Myths and Magic

by Kevin Partner

  Moments later, a branch of the tree she was watching quivered as if a bird had taken flight, so she turned back to face the tent, held her breath, stood up and threw the stone. Many was the child back in the Butterlins Mountains who’d experienced the ignominy of being felled by a flying boot and, again, Gramma’s aim was true as the wine glass exploded, showering the General in glass and alcohol as he collapsed backwards and out of sight.

  Jessie and Velicity had sprinted from the cover of the oak tree immediately they’d given the signal, the younger woman taking the lead as they headed for the back of the tent from the opposite direction to Gramma. They’d heard the glass shatter and cries were now breaking out around them as the vagrant army slowly came to its collective senses.

  Velicity reached the back of the tent and launched herself on the flailing figure, pinning it beneath fallen canvas. Over the sounds of protest from below her, Velicity could hear Jessie, and now Gramma, turning over the cart and the tent in search of the vessels. Seconds passed, and her panic began to rise as she heard feet rushing and voices shouting, then, above all, came the last thing she expected to hear. Laughter. And it was coming from beneath the sheet, where the figure was no longer struggling, but rather flailing about in its utter joy.

  Strong hands gripped her shoulders and hoisted Velicity to her feet. She stabbed down with her feet, causing a sharp intake of breath from behind her but the hands renewed their grip.

  “Do that again, my pretty,” hissed a voice in her ear, “and nothing he can say will keep me from slittin’ that lovely throat.”

  Velicity stood, defeated, and watched as the others were brought before the General who, by now, had emerged from beneath the canvas and was beaming at them.

  “Oh, how delicious,” he said, hardly able to contain his joy. “You’ll be so much more fun than that dreadful woman we burned yesterday. And to think, you believed me stupid enough to keep the vessels by my side or, indeed, that I wouldn’t notice you following us. I knew what you were about, you are nothing without your power, and that made you desperate.”

  Jessie’s face showed utter hopelessness, all defiance had drained from her, and she didn’t seem to be watching or listening to General Odius who was parading in front of them, his filthy rags flying in all directions.

  “But, sadly, all good things must end eventually,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “We have a few hours before we are ordered to our master’s side, just long enough for a burning, I think. Or three burnings, to be precise.”

  #

  The black figures drew away from Bill and his mother as they walked up the hill towards the stone circle. Maybe it was because they’d been taken by surprise that the creatures allowed them to pass, or maybe it was because Bill was angry. In fact, he was incandescent.

  The last couple of weeks had seen his life turned inside out. He’d gone from a happy, though moderately bored, young inheritor of the family charcoal business to a crazed pyromaniac watching the end of the world with his mother while perched in a tree. He’d abandoned his father to probable death and was pretty sure the woman he’d fallen in love with had also, by now, been hunted down and killed in an act that proved she felt the same way about him. Granted his greatest desire in the midst of Armageddon – the demi-gods of fate11 had a pretty sadistic sense of humour.

  Rage filled Bill until he felt as though he’d explode. He strode up the hill, his mother trailing a little as she tried to keep equidistant between him and the hordes crowding around them. He glanced at his hand, gripping the staff he was using to steady himself on the muddy turf and saw that it was glowing. Perhaps this was what Brianna had warned him about - those who couldn’t control the gift simply exploded. In which case, he thought, the sooner he arrived at the top, the better.

  The two sarsens at the entrance loomed in front of him, and the crowds of black and grey-clad creatures parted as he stepped between them. He looked into the circle and saw, for the first time, the cause of all this anarchy.

  The Faerie King stood with his back to Bill, watching as soldier after soldier climbed through.

  “Come, my sweets,” he crooned, “soon there will be enough of you, very soon.”

  His mother’s voice whispered in his ear. “Strike now, you’ll get no other chance.”

  Bill hesitated as the figure in the centre of the circle went still and, very slowly, turned around. Still he hesitated as he saw expressions first of fear, then anger and finally amusement play across the white face of the Faerie King.

  And it was the smile that reignited Bill’s fury. He pointed the staff at the King and felt the heat swell within his body, gathering like a river caught behind a beaver’s dam, before rushing through his arm, into the staff and out as a blinding ball of white heat that thrust him backwards to the ground. Engulfed by a roaring, the very mud seemed to shake.

  He felt hands under his shoulders and looked up to see his mother’s face. “Get up, quickly,” she whispered in the sudden silence.

  Bill scrambled to his feet, using the staff as a prop. The circle was full of smoke, or steam, thickest at ground level where he could see nothing but the vague shapes of legs, arms and heads, some moving, some quite still. Sound slowly returned as a melange of groans, cries and a weird sort of after-echo that bounced around the stone circle.

  He could see figures shuffling around outside the circumference. And then he saw it - the doughnut stone had gone. No, it had fallen. Sudden hope thrilled him as he strode towards it, picking his way between the bodies, could the king be dead, crushed beneath his own portal? There was the stone, two large arches now split from each other, lying inert in the mud. But there was no sign of the Faerie King.

  “Son!”

  He felt it before he saw. It was as if someone had reached inside his body and was squeezing his heart. Hot breath on his shoulder as a voice, full of malice and rage, hissed in his ear.

