Hounded

Chapter 5

Pillow talk in the modern era often involves the sharing of childhood stories or perhaps an exchange of dream vacations. One of my recent partners, a lovely lass named Jesse with a tattoo of a Tinker Bell on her right shoulder blade (about as far from a real faery as one can get), had wanted to discuss a science-fiction television program, Battlestar Galactica, as a political allegory for the Bush years. When I confessed I had no knowledge of the show nor any interest in getting to know it or anything about American politics, she called me a “frakkin’ Cylon” and stormed out of the house, leaving me confused yet somewhat relieved. Flidais, on the other hand, wanted to talk about the ancient sword of Manannan Mac Lir, called Fragarach, the Answerer. It kind of killed the afterglow for me, and I felt myself growing irritated.

“Do you still have it?” she asked. And as soon as she did, I suspected that the entire visit—even the conjugal part—had been planned just so she could discover the answer. I had flat out lied to the lesser Fae who’d attacked me earlier, but I didn’t feel safe doing the same to Flidais.

“Aenghus Óg certainly thinks so,” I hedged.

“That is no answer.”

“That is because I have reason to be cautious, or even paranoid, where that subject is concerned. I mean you no disrespect.”

She eyed me steadily for a full five minutes, trying to get me to talk by merely remaining silent. It works well on most humans, but the Druids taught that technique to the Tuatha Dé Danann before I was born, so I kept my smile on the inside and waited for her next move. I busied myself in the interim by trying to find patterns in the popcorn ceiling and idly stroking her right arm, which was tattooed like mine, ready to draw the earth’s power with an effort of will. I found a woodpecker, a snow leopard, and what might have been the snarling face of Randy Johnson throwing a slider before she spoke again.

“Tell me the story of how you came to possess it in the first place, then,” she finally said. “The legendary Fragarach, the sword that can pierce any armor. I have heard several versions of it in Tír na nÓg, and I would like to hear you tell it.”

It was an appeal to my vanity. She wanted me to lapse into braggadocio and get so carried away with my tale that I’d wind up blurting out, “It’s in my garage!” or “I sold it on eBay!” or something similar.

“All right. I stole it in the Battle of Magh Lena, when Conn of the Hundred Battles was so bent on slaying Mogh Nuadhat during the night that he hardly cared what weapon he was holding in his hand.” I raised my fist as if it grasped a sword. “Conn was outnumbered and knew he’d have little chance of winning in a straight-up fight, so he decided to attack in the night to skew the odds in his favor. Goll Mac Morna and the rest of the Fianna refused to fight until the morning, citing something about honor, but I have never had much of that in the middle of a war. Being honorable is an excellent way to get yourself killed. Witness the British getting their hair lifted by this continent’s natives in the eighteenth century because they refused to break their silly formations.”

Flidais grunted, then said, “This was before Finn Mac Cumhaill led the Fianna?”

“Oh, aye, well before. So I slunk away from the Fianna’s fires and went to join Conn in the slaughter. He was hacking his way amongst Mogh Nuadhat’s army—which was about seventeen thousand Gaels and two thousand Spaniards, if you can believe it—when his hands, slick with the blood of his fallen enemies, slipped on the hilt of Fragarach as he raised it for another blow, letting this magnificent sword sail behind him, over his head, to literally fall at my feet in the chaos of a night battle.”

Flidais snorted. “I don’t believe you. He simply dropped it?”

“Threw it would be more accurate.” I raised my right hand. “Every word is true or I am the son of a goat. I picked it up, felt the magic thrumming through my arm, wrapped myself in mist, and exited the field with my prize, never to return until the time of Cormac Mac Airt.”

“Nay, they did not let you simply exit with Fragarach!”

“You’re right,” I chuckled. “There was a bit more to it than that. I thought you might enjoy the short version, though.”

Flidais seemed to seriously consider whether or not she had enjoyed it. “I appreciated the denial of expectations; it is similar to when prey refuses to behave in standard fashion, making the hunt more interesting. But I know that you have skipped many details, and it already differs from what I have heard, so now I must know it all. Tell me the longer version.”

“Wait. What did you hear in Tír na nÓg? The short version.”

“I heard that you stole it from Conn through chicanery and guile. In some tales you put him to sleep through use of a potion; in others you switch swords with him using an illusion. You come across as little more than a scheming, cowardly footpad.”

“How delightful. All right, then, I think perhaps it is crucial to know my state of mind leading up to the point where the sword dropped at my feet—for that is truly how it happened. Night battles are ridiculously crazy; I wasn’t sure that I was always facing people from the opposing army, you know? The only illumination saving it from being black as tar was the pale glow of a crescent moon, the stars, and a few distant campfires. I may have accidentally killed a man or two on my own side, and I was paranoid about being cut down in a similar accident. So I was thinking, this is absurdly dangerous, why am I doing this, and why am I here, and the answer that I came up with was this: We were all killing one another in the middle of the night because Conn had a magic sword given to him by Lugh Lámhfhada of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Fragarach’s power had allowed him to conquer most of Ireland. Great as he was, he could not have done it without that sword. Conn would have never had the stones to attack Mogh Nuadhat without it. Everyone who died in the battle to that point had done so because a single sword gave one man in power the lust for more. And as I maniacally hewed down whoever faced me, I realized that, even as we fought for Conn, Conn was fighting for the Tuatha Dé, manipulated by Lugh and his cronies as sure as a tree drinks water.”

“I remember this now,” Flidais said. “I stood apart because I have never had much interest in human affairs outside the forest. But Lugh was very interested, and Aenghus Óg even more so.”

“Aye. I think they wanted to bring peace to Ireland at the point of a sword. They encouraged Conn to do what he did—and all the High Kings after him. And perhaps it would have been the best thing for Ireland, I don’t know. What bothered me is that the Tuatha Dé were manipulating human events, when they were supposed to have been removed from them centuries before.”

“Meddlesome, are we?” Flidais grinned sardonically.

“In that particular case you were. I was mentally cataloging which of you were on Conn’s side and who was on Mogh Nuadhat’s when the sword fell at my feet. I knew immediately what it was; I could feel its power pulsing through the ground, calling to me. And that’s when I heard a voice in my head, already half expected, telling me to pick it up and exit the field. Pick it up, the voice said, and I would be protected.”

“Whose voice was it?” Flidais asked.

“Cannot you guess?”

“The Morrigan,” she whispered.

“Yes indeed, the old battle crow herself. I would not be surprised if she had something to do with it slipping from Conn’s grasp in the first place. So I picked it up. When you’re in the middle of a killing field and the fucking Chooser of the Slain tells you to do something, you do it. But of course there were many agents, human and immortal, who objected to this.”

“Conn came after you?”

“Not personally. He was too busy fighting for his life with a normal sword he’d snatched from a corpse. He was in the very thick of the mêlée, and thus he sent some of his chiefs behind him to find Fragarach. What they found was a Druid holding his sword and not particularly anxious to surrender it. In fact, they found me trying to summon mist to cloak my escape.”

“Only trying?” Flidais raised an eyebrow. I noticed that she had a few freckles underneath her eyes, high on her cheeks. She was comfortably pink all over and slightly bronzed from the sun, not the marble white of the Morrigan.

“It was rather difficult to concentrate. Aenghus Óg and Lugh were in my head, telling me to return the sword to Conn or die, and the Morrigan was telling me I would die if I gave it back. I said to the Morrigan that I wanted to keep Fragarach for my own, to which Aenghus Óg and Lugh both shouted no, so of course the Morrigan instantly agreed.”

Flidais laughed. “You played them against one another. This is utterly delicious.”

“But wait, it gets tastier. The Morrigan shielded my mind from Aenghus Óg and Lugh, and just in time. Conn’s lieutenants tried to slay me and quickly discovered that, while Fragarach was a great sword in Conn’s hand, it was a terrible sword in mine. They all shouted ‘Traitor!’ before they dropped in the mud, however, and I abruptly found myself surrounded by hostiles—hostiles egged on to kill me by Aenghus Óg and Lugh, no doubt. The Morrigan suggested to me that the best way out would be through Mogh Nuadhat’s army. Charging in that direction, I whirled Fragarach around me with all the strength a Druid could muster from the earth, cleaving bodies in two and shearing anonymous torsos from their trunks. The flying halves of men bowled whole men over, and fountains of blood showered upon my erstwhile comrades. I eventually reached Mogh Nuadhat’s Spaniards, who parted for me like the Red Sea for Moses—”

“For whom?”

