Besieged

by Kevin Hearne

  “Ah, that’s what I need,” I say as I hold out me cup, even though I have no plans to drink another drop. I wouldn’t put it past him to have poisoned it while out of me sight.

  He pours himself another and raises his glass to me. “Sláinte.” I mirror him and bring the cup to me lips and pretend to drink, while asking the elemental through me tattoos if there are any bodies buried nearby, specifying human remains.

  //Yes// the reply comes, and far too quickly for me comfort. //Many juvenile humans//

  I lower the cup and drop my pretense with it, watching his eyes.

  “Is Siobhan still alive?” I asks him, and for a wee fraction of a second his eyes widen in surprise, but then he tries to deflect.

  “Siobhan who?”

  I throw the cup at him, mead spilling out and splashing his face. Those spots on his cheek I thought might be the dried blood of some animal were probably the blood of poor Siobhan.

  “I’m talkin’ about the girl ye took from that village two weeks ago! Is she still alive, ye poxy pair o’ bollocks, or have ye already eaten her, ye feckin’ heartless monster?”

  For a small moment, there’s fear in those eyes. Maybe a flash of guilt too, for he’s been caught and he knows it. I’m expecting him to lash out at me, but instead he throws back his head and laughs, and ye could have shoveled me jaw off the ground, I was that surprised.

  “You’re so young and full of yourself!” he says, and beams at me. “I’m doing Gaia’s work out here and nothing else matters, ye see? This goat, or that cow, or that girl Siobhan—they’re all just meat to Gaia, and ye know it to be as true as Brighid speakin’ in three voices. If Gaia gave a damn about what I ate one day and shat the next, I wouldn’t be here now, would I? The earth wants to be healed, Eoghan, and who’s makin’ it hurt like this? Those same fecking villagers on whose behalf ye come here, all full of outrage. Where’s the outrage for this great big bog, lad, that we are supposed to fix because they’re too stupid to think of the long term?”

  “We can fix the land and we can educate the villagers and we can sacrifice when we have to, but we can’t become the horrors we’re supposed to be fighting. There’s a reason that Druidic law overlays the laws of Gaia! How can ye stand there and tell me it doesn’t matter?”

  “Because it doesn’t,” he replies, his voice cold as a penguin pecker in an Antarctic winter. “And besides: Children are delicious.”

  Well, after that, there wasn’t much use for talking. It was going to be a fight and nothing for it, except it’s not often that two Druids try to end one another. If we face off in a cattle raid, we don’t do much apart from trying to give our side an advantage or make things tough for the enemy—summoning some fog or softening the earth, that sort of thing. We rarely attack one another directly, because the truth is we are bound to Gaia, not this king or that warlord.

  But Dubhlainn had somehow decided this meant he was no longer bound to humanity. I knew he had to be torn from the world before he could tear apart any more lives.

  I shift me shape into a bear and he shifts to a tiger and we try our best to rip up the other guy’s flesh faster than he can heal it—for what else can we do? If we cast camouflage, the aura is still visible in magical sight.

  He scratches up an eye and blinds me on one side, but I back up and keep the other eye on him while it heals. He keeps coming, thinking to press his advantage, but he’s never fought a bear before and doesn’t realize I’m perfectly happy to swipe at him while I’m back on me heels. He charges right into a timed haymaker, and me claws—powered by a whole lot of muscle and more than me usual store of anger—take off most of his nose and knock out a tooth as well, spraying his blood into the fire, where it sizzles and hisses. That makes him pull back and think some.

  While we circle and regroup, I contact the elemental and ask that Dubhlainn’s access to energy be cut off. It asks me why and I explain that he’s broken Druidic law by eating the children of those he’s supposed to protect. The answer is basically, //So what?// and it chills me—changes me too. Dubhlainn had been right: He hadn’t used bindings to commit murder, and he was doing what he could to amend the soil, so according to Gaia he was finer than a frog’s hair. It threw into question all the pillars of morality I’d been taught: Me archdruid had presented everything as if it had been received wisdom from Gaia herself.

