by Kevin Hearne
Since the goblins have the weaponry to do him serious damage, Atticus is rightly focused on them, taking a risk that none of the fliers will be able to get through Brighid’s defenses and take off his head. But as I run, I see a pixie slip in under Brighid’s inferno and stab him underneath the collarbone with a bronze needle sword. He swats her and she crumbles into ash. He can’t take time to pluck it out; he has to keep parrying and swinging at the goblins and a Fir Darrig who leaps at his head. But then a small formation of sidheóg archers follow up in the pixie’s wake, flying below the ceiling of flames, and unleash a volley of miniature arrows at him, kind of like toothpicks but much sharper. I imagine they’d be foiled by a thick wool sweater, but of course Atticus is fighting naked. The arrows prickle the left side of his upper torso en masse, and many of them lodge in his face and neck, sticking out like porcupine quills. There’s no serious damage, but it makes him flinch and miss the incoming swing of a goblin’s axe.
I cry out a warning, but it’s too late. The axe—a bronze number with notches in the blade—hits Atticus high up on his left arm, almost at the shoulder. It lodges in the bone and stays there as he falls to his right. The goblin lets go of the handle, partially because Atticus’s fall yanked it from his grip and partially because he’s surprised he made contact, and so he’s standing there, frozen, when I arrive. I treat his head like a fungo and swing for the center-field wall. His skull crunches and he falls like timber, and I redirect the swing to clock another two goblins upside the head in quick succession. They’re coming in, axes high and unguarded, thinking that they’ll finish off Atticus while he is down. They go down instead.
“Get up, Atticus! I’ve got your left side!”
He doesn’t waste time, just grunts as he pushes himself up and gets to his feet, knocking aside the thrust of a goblin sword to the right and opening the creature’s throat as he sweeps left. He keeps going because the goblins keep coming, checking his swing to the left to make sure he doesn’t hit me, and I do my best to lay the gobs out and give us some space. The axe is still buried in his left arm, which hangs useless at his side.
“Think you can pull … pull out the axe?” he says, blinking furiously as he deflects a blow from a spriggan who hopped over the lead goblin, hoping to surprise him.
“Sure,” I reply, switching Scáthmhaide to a left-hand grip. “Hold on.”
The staff whirls and staggers two goblins, who are in time to get caught in a chain-lightning blast from Perun. The enemy’s charge slows in front of us, the goblins behind the fallen front lines realizing that something unseen is kicking their asses. They’re squinting, searching for a target, and it gives me time to grab the axe handle and yank it out of Atticus’s arm. It tears him up a bit, and an awful lot of blood comes with it, along with a grunt of pain, but at least now he can heal it.
As a bonus, the axe turns invisible when I touch it, so to the goblins approaching warily, it looks as if it simply ceases to exist. It exists again once I throw it at the head of the nearest one, but by the time he sees it, all he can do is duck. His buddy behind him doesn’t have enough time to duck—it splits his face, and I leap in, sweeping the end of my staff up from the ground to connect with the ducking goblin’s chin as he rises. He sprawls backward with a broken jaw, teeth popping out in bloody parabolas before landing on his body. That gives some other goblins ideas about where I am, and they hack blindly in my general direction. I back up and feed their throats a couple of knives. As they fall, I deliver sharp strikes to the soft bits of the next rank. Atticus is still slashing with Fragarach next to me, though the movements look jerky and undisciplined.
“Nnneurotoxin in the nnnneedles,” he says. “Heal it ff. Fast if you geh. Geh. Get hit. I got lots. Sssslowing down.” He steps back and barely avoids the swipe of another axeman, but that unbalances him and he takes another step and another, staggering away from the fight until he keels over backward. Fragarach falls from his hand.
“Atticus!”
I find meself royally pissed and quite happy about it. This is the kind of battle the bards were always singin’ songs about in the old days, where everybody’s mad and thinks they have a good reason to be that way. Me uncle would have loved it and wrote a song for sure. He’d call it “Rivers and Lakes and Bogs of Blood” or something. Probably something else—I’m shite at makin’ up songs. But I’m sure we’ll be stepping in large pools of blood soon, because the goblins keep coming and I keep killing them. I’m not sure they realize I’m a Druid, with an infinite energy supply and the ability to heal quickly. They don’t seem to expect me to move the way I do. They might be thinkin’ I’m the average bear.
