The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  Maureen's trees were talking to her, the voices in her head that personified schizophrenia. "Go back," they said. "Flee, be afraid. This forest is not a place to be. Danger and death lurk here."

  Maureen's whole package, indeed. Next thing, Jo would be afraid of men. She smiled at the thought and walked on, forcing the dragon and the outrageous impossibility of where she was out of her mind. After all, warmth and green leaves and the smell of forest dirt felt as intoxicating as three stiff drinks when compared with Maine in February.

  The sound of a creek trickled through the woods, reminding her that she was thirsty. The trail crossed it through a muddy ford, and she wished she had some tracking skills, to see if Maureen had passed this way. There'd been a lot of traffic, but it was Greek to her, and over-written Greek at that. She followed the water upstream, looking for some stepping-stones to save her feet a soaking.

  She stared at the water. Crystal clear. Did she want to drink and chance the raging shits? Or hold out for some nice safe wine or beer at this "Master's" place?

  If in doubt, doubt. It was Rule One of food and water in the woods, laid down by Maureen. Jo didn't have any Halazone, and she wasn't all that thirsty yet.

  She climbed back to the trail, puffing her way up the hillside through underbrush and dead leaves. She tromped through a patch of mushrooms and squashed some purple berries, wondering if they were all poisonous and if not, where the clean-up crew had gone--all the little critters that eat stuff in the woods. She hadn't seen any birds or squirrels or deer tracks.

  Maureen was the one for wildlife and plants, the expletive deleted forester, but even Jo knew the woods shouldn't be so quiet. Hair rose along the back of her neck.

  She came out on the trail again. The way was more open now, blue sky overhead. Birds circled up there, three of them, big and dark. Vultures? Ravens?

  Swell. She'd asked for omens? Look what she got.

  Buildings lined the ridge ahead: a round stone tower, stone castle walls, and shaggy roofs of thatch tan against the sky. It had to be that "Master's" keep. It looked cold and clammy and dark, and she wondered if you could really keep an Irish rain out with a roof like that.

  Walls and towers said there were enemies, armies, sieges. Jo reminded herself again that fairy tales were dangerous places. Maybe she didn't like this world Maureen was wandering in.

  She turned back to the trail, chilled in spite of the stiff climb through the forest. She felt like it would take just about one more thing to shove her off the deep end. Dragons and vultures and too-silent forests and dark towers on the crowns of hills: adventure was something nasty happening to somebody else, far away. It wasn't fun when it started to get personal.

  And last time she checked, her knight in shining armor was in another universe. Just her luck, he was off buying guitar strings when she really needed him to slay a dragon.

  Or maybe Brian would be a better choice. This looked like his territory.

  Maybe that was where Mo found him. Wandered around in her psycho nightmares, grabbed one, and made him real. Put him in a suit of medieval armor, and he'd fit right in.

  She reminded herself to shut up and keep walking. They should have a well up there, and maybe she could ask politely for a cheeseburger and fries, hold the onions.

  And then Jo's eyes connected with her brain, overriding the mindless blither that had kept her from screaming, up 'til now.

  Those white things on posts, they weren't streetlights. They had eye-sockets. Some of them had lower jaws. Some had wisps of hair still sticking to the tops and sides.

  They were skulls.

  They were human skulls, set up on stakes like the light-globes placed along a rich man's driveway to create an inviting approach for guests. One had a raven perched on it, pecking at shreds of flesh. A dinner guest.

  Jo ran. She ran silently, except for a panting moan that was her throat tightened against vomiting. She ran downhill, off the trail, through the clawing brush and tumbling and sliding headlong through the dead leaves and moss and rolling to her feet and running again. She ran, and inside her head, she screamed.

  She hit water. She splashed into the creek, uncaring. Follow water downhill, she remembered, it always goes to civilization. Second Rule of the Woods, courtesy of Maureen. Trails could go anywhere at all, but water went downhill, to the sea. Follow water and you'd find man.

  But she didn't want to find man.

  That was man up on top of the hill. Man the headhunter, man the tyrant, man the rapist.