  If I wanted him dead, I’d have to somehow prove to be more savage than he was. And if I failed, he’d probably not be bothered, much less challenged, for years, free to prey on all the villages around Boora Bog.

  I charge at him, head cocked to keep me good eye on him, thinking I will take whatever he wants to dish out so long as I can give him an answer. Tough to anticipate whether he will try to sidestep and come at me blind side or take a swipe at the target of me other eye—he’d surely love to have a blind opponent, but maybe he’s the type of fighter to attack weakness every time. I try to be ready for either: I’m going to be taking claws to the head regardless, so it’s kind of like choosing whether to place your head in a hippo’s mouth or up its arse.

  Just before I reach him, his muscles bunch and give me a tell: Tigers aren’t built to sidestep, and that blow’s going to come at me good right eye. I rise up on me back legs a bit and lift a paw in time to take the brunt of his attack. It knocks me near off me feet, but he’s committed to it so hard that the follow-through has him out of guard and vulnerable. He sees me left coming but can’t avoid it because I still have plenty of momentum left from me charge. It catches him square on the side of the head, ear to bottom of the jaw, and there’s a crunch and a deep gouge left behind, no chance of him opening that mouth to bite me for a while, and he tumbles over besides.

  I press in before he can regain his feet, me teeth at his throat. He tears into me with all the claws, ripping open me belly in a desperate bid to repel me, and I back away all right, but not without taking his jugular out for some fresh air.

  That proves too much for him and he bleeds out before he can heal it up, and I spit out the flesh in me teeth before I can vomit.

  As I collapse and try to focus on me healing, a crow spirals down and lands on Dubhlainn’s face. It wastes no time but plucks out the eyes and swallows them. I’m thinkin’ that crow better not try such shenanigans with me when a scratchy voice enters me head, as if in answer.

  Ye have nothing to fear from the Morrigan today, Eoghan Ó Cinnéide. The head turns and the eyes glow red and I realize I’m looking at the Chooser of the Slain herself. Me hackles rise and I shudder in fear, no help for it. And then I wonder if the Morrigan had anything to do with me victory.

  I may have helped a bit, she says, answering me thoughts again. But it was still you who found him, and it was your choice to fight.

  I want to shift to human so I might be able to talk, but I worry that it might slow me healing or make something worse if I do. I’d really like to know if other Druids had found Dubhlainn, seen what he was, and chose not to fight him. I needn’t have worried; the Morrigan read that in me mind as well.

  Two others found him, knew him for a villain, and left him alone. They do not have much longer to live. The next time they fight—and I will make sure it’s soon—I will take them and eat their hearts, for they looked this evil in the eye and did nothing but let it pass them by and grow. But you, Eoghan, will have a long, productive life. I know this to be true. We will speak again, years hence, well before it is your time to move on. Harmony until then.

  That was the only hint she ever gave me that she planned to park me arse on a time island later. She takes off after that, apparently only interested in his tiger eyes. I hoped she stowed Dubhlainn’s spirit somewhere dark.

  It’s no small thing, killing another Druid and having a death goddess give ye an “attaboy!” I take a few days to heal and think over what it all means. I search Dubhlainn’s house, such as it is, and find that he’s been keeping souvenirs in that jewelry box: It’s full of finger bones. I haven’t trusted men in
bogs ever since, nor any other hermit out in the wilderness.

  I leave the tiger’s body for carrion and fly back north, bag of clothes gripped in me talons. On the way to the village, I figure I’ll only stay long enough to give them the news and assure them that the bogeyman is dead. They’re to give me no welcome after I tell them it was a Druid that had been feasting on them all this while. Even if they believe I’m nothing like Dubhlainn, every time they see me they will think of who and what they’ve lost, and that’s no way for any of us to live.

  With me guts back in their proper place and me left eye healed up, I have no trouble seeing there’s a cattle raid in progress when I arrive—or, rather, a raid that’s nearly over, and failed to boot. The attackers have been routed and they’re scrambling away from the bodies of the fallen. The defenders aren’t keen on pursuing, but I’m keen to know where those attackers might hail from.

