Scourged

by Kevin Hearne

  “Are you saying there are vampires in there right now? And they could hear us mucking around?”

  “That is indeed what I’m saying. Especially if they have some modern surveillance devices installed, which I suspect may be the case. If we go back we may find they have emerged. Or else they will hear us approach and hide again.”

  “So there must be some kind of Scooby-Doo lever that opens up a secret passage.”

  “What is Scooby-Doo?”

  “A long-running television show that demonstrated to everyone what a terrible idea it was to wear an ascot. The protagonists solved mysteries in old houses that frequently had secret passages behind bookcases, always activated by moving a particular book or a small knickknack or even a torch in a wall sconce. There has to be a way through.”

  “We can unbind the cellulose of the wood if nothing else.”

  “So we’re doing this? We’re going to go down there and slay the undead?”

  “Is that not why we traveled here?”

  “Okay. I’m up for it. But before we go, I’d really like to hear that message from Brighid.”

  “Oh, yes! I nearly forgot. Ragnarok is coming soon.”

  “What? How could you forget something like that?”

  The goddess shrugs. “Because I am not to be involved in the primary fracas. Siodhachan and Eoghan will be engaged in the main battle, along with many others. But we have heard of a building disturbance on the other side of the planet, on an island named Taiwan. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apparently it is to be the origin of the second major front. So you and I are tasked with containing whatever emerges at the site of the smaller, secondary, and inevitably lesser fracas. This is to ensure I won’t run into Perun, you see.”

  “That may indeed be the reason behind what they’re doing, but it doesn’t sound like light duty. It could be one heck of a major fracas. Just you and me against who knows what?”

  “Well, somebody does know what, or at least is supposed to have a fair idea. We’re going to go see him first. I’ve been given directions and passwords and a rare fruit from Manannan Mac Lir’s Isle of Apples.”

  “Who is it we’re seeing?”

  “Some man named Sun Wukong.”

  “Holy shit. Flidais, you’re not joking with me right now, are you?”

  “I do not jest. That is whom we are supposed to see. Why, do you know him?”

  “Only by reputation. Sun Wukong is the name of the Monkey King.”

  i returned to the sandstone buttes of the Navajo Nation, baked red and gold in the sun, and found a place to wait high above the arroyos cut by flash floods. I built a spare, smoky fire out of creosote branches, folded my legs underneath me, and communed with the elemental Colorado.

  I waited most of the day, skin cooking slowly among the rocks, and wondered if I wasn’t wasting my time. I’d already made a couple of other calls before coming, but it wasn’t like I had no other preparations to make. I couldn’t afford to wait past nightfall, and I had to heal from sunburn several times.

  He arrived late in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, dust-caked jeans and boots scuffing the rock, a simple black T-shirt tucked in and a cowboy hat resting on top of long black hair.

  “Hello, Mr. Druid,” Coyote said, trying to peer around my body, looking for something. “Where’s your hound? I brought sausages.” He held up a greasy bag and I winced in regret.

  “Oh, he’s going to be upset that he missed seeing you. He’s in Oregon.”

  “Well, damn. I mostly came to see him.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t act like it’s news. He’s always been your better half.”

  “I won’t argue with you.”

  “Well, damn it all again. That’s the only other reason I came. Guess I have no business being here.”

  “Coyote, please,” I said as he turned away. “May I beg a few minutes? It could lead to a fine argument. You might even win.”

  He halted, pivoted with a grinding noise underneath his boot heels, and considered me with pursed lips. After a long silence of holding my eyes in a staring contest, he finally replied, “You know how to push my buttons, don’t you, Mr. Druid? You know I can’t resist arguing with a white man.”

  “You’d probably enjoy Twitter, then. But I wouldn’t push if it weren’t important.”

  Coyote tossed the bag down and settled himself across the fire from me, peering through curling vines of smoke. “All right, then. Bring it.”

  “I need your help.”

  “No.” He snorted and flashed a grin. “That was quick.”

  “It’s not just me, Coyote.”