“I beg your pardon. I was alluding to a figure from the Torah, who escaped an Egyptian army by appealing to the god Yahweh for aid. Yahweh parted the Red Sea for Moses and his Jewish friends to escape, and when the pharaoh’s army tried to follow, the Red Sea fell upon them, drowning them all. And so it was when Conn’s men tried to pursue me; the Spaniards closed ranks and thwarted them, and I ran freely to the other side of the field, thanking the Morrigan for her assistance. But that’s when Aenghus Óg decided to take a very personal hand in the matter. He appeared before me, in the flesh, and demanded that I return the sword.”

“You had better not be jesting with me now,” Flidais said.

“I assure you I remember it very clearly. He was outfitted in some stunning bronze armor etched with lovely bindings and dark-blue pauldrons and bracers. Do you remember seeing it?”

“Mmm. Long ago, yes. But that proves nothing.”

“Confirm it all with the Morrigan. For just as Aenghus and I were about to come to blows, she alighted on my shoulder as the battle crow and told Aenghus to back the fuck off.”

“She actually said that?”

“No.” I grinned. “I confess that was a bardic embellishment. She said I was under her personal protection and by threatening me he placed himself in mortal peril.”

Flidais clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, I bet he nearly shat kine!”

That made me laugh—I hadn’t heard that expression in a long, long time. I refrained from telling her that the modern expression would be “he had a cow,” because I liked the original better.

“Yes, the kine he nearly shat would have fed several clans.”

“What did Aenghus do then?”

“He protested that the Morrigan had gone too far and interfered beyond her compass. She replied that the battlefield was precisely her province and she could do as she wished. She tried to make him feel better by guaranteeing that Conn would survive the night and even win the battle. He accepted these concessions as his due but couldn’t leave without threatening me personally. He glared at me with those flat black eyes and promised me a short, miserable life—and I’m grateful for that, because the Morrigan has tried to make it the opposite as much as possible.

“ ‘You may enjoy this victory now, Druid,’ he said, ‘but you will never know peace. My agents, both human and Fae, will hound you until you die. Always you will have to look over your shoulder for the knife at your back. So swears Aenghus,’ blah blah blah.”

“Where did you go?” Flidais asked.

“At the Morrigan’s suggestion, I left Ireland to make it tougher for Aenghus to kill me. But the bloody Romans were everywhere and they weren’t friendly to Druids. It was the reign of Antoninus Pius, so I had to travel east of the Rhine to escape them and join the Germanic tribes holding the line there. I fathered a child, picked up a language or two, and waited a couple generations for people in Ireland to forget about me. By stealing Fragarach, I had ensured plenty more battles and horrible, bloody deaths. Conn wasn’t able to fully unite all the tribes without Fragarach to enforce his will, and Aenghus Óg’s dreams of some kind of Pax Ireland were ruined. Even though Conn won that battle and slew Mogh Nuadhat, he had to settle for a patchwork of truces and marriages to keep the illusion of peace, and it all fell apart after his death. The Morrigan has used my name to goad Aenghus Óg ever since, not that he needed it. After I bore witness to his cowering before her, there was nothing he wished more than to erase his humiliation by erasing me.”

“How long since you have wielded Fragarach?”

“I will not say.” The goddess’s face fell a bit, clearly disappointed that her gambit had failed, and I grinned. “But if you are wondering if I have kept up with my swordsmanship, the answer is yes.”

“Oh? And with whom do you spar out here? I would imagine that there are few mortals alive who are truly skilled with a blade anymore.”

“You imagine correctly. I spar with Leif Helgarson, an old Icelandic Viking.”

“You mean he can trace his lineage back to the Vikings?”

“No, I mean he really is a Viking. Came to this continent with Eric the Red.”

The brow of the goddess knitted in confusion. There were a few extremely long-lived mortals like me running around, but she thought she knew them all. I could tell she was reviewing them in her head, and when she failed to recall any Vikings, she said, “How is this possible? Has he made some sort of bargain with the Valkyries?”

“No, he’s a vampire.”

Flidais hissed and leapt out of bed, landing in a defensive fighting posture as if I was going to attack her. I very carefully did not move except to turn my head a little bit and admire her perfectly sculpted form. The last rays of the day’s sun were filtering through the blinds, leaving soft striped shadows on her lightly tanned legs.

“You dare consort with the undead?” she spat.

I really hate that word, even though I occasionally catch myself using it. Ever since Romeo and Juliet, I am of Mercutio’s mind when he takes issue with Tybalt’s suggestion that he consorts with Romeo. To mask my irritation, I grinned and tried to affect an Elizabethan accent. “Zounds, consort? Wouldst thou make me a minstrel?”