  “Now, you will die.”

  The pressure grew stronger until he felt as though his heart must be crushed. He heard his mother scream and the pressure disappeared, as quickly as it had arrived. Bill fell to the floor and watched many black figures grab Astria as she raised the staff to strike the King.

  In his wrath, the true form of the Faerie King was revealed. A towering maelstrom of blacks, greys and whites like a ship foundering in a storm and, at the centre, a maw full of pointed teeth wide open and ready for the kill. And then, with a struggle, he reasserted control. His disguise returned, albeit with little refinement - the powdered dandy of the man at the window was but a distant memory.

  “You have damaged the portal, but your victory will be fleeting. We will repair it in time, and my army is already large enough to subdue this region. As for you,” he said, as Astria was flung beside her son, “your reward shall be to watch your child die by my hand and then to witness the end of everything else you hold dear.”

  He was pointing at Astria now, his hand shaking and his appearance flickering between man and monster.

  The Faerie King took a curved sword from a trembling general and swished it through the air as he approached Bill, the only sounds those of the sword and of Astria weeping. He raised the sword high, his face flickering.

  And then the horns sounded.

  Chapter 29

  Bastard, cheat and sadist were all words that could be used to describe Chortley Fitzmichael. Coward, on the other hand, was not. Chortley pulled the horn from his lips, looked up the slope and gasped. Around him was gathered the armed might of Crapplecreek, but that was a puddle to an ocean compared with what they now faced. Rank upon rank of black and grey figures swathed the stone circle atop the hill, thousands of pairs of green, merciless, eyes turned silently in his direction as the echoes of the horn died.

  Chortley had exerted every ounce of his charisma, authority and family name to persuade the garrison commander to lead out his men on what must have seemed at best a fool’s errand and, at worst, a suicide mission. He felt the restlessness and fear spr
eading around him. Any moment now, the first of them would break and run.

  There was a cough from his left. “Lord Fitzmichael?”

  “What is it, commander?” Chortley responded without turning. He sensed an arm being waved up the slope as if it were obvious.

  “Don’t you think retreat might be in order?” the commander stammered. “Er, before we’re overwhelmed?”

  Chortley looked at the man, sweating on his horse, his hands reflexively on the reins as if preparing for the order to run away. By rights, the fool should be hanging from a rope right now. Chortley had found him in his chambers preparing a letter to someone calling himself Odius advising him that the women had escaped. The commander had been so terrified of having to make this report that he’d actually looked relieved when he’d recognised Fitzmichael. Chortley soon put that right and almost had him thrown off the castle roof but decided that this might affect morale, and so the moron had earned a reprieve. Temporarily.

  “Retreat?” Chortley said, as if seriously considering it. “And cede the downlands to those vermin? Then hide behind the walls of Crapplecreek waiting for reinforcements?”

  One look into the man’s eyes told Chortley that this was exactly the commander’s plan. How Chortley loathed lick-spittle lackeys like this trembling worm. Dressed up in military finery like a child playing at soldiers - which was about all the commander had ever done. It had been too quiet around here for too long, and now the army was led by an officer whose only experience of war was when he rearranged the furniture in his quarters without his wife's permission.

  “You might have had a point,” responded Chortley “if the walls were in reasonable repair but it seems the budget for maintenance has somehow been spent elsewhere. Give them a day and they’ll have burrowed through like moles in pig shit. No, we must face them here.”

  “But we can’t possibly beat them, my lord! There are too many.”

  Chortley reached across and grabbed the commander by his coat collar, almost pulling him out of his saddle as he brought the man’s face to within inches of his.

  “Then we will delay them, you snivelling coward!” he hissed. “We will delay them so that my father has time to gather the army and levies, and we’ll wound them so that he stands a chance even if we do not. I am a Fitzmichael, and we do not retreat!”

  He pulled a dagger from his belt and held its blade, hidden in his mail gloves, an inch from the commander’s throat.

  “Now, if you don’t want to be the first casualty, you will act like a man who deserves his position.”

  The commander’s face had turned purple, but he contrived a brief nod and swayed back in his saddle as Chortley released him. There was a murmur from the officers and men surrounding him, and Chortley knew it was now or never.

  Chortley Fitzmichael lifted himself up on his stirrups and looked around at the 200 or so nervous men and women of the Crapplecreek garrison.

  “Soldiers of Crapplecreek,” he bellowed, “we face an enemy greater in number and cruelty than anything you have come up against before. These are not hill bandits commanded by some rogue, but the hand-picked legion of a fell king.”

  The murmuring had increased a notch, and Chortley sensed many of the garrison taking a metaphorical step backwards.

  He raised his voice further.

  “Let me be clear with you. Nothing you face in the coming minutes will be worse than the revenge I will have on any coward who tries to turn and run. There is nowhere in this or any other world you will be able to hide from the wrath of the Fitzmichaels if you do not do your duty. Fear them all you like,” he bellowed as he waved his sword up the slope, “fear them but obey me! Forward!”