The reason I favor the form so much is that I’m damn hard to kill this way, without a lucky spear thrust or one o’ those fancy hand grenades the modern soldiers like so much. If ye have a sword or an axe, there’s almost no way ye can get close enough to hit me without giving me a chance to hit you first. And if ye do hit me, why, you have to hack through a few inches of fat before ye get to something that matters. So I keep my head up and out of reach as much as possible, take the odd hits here and there, and kill the fecking bastards, because a bear’s strength multiplied with the earth’s strength equals a one-way trip to the dirt for the lads who run into me claws.
That’s not sayin’ I’m havin’ an easy time of it. I have three weapons stuck in me hide now, none of them feels good, and I expect there will be more before we’re through. Maybe a lot more. Maybe too many.
I could die here soon. I should have worked harder to convince Siodhachan to bring help, because feck a handsome chicken if I wasn’t right about Fand. But ye know what’s strange? I’m lovin’ the fight I knew was coming, with only one real regret: I wish Greta was here to fight alongside me. She’s already under me skin far deeper than these crude goblin blades.
Instead, I have a weepy Manannan Mac Lir on me left and a fiery Brighid on me right. I don’t feel sympathy for either of them, because none of us would be here now if they hadn’t spent so many years refusing to see the truth.
Strategically, the truth is that we are bent over and waiting to be pounded. We Druids have incredible power, but we’re not gods, and as such we’ll be the first to fall. The tide of foes doesn’t seem to end, and eventually one of them will push me under and I won’t get up. And while the Tuatha Dé Danann might last longer, they can fall, too, against odds like this. Brighid must have come to the same conclusion, for she stops spraying fire in the sky and becomes the fire in the sky, rocketing from the ground wreathed in flame and on a collision course with Fand. It’s impossible to miss, and as soon as she takes to the air, the crush of the charge stops, because no one wants to miss the show—it’s all about whether Brighid or Fand is left standing, anyway.
The sylphs protecting Fand and allowing her to float in midair lower her to the ground as Brighid dives down to confront her. When Fand plants her feet, she still stands head and shoulders over the goblins, and on me hind legs I stand eight feet tall, so I can see them well over the horde between us.
Fand sidesteps Brighid’s landing and stands unflinching as the goddess of fire attempts to barbecue her without the benefit of sauce. The sylphs bear the brunt of it, blowing the flames back and to either side. Seeing that it’s pointless to continue, Brighid douses the fire and has a go at Fand with the giant sword. I don’t expect it to last long, because Brighid has far more experience in battle and is fully armored, whereas Fand rarely fights and is naked. But Fand doesn’t try to parry or fence; she dodges and ducks every blow, inhumanly fast—faster than Brighid, her Druidic speed aided by sylphs—and she keeps looking for an opening in Brighid’s guard. Her eyes often flick to Brighid’s helmet, the only place where there is a gap in the armor, and I understand. She wants to make one strike with Moralltach, a solid hit that slips through the helmet and ends it—any strike that broke the skin would be sufficient, and she would never be able to penetrate Brighid’s guard any other way. The armor Brighid wears was
designed and warded to fend off blows from Fragarach, which supposedly could cut through any armor, so I doubted Mortalltach would have any chance of penetrating it.
Tension rises as the duel lengthens, Brighid always missing but in guarded fashion, Fand doing nothing but dodging and waiting for an opening. Neither of them would ever tire, so it’s much more a duel of wits and skill. It takes a minute of this—a long time in battle—for me to realize that something is profoundly wrong. Why haven’t the bean sídhe screamed out the name of who was going to die? It’s not like their predictions of death are voluntary; when they know they have to shout it, and they’ve been yelling their throats raw during the whole battle. Now they’re silent, and it’s fecking creepy.
Me answer comes in the next five seconds. Seeing an opportunity after an overhead strike from Brighid misses and leaves the oversize sword edge in the dirt, Fand darts in and thrusts at the thin strip of space that allows Brighid to see through her helmet. Realizing that this was perhaps the only time she did not want to keep her eyes on her opponent, Brighid turns and bows her head as much as possible, and the tip of Moralltach strikes and etches a groove in the metal as it glances off. Fand tries to dance back out of range, but she had committed too fully, drawn just a hair too close. Brighid’s backhand sweep catches Fand underneath her own extended right arm and draws a red line across the tops of her breasts. It’s not fatal, but it rips loose a cry of pain from Fand and demonstrates that she’s overmatched. So she surprises everyone and scarpers without a word. The sylphs lift her up out of the circle and whisk her away at top speed to the far pasture, where a line of trees on the other side will allow her to shift away.
Brighid doesn’t have the best range of vision through that helmet of hers, and it takes her a few seconds to process that Fand has abandoned the field, leaving her army behind. By that time it’s too late for her to catch up, and she has her own people to worry about, besides being surrounded by a host of the Fae in rebellion. Everyone is stunned—especially the Fae, who just witnessed their leader flee after getting scratched—but at least we know now why the bean sídhe were silent.
Brighid is the first to recover. She shoots into the sky and hovers above the field in a nimbus of flame, her three-note voice booming over our heads. “It is over. Fand is gone, and I give all Fae a simple choice: You may have forgiveness or fire. If you wish forgiveness, leave the field and send an emissary to Court tomorrow to discuss with me in candid terms how I may best serve the Fae in the future. I truly wish to be a better leader for you and am eager to hear how I can become one. If you wish fire, however, continue to fight. Choose now.”
They choose forgiveness with fecking alacrity. The front line of goblins and spriggans cast nervous glances back at me, wondering if I’ll be bound by Brighid’s words or not. I nod and put all four paws on the ground, signaling that I have no wish to open up their bellies. The surviving airborne Fae, including the bean sídhe, disperse almost immediately, leaving the troops with no air support and only Brighid floating above them. They couldn’t wait to flee. The spriggans and Fir Darrigs take to the surrounding forest, and the goblins drain into the holes in the ground from which they’d spewed. That’s when I look off to me right and see that Siodhachan is down.
I have decided that I really hate poison and I’ll never use it again myself. It’s not how I want to win.
The sidheóg toxin didn’t deliver a fraction of the pain of the manticore’s venom, but it was effective in slowing me down and making me vulnerable. And it was sneaky—the lack of pain meant I didn’t realize what was happening until it was almost too late. My muscle responses dragged, and my movements became sluggish and unbalanced. My vision blurred, and I warned Granuaile about it with a mouth full of mush.
I barely avoided the swing of a goblin’s axe by stumbling backward but couldn’t recover from it and fell flat on my posterior, Fragarach bouncing from my grasp when my knuckles hit the ground. Granuaile shouted my name, but I couldn’t answer. I knew I could beat the toxin given enough time, but the goblin who missed me wanted a second chance. He was charging after me—axe raised to chop down into my guts, and an ugly slash of a grin on his mug—when an unseen force knocked him sideways, as if he’d been kicked. He had in fact been kicked by Granuaile, and when he tried to get up he got a knife in the face for his trouble. Two more goblins met swift ends trying to come after me as Granuaile stood invisible sentinel, and then Brighid took the fight to Fand and everyone stopped to watch.
“Atticus, are you okay?” Granuaile’s disembodied voice asked.
“Worr … Working on it.” I hoped whatever Brighid was doing would keep everyone preoccupied for a few more minutes. My body was breaking down the toxin, but I wouldn’t be turning cartwheels or even speaking clearly for a while. And then, when I had no option but to stay still and think, I felt the crushing weight of responsibility for the entire debacle.
I’d never have a beer with Goibhniu again; he’d brewed his last barrel and forged his last project in the iron and silver knot-work of Scáthmhaide. Nor would I get a chance to discuss Rembrandt again with Meara; her grotto would remain forever dark, blacker than the canvas of The Night Watch.
I’m not ashamed to say I shed tears for them. They deserved much more than that. And then I heard but didn’t see Brighid say that Fand was gone, and the Fae army melted away like a snowman in the Mojave Desert. There was a profound lack of celebration on our side. I cast my eyes to the left and saw that Manannan Mac Lir was gone. He had plenty of spirits to escort to the next world after a battle like this, and his wife was now indisputably a treasonous fugitive. I supposed we wouldn’t see him for a while. Owen and the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann were physically fine—or at least they would be, given time to heal. Owen came up to me in his bear form and snuffled at my face to make sure I was still alive. He had several goblin weapons lodged in his body and probably needed them removed before he could shift back to human. But he moved off before I could offer any aid, apparently satisfied that I wouldn’t die immediately.