“I speak not of minstrels,” she scowled. “I speak of evil.”

Oh well. Not a fan of the Bard, then. “Your pardon, Flidais. I was alluding to an old play by Master Shakespeare, but I can see you are in no mood for light banter. I would not say that I consort with the undead, for that would imply a relationship beyond what is minimally necessary for business. I merely employ Mr. Helgarson. He’s my attorney.”

“You are telling me that your lawyer is a bloodsucking vampire?”

“Yes. He is an associate at the firm of Magnusson and Hauk. Hauk is also my attorney; he’s also Icelandic, but he is a werewolf and takes care of clients during the day, and Helgarson obviously does his business after sunset.”

“Associating with a member of the Pack I can understand, and even approve. But frolicking with the undead, that is tabu.”

“And a wiser tabu has never been enforced by any culture. But I have never frolicked with him and have no plans to do so. Leif is not the frolicking type. I merely use his legal services and occasionally spar with him because he is the finest swordsman available in the area—and the fastest as well.”

“Why does the pack member work with the vampire? He should have killed the foul creature on sight.”

I shrugged. “We are not in the Old World anymore. This is a new age and a new place, and they both happen to have a common enemy.”

Flidais cocked her head sideways and waited for me to name said enemy.

“And that would be Thor, the Norse god of thunder.”

“Oh.” Flidais relaxed somewhat. “I can understand that, then. He could make a salamander team up with a siren. What did he do to them?”

“Helgarson won’t tell me, but it must have been bad. His fangs pop out if you just say ‘Thor’ aloud, and he hunts carpenters simply because they use hammers. As far as Magnusson and Hauk go, Thor killed some of their pack members ten or so years ago.”

“This Magnusson is a werewolf too?”

“Aye, he’s the alpha. Hauk is his second.”

“Did Thor have cause to attack them?”

“Hauk says they were on holiday in the old forests of Norway and it was nothing more than a capricious whim on Thor’s part. Eight precisely aimed lightning strikes out of a sky that had been clear moments before. Couldn’t possibly have been a freak occurrence.” Silver isn’t the only thing that can kill werewolves: Humans simply don’t have access to weapons like bolts of lightning, which fry critters before they can heal.

Flidais was silent for a time and regarded me intensely.

“This desert seems to attract an unusual collection of beings.”

I merely shrugged again and said, “It is a good place to hide. No easy access from the Fae planes, as you know. No gods stomping about, besides Coyote and the occasional visitor like yourself.”

“Who is Coyote?”

“He’s a trickster god of the natives. There are several versions of him running around all over the continent. He’s a nice lad; just don’t make any wagers with him.”

“Isn’t the Christian god prominent here?”

“The Christians have such muddled ideas of him that he usually can’t take shape beyond the crucifix form, and that isn’t much fun, so he rarely bothers. Mary will appear more often, though, and she can do some pretty awesome stuff if she feels like it. Mostly she sits around looking beatific and full of grace. Keeps calling me ‘child,’ even though I’m older than she is.”

Flidais smiled and crawled back into bed with me, vampires forgotten. “When were you born, Druid? You were already old for a mortal when first I met you.”

“I was born in the time of King Conaire Mor, who reigned for seventy years. I was nearly two hundred when I stole Fragarach.”

She threw a leg across my body and then sat up so that she knelt astride me. “Aenghus Óg thinks Fragarach is rightfully his.” Her fingers began to trace curling patterns on my chest, and I stopped her by covering her hand with mine, with seeming affection. It wouldn’t do to have her put a binding on me. Not that I thought she would; it was merely my customary paranoia.

“The people here,” I said, “have a saying: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And I have possessed it for far longer than any other being, including Manannan Mac Lir.”

“Aenghus Óg cares nothing for mortal sayings. He thinks you have stolen his birthright, and that is all that matters to him.”

“His birthright? Manannan is his cousin, not his father. It’s not like I stole his personal family heirloom. Besides, if it truly mattered to him, then he would have come to get it himself by now.”

“You have not stayed long enough in one place to make it practicable.”

I looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Is that all it takes to finally make this end? Just stay still?”

“I would think so. He will send surrogates after you first, but if you defeat them, he will eventually have no option but to come after you himself. He would be pronounced a coward otherwise and banished from Tír na nÓg.”

“I will stay still, then,” I said, and smiled up at her. “But you can move if you like. May I suggest a gentle rocking motion?”