by Dave Freer
“It’s my right . . .”
At this point his horse reared, turned suddenly and tossed him out of the saddle, and headed home as fast as it could go. The haerthman who had placed the sharp point of his lance just exactly where the horse would think it a very cheeky horsefly indeed, saluted her. “Hail, Defender. We are here to fight for you. At least, I am. Who is with me?”
Most of the men raised their lances in salute, and shouted, “Defender!”
For a brief moment it was quite heady. But then the reality of it all came back to her.
The earl sat up, groaning. “Have you rebelled against your liege? Where is your respect? I’ll have you all tossed out to be landless, masterless men! Take her back to the Dun!”
The haerthman who had assisted him out of the saddle pointed his lance at him. “It’s you, Earl Simon, who have not shown respect to your liege. She is the Defender. The sea-window returned, the forest walked.”
“And she spoke to the sea and it destroyed the Vanar fleet for her,” said the spriggan neither Meb nor the earl’s men had known was there.
The men of Dun Calathar were wide-eyed. But they stood, respectful.
Earl Simon flapped his mouth, but no words came out.
* * *
“The giant should be fun,” said the spriggan with morbid satisfaction.
“Giant? What giant?” asked Meb, with a sinking feeling. The spriggan looked pleased. It had been looking quite put out, and had found nothing to think of that could go wrong with the trenchwork at the forest, a sure sign that it was well prepared—and probably would go wrong. But she had no preparations for giants.
“Ach, he’ll be one of the half-dead ones. They always have some half-dead marching along with them.”
“Half-dead ones?” Meb was beginning to feel like one of those birds trained to repeat what was said. “What are they?”
“People, or various creatures, monsters mostly, that are not alive but aren’t dead. They come with the invaders. They’re often quite hard to kill,” explained the spriggan.
“If they’re not alive, how do you kill them?”
“They’re dead but have been reanimated magically. Rebuilt, as it were,” explained the spriggan. “Sometimes they have been mixed with things that are harder to kill, and they’re generally not too sensitive to pain. Or very clever. A clever man knows when to be afraid and to run away. The half-dead just keep coming.”
And Meb remembered Vivien speaking of her husband Cormac being seen among the forces of various other places. She understood, now, how that could be. It still made her shudder, and got her no closer to how to deal with the giant.
“Just how big is this giant?” she asked in a fading voice.
“Oh, not so big. The last one had three heads, and was terrible. This one isn’t more than eighteen cubits tall. Living stone too, though, so not much use firing arrows into him. You’ll deal with him, though.”
“You could have told me earlier,” said Meb.
“Why?” asked the spriggan.
“I could have got a better head start, running away,” said Meb, bitterly. “I need to talk to the muryan.”
“There is nothing like ants to bring down giants,” agreed the spriggan.
“I hope you’re right,” said Meb. “Because that’s all I can think of right now.
* * *
They came, with the sound of drums, and the tramp of the giant. It was just before sundown and a curling mist was falling over the top edge of the valley, making the upper rock walls hazy and indistinct, muting colors.
The men of Ys, in their fish-scalelike armor, each troop of horse behind its brave standard, were plainly expecting the usual trouble at the gap. They halted, just below the “forest,” to tighten their formations and ready themselves. Oddly, in this light, Meb thought it really did look like a vast forest, far bigger than a mere couple of thousand branches and Wudewasa. The noise that came from it was more alarming than the drum or tread of the giant. It was a strange, deep roaring sound, pulsing, rising and falling. Meb knew the Wudewasa made the noise by whirling flat-bladed pieces of wood. Knowing full well what it was, it still made the hair on the nape of her neck want to stand on end.
Some scouts had ridden along the upper part of the valley and into the wood. None had given warning.
But now the gap was closed.
And the sound of the bullroarers in the valley was suddenly made faint by her own yell. It was supposed to be done in unison. Supposed to echo. Somehow, with the nerves of the moment or maybe the water-horse deciding to rear and charge—which was anything but what Meb had had in mind—“Go home!” should have been a lost squeak, only fit for annoying children. Instead, it reverberated from the rocks and echoed up and down the valley—as Meb, on the runaway water-horse that wanted nothing more than to fight, charged down at them, followed by the men of Dun Calathar. The water-horse, merely walking, had had a bad effect on the normal horses. Galloping full tilt, dashing its wild mane about and somehow managing to scream horse defiance, and show itself as the biggest, most attractive, toughest stallion in existence, its effