by James Fahy
As Hawthorn reached him, Robin felt the great well of anger and power within him ebb. His eyes refused to focus. He tried to smile triumphantly at Hawthorn, the Golem cantrip still laying waste to the enemy below them, scattering the remaining centaurs, driving them back down the hill, but he couldn’t manage it. He was exhausted suddenly. More tired than he had ever been. He felt blackness rushing up to engulf him, and blearily saw Hawthorn close the last few steps between them just as his legs gave way beneath him.
Strong, rough hands caught him under the arms as he fell, and Robin distantly felt himself being lifted, carried like a child through the open gates of Briar Hill.
“You rest,” he heard Hawthorn say quietly, exhausted himself and struggling for breath. “You did well, boy. You rest now, son.”
Robin gratefully sank into blackness and silence.
BRIAR HILL
“Is he dead?”
Jackalope’s voice sounded both distant and detached, rising out of watery darkness.
“Of course he’s not dead, numbskull!” Woad’s voice drifted in. “He’s not the dying type. Don’t be stupid!” And then, quieter. “He’s not dead, is he?”
Hawthorn’s calming voice joined them. “No. Don’t worry. He’s just … drained, that’s all. There. I think I got most of the blood off.”
Robin felt as though he were struggling to swim upwards through black water as thick as treacle. He became vaguely aware of himself. He was sitting, propped or leaning against something. His arms and legs felt heavy, as though someone had cut the strings of a puppet. With no small effort, he forced his heavy eyelids to open. The faces of his companions swam into view against a background of deep red sky glowing behind them.
“There. See? He’s awake,” Hawthorn said, though he sounded a little relieved underneath his confidence. Robin felt a damp cloth pressed against his forehead. It was incredibly soothing.
“What … where are we? Are we safe?” His mouth was dry and felt full of cotton wool.
“Safe is a fairly relative term,” Jackalope said.
“Yes, Robin. Safe for now,” Hawthorn assured him. “How do you feel? Could you take a little water?” He turned his head to Woad. “Fetch more water from my skin,” he instructed. “In my pack.”
The faun scampered away.
Robin gingerly lifted a hand to his head. It felt bruised. The bright and crimson sky was stinging his eyes. “Did I–”
“Faint?” Jackalope interjected bluntly. “Yes. You dropped like a stone.”
Robin scowled. “I was going to say ‘pass out’,” he muttered. This somehow sounded better to him.
“We are at Briar Hill,” Hawthorn told him, as Woad returned with a water skin. He passed it to Robin, who took it gratefully.
“Sips, not gulps, please,” Hawthorn instructed in his crackly old voice. “You’ve been out of action for several hours. The sun is setting.”
The water was wonderful. Robin felt utterly parched, and it seemed to wash the cobwebs out of his head. He sat up a little stiffly, running a hand through his messy blond hair, and secretly relieved to find there were no horns there.
“Sunset?” he said, coughing a little. “The centaurs?”
“They have gone,” Hawthorn explained. “They would not enter Briar Hill, even in daylight. They are a superstitious bunch, but they have been circling the hill all day. Now that night is falling, they have finally left. They won’t even stay close in the dark.”
This was tremendously good news to Robin.
“So, we’re rid of them?” he said with relief, looking around at the others.
“I doubt that,” Hawthorn replied grimly. “It’s likely they know they have us trapped up here. They will have gone to fetch reinforcements. We rather decimated their ranks, after all.” He was looking at Robin curiously. “When you have come around properly, there are things we must speak of. They are not merely chasing us for sport. There is more to it than that.”
He patted Robin lightly on the knee. “But first, we eat. Jackalope has built a fire. Come and enjoy the delights of Briar Hill before we lose the light altogether.”
Robin soon discovered that they were in a town square, long since abandoned. The ground below was packed earth, and all around them rose the empty wooden shells of buildings. Hollow glassless window-frames stared down at them like haunted eyes. Many of the low buildings, crammed together, were roofless or partly tumbled down. Grass grew long within their walls, and ivy trailed over their crumbling timbers, as though the earth were reaching up and slowly trying to pull the ghost of the town down under her green skirts.
