The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  The words spoke of hidden undercurrents, a reminder that Brian was an outsider in this town and in this world of music. He was always an outsider, the ranger guarding the edges of the forest. Problem was, he was never exactly sure which side he was protecting, and neither provided a home.

  Memories came at him, unbidden, and again took the voice of a grizzled Sergeant-Major offering advice to a subaltern still wet behind the ears. You need a home, old son. You've never really had one.

  Last night with Maureen had reminded him of that. She was special. He resonated with her. There must be some way to reach her, to calm the tension. Not by using the Power. What he needed was more lasting than that could give, something real rather than a puppet on a string.

  Jo deflected David to another table, leaving Brian alone with Maureen and their coffee, waiting for the applause to die so they could talk again. That simmering rage was back on her face.

  "I met your sister today," she finally said, in a tone warning of hidden minefields.

  "The Queen of Air and Darkness?"

  "Huh?"

  "Fiona. She always wanted to be Morgan le Fay when she grew up. Or Morgause, or one of the Three Witches in Macbeth. Something dark and dangerous, anyway."

  "She gave me some questions to ask you."

  Bloody hell. "She would."

  "How old are you?"

  "Oh. That one's a little complicated. The simple answer is, about seventy. Time changes around, between your world and the Summer Country."

  "You look about thirty."

  "And you look about sixteen tonight. Your sister looks about twenty, only because she dresses differently. We don't age the same as humans do." He held up a palm, to stop her questions. "We do get old, if nothing kills us first. With proper training, you can expect to live about two hundred years. Or you could die tomorrow, if you go around trusting Fiona."

  "So you know I have the blood of the Old Ones. You're an Old One, yourself. Why did you warn me they were dangerous?"

  "Because they are dangerous. The fact that you have the Blood only makes it worse." He paused and sipped some coffee as a diversion. How was he going to explain this to an innocent?

  "Mostly they ignore humans unless one gets in their way. With each other, they fight and backstab and shift alliances and scheme and connive in ways that make the Balkans seem simple. Meeting you, instantly knowing you for what you are, they will assume you know things you've never learned, can do things you don't even dream about. Those differences could quickly get you dead, or made into a slave."

  It wasn't helping. He could read it in the knife-edged line between her eyebrows.

  "What's your real name?"

  "Arthur. Arthur Pendragon." He grimaced, then shook his head at her obvious disbelief.

  "It's a ritual name. There've probably been a thousand Arthur Pendragons since the original flea-bitten tribal chief in an obscure corner of Wales. There are sixteen or twenty of us alive right now. That's why we use other names. Brian Albion means me, just as much as Arthur Pendragon. Fiona's messing with your head."

  "And these 'Pendragons' are all Old Ones?"

  "Old Ones raised as Christians. We stand between the Summer Country and what you'd call the real world. Our job is to keep the two apart, protect humans from the Old Ones."

  "Why?"

  "The Old Ones don't have what you'd call a conscience. They keep slaves. They torture. They kill on malice or on whim. Each is an absolute despot in his heart. Fiona isn't helping you, she's using you for some plot she has going."

  "And what you did to those fire doors last night proves you have a conscience?"

  Damn. Well, you’re supposed to be good at thinking on your feet. "The traps I set on those doors were keyed to Fiona and Sean. The doors wouldn’t jam unless they tried to pass. And my spells didn’t start the fire."

  He still wasn't reaching her. This involved something deeper, something more basic to her way of seeing. What he was saying didn't touch that problem.

  She shook her head. "So everything’s the fault of the Old Ones? And yet all you Pendragons are Old Ones. I had a logic course in college. Seems to me that your argument is biting itself on the ass. Tell me why I should believe you instead of your sister. Fiona said you were dangerous--the kind of man who stabbed strangers in the back."

  "Liam was no stranger. He killed a friend of mine--tortured him to death for no other reasons than boredom and the fact that he had the chance. In the years since, I've found five other corpses on his trail. Four of them were women. He followed you into that alley. Would you rather that I'd let him take you?"

  He glanced at the crucifix she wore, such a different message than a plain cross. "Why are you a Catholic? I was raised to do this. I don't know why Liam wanted you, but it wasn't for your own good. Not something you'd choose if you had a choice." Brian allowed himself a wry smile.

  "Beyond revenge, I killed him because he would have killed me. He would have killed me because he knew I would kill him. It's like cats chasing their own tails. Makes about as much sense, but you can't escape it."

  The conversation was surreal. He wondered if any of the nearby tables were listening, over the general buzz. This place was "chemical-free." Would they get bounced for being stoned?

  He glanced around. The only people looking his way were Jo and David. They were too far away to hear.

  He hoped.

  "Let me ask you a question, now. Why do you think Fiona is trying to split us apart? Why does she want to turn you against me?"

  She shrugged. Her face told him she doubted they had ever been together. He bulled ahead with it, anyway.

  "For whatever reason, Fiona has decided I'm her mate. The father for her children. She sees you as a rival. God help the woman who stands in her way."

  Maureen's eyes bugged out, and she gulped coffee so fast she sputtered. Brian ran through the Heimlich maneuver in his mind before she caught her breath.

  "But . . . But . . . She's your sister!"

  "Machts nichts. The Old Ones don't have the same taboos as you civilized sorts. I just told you that. Besides, she has ancient precedent. Think of the Egyptian pharaohs, brother marrying sister. More to the point, what sin lies at the heart of the fall of Camelot, no matter which legend you choose? Who were Mordred's parents?"

  That reference to fantasy touched her where nothing else had. Her face opened out, shock and curiosity replacing the hard-edged anger. Whatever hid beneath her surface, she wasn't playing to Jo and David any more.

  "Arthur," she whispered. "His half-sister."

  "By whichever name."

  Then something clamped down on her face again, and her lips thinned. She was through with sparring.

  "So she's chasing you. She can't rape you, can she? Isn't that a male prerogative?"

  Shit! Now Brian could see Fiona's bomb, but he was powerless to defuse it. His sister was such a devious little bitch, knowing just exactly what strings to pull and what buttons to push to make others dance like marionettes.

  "She can force me if she gets me in her power. She can bind me to her with a spell. I think that's why Liam was after you. To make you a sex-slave for his master in the Summer Country."

  Her teeth showed now, and with her sharp face it gave her the look of a redheaded piranha.

  "A spell to make you want her? A glamour, perhaps? There wouldn't be any connection with my inviting you in, last night? No tampering with my emotions?"

  "You were in danger and afraid. You still needed protection. I thought it was the best choice for both of us, getting you safely home."

  "Bullshit! I came here tonight because I owed you something for saving my butt. I hoped Fiona had lied. But what you tried to do, that's rape. Alcohol, hypnosis, whatever the hell you call it, it's still rape!" She squirmed in her chair, as if even she was trying to escape from her own words.

  Brian squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "You told me to stop. I stopped. You told me to leave. I left. No means no. T
hat isn't rape."

  "If I ever think you're doing it again, I'll kill you!"

  "Maureen . . ."

  "You go to hell, Brian Arthur Albion. You just go straight to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Get the fuck out of my life!"

  She lurched to her feet and drained the dregs of her coffee. Well, that was better than throwing it in his face. And at least she wasn't screaming.

  She had been loud enough to get attention. Not just Jo and David, but a dozen faces turned toward them, curious. He had a sudden idiot's vision of passing the hat for intermission entertainment, like jugglers or a pair of acrobats.

  He watched her retreating back, rigid as a spear with anger. She marched straight for the door and into darkness. He started to go after her, reason with her, and then decided now wasn't the time or place. She wouldn't be capable of listening. Grenades were like that.