  “Honestly, Mr. Druid, I don’t care who you’re representing here. Why should I help you instead of helping my own people?”

  “Because there’s a narcissist with a bunch of cronies who wants to burn down the whole world—your piece of it included—for no other reason than to stoke his own ego and profit besides.”

  “So, kinda like an American president, then.”

  I gaped for a second as I tried to make the connection, then closed my mouth. “Yeah, kinda like that.”

  “Well, I seen men like that before, Mr. Druid. I’ve survived them, and my people survived them too, and I’m pretty sure we’ll outlast this new one. And before you say anything,” he said, pointing a finger at me through the smoke, “let me remind you that you never lifted a dainty finger o’ yours to help us fight off all o’ them presidents. And not just us, but all the tribes. And, hey, I’ll be a sweaty sack o’ nuts if you ever helped with all them settlers and soldiers who did their best to wipe us out, never mind the presidents. Don’t try to tell me you’re in the same boat as us either. Ain’t no way we coulda helped the Druids out against the coming of the Christians. But you coulda helped us and you chose not to.”

  “That’s not true. I couldn’t help. I was hiding from Aenghus Óg and had to limit my magic usage.”

  “Well, I understand that, Mr. Druid, I surely do. So I hope you’ll understand when I say we gotta limit our dying for white man’s causes.”

  “But you don’t die.”

  “Oh, I die, all right. I thought I made that clear before. The fact that I keep coming back doesn’t mean I don’t die. My people die too. But still we endure. Getting involved in this thing you’re talkin’ about doesn’t sound like the best way to keep doing that. I figure the best thing to do, since y’all have mostly forgotten about us, is let you fight it out and we’ll enjoy the peace afterward.”

  I deflated for a moment, defeated.

  “Okay. Fair enough. I don’t think you’ll be left alone or that there will be a lot of peace afterward if we don’t stop him, but I do see that you’ve done more than your fair share of fighting dudes who think the world is theirs to take. That’s legit.”

  “Oh, well, thank you so much for validating my feelings, Mr. Druid. I was really hoping you would. Gonna sleep real well tonight. Normally I have to pop melatonin pills down my throat like candy, you know, because some white man hasn’t told me I’m right recently.”

  “Sorry. That obviously didn’t come across as I intended. I’m trying to agree with you. But this guy can probably take the world if anyone can. I’m talking about Loki of the Norse pantheon. He’s going to bring a legion of the undead, a good number of fire and frost giants, and who knows what other allies with him. You might be safe here for a while on this side of the world, but if he’s not stopped on the other side, by the time he gets here there will be no stopping him.” I shook my head at the scale of what was about to be unleashed. If Loki wasn’t stopped before he could build momentum, it would be because I failed to stop him. It would be because I had been stopped. “This is going to start day after tomorrow, probably, somewhere in Scandinavia. If you want to help, that�
��s where to show up.”

  “What kinda help do you think I can give, Mr. Druid? I ain’t some mighty warrior who’s gonna come in there and rally the troops to charge or whatever.”

  “I know. You’re not gonna pucker up and blow the horn of Helm Hammerhand. I want you to do something that you’re uniquely qualified to do. I want you to assassinate Hel.”

  “What? Are you talkin’ ’bout that half-dead woman who showed up to recruit you here that one time and because of her Frank Chischilly summoned Monster Slayer?”

  “That’s the one. She’s the Norse goddess of the underworld, the daughter of Loki. And she can raise the dead. So once they start killing some folks, she can add them into their army, and you can see how that’s going to quickly grow out of control. Removing Hel’s the key to keeping the fight manageable, if just barely.”

  “If she can raise the dead, then can’t she raise herself if I kill her?”

  “Well, no. Because she has to be alive to do that, and in this hypothetical, thanks to you, she’d be dead.” She would still be ruler of the underworld and she would have an existence there, but, like the Morrigan, she would be a shadow of her former self. She wouldn’t be able to manifest on Midgard again in time to make any difference in Ragnarok.

  “Huh. Is she going to be stomping around all twelve feet tall and stanky like raw chicken gone bad?”

  “She might be, but she might be in disguise too. You can see through those, right?”

  Coyote smirked. “Yeah, I know a thing or two about disguises, Mr. Druid.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll consider it. Because she has been here before and she won’t forget about you if they make it to this side of the world.”

  The trickster sniffed, hawked something up, and spat in the fire. “Sure. I’ll consider it.”

  “Good.”

  “I imagine you have other places to be, other folks to see.”

  “I do.”

  “Fires to put out and whatnot. Don’t worry about this one here. I’ll take care of it.”

  I got to my feet, slapped the red dust off my ass, and nodded to Coyote. “Thanks. See you around.”

  “Maybe, Mr. Druid. But probably not. Tell your dog I said hi, though.”

  a fen is not really a synonym for a bog, though it is rather wet and something of a mire. Its chemistry is different, though, so ye get a different set of plants growing there. Mostly grasses and the occasional scraggly tree, thin and fragile things. Ye might think it’s a handsome plain, until ye step in it and the mud hugs your foot like a hungry python.

  The Morrigan’s Fen looks fine, just fine, until Coriander and I step away from the bound tree and see we have to cross it to get to the structure where Fand and Manannan Mac Lir must be hiding. I don’t rightly know what to call it: It’s not a castle or a manor or even a house, more of a gothic nightmare of architecture, like if the Morrigan had found a mason wandering in an opium haze and said, “Make it all foreboding and ominous, maybe a splash of drooling madness and a dollop of gibbering batshit.” Dark and writhing shapes in some bits, pointy parts in others, and sometimes the black shines with a high gloss, and sometimes it lies flat like old standing coffee ready to grow a layer of mold on top. The low gray sky doesn’t help to cheer it up any. Nor do the croaking crows.

  It’s just me that has to wade through the fen, it turns out. Coriander floats above it, and he does so just a wee smidge ahead of me so that I can see how easy it is for him. I mutter curses at him and he smirks, enjoying it.

  Halfway across, me legs all slimed and squidgy, I see some upright lads with wild hair approaching in the distance. A bit closer and I see they’re not lads. They have swords and dead eyes. Bark instead of skin. A mobile set of roots instead of feet, poling them across the fen like so many stilts. Yewmen.

  I put on the brass knuckles Creidhne gave me, fully charged with energy. They let me shatter stone; should work just fine on a hardwood. That is, if I can get close enough to punch them without being sliced into cutlets. The Morrigan’s yewmen aren’t fooled by camouflage, and I’m not going to be terribly speedy in a fen.

  “Go sic ’em, Fuckstick,” I says to the Herald Extraordinary.

  “I can do no more than accost them, sir. I am incapable of instigating violence.”

  “Give yourself some credit, lad. Just go talk to them and I bet they try to kill ye.”

  The Herald Extraordinary rolls his eyes at me and sighs like a phantom squeezing out a vengeful fart, but he floats toward the yewmen without fear. Once he reaches them and starts talking, they treat him like an obstacle in the landscape—that is, they don’t engage, they just go around him. Coriander floats back, plants himself in front of one or the other, but they know the score. Just patiently flank him and keep advancing to the target. Me.

  “That’s not working, damn it!” I holler at him. “Get back here, Fuckstick. I have a better idea!”

  He speeds back to me, frowning in disapproval, and the yewmen keep coming at their measured pace. “I really must protest your abusive language, sir—”

  “I know, I’m a right bastard. But like I said, save me arse and I’ll take the trouble to use four syllables. I want ye to float right in front of me, hear? Just a bit to me left, though, because it looks like they’re right-handed. We’re going to let ye take their hits and I’ll counterpunch. Speed up with me now, we’re flanking to their left, make them adjust…aye.”

  I move to the right and the yewmen have to respond. There’s no way I can allow them to surround me; I won’t have a defense against blades coming from all directions. If I move and strike and move again, I should be able to survive and outrun them once I’m past. I’d simply shift to a kite and fly over them were it not that three in the back have bows, waiting for just that. I’ll have to make sure the herald covers me arse if I make it past the phalanx here.