  Ignoring the village for the moment, I fly ahead of the three men headed home and land in front of them, shifting to human so that they know right away I’m a Druid. They veer away to either side, terrified, but I hold up a hand and call out that I merely wish to talk, their safety guaranteed.

  “Would I be right in thinking,” I asks them, “that your village could use a Druid on its side now? Because ye sure don’t have one, judging by what I saw back there.”

  They admit I would have been most welcome a few minutes ago.

  “If I’d been here a few minutes ago I would have been on the other side, and every fecking one o’ ye would be dead,” I says. “But I’m looking to move on and give help where it’s needed. So what do ye say? Will ye put up a Druid and let me teach and honor the gods below? I won’t come where I’m not welcome.”

  They agree, and I tell them to wait while I say me farewells to the villagers and help them bury their dead as well as the dead raiders.

  Saoirse screams and attacks me with her fists when I tell her Siobhan is dead—that they’re all dead, the livestock and children alike. I don’t blame her; there’s no one else to receive the rage she must set free before it gnaws away her insides. Some of the other parents who lost their children much earlier well up, shed some tears, but wind up thanking me, because at least now they know. But no one is sorry to see me go.

  As I take me leave to join the three surviving raiders, I think that Dubhlainn was only half right: Gaia might not give a damn about human laws, but that doesn’t mean human laws are meaningless or serve no valid purpose. On the contrary, we can hardly serve Gaia and be stewards of the earth if we do not have law and civility.

  The survivors lead me back to their village, on the eastern side of the bog, a wee poor place of half-starved citizens with hollow cheeks and haunted eyes. Unlike the other village, which was more prosperous, they are quite ready to accept help and instruction.

  Some of them are wrecks when they hear that their fathers or brothers or husbands fell. One woman and her fire-headed son, however, are not sorry at all. They trade a look of relief, and maybe there’s a glimmer of hope in their expressions too. Whoever they lost, he must have been a shite father and husband. The purpling under the mother’s left eye tells me more than enough.

  I meet the lad formally the next day. He’s seven, sharp as a knife’s point, and curious about everything. I can hardly finish a sentence without him asking me another question, and when I take him to task for it, he grins at me. “Sorry, Archdruid,” he says, even though I wasn’t one yet—he knew how to flatter and manipulate straightaway. “It’s just that I haven’t had anyone around who would answer me before.”

  So that’s how I met Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin and took him on as an apprentice. I’d buried his father back there and his life would have been shite, sure, and his whole village would have suffered too, if I hadn’t come along to help them through those lean times. His life would certainly have been much shorter, and I imagine the world would be much different without him swinging his cock around for two thousand years. But just different, mind: no way to know if it would be better or worse.

  But looking back on it now, it was what happened at Boora Bog that made Siodhachan turn out the way he did. Because I didn’t train him the same way as I’d been taught, did I? I didn’t present Gaia’s law and Druidic law as one big monolith that must be followed at all times. I taught him that sometimes ye could break those Druidic laws—or other laws, for that matter—and get away with it if ye truly needed to, because Gaia wouldn’t care.

  So that’s why he had the stones to steal Fragarach from the Tuatha Dé Danann and make this deal and that awful bargain. If he was going to be the best Druid he could be, he needed to stay alive and grow powerful, and if he broke all the rules and cheesed off all the Fae in the process, well, it was justified to his way of thinking, because he always served Gaia.

  —

  Greta props herself up on an elbow and stares at me. “Are you telling me that you’re responsible for his behavior?”

  “Nay, he’s responsible for his own bollocks. I’m to blame for teaching him to question authority, its priorities and motivations, and to fight that authority when he saw it conflicting with Gaia’s interests.”

  Me love frowns and gives a tiny shake of her head. “Why would you do that when it could turn him into the same kind of monster that Dubhlainn was—a lawless predator?”