  Damned if he knew what she had on her hidden agenda. All he had done was touch her fear of him, soothe her, calm her. Now she was acting as if he was an incubus.

  Her musk lingered behind, heavy even in the crowd-smell of the evening, bypassing his brain. It ignited a war between his body and his mind. "Go away closer." "No means no."

  Women.

  Particularly women of the Blood. Brian damned Fiona. He damned Maureen, and damned Jo with her confident sexuality aimed at her simple straightforward Homo sapiens, and damned Brian Arthur Pendragon Albion while he was at it.

  Sex was such a deadly stew.

  The musicians wandered back through the crowd, and David joined them, leaving a kiss on Jo's hand. The break was over, intermission act and all. The Downeast lobsterman stepped up to the microphone.

  "Well, folks, we've been after the lighter side of Ireland and it's time to get heavy, now. This isn't an IRA song, but rather the contrary. For generations, one of the few ways to support your family in a poor land has been to go for a soldier, to take the King's Shilling and go off to fight in foreign wars. And then you come home again . . . ."

  The bodhrán started to thump a funeral march, and the whistle picked up a slow-paced "Johnny Comes Marching Home." One by one, the other instruments joined, including a caoine wail on the uillean pipes that would have done credit to the best banshee.

  "While going the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo,

  "While going the road to sweet Athy, hurroo, hurroo,

  "While going the road to sweet Athy

  "A stick in my hand and a drop in my eye

  "A doleful damsel I heard cry

  "'Johnny I hardly knew ye!'

  "With their drums and guns and guns and drums

  "The enemy nearly slew ye.

  "Johnny me dear you look so queer,

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye."

  Brian knew this song. He'd lived it, through long years in the brushfire wars of the death of the British Empire. He settled his head in his hands. Death and maiming, the arts of war--his life stretched back behind him through the Malay jungles, the heat and dust and stink of Oman, the deceptive civilized streets of Belfast and Cyprus.

  Maureen . . . She had no reason to trust him, wouldn't have a reason until it was too late. Just like the young man who marched proudly off to war in his brilliant scarlet uniform, the thousands of young men.

  As he'd told her, the circle of killing lived on its own energy. He hunted Old Ones because he knew they hunted him. They hunted him because they knew he hunted them.

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild, hurroo, hurroo?

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild, hurroo, hurroo?

  "Where are your eyes that looked so mild

  "When my poor heart you first beguiled?

  "Oh, why did you run from me and the child?

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye."

  Each side killed because they feared death. They feared death because they killed. For others, it was the Balkans or Kashmir. For Brian, it was the Old Ones.

  One by one, over the years, the war had claimed his friends --Mulvaney had been the last. The enemy had bled just as much. The chess match was a draw. And he couldn't see any way to resign from his current war, any way to negotiate a truce. Nobody trusted enough.

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo,

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo,

  "You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg,

  "You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg,

  "You'll have to be put with a bowl to beg.

  "Johnny I hardly knew ye!"

  Brian stared down at his cup, finding nothing but coffee. He shook his head.

  He was getting old. His thoughts didn't usually start turning this dark until he was at least halfway through a bottle of the Queen's best rum. He didn't start seeing the dead boys and the ones who wished they'd died until the landlord gave out his last call for the night. That was when he saw the blood soaking out between his fingers without the force of a heartbeat behind it, the death-blood of another child who'd trusted the old soldier to get him safely home again. That was when he sat in a tent at midnight writing letters to the next of kin.

  The grizzled Sergeant-Major was back, whispering in his ear. You're getting old and your brain is turning soft. Why are you so interested in this barmy little bint? Don't give me that crap about her smell. That's animal-talk, dogs following after a bitch in heat. You're only half an animal. What does the rest of you have to say?

  Brian shook his head, slowly, at his inner voice. He saw pain, and he knew considerable about that subject from the inside. When her face opened up with the music, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And underneath the pain and anger, he could feel the strength of tempered steel. She didn't even know it was there, but she could be more deadly than Fiona. He didn't want her to ever have to be.