  Maureen's man.

  Jo held Maureen's gun in one hand and Maureen's jacket in the other and splashed her way downstream. Icy water soaked through her boots and pants, working up to her waist where it met the icy sweat working down. She shivered and thrashed on through the overhanging brush and felt knives stabbing her ribs where her lungs fought for air.

  Water hid scent, didn't it? Washed out the tracks? They wouldn't be able to use dogs to trail her. She had to keep to the water.

  She forced herself to slow down. How would Maureen deal with this? What would that paranoid cunning say? Jo shrugged her arms back into the jacket and stowed the pistol, to free her hands. It was time to get sneaky, time to worry about avoiding the dragon and all its friends.

  Thinking paranoid helped, thinking about Them following her around. Paranoia eased through the brush, instead of breaking it: broken branches were a trail, a sign pointing fingers along the way she went.

  Skeleton fingers.

  She was seeing skulls everywhere, rounded white domes of limestone in the moss and running water, the dark pits of eyes and nose in the rotted boles of trees, the grinning teeth in sunlight glinting off of leaves. Skulls followed her, watched her, and laughed at her panic.

  Jo's foot slipped, and she splatted on her butt. That jerked her brain back to survival. Wet moss was nearly as slick as a greased slide. She scrambled to her feet and continued downstream, along the creek-bed running smooth over bedrock coated with green goo.

  She groped for handholds, overhanging branches or protruding rocks. The makeshift bandages were long gone. She planted each foot carefully, thanking the hiking gods for the ridiculous vogue for Vibram soles on winter city boots. She grabbed another branch, easing across the stream and looking for her next foothold.

  Something bit her hand, a sliver of bark digging into the dragon-scale cuts. Jo snatched the hand back, instinctively sucking it in the monkey-fear of venom, tottered, and fell again. Her feet shot out from under her. Her wet jeans skidded across the slick rock, faster and faster.

  Where the hell had all that slope come from?

  She slid and slid and balled up with her arms around her head, fighting to keep her feet below her to catch the rocks before anything more delicate smashed into them. The water piled across her, cold as fire, and she fell into it and out of it and into it again.

  Wet darkness closed over her head.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brian's glance flicked from treetops to dry-stone wall to emerald fields, searching for the enemies he knew were out there. He saw too much cover, too much dead ground, for comfort. You could hide an army in the folds of Fiona's rolling pastures, and he wasn't even ready to take on a squad.

  The problem with coming out between Fiona and Dougal was that it landed him squarely in the crossfire of their war. Whichever way he went, he was on the outside trying to get past their sentries.

  He scanned the neat stone walls, waist high and so perfect for hiding archers, then searched the sky for stooping griffins with their talons ready for a killing strike. Or maybe Fiona had set strangling ivy to lurk in the branches of the pasture oak overhead, ready to slither around his throat?

  Nothing. He relaxed an inch, but he was still sure he walked headfirst into a trap.

  The Summer Country always looked too damned innocent. In spite of all its dangers, this land felt like home. Whenever he came here, something fused with his blood and told him the land was his, that he could mold it to
his will.

  The feeling was seductive, as if even the air of the place conspired to draw him away from the humans he protected and over to the Old Ones. Everything here reminded him of the blood he shared with Fiona and Sean. Joining them would be so much easier than fighting them. He ignored that offer, knowing that it lied.

  The land might welcome him, but the people didn't. Dougal had a spike beside his castle gate, waiting for another skull, and Fiona . . . Fiona had Sean lurking behind her shoulder for whatever might be left of Brother Brian when she was through with him.

  And David wouldn't enjoy what any of the Old Ones would do to him.

  The pasture oak stood as a reliable landmark for travel between the worlds. It was the image he'd aimed for in Fiona's land, a marker on the edge nearest Dougal where things tended to stay the same from moon to moon. In that respect, edges were safer, sort of neutral territory between the minefields.

  Fiona found passive defense to fit her moods: her poison plants and the misdirection of a landscape that changed while your back was turned or even right before your eyes. Dougal liked his guards more active, active enough to threaten even their own master. Dougal lived for the adrenaline rush of danger.

