I adjusted my beret and twirled my shillelagh with as much menace as a Ronan Boyle type can muster.
“Listen up ye lot! I’m taking the captain and this Crom Cruach. I’m going to walk right out of here and nobody gets hurt,” said somebody who sounded like me. I suppose it was me. Must have been? My face was beyond the red color temperature index and was moving into the light blues.
The weegees cackled, as if this were the funniest joke they’d ever heard. Crom Cruach smiled, his jerky-cheeks pulling up taut. He pulled out a bronze dagger from his robe and took Captain de Valera’s hand, then he led her toward the altar.
“My lord,” said the captain to Crom Cruach in a voice that was not at all what she usually sounds like. She is not somebody’s damsel. All of this was disgusting and out of character.
“Captain de Valera! You are not yourself right now! It’s me, Detective Ronan Boyle! I’ve traveled a great distance to get you home!” I shouted.
When nobody reacted, I tried again. “Nobody move or you’ll talk to the shillelagh!” (This is a slogan on a popular tank top that Yogi Hansra sells at her yoga workshops at Collins House, and worth a try.)
More laughter from the weegee cult. My threats weren’t landing.
Captain de Valera looked up at me, her two-tone eyes blank. The real her was somewhere very far away.
Crom Cruach leaned in and kissed her. Right on the lips.
Dis. Gus. Ting. With no other plan than a whole bunch of skull cracking, I raised my shillelagh and leaped over the railing, shrieking like a madman.
“Get that beefie!” screamed the Red-Eyed Woman.
I did not land on the splatmat, as I had sort of planned.
Before I could hit the ground (a landing that likely would have broken both of my legs) a harpy jockey swooped down from above and lanced me directly through my shoulder.
The confusion of being a living marshmallow on the end of a stick was compounded by the life-changing pain of the lance through the shoulder.
For some reason I noticed the useless detail that the lance had a sapphire tip, now with a tint of my blood on it.
Oh boyo did this hurt—so, so much. Tears would have streamed down my cheeks but because I was now flying on a kebab stick, the tears blew up into my eyebrows instead.
I ran my legs in the empty air like the worst pantomime of riding a bicycle that you’ve ever seen. The harpy jockey zoomed me up into the rafters of the dome, cackling and performing loop-the-loops, to add to my embarrassment and mental trauma.
I was crying and bleeding, and if I know me, shrieking. Kilt flapping. Other than a time I broke both wrists Roller-blading in Ayre Square, this would mark the low point of my life.
My shillelagh was gone, lost somewhere in the bleachers. And even worse: My beret was unaccounted for.
Up in the expensive seats I could make out another harpy jockey swooping toward Log, but he was very mistaken to think he could stab her through on his lance. Log is solid muscle. The lance bounced right off her back, and the jockey and the harpy took a hard tumble into the stands. When they popped up again, Log knocked them out cold with two great swipes of her shillelagh.
Log turned and picked up her tiny parents, one in each arm. I thought it was to protect them, but that’s not the leprechaun way.
“Ronan! Duck! I’m gonna throw me da at you!” screamed Log.
I thought I misheard her, but I did not. She took her da, wound up, and threw him directly at the jockey who was flying me about.
Dave’s walnut-hard head connected with the jockey’s skull, knocking him off the bird. The jockey fell a hundred meters to the floor of the dome.
I also fell. So did Dave.
Long-term planning is not Log MacDougal’s strong suit.
One of the ceremonial torches broke my fall, so while I did not die from splatting on the splatmat, I did catch on fire.
The Special Unit jacket is flame resistant, but it seems that the kilt is highly flammable. This is a dangerous detail I will report to the dull-as-paint Deputy Commissioner Finbar Dowd.
Lily and Rí leaped on top of me, rolling around, suffocating the flames with their huge bodies. I stumbled to my feet, my face steaming, kilt smoldering. I had lost my shillelagh, but I did have a huge lance at my disposal, as it was still sticking through my left shoulder and finders keepers, losers weepers! The fact that I was both losing and weeping at this moment seemed very appropriate.
The tears poured down my face in their proper gravitational direction.
I thought there was a chance that to pull the lance out of my shoulder would kill me, as I feel like I have heard that somewhere. But to leave it in would be awful as well. I took a chance and forced it out.
I did not die, but I did feel quite dizzy. The lance seemed to hit mostly the meaty part of my shoulder, which was fortunate, as there is there is not a surplus of meaty parts on me. I ripped off a bit of the hem of my kilt and made an impromptu tourniquet for my shoulder, stuffing some extra fabric into the hole. Only adrenaline was keeping me from passing out entirely.
From the corner of my eye I saw Log wind up and throw her mum at the other harpy jockey in the air above us. With a satisfying crack, he (and Mary) bounced off the dome and dropped one hundred meters to the splatmat.
Using the lance for support, I took a step toward the altar and the captain.
Log hustled across the splatmat, scooping up her parents to use as projectiles again.
“Captain de Valera, please,” I said. “Try to remember me. I am Ronan Boyle, your trainee! We must get out of here!”
The captain cocked her head, but nothing seemed to register.
“It’s me, Ronan Boyle,” I repeated, thinking it would jog something in her mind.
I surreptitiously began to unfasten the Roscommon Football Club vastsack from my belt. If I could buy a bit of time and get her into it, even if it meant losing Crom Cruach, it would be worth it.
Dooley was rushing around, shoving the stones and relics into a vastsack that he had brought. His sack looked like a Prada clutch from their 2020 line, sneaky devil. If his entire vendetta was to get some stolen trinkets back to his gallery—well, that is just sad. That’s not even a real vendetta!
Lily and Rí fanned out and began to circle behind the weegees. (A useful tactic of the wolfhounds of the Special Unit. Two huge wolfhounds pacing behind you is so unsettling. Try it, if you have two wolfhounds.)
Then something remarkable happened: The captain gestured to the weegees to stand down, and they did. She stepped toward me, the light of the torches finding reflection in her not-quite-a-matching-set of eyes.
She smiled at me, then she spun around and kicked me in the chest, sending me flying ten meters backward.
The Red-Eyed Woman cackled and tossed the captain a brass shillelagh. The captain leaped toward me, leveling a swing at my head. I rolled away in the nick of time—a lifetime of playing “Are You There Moriarty?” with my mum and da has made me an expert at rolling away from swipes at my head.
“Captain, no! I’m on your side,” I yelped. “It’s Ronan Boyle!”
The captain’s eyes had gone from dazed to full evil. I had never seen her look like this. I had to remind myself that this was not the real captain.
Log kept throwing her parents at weegees and nailed each one. Not only did Log’s parents seem to not mind being used as weapons, they enjoyed it. Dave was giggling like a psychopath, as his daughter Log often does in skirmishes. If I were to tell you that this was one of the most genuine “happy family” moments I’ve ever witnessed, I would not be lying.
The cracking of leprechaun noggins against each other sounded like a heated Ping-Pong match.
Lily and Rí had each captured one of the downed harpies and were keeping them pinned by the napes of their necks, the best (only) way to keep a harpy subdued.
I would have said it seemed like we had the upper hand in this tussle, except for the Captain-de-Valera-versus-Ronan-Boyle part. The capt
ain has an award on the wall of the astonishingly bad cafeteria for BEST SHILLELAGH FIGHTER 2017–2020.
If you were to make a list of people I did not want to have to fight against, Captain de Valera is in the number two spot, right after Yogi Hansra.
She came at me with a classic Hansra 1-5-3 fighting pattern that means one strike from your dominant hand, five from nondominant, then three kicks. With my proper shillelagh (that the captain herself had given me) I would have been ready for this, but with only the shousting lance, every blow from the captain connected.
A well-placed kick from the captain’s not-at-all-weird-looking foot met me directly across the jaw.
This was the first time I learned that a blow to the jaw (rather than the head) is what causes a classic knockout.
I started to black out.
I could dimly see Dooley grappling with Crom Cruach, trying to get him into his Prada vastsack.