  Speaking of Fiona . . .

  He lifted his head and did his reflex scan of the crowd, of his surroundings, of possible ambushes. Two dark faces sprang out of the shadows, as if they took form before his eyes. Fiona. Sean. His sister winked at him.

  "With their drums and guns and guns and drums

  "The enemy nearly slew ye.

  "Johnny me dear you look so queer,

  "Johnny, I hardly knew ye."

  The instruments dropped off, one by one, until the tin whistle piped a military retreat and the bodhrán finally drummed its funeral cadence into echoing silence.

  Brian cursed himself for relaxing his guard. How long had Fiona been there? Had anybody followed Maureen out the door? A minute, two minutes to finish the song . . .

  He was outside and fading into shadows before the echoes died.

  Chapter Eight

  There were five of them.

  At least five of them, Brian reminded himself. He could get killed making assumptions. The darkness could be hiding twice that many. Those were just the ones he'd seen or heard.

  He added a mental note to never, never, go out in jogging shoes in winter. No matter what he thought he was going to do. Now his damned Reeboks squished icy water between his toes with every step.

  Brian slid along an alley wall, hugging shadows, feeling the grit and grab of brick against the back of his jacket and praying his feet wouldn't find any noisy junk or ankle-breaking potholes under the snow. This frozen maze of alleys could kill him as easily as the squad trying to pin him down.

  There were at least five of them, and they were human. That cut back on his options. Times like this, he really questioned the nobility of unilateral disarmament. Things he could do, things he had done to Liam, just weren't options against humans. He was supposed to defend humans against Old Ones. That was his bloody job.

  There were always rules of engagement.

  It didn't matter if the damned jackals knew these alleys better than a Jesuit knows the Bible. Didn't matter if they'd sold their souls to Fiona or Dougal, bought and paid for. He couldn't kill them.

  A shadow flickered across the end of the alle
y, short and skinny against the orange of the streetlights. Street kids, who lived in these alleys night and day. Gang kids, with knives and lengths of pipe and probably guns, being Yanks.

  How had they found him? He wondered for an instant if the music had called Fiona and her lapdog. That one reel belonged to the Summer Country, that was certain. But this wasn't summer. Far from it.

  Kids, he thought, and cursed under his breath.

  He couldn't kill them, and he couldn't even use the powers of the Blood where there were witnesses. Back when he'd thought Maureen was human, she had been alone. If she'd talked about what she saw, there was no evidence--no other witnesses. The cops would smile at each other and do a little spiral with a finger in the general area of their ears. Just another nut.

  He edged deeper into the maze, peeked around a corner, and scanned the shadows for his next move, his next threat. The cheeks of his butt clamped tighter in the ancient response to fear. It didn't matter how many hundreds of times he went into combat; the fear was there. It had better be. When the fear leaves, you die.

  He swallowed metallic spit.

  Dark, odd-shaped lumps could be bags of trash or lurking death. Tracks in the snow could be ten hours old or ten seconds. Blackness at the head of a fire escape might be a sentry or only plywood and ice against the sky.

  A whistle echoed down the alley: a mockingbird singing in February in Maine. Another echoed back. That was all he bloody well needed, a street gang trained as Indian scouts.

  His glance flicked back to the roof edge: something moved against the stars. Damn kids held the high ground.

  Brian slipped from shadow to shadow, crouching behind transformers humming to themselves under the snow, sneaking around rusty package vans that hadn't moved for at least three storms. The moldy back-alley smells of soaked cardboard, garbage, and cat-piss wiped Maureen's fragrance from his memory.

  Welcome to the real world, Brian Albion.

  One of the trash-bags stretched, found a more comfortable place to squat, and returned to sentry duty. So much for that way out. Brian could step around a corner into the Summer Country and escape, but he had a sneaking suspicion he'd find Fiona waiting for him at the gate.