backs of the houses and squeezed through a narrow alley to the street. Nettles and goosegrass grew up to Ran’s waist. “They’ve taken cover!” Donnchla breathed. He seized Ran’s shoulder and pulled him in front of him so Ran could see down the street.
Nothing moved. It was a ghost village. Houses without doors or windows looked like monsters, black eye sockets gaping in stone skulls.
Ta-tata-ta!
The shots came from behind them.
Instinctively, Ran darted away from the noise, into the street, and—
—crack! Crack!
The cobblestone he was about to put his foot down on stood up on its side. Another one did the same. Ran dived into the alley on the other side of the street. Where he had been standing the cobblestones jumped up to the vertical, one after another.
Donnchla, on the other side of the street, gestured frantically for Ran to stay where he was.
But one of the strangers, the one Donnchla had called the Shackler, was coming up the street. He hid in a doorway, then jumped out and ran to the next doorway. The next time he moved, he was going to see Ran.
Fear made a wobbly hollow in Ran’s stomach.
You have to stop being afraid of getting hurt.
Put on your tourney face.
He drew the Worldcracker.
The Shackler pelted towards him. He was a little bulgy man in checked trousers, carrying his rifle low. Their eyes met. The rifle swung towards Ran.
Hopelessly, although the Shackler was still out of reach, Ran hit out at him with the Worldcracker—
--and the Shackler stopped. Dropped his rifle. Sat down, clutching his stomach. Blood spilled between his fingers.
Ran screamed. He ran down the street, leaving the Shackler behind.
Ragherty sat with his back propped against the last house in the village. Blood blackened his jeans, seeping into the earth. Between him and the visitors’ white estate car, half a dozen more bodies lay bleeding. They were the other men from the farmhouse. They must have charged the car and been cut down in mid-stride, like heroes of old.
“Get down, will you,” Ragherty said hoarsely. “He’s behind the—”
Crack! Above Ran’s head, a bit of stone jumped out of the wall.
Big Ted O’Leary was shooting blind and did not know that he was aiming not at a grown-up, but at a boy just over four feet tall.
Ran walked towards the back of the car, holding the Worldcracker out in front him. He saw the sole of a fancy leather boot, a bit of trouser hem.
He stabbed out, an awkward abbreviated movement.
Big Ted O’Leary screamed.
Ragherty jumped to his feet, shouting, shooting. Conn sat up with half his face gone. Big Ted O’Leary rose up from behind the car (his head was round like a newel post, topped with a silly little hairknot), cradling a rifle against his shoulder, and the noise of it hit Ran and knocked him down.
“He’s dead.”
“He’s not. I can feel his pulse.”
“He’ll be dead soon enough. He’s an incurable.”
“Nothing to be done for him, the poor wee fella.”
“He won’t die. Get the van out.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I can do what I want. We have to leave now, anyway.”
The voices were far away. Ran heard the words without understanding what they meant. He could feel that his body was still there, but he couldn’t feel any sensation coming from it. He knew from experience that that was very bad. The numb feeling was pain’s herald, and the longer it played its silent fanfare, the worse the pain would be when at last it rode in.
“What the fuck? What the fuck!” This was a new voice. It belonged to Sullivan, whom Donnchla had called an IMF stooge. “You eejits, you’ve killed Connelly!”
“Eejit yourself. It was them.”
“Did he not pop his head up in the middle of a gun battle, the loony? I’m not responsible for him. You should have kept him up at the farm with you, hiding under Marigh’s bed.”
“Ah God. I don’t believe this. What am I going to tell them? I’m fucked.”
“You’ll be fucked all right if you don’t get in the van. There’ll be more coming after that lot. Ferdy, you stay here. Look after Marigh. We’ll meet you in Belfast.”
“Belfast? We’ll never make it that far if they’re after us!”
“I know a shortcut.”
“Ah fuck, fuck, fuck, f …” Sullivan’s voice kept up, like a prayer, coming closer. Suspension creaked. The profane litany broke off. “You’ve killed the Sauvage brat and all!”
“Don’t you call him that! He slew the Shackler! He’s a hero and I’m not going to let him die!”
The van started.
The pain came.
36
Val
One Minute Later
Alyx drove fast along the lakeshore road. Val sat in the far back, watching little Randolph Sauvage die. A bullet had nicked an artery in his left arm. These eejits had let him lose half the blood in his body before Donnchla got there and tourniqueted him. An incurable himself, Donnchla at least knew first aid. But neither he nor Val had any way of putting all that blood back where it belonged. It was only a matter of time now until the boy’s small body simply closed down.
On his lap Val held Connelly’s relics, sawn off by the ever-helpful Conn and wrapped in a sack. Alyx’s boys had salvaged the relics of Big Ted O’Leary and his friends, too. The inside of the van smelt of dead bodies. If only the brothers at the cathedral school could see them now.