The pain in my jaw was nothing like the agony in my stomach. I had led Lord Desmond Dooley right here like some kind of hapless tour guide. Now I would likely die, and Dooley would escape with his knickknacks and my Bog Man.
I looked up at the captain and the captain’s temporarily evil eyes. She was about to whack me right across the temple.
“Siobhán, wait. Siobhán de Valera, I love you,” I said.
* A vastsack is small on the outside, massive on the inside. This one was medium-grade; guaranteed to hold a normal-sized production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has about twenty singing roles.
Chapter Twenty
A FRIEND
The captain’s eyes blinked. Was there a moment of recognition? I could not say.
I have no idea why I blurted out a silly thing like what I had said. Certainly, the kick to my jaw had rattled my brain, and I was not thinking clearly. In normal situations Dame Judi would have intervened and told me what to do next.
“I mean, Captain . . . I’d love . . . to get you out of here,” I sputtered, trying to think of what I must have truly meant.
“Ronan! I’m sorry, Ronan!” said Log, calling my attention over to her. The weegees had gotten the drop on the MacDougals. Log was disarmed, and her mum and da were being held at knifepoint by the Red-Eyed Woman.
There were too many weegees for our side to get the upper hand. Lily and Rí would tip the balance, but that would mean releasing two full-grown harpies, which would be disastrous.
“Don’t let the birds go!” I said, shaking my head at the wolfhounds. I looked around and did some terrible calculations. My spirit was crushed. I knew the terrible thing I had to do next. I had to admit that I had always known I was just an understudy on this mission. Filling in for some real Special Unit hero who would have had this well in hand. I dropped to my knees.
“We surrender. In the name of the Commissioner of the Special Unit, I invoke the treaty of 1979 and ask for humane handling as your prisoners,” I said, putting my hand that I could lift into the air.
The Red-Eyed Woman and the weegees screamed with delight, toppling over themselves, blowing raspberries. They pulled out flasks and toasted one another. One little man did a horrid gesture that seemed to mean “I wipe my bottom with your treaty of 1979.”
And then, from below my feet, there came a low and frightening rumble.
“What is that sound?” said Log’s da, who cannot see and who, with his fine-tuned hearing, was the first to hear whatever it was.
The weegees stopped laughing. Something had changed in the air around us.
Even Dooley and Crom Cruach froze, midstruggle, expensive antique daggers at each other’s necks.
The weegees trembled. A shadow covered the splatmat.
I could sense something behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the surprise that was making everyone tremble.
A massive black bull.
He was size of a tank, well over a metric tonne (2,204 pounds). His horns were a meter long and curled to make this animal seem more like a demon than anything I’ve seen, including some actual demons in books.
His hoof pawed at the ground, ripping open a small chasm below where he stood. Smoke blasted from his nostrils. He scowled and fumed, ready to charge. And atop his head, perched between his horns, was a familiar hat.
“Hello, Ronan,” said bull-shaped Figs.
“Figs?!” I shrieked “Horatio Fitzmartin Dromghool? Is that you?”
“I told you I have frightening forms, Ronan. Nobody ever believes me, even though I mention it all the time,” said Figs. “But I can’t control the change-over, so I thought I’d hang back until I turned into something useful. Hedgehog-me wouldn’t be much help, would he? Now let’s wrap up these vendettas and get you home!”
With that, bull-form Figs charged the weegees like a runaway locomotive.
I leaped and tackled Captain de Valera, tossing the brass shillelagh to Log. Log gave the Red-Eyed Woman a magnificent Hansra Pull, sending her bottom over teakettle into a nearby pile of harpy droppings.
Overpowering the captain did little to change her spell-induced attitude. She bit me squarely on the cheek.
Bull-form Figs laid waste to every weegee in his path. His horns bonked and poked them, sending them flying into the air like napkins.
“Log, get Crom Cruach, no matter what!” I said, tossing her the Roscommon Football Club vastsack.
I cursed myself for ever doubting Figs. The thunder of his hooves shook the dome. He deftly started to herd the weegees toward Log.
For those keeping score:
Log had my vastsack. Dooley had a Prada vastsack.