  Brian didn't. Apparently David didn't, either.

  The young bard held an arrow nocked and ready, but his fingers were trembling, his face pale and beaded with the sweat of the green recruit. His mind was on Brian, not the battlefield.

  Time for some fatherly advice from the veteran. "It's normal to be scared," he said. "The day I lose my fear of dying will probably be the day I die from acting reckless. I've been too many places where life or death was a shade of angle or a gram of force. Just don't let it paralyze you."

  Fortune was chance and chance was fortune. Luck, not skill, often determined who survived a battle. So much for glory.

  David forced a weak smile.

  The bloody fool trusted Brian. That's what was new, the different fear. Brian remembered too many mistakes. He'd misjudged Fiona's devious plots, and the lengths Dougal would go to, looking for a mate.

  Sean had taken Maureen. That meant an alliance between Fiona and Dougal. It had seemed about as likely as Joe Stalin pairing up with Hitler's Reich. Brian shook his head. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history . . . He'd left the idea out of all his strategy for this living chess game.

  That boy shouldn't be in harm's way, untrained and untested. Maureen shouldn't be here, Jo shouldn't be here. If Brian had deserved their trust, they'd all be home in bed. Which was where he still belonged, no matter what face he put on for David.

  Brian still felt like a wrung-out dishrag. He was trying to fight on the enemy's ground, weak and unprepared. He was reacting, not acting. It was one of the quickest ways to die.

  He shook off the thoughts, limped across to the nearest wall, and peered over it. Nobody home. Normally he would have vaulted over it with knife in hand, but his leg and arm and shoulder weren't up to those heroics. He was getting too old and lame for this.

  He climbed stiffly over the wall and waved for David to follow. "Sean took Maureen. That much we know for sure. Dougal wanted her. Odds are, we'll find Maureen at Dougal's keep. I'm just hoping we'll find Jo by looking for Maureen."

  Brian studied the forest ahead. He saw a killing zone, perfect for ambushes. Snipers in the trees or in spider-holes under bushes, trip-wires, pit traps, you name it. It was as bad as the Malayan jungle, except for the leeches and the bugs.

  Dougal didn't work that way.

  David wiped his hands nervously on his pants, scanned the horizon, and turned back to Brian. "What should I be watching for?"

  The real question was, what could Brian tell him without breaking the boy's nerve? "Dougal will have beasts on guard throughout his forest, vicious things he's caught and trained or broken to his will. He'll have some human guards as well, closer in where they'll be safe, because some of the animals he keeps will kill anything that walks."

  In other words, Jo could die quickly if she was wandering alone. Brian didn't want to remind David of that.

  "Watch the forest," he said, "not me. Man or beast, anything out there besides Jo or Maureen is fair game. Kill it before it kills you."

  Brian moved as if he patrolled alone: eyes ahead, eyes behind, checking out each tree, each rock, each step along the beaten leaf-mold of the trail. He couldn't expect David to spot danger, couldn't rely on the boy to guard his back. The training wasn't there.

  The damned leg and shoulder still hurt. His ribs still stabbed him in the side with an ice-pick when he tried to breathe too deeply, and he had all the stamina of a week-old kitten. That was always the last thing you got back after wounds, the body's revenge for deadly insults.

  Sean couldn't have waited another day, another week, to snatch Maureen. He had to do it last night.

  Bastard.

  Scraps of purple rip-stop nylon lay in the trail, mixed with white fluff. Brian squatted down with a quiet grunt of pain, and studied the pattern, automatically looking for trip-wires or the evil little prongs of a contact mine. To hell with the fact that explosives wouldn't work here: old habits die hard.

  His fingers traced prints in the exposed dirt. Something big had walked here, something with scaly feet and claws. A whiff of vinegar mingled with the earthy rotting of the forest floor. He wrinkled his nose.

  Dragon. That would explain the overgrown lizard tracks.

  David grunted something inarticulate, and Brian scanned the forest for mythical beasts. Nothing moved. His gaze flicked across the young human and then back to him again.