  For about six seconds I think maybe I’ll outrun them. And then they find another gear somewhere, or just have no trouble in the muck like I do, and they take a good angle. They’re going to have a shot at me.

  The leader whips one of his long arm-like branches out in front of me low to the ground, and it’s a fine gambit: Trip me up in this muck and I’m probably not going to get up again. But I see it coming and hang back just a wee bit, letting Coriander float into it first, and those kinetic wards of his do the trick. The branch rebounds off them and spins the yewman away. But reducing me speed like that has its cost.

  The second yewman thrusts his branch around the back of Coriander, and I duck just in time. It opens a searing lash of pain across me shoulder blades and I curse the faery for being an incompetent shield.

  “Do ye know how angry Brighid’s gonna be if ye let me die?” I say, trying to keep up my speed.

  “It is difficult to quantify, sir. Mildly vexed at the short-term inconvenience, for sure. But life is long, and her anger, like her fires, tends to die out after a while.”

  That response chills me guts five degrees or so. He really could let the yewmen have me and shrug it off. It’s not like the yewmen don’t have a reputation for being damn fine murderers; he’d have no trouble suggesting that they were more than a match for the two of us.

  As he’s talking, though, two of the yewmen make incidental contact with Coriander while trying to get to me, and they are both blown back like a hurricane uprooted them.

  The one that sliced up me back is going to try again, but I’m watching the bastard and waiting. Let Coriander deal with the lads out front trying to trip me; I can handle this one who’s hoping to pull off a deadly reach-around.

  That thick branching arm of his with sharp stick fingers whips out again and I lurch to a halt, letting it pass in front of me. A claw scrapes across me chest and a flight of arrows from the archers passes in front of where I was going to be, two of them flying through and one rebounding off Coriander. I grab
the yewman’s woody wrist with me right hand and then punch straight through the bough with the knuckles on me left, splinters gouging me arm. Yewmen are silent, but I can tell he feels it. He stops the chase and I pick up speed again, taking his hand with me. One more yewman is denied in his attempt to trip me and he’s spun out of the pursuit, leaving one that we haven’t passed yet plus the archers, and I’m careful to put Coriander between us now.

  This lad wants to take a swipe at me with his sword. His right arm visibly lengthens as he matches speeds with us, his arm trailing behind, his plan plain to see.

  “Watch that shite,” I say. “He’s going to whip that around back.”

  “I am aware, sir,” the herald replies, his manner calm and unruffled as he floats above the fen and I churn me legs through it.

  It’s a crafty strategy the yewman’s chosen. To counter it, Coriander will have to stop, and that will do two things: allow the lads we’ve passed to catch up a bit, and leave me exposed to a volley from the archers if I don’t stop in time. I peek around at the archers and see they’re all ready and waiting for me to break cover again. Fecking hells.

  This yewman’s arm isn’t tough and woody like the other one; it’s limber and flexible and meant to bend instead of snap, so even when it runs into Coriander’s wards, that arm and sword are going to keep whipping around my way.

  Bollocks.

  The branch yaws back and around, building all the tension it can with the sword clutched at the end, and then it releases and Coriander halts to meet it. I’m immediately exposed and the archers let fly. Nothing for it: I dive headfirst into the fen, stretching out and ready for the sting of foul water in me wounds. The arrows pass over me head and so does the curl of the sword, but all me momentum’s gone and I’m covered in muck and I may have squashed an unlucky frog.

  The yewman’s arm whips away and I can see the archers reloading. A glance over me shoulder confirms the others are trying to make up that lost ground.

  “Come on, Coriander, while me arse is still attached,” I says, giving him the four syllables he wanted. I lurch up out of the sucking mud and stagger forward, trying to build up speed again. Coriander screens me from the next volley of arrows and then we’re past, moving too quickly for the yewmen to catch up. Not that they stop trying. We just have to keep going and hope we don’t run into some booby trap ahead.