The wolfhounds had a harpy each.
Dooley and Crom Cruach held daggers at each other’s necks.
Captain de Valera was pinned but biting my face, when within range.
One massive bull that turns out is our friend Figs herded the weegees.
There was no time to make a pressed sandwich, so I gave the captain one drop of Black Anvil from one of my flasks. Black Anvil is a whiskey made for the leprechaun navy that will knock out most humans and faeries. One drop is good to sedate a human for several minutes.
The captain was out. I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder before I realized that I am not strong enough to do that. Not at all.
I went down hard, my nice umbrella poking a second hole in my armpit. I sat for a moment, looking and feeling like an eejit. Then I took off my utility belt and used it as a strap to lift the captain. This was not part of my training, but rather a technique I once saw in a YouTube commercial about how to move furniture by yourself. A realization was washing over me. It was becoming clear that the difference between me being brave and bold, and PRETENDING TO BE BRAVE AND BOLD . . . is tiny.
From the outside, nobody could tell the difference.
Perhaps that is the secret to everything? Act like you are supposed to be there, and nobody will tell you to leave?
Act like you are brave even when you are drowning in beret sweat.
I looked around for Dame Judi but she was nowhere to be seen. I was alone.
For the first time in a long time. Does everyone else just act like they’re brave? I asked the hamster on the Möbius in my head. He, too, was gone. The only person left in my head seemed to be Ronan Boyle.
This was a slightly nerve-racking thought. But I vowed to myself that I would try. Try to pretend to impersonate the brave hero that I am definitely not, but could possibly convince others that I am, and maybe what’s the difference anyway?
Rí and Lily had dragged the harpies to a holding cage, which the harpies did not like.
Bull-form Figs was herding the weegees toward Log and into the vastsack like so many rodeo clowns. Some weegees were trampled under hoof, and he would poke them up by the bottom and toss them with his horns.
Crom Cruach now had Dooley by the throat, fancy knife to his neck.
“Help me, Boyle!” said Dooley, pathetically. “I am not your enemy! Remember how I helped you?! Right? We could be mates, Boyle!”
>
“I’m so over this bit, Lord Dooley,” I said.
Crom Cruach said something in (I think) Irish. He pointed his skinless finger toward the captain.
“He says give him the captain and you get to live,” explained Dooley. “We’ll both get to live. Just do it, boy. He needs to drink a bit o’ her blood for his powers to fully come back. Don’t be a party pooper!”
I’d lost both my shillelagh and the lance at this point. I had only one idea left, and it would require that I was very quick and clever—and I am often not either of those.
Crom Cruach howled. His dead eyes rolled back in their dry sockets. An electric tornado began to swirl around Crom Cruach—some manner of evil energy that seemed to be emanating from Crom Cruach himself.
“Boyle, please. He grows stronger, but he needs the captain’s blood! Let him win this one. You’re unarmed,” Dooley helpfully pointed out. “It’s over, lad.”
“If he needs blood, it will be yours and mine, not the captain’s,” I said, inching ever closer. “And no, I don’t have a weapon, all I have is this—nice umbrella.”
I yanked my nice umbrella from where I had stashed it ages ago. I lunged at Crom Cruach. With a crunch, the tip of my umbrella popped directly through his mummified chest. He screamed, a dry moan that burned the inside of my ears and would linger for years to come.
Out of Crom Cruach’s chest poured peat, dirt, and some wriggling worms. I tried not to boke.
Crom Cruach fell to his knees, dropping both the dagger and Dooley.
The swirling energy tornado vanished. I had stunned Crom Cruach, but not killed him (which I don’t think is possible anyway). But this act might be enough.
“Now, Log!” I screamed.
Log leaped in from behind, tossing Crom Cruach into the vastsack with the ease of a shoplifter stealing a Lion Bar (something Log often is in real life).
Crom Cruach was in custody!
My nice umbrella went with him, but so be it, these things happen.
I fell to my knees, as I was not yet an expert at this strap-lifting technique and the captain was very dense from Yogi Hansra’s hot yoga class.
Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death Page 16