  Jessie watched as the rabble commander swept back into the tent. The rough hemp rope binding her wrists together had left them sore and weeping, and her shoulders and hips ached as she sat on the damp grass with the other two prisoners. Despite her discomfort, however, she noticed a subtle change in the general. Only minutes before, he’d been enjoying telling them exactly what was in store for them as, outside, the bonfires were being built. And then a horn had sounded and, judging by the expression that flashed across his face, it was an unexpected horn. He’d abruptly exited, and they’d been left, craning to distinguish any words from the excited murmuring outside. Velicity, whose ears were youngest, had said the speakers seemed to have no idea what it meant, but then the talking had ceased, and the general had re-entered the tent.

  “Sadly, we must cut short our entertainment,” he said, a cruel smile playing across his lips. “A pity: I’d been so looking forward to watching you three witches die slowly like frogs in a kettle.”

  “Did someone say keckle?” piped up Gramma, who’d been napping.

  “Silence!” The general roared before turning his back on them, his hands pressed to his temples. His shoulders relaxed, and he turned to face them again.

  “Perhaps it is better this way after all. The sooner you three are quieted, the better.”

  Jessie tensed as a curved dagger appeared in his hand, and he advanced towards Gramma, murder written all over his face. So, this was how it was to end? The last elementals tied up like hogs and despatched the same way. For the first time in her life, she felt pure unadulterated panic, and tears welled as she watched him grab Gramma by the hair and wrench her head back. The old woman seemed remarkably calm, all things considered, giving little more than a brief wince as her bony neck was exposed.

  The tall, tatty, figure bent over the old woman and, with a dramatic flourish, raised his dagger high. And froze.

  “Don’t move.”

  Jessie thought she knew that voice, but it was a few moments before she recognised it and exhaled.

  Brianna’s head appeared above the filthy shoulder of the general, her knife at his throat.

  “This seems familiar,” she said, in a tone normally reserved for the meeting of two casual acquaintances, “except the blade was in the other hand last time, wasn’t it?”

  The general looked as though he was trying to see out of the side of his skull. “Who the hells are you?” he hissed.

  “Well, I would say I’m you’re worst nightmare but that’d probably be a bath wouldn’t it?” Brianna replied. “And before you think of calling for help, don’t doubt for one second that I’ll slit your throat before you get a sound out.”

  “Look, I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” interrupted Gramma from the floor, “but me backside aches and me ginnel is bloody damp so hurry up, will you lass?”

  Keeping the knife to the general’s throat, Brianna reached into a pocket, pulled out a second blade and pointed it at Velicity who turned around and got onto her hands and knees, her back towards Brianna. A quick slash of the knife was all it took to cut through her bonds and Velicity sighed as her arms were freed.

  Within seconds, the two older women were scrambling rheumatically to their feet. Jessie brushed the dust from her dress and smiled at Brianna.

  “Well done, lass,” she said, “but what took you so long?”

  Velicity sighed. “There had to be a ‘but’, didn’t there?”

  “Don’t worry, she can’t help herself,” Brianna responded before looking at Jessie. “To answer your question, mother, I was delayed. Some hunters from the other side were after me, I only just made it to the farm.”

  The general shivered at this.

  “You encountered the master’s hunters and lived to tell the tale? I don’t believe it.”

  Brianna nudged the point of her knife into his jugular.

  “You know what? I don’t care what you believe, just like I don’t care whether you live or die,” she said, coldly casual. “You thought you’d killed me, after all. And worse, you humiliated me in front of my family. I’m having a hard time keeping this knife still, so I suggest you shut up and don’t say another word.”

  Sweat appeared on the General’s grubby forehead. Jessie saw terror revealed in his eyes as he gave a pathetic, almost non-existent
, nod.

  “Now, you can give back what you took from us,” Brianna said. “Where are the vessels?”

  General Odius’s face turned white. Not the natural white of Fairie but the squeaky bum paleness that comes from having a maniac wave a knife around your Adam’s apple. His eyes darted left and right, and his body trembled, but he didn’t open his lips.

  Brianna sighed. “You may speak quietly.”

  “If I give them back to you, my master will kill me!”

  “And if you don’t, I’ll kill you right now,” Brianna hissed, pushing the point of the knife into his neck so that it broke the skin.

  “They’re not in here!”

  Brianna exchanged glances with her mother.

  “Then you and I will go and get them. And just remember, my dagger will be an inch from your back, and if we don’t get safely to the vessels, you’ll feel it quick enough. It’d be my pleasure.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Jessie said.

  “No, you won’t, it’s risky enough taking this weasel through his own camp, but even those dimwits out there would twig something was wrong if you three came along. You’re s’posed to be prisoners.”

  Jessie opened her mouth, but Velicity jumped in before she could speak. “She’s right, Jessie. We must put our faith in her.”

  Jessie Hemlock looked from Velicity to her daughter and then to Gramma who gave a tiny nod.

  “Right. We’d best be makin’ ready to get out of here anyway,” she said and began ostentatiously looking for useful items in the tent.

  Brianna turned away from them, clasped the knife in her hand and shoved it in her coat pocket with the blade pointing at the General, then used her other arm to spin him round so she was looking at his back. The pocket, now armed and dangerous, poked him, and Jessie looked up as they headed for the tent flap.