Saints, I need a drink.
The van went over a pothole so deep that the chassis scraped the road.
Val decided they’d have to stop for petrol before long, and then he’d be away. Straight to the nearest pub.
He opened his eyes. The rear windows of the van had turned white with fog. “Bloody weather,” he mumbled. “The sun was out only five minutes ago.”
Alyx switched the headlights on, but even with the beams on low you could barely see the next pothole for the fog. The black face of a cliff loomed and shimmered away.
“What road is this?” Val’s breath puffed white.
Donnchla answered, “It’s no road you’ve ever travelled, Sullivan.”
Laughter from the other men.
“Here we are,” Alyx said, stopping the van. With the engine off, Val heard the sound of running water close by. For some reason, his hackles rose.
They all got out. The cold hit Val like a spear to the lungs. Ragherty lifted Randolph Sauvage in his arms, tenderly. The boy’s head lolled.
“Where are
you taking him?”
“For a bathe,” Alyx said. “He’s all over blood. He needs to get clean.”
Val watched them file into the fog. Dread tapped at his brain. Only Donnchla stayed behind.
“Why don’t you go with them?” Val demanded.
“It’s not for me.”
“What is it?”
“Go and find out. Or are you scared?”
“I will, then.” Val stumbled away in the direction the others had gone. Moisture-slick rock glistered like frozen mud. Clumps of moss grew in crevices. The van was soon lost in the fog behind him. Terror goaded him with visions of getting lost, stumbling around in this lifeless landscape forever.
But the sound of running water and laughter drew him to a stream. Fast-flowing, sharp-elbowed, purling white over rocks. Claw-shaped ferns edged a wider pool and the men were splashing around in it, washing off the dirt and the blood of their butchery.
Little Randolph was in the water, too, floating in Ragherty’s arms. His tourniquet had come loose. It floated in the bubbles, blood-blossomed. There was no more blood flowing from his wound. Dead, then. You washed the dead to prepare them for burial. If their relics had no value you buried them whole.
“Go on, take a dip,” Donnchla said, coming up behind him. “Why don’t you?”
“Why don’t you?”
Alyx splashed out of the pool. Her tatty grey briefs and undershirt clung to her body in a way that made Val’s tongue thick in his mouth. “You can go in if you like.” Her gaze held level on his face. “It’s not so cold.”
“Not if Donnchla doesn’t.”
Alyx shrugged. “Your life, your decision. Have the decency to turn your backs, both of you, while I get dressed.”
They complied. The mist shifted, unveiling fuzzy glimpses of rock faces. Donnchla picked his nose. “She’s not thought this through,” he said.
“What?”
“The child.”
“He’s dead.”
“He’s not.”
Behind them, a boy’s voice rose over the men’s. Laughter carilloned. Val turned around. Randolph Sauvage stood up in the pool, naked and pink with cold.
“He’s healed!”
“Give the man a hand for his powers of observation.”
“But he’s an incurable!”
“Not anymore.”
Val swung to Donnchla. The other magician’s eyes were ratty and bright above his ridiculous, trying-to-be-scary moustache. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“It does, yeah. This is it. A cure for incurability. A cure for everything including the common cold. This is what your man Connelly was looking for.”
“You cocksucker.”
“You going to call Alyx names, too, for healing a boy that was on the edge of death?”
“You tried to get me to go in.”
“You should, with your lungs that sound like a steel band.”
“And lose my incurability!” He remembered the vial of ‘holy water’ that Alyx had given him in Abydon, and grew even angrier. “You’re just trying to get rid of the competition.”
“You’re no competition to me.” Donnchla twirled his moustache.
“Get away, you pathetic wee cursemonger. I pissed myself laughing when I saw what you did at Lough Inagh. Walking gorse bushes? Where did you learn that one, off a stone tablet? I grant you it would be a clever trick if we were still fighting with axes in shield walls.”
Donnchla’s lips thinned. Before he could come up with a retort, Alyx led Randolph Sauvage up to them. “All better,” she said.
The little boy’s face radiated happiness. His formerly dull complexion glowed. Even his posture had improved. Val felt a pang of envy mixed with sympathy. He could only imagine what it must be like to be completely free of pain for the first time in your life. And the boy was too young to know what he’d paid … what had been taken from him without his knowledge.
“What a waste,” Donnchla said quietly, echoing Val’s thoughts. He glanced at Val and the two of them shared a moment of wistful understanding, their rivalry temporarily forgotten.
Alyx had overheard. “What’s a waste? He’s alive and he feels great, do you not, Ran?” The boy nodded. “There you are, then! Your head’s away, Donnchla. You, too, Val.” She wrung out her hair, flicked water at them, and laughed to see them jump back.
Ragherty came over. “Here’s your sword, Ran.”
“Thank you very much,” the boy said politely.
“Do you see what I mean now?” Donnchla said, ostensibly to Val. “She didn’t think this through at all, did she?”
Alyx flushed. “Let’s get back to the van,” she said loudly. “I thought these two were going to stay and guard it, but they had to come traipsing after us, like wee children looking in the window of the sweetshop.”
They found the Shackler rummaging in the back of the van. “I want my relics,” he said. There was a rent in his tunic and the lower half of the garment was a stiff apron of blood.
“It’s not him,” Ragherty said, putting a cautionary hand on Val’s arm.
“It is me. You murdered me. He did.”
Randolph Sauvage shrank against Alyx’s side.
“I want my relics. Give me them and let me go.”
“It’s his ghost,” Conn said. “It must have followed us from Lough Inagh. You a saint, you murdering, torturing cunt? There’s no justice.”
“What is this place?” Val said.
“It’s the land of the dead,” Alyx said. “The Otherworld. The place where the fey come from, where the saints go.”
“Ah, God.”
“There’s no God. Not here, anyway. Only the River of Sticks.”
“What is it? The River of Sticks?”
“It’s what we just bathed in. The cure for sickness. The cure for everything. My mother brought me here when I was thirteen.”
The Shackler said eagerly, “The river. Yes, the river. Give me my relics and let me go to the river.” He started to cry. “It’s a hard world. I never fitted in. I wasn’t a bad man; I only hurt people because I was too scared to hurt myself. No one ever understood.”
“Ah, give him his relics,” Alyx said. “He’s too recognizable to fence his head in Belfast, anyway.”
Liam rooted through the gore-sopped sacks and tossed the Shackler’s head, hands, and heart at him. The ghost clasped the things to its breast. It was bizarre to see a man clutching his own head in his arms. “Thank you, thank you a thousand times.”
“I’m sorry!” Randolph Sauvage blurted. “I didn’t mean to kill you! I just …”
“You’re too young to be a killer. Ah, it’s a hard world.” The Shackler shuffled away into the fog.
“He didn’t forgive me,” Randolph said. His mouth wobbled.
“He was in too much of a hurry to get to the river,” Alyx said. “Weak-willed piece of shite.” She gestured upwards. “There’s saints up there in the mountains that have lasted centuries. Nowadays, they just fold like newspapers. We’d better get on the road.”
A knocking noise came from the van’s engine compartment. Ragherty popped the bonnet, lifted it—and recoiled with a shout.
Fur and claws and owlish eyes boiled in the engine compartment.
“Gremlins!” Val exclaimed.
The little fey sprang out of the engine in a storm of chittering shrieks and fled into the fog.
The engine was a mass of twisted piping. The gremlins had done an astonishing amount of damage in a short time. The van was a write-off.
37
Ran
That Afternoon
They walked.
“This was supposed to be a shortcut,” Alyx grumbled. “Fecking gremlins.”
“You’ve been using the Otherworld as a shortcut?” said Val Sullivan, the scary magician. He seemed unable to say anything without turning red and furious anymore.
“It’s handy when you’re short of petrol. Or when you don’t want to run into a checkpoint. H
ow d’you think we got to London the last time?”
The fog never lifted. It muffled their footfalls on the road, which was cobbled, with so many missing stones that you constantly had to watch your step. As they descended from the mountains, the road got even worse. Long stretches were all weeds. They occasionally saw a ghost stumbling across their path. Ran wondered whether they would meet Piers. He hoped they wouldn’t. He knew now that this was the same place he had visited in his dream. He also knew that Piers would not be happy to see him with Alyx and her friends.
But Alyx had healed him by bringing him here. He relived the moment when he’d come to, floating in the river. Alive! He still felt great. Nothing hurt. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this good before.
He was getting tired, though. And hungry . When they sat down for a break and Alyx handed around a half-loaf of sliced white bread, Ran gobbled it down, although it tasted like cardboard, compared to the bread they had at home.
Alyx watched him fondly. “We’ll have something better for you when we get to Belfast. I know a pub where they do the best fry-up in the country. Sausages, mushrooms, black pudding, taties, eggs, and fried bread, how does that sound to you, my hero?”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“What?”
“‘My hero.’”
“Because you are.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m just a child.”
Val Sullivan laughed.
Alyx’s face got funny. Her lips pressed together and she shook her head. “You wielded the Worldcracker. You slew the Shackler.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Ran’s voice was tiny. He had killed a man.
“What sort of attitude is that for a king?”
“I’m not—”
“Would you stop your cribbing!” Her sudden anger brought the tears to Ran’s eyes. He sat stiffly, knowing that to cry would make her even angrier. She jabbed his leg with the Worldcracker, dropped it in his lap. “This proves it,” she sadi bitterly. “You’re the true king. I’m not the true queen. The Sauvages were kings long ago, before the MacConns were ever heard of. So I suppose it makes sense, doesn’t it?” She looked around at the others. “Doesn’t it?”