  The boy's face looked like pale ash, a mask. He was staring at the cloth and blinking.

  "Jo. Jo's ski-jacket. She wore that when she left."

  Brian picked up a scrap and ran his thumbnail over one of the dark blotches on it. Part of the stain flaked off, reddish brown: dried blood. He looked around for more splashes and puddles on the dead leaves, the torn earth.

  Not enough for death.

  He teased at the stain again, sniffed it, tasted it: the heady musk of a fertile female of the Ancient Blood. It was definitely Jo's jacket, almost the same fragrance as Maureen. Maybe a day old, maybe more. Less than a week.

  Time ran differently in the Summer Country than in David's world. Time even ran differently in one part than in another. Last night in the "real" world might be last month or tomorrow here.

  His fingers traced the tracks again, and then he looked up at David. Brian decided to give it to him straight and see if he panicked. Better now than later.

  "It looks like a dragon caught her and didn't kill her. The beast may have a brood she's teaching to hunt, like a mother cat. Or sometimes Dougal wants to take prisoners. That's not a thing you should be hoping for."

  The fear had faded from David's face, replaced by white rage. He forced words past his clenched teeth. "Dougal. One of your Old Ones. What are his powers? Will these arrows work on him?"

  Controlled anger was good. Much better than either blind rage or panic. Brian could use anger--could aim it and pull the trigger, could set a timer on it and leave it ticking on someone's doorstep.

  "Arrows will work. He controls people and animals, not things, and he needs to be close to them for hours or days. He's a beast-master. The other side of the coin is, the control lasts. It's not like a glamour, where if you move away five feet, ten feet you lose your power. His beasts will obey him even if he doesn't see them for weeks."

  "I think I'd rather strangle him. If he hurts Jo . . ."

  "Just kill him the fastest way you can. You won't get a second chance."

  David swallowed and nodded. At least the kid wasn't sputtering about dragons. Shake him loose from his mind-set once and he was willing to take all comers. Good. Very good.

  How would he act under fire? That was the acid test.

  "If you see a dragon, aim for the eyes or down the throat. The only place your arrows'll pierce the hide is right under the legs, and you'll never get a sho
t at that. Most other stuff you see, go for the chest or belly. Slow down, stay calm, choose a target, remember the smooth release. Panic won't help Jo."

  "Jo," David muttered. "Dragon. Eyes. Throat. Kill."

  And he was off down the trail, stalking like a wind-up toy all stiff in the legs and with the bow held like a forgotten walking stick.

  "Bloody raw recruit!" Brian swore and hobbled after him, struggling to catch the kid before he triggered one of Dougal's traps.

  Dark scales glittered between the trees and swirled toward David, a wall of armor more than man-high. He jerked the bow up and loosed an arrow that flew wild, the string twanging like a plucked lute. The shadow hissed like a snake imitating a Russian basso and then struck at David with a head the size of a small car.

  Dragon. The kid was lunch.

  Somehow, David rolled sideways from the teeth and bounced back to his feet, shedding bow and pack and quiver. The dragon whipped her tail around, sweeping her prey from his feet and into a tangle of brush.

  {The Master said nothing about eating you.}

  Brian jerked his kukri from its sheath and limped forward, working a stunning spell as he walked. Real dragons didn't have magical defenses--they rarely needed them.

  "Hey, snake!" Brian shouted. "Stop to eat him, and I'll eat you!"

  The lizard head swiveled back, teeth gleaming a mottled yellow in the sunlight. She needed a good dental hygienist. That and tartar-control toothpaste.

  {Two. Most excellent. Hunting has been poor lately.}

  She glanced at David, tangled and moaning in a hawthorn, and concentrated on Brian. Smart snake: she paid attention to the one who still had teeth. She tossed her head and shot a look behind her, as if something back there disturbed her.

  Brian had to get close enough for the spell to work. Close enough, but not inside her belly.

  He threw the knife at her right eye, the one towards David. She ducked to the opposite side, and the heavy blade clanged against the scales on her eye-ridge, striking sparks and spinning uselessly away.