The Tuatha Dé Danann were another matter. I thought they’d be emotionally scarred forever. Off to my right, Flidais dropped her invisibility and fell to her knees, weeping, and Perun rushed over to provide whatever comfort he could. Luchta and Creidhne gathered over the body of their fallen brother and engaged in some cathartic swearing as they removed the spriggan’s body from Goibhniu’s and folded his arms over the wound. Luchta lost it and beat the spriggan’s head with his club until it was nothing but a sappy smear on the turf. Part of me wanted to go to them, all of them, and say how sorry I was, how I would never forgive myself for my role in bringing this about, but that was an atrocious idea. It wouldn’t make them feel any better—it might seriously annoy them—and it would put me in their debt if I made any admission of culpability. I didn’t know what else to do except weep and wonder how my overture for peace could have resulted in such ruin. Feeling small and alone but physically somewhat better, I sat up and propped myself with my right arm.
Granuaile’s voice came softly from my left. “I’m here, Atticus, if you’re looking for me.”
I turned and saw nothing. “Where?”
“I know it’s over, but I’d rather stay invisible for now. I have a lot to tell you.”
Frowning, I asked, “Are you hurt?” My speech had returned to normal and I was somewhat relieved at the progress.
“Yes, but it’s nothing that won’t heal soon.” An unseen hand ruffled through my hair. “I missed you,” she said.
“And I missed you. I was worried about you, in fact, when I couldn’t get in touch. But I guess you got my note. Thanks for saving me. Like, five times or whatever it was.”
“You’re welcome. I wasn’t keeping score.” Her fingers ran across my head again, and then she said, “Hey. Looks like you’ve been crying.”
I sat forward, taking the weight off my arm, pawed at my eyes, and sniffed. “Well, yeah, it’s been a terrible day. I was hoping to broker
a peace but ignited a revolution instead. I didn’t want anyone to die. Not the goblins, not any of the Fae, and certainly not Meara and Goibhniu.”
“Then we’ll talk about that too. Is your arm okay? That axe went pretty deep.”
“It’ll be all right in a few days.”
“Want any help pulling out all those little tiny arrows that almost did you in? You look like a mutant hedgehog.”
I laughed in surprise more than mirth. “Yeah, that would be great, thanks.”
As we sat amongst the ruin of so many lives and carefully plucked miniature weapons from my upper body, a strange sense of peace settled over me, the soft comfort of a small revelation that gave me hope. I’d been pushing so hard to find harmony when it wasn’t there to be found. It was much better to be still and let it find me.
Though I wish for nothing so much as a hasty departure from the battlefield, I understand that a certain amount of debriefing is needed before we can go. I cannot be certain, but I think Brighid is seething and blaming herself more than anyone else for not spying this attempted coup in time to prevent it. The sheer numbers we saw on the field are an indictment of her leadership, and while I might question many of her decisions, she is at least honest enough to admit her own failings. How many of the horde that faced us had sworn fealty to her before? Why had none of the Fae fought to defend her and the Tuatha Dé Danann from the rest? There would be uncomfortable answers to those questions.
It is a sad, tense while before Brighid can pay attention to us, since she understandably commiserates first with Flidais and then with her two sons at the loss of her third. She must feel her own flood of anguish at Goibhniu’s death, but I do not think she is the sort to grieve in public. It gives Atticus time to dissolve the poison in his body and get to his feet. When Brighid joins us, she has sheathed her sword across her back, the way Atticus does, and is cradling her helmet in her left hand. Her hair, strangely, is full and perfect. Such are the prerogatives of a goddess, I suppose. I listen in silence as she confers with Atticus and his archdruid, Owen, who has had the weapons removed from his bear form and shifted to human. Visible angry wounds paint red lines across his body. I haven’t met him formally yet, but I’m not particularly looking forward to it. Judging by his expression, the flag of his disposition is habitually sour, and that comports with the stories Atticus told me about him in the past. I must make allowances, however, for the extraordinary circumstances. I can expect few smiles today.