It was utterly silent and still in the empty square. Not even a bird sang. Clumps of tough-looking grassland flowers grew here and there through paving slabs and blocked narrow alleyways, long since disused. Their questing tendrils pushing determined through cracks in the stones.
The still, silent place was incredibly eerie, especially in the setting sun. The sky overhead was blood bright, crimson and dramatic. Shining through empty frames and broken walls in thick beams dancing with ghostly dust. The buildings cast elongated evening shadows across the square, questing fingers of darkness creeping over the long abandoned cobbles.
Jackalope had indeed started a fire, near the front of an old building that may once have been a town hall. He and Woad were busy rooting through Robin’s near-bottomless satchel for food and drinks.
He joined them, feeling more steady with each step he took toward the fire.
“Why won't the centaurs come here? Into the town?” he asked, looking around them. It was quite creepy, like something from an old black and white zombie movie, but he was still surprised. Centaurs didn’t seem the nervous type to him. More the hard-headed, bloodthirsty murderous type.
“Don’t know your history, Pinky?” Woad teased. “Shame on you. You’ve always got your nose in your books, haven’t you read about the hill?”
Robin shook his head, which he immediately realised was a bad decision as it made his vision swim. He dropped down next to Woad, as Jackalope began to spear dried fish Hestia had packed for them onto sticks for roasting over the fire.
“It’s a dark place,” the faun said. “The world is full of them. Some places are just … bad. Like the brown spots on a good apple. They dip down heavier than other places, and all the shadows just roll into them and pool up.”
“Briar Hill has been many things to many people, Robin,” Hawthorn said, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite the three boys. He passed Robin the large leather copy of Hammerhand’s Netherworlde Compendium which had tumbled from his satchel during Woad and Jackalope’s rummaging. “Few of them good,” he added.
Taking the book, Robin sat by the flickering flames in the sunset of the abandoned town and leafed through the waxy pages until he came to the relevant entry.
Frowning at the spidery script on the yellow vellum, he read aloud as the others listened.
“West of the ruins of the once great Fae palace of Erlking, amongst the great and rolling grassy hills, now home to herds of wild beasts, there rises Briar Hill, a strategic military outpost of some fame during the ancient Fae wars between those people and the invading Whitefolk. Once home to a monastery housing the mysterious and now long defunct Brothers of Shadow, the ruins of Briar Hill have since seen many incarnations. A military fort; a refugee camp for Fae fleeing from the south at the outbreak of the war; and later, and perhaps most grimly, as an internment camp run by the Peacekeepers for the ‘processing’ of captured Fae prior to transportation either south to Dis or further west to the Hive. Long since abandoned and left to ruin, the structures atop Briar Hill are now tumbled stones, reclaimed by nature and said to be haunted by banshee. None but the foolish or those desperate for shelter now venture near the hill after dark, for fear of encountering these vengeful spirits.”
He looked up from the book. “Cheerful stuff,” he quipped. “So which are we? The foolish or the desperate?”
Hawthorn chuck
led. “Hammerhand knew his lore, especially about the wild beast. These grasslands are full of centaur, although these ones seem very organised. I wonder who is leading them, and what they are doing out here in the lonely places.”
“We read about banshee,” Robin looked to Woad. “Do you remember? Back at Erlking. You said they were old wives tales.”
Woad shrugged unapologetically. “I didn’t say old wives were liars, did I?”
“So this town has been a prison, a death-camp, and some kind of secret society,” Robin said. “Where did all the people go? Why was it abandoned?”
“They went to the camps of Dis,” Jackalope said. “This was mainly a Fae place originally. There are countless towns like this in the Netherworlde now. Empty.” He scuffed his boot in the dry dirt. “Dead places. The Fae who had lived here for hundreds of years all rounded up and marched off like animals by the Panthea. Men, women and children alike.” He flicked his silver eyes at Woad.