  “Because I didn’t want him to become a bitter cynic like me, disillusioned and questioning me whole training like it was all a lie! I wanted him to have the whole truth and be a skeptic, which is a very different thing. And besides, I knew going into it that if he did turn out bad, the Morrigan would make sure he got cut down. But that’s clearly not what happened. The way he tells it, the Morrigan actually wound up protecting him for a long time.”

  Greta blinks, trying to absorb that information and make it fit with her experience of him.

  “It comes down to the fact that he serves a different value system than any human one. I pointed out that Gaia was interested in protecting the vitality and variety of life on the whole planet. Broadly speaking that’s difficult to argue, because unless you’re falling prey to this predator or that, that basic value is pure and good and beneficial to all concerned, if ye take the long and wide view. But humans, I taught him, rarely take that view. Human laws think of protecting humans first. Though if ye look closely at most human laws, they tend to benefit a narrow few over the good of all humans. I’m sure ye can think of a law or three that protects someone’s personal profit rather than what’s good for everyone.”

  Greta rolls her eyes. “That’s easy. The tax code protects the rich, and lots of voting laws protect a white majority, and arbitration clauses protect corporations from getting sued when they rip people off, and we could go on all day.”

  “Good, so ye see me point. That’s basically the core of what I taught him: Protect Gaia first, protect humans second, and question everything else. That probably led him to construct a strange moral compass. And looking at Granuaile, I wonder if he might have taught her in an even more extreme fashion—that Gaia’s law is all that matters and human laws are just shite to carefully step over in pursuit of defending the planet.”

  “Huh. We kind of think that way too. The pack, I mean. We step around the law constantly to protect our own interests. What I want to know is this: Are you planning on teaching your current apprentices the same way?”

  “I don’t know. Well, no—it’s already different. I’m not half so angry as I used to be. I’m still boiling over what’s been done to the planet since the Morrigan put me in long-term storage, but I think I understand that all people are protecting what’s theirs and rarely think beyond what they’re going to eat in the next week. And I understand that training minds to think differently is a long road, but at least I have the time to walk it. These are good kids and we’re in a good place now.”

  “Yes.” Greta pats me chest a couple times, falls back and looks up at the sky with me, and sighs her contentment. “That we are, Ow
en.”

  “I’m glad I get to walk this long road with you, love.”

  Greta giggles, which is not the reaction I’d hoped for. “Are you getting sentimental on me, Teddy Bear?”

  “Nah, I just injured me gob. I have no idea what the hell just happened. I was trying to grunt and it came out all wrong.”

  She chuckles and drapes a leg across me, planting a kiss on me cheek. “I think someone’s told you about foreplay.”

  “I thought the fighting was the foreplay.”

  “Ha!” She kisses me again. “You’re not still bleeding anywhere, are you?”

  “I’m good to go.”

  She shifts all her weight on top of me, cups me face in her hands, and says nose-to-nose, “Let’s have that long walk, then.”

  This story, narrated by Perun, takes place after the events of Staked, Book 8 in The Iron Druid Chronicles.

  When I am invited to this thing called “Cuddle Dungeon,” I am thinking perhaps my English still not so good, or maybe these are very strange peoples. Dungeon is prison underground and full of many unpleasant things—rats and bad smells and moist coughing noises. Cuddles is soft and warm times before or after sex. I would not think to put these things together, but these modern peoples do.

  My lover, Flidais, tries to say is ironic, a kind of joke, but I am not understanding. So she shrugs and says, “Is Scottish,” which she says about everything I do not understand. But she also says this for things she does not want to explain. Like who invited her to bring me to Cuddle Dungeon: “Some Scottish lad.”

  Is very confusing being old Slavic thunder god in modern world, but is good that there are new kinds of dungeons, I suppose. Is consistent with technology culture obsessed with upgrades. They upgrade everything now: even dungeons.

  We join line in wet city of Edinburgh, down narrow cobbled alley between old brick buildings where there are stairs leading belowground. Man at front of line holds out hand, and Flidais gives him tickets she buy somewhere before. Man looks at me and laughs and says, “Ye have no fookin’ idea what you’re doing here, do ye?”