“No offence to you,” he added gruffly. “I know you’re Panthea, but a lot of your kind, even those who didn’t actively believe in Eris’ cause, they didn’t do anything to stop it, the persecution of our people. So called ‘fae sympathetic’ Panthea, watching in silence as their Fae friends and neighbours were taken in the night.” He snorted in distaste, poking the fire.
“I’m the first to side with the Fae, believe me, but many Panthea were simply terrified to speak out against Eris,” Hawthorn counselled, even-handedly. “Many of them still are. They have families of their own to worry about too, and it isn’t just Fae like ourselves who disappear in the middle of the night.” He peered into the small fire, looking sad and tired. “Fear closes lips that should roar and stays hands that should tear.”
Jackalope looked up angrily. “How can you sit there and defend them?” he asked. “Those who did nothing? The poor, frightened Panthea?” His lip curled. “They’re as guilty as Eris’ supporters. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them because yes, fair enough, they might not have stopped it, but hey, they felt just terrible about it on the inside? That makes it all okay?” He snorted down his nose.
“I used to hate all Panthea,” Hawthorn said. “For many years after the war. Some of the Fae resistance still do.” He sighed a little in the setting light of the sun. “But stories have more than two sides, boy. Some of them have more sides than a glittering diamond. Things are not simple or clear in this world or in any. You are too young to know that yet perhaps.”
Jackalope looked around at the ruined town. His face was thoughtful, distant. The empty shell of the town had clearly stirred up memories of his own
“The night they came to our village,” he said quietly after a moment, not looking at any of them. “A town like this one … They were taking Fae families from their houses, dragging us into the street in the dead of night.” He took a bite of his grilled fish, speared on the kebab and chewed it thoughtfully. No one said anything.
“They took me and my brother,” he continued. “I was very young at the time of course, but I remember it so vividly.” His hard silver eyes flicked up to Hawthorn across the flames. “We lived next door to a Panthea family at the time. They had children our age. We used to play together all the time. Two boys.” He swallowed his fish, looking down at the roasting stick. “They were my friends. Their mother fed us at their table.” He smiled humourlessly, his eyes scanning the broken walls. “She made the best scones. I can still remember the taste. Full of cream. Lovely woman. We didn’t know they were different from us. We were just children. Children are blind to these things.” The smile dropped and he looked back to them, his silver eyes like mercury in the flickering firelight.
“That night, when they dragged us out through the street like dogs, the Peacekeepers rounding up every Fae in the village, just as they were doing everywhere, in every town … it was a spectacle. All the village was up in the middle of the night. For the horror show. They were out in the streets, the people of my small town. The Panthea, at doors and windows. Some only brave enough to twitch behind curtains. The Peacekeepers drove us Fae down the main street, hands bound behind our backs like animals, shoving us into barred wagons. We passed my neighbour’s house.”
His sharp eyes flicked from Hawthorn to Robin. They were hard and harsh.
“The children, my friends …” he smiled grimly. “Both of them … they stood encircled in their mother’s arms. All three of them huddled in the doorway, watching our dark procession. They looked horrified. The youngest boy was crying, I remember that. Even the mother’s face was like ash.” His eyes cast downwards, looking at the soil between his own feet.
“My brother was quiet, full of dignity. He always was. I … was very young. I caused a fuss.”
Jackalope wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“Kicking and screaming, a puny child trying to fight the Peacekeepers every step of the way. All tears and snot and terror. Embarrassing. I saw our neighbours as we passed. The mother? She looked right at me, holding her children tight. Right at me. And you know what she said to them? As she turned them inwards, burying their faces in her skirts?”
The fire popped and hissed under the crimson sky.
“She said ‘don’t look’,” Jackalope said, thickly into the silence. “Don’t look at them, babies.” He threw another stick on the fire, sniffing. It caught and kindled, popping and hissing.
“This woman who had fed me, this woman who had nursed my bruised knees a hundred times, fed me at supper like one of her own, chatted to my brother at the market every day. There were tears standing in her eyes, and she said to her children ‘don’t look.’ She said ‘turn away.’ Do you know what her tears were worth to me?”
A long and uncomfortable silence spread further out from the fire.
“Nothing,” he finished bitterly. He looked at Hawthorn, his eyes like hot stones, challenging the older Fae. “There’s another side for you to add to your glittering diamond stories, old man.”
He got up, dusting off his knees. “I’m not hungry,” he said thickly. “I’m going to go and have a look around.”
“Be wary,” Hawthorn called after him as he stalked away. “And stay within the walls.”
“This town has been a death-camp,” Jackalope called back. “The worst thing that could happen here already has happened.” His boots scuffed at the dry dirt, kicking loose and long forgotten cobbles ahead of him into the deepening evening gloom. “And now here we are, the last three Fae, hiding like rabbits in our own ruins.” He laughed humourlessly at the irony of this, as he disappeared into the shadows beyond the circle of firelight.
They ate in subdued silence for a while after he had left. The light drained from the sky, cloaking the town in quiet shadows around them as night fell.
“We are not the last three,” Hawthorn said quietly to Robin, some time after Jackalope had gone off to wander the empty streets alone. He had been watching the boy's face as they ate. Clearly, he could sense how troubled he was. Hawthorn reached for one of the seared fish sitting above the flames. “There is a resistance against Eris, a gathering of Fae. Scattered we may be … yes. But it is there. I am part of it, and we plot and plan. Fear not, Robin.”
“I’m not afraid,” Robin said, glancing around at the shell of the town. “Erlking is a resistance too. Of Panthea. And not silent or scared ones either.” He looked directly at Hawthorn. “Eris will learn that fear cannot control people forever. Fae or Panthea. I’ll never let it control me.”
“How did you do that?” Woad asked, crunching into his dinner noisily. “Back on the hill, with the rocks? You had no mana left, but then boom!” The faun mimed a big explosion with jazz-hands. “You dragged half the walls of the town down on those angry horse-men. Talk about mastering an element.”
Hawthorn was looking intently at Robin as well, clearly just as curious.
“I … I don’t really know,” he replied, honestly. “It’s like I just … found more?” He shrugged. “I don’t know how t
o describe it. I was so angry. We were so close, and you weren’t going to make it. It wasn’t fair. My mana seems to be doing this. When I get … emotional. Mad, I guess."
“There was darkness in that casting,” Hawthorn said, though there was no judgement in his voice, merely an observation. “Looking up the hill at you, I saw. You were not yourself. Just … fury and power.”
“That’s the Puck, not me,” Robin said quietly.
“Well, whatever it was, and however you did it, you saved my life without a doubt,” Hawthorn said. “You have my thanks for that. These powers of yours could be a tremendous weapon against Eris, for the resistance.” He shrugged. “That is, if you could learn to control it better. It’s never a good sign when cantrips cause nosebleeds and unconsciousness.”
Robin wasn’t sure how much he liked being referred to as a ‘weapon’, and the gleam in Hawthorn's long eyes was a little bright for his liking. He shuffled uncomfortably and took a bite out of his fish as the last rays of light left the sky above, washing a band of deep twilight purple over them.
“Before, when I woke up,” he said, eager to change the subject. “You said you thought the centaurs were chasing us for something more than just the fun of it?”
The older Fae nodded his ragged head. “Centaurs can and do hunt for fun, and they are territorial. They tend to stick to their own hunting grounds. The amount of distance we covered in this chase, it is larger than any centaur's usual patch. Many times larger.”
“So, they were determined,” Robin reasoned.
“More than that,” Hawthorn insisted. “They were hell-bent on catching us, and I want to know why.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Woad said. He sat across from them, cross-legged in the crackling spluttering light of the campfire, waving his fishbone at them. “I mean, look at you two. Two Fae. Big one been thorn in Eris’ toe for years, finally caught, escaped, probably showing everyone up in the process, I bet there were some red faces at the Hive. Then you have the cheek to come waltzing back into the Netherworlde right away, larking about like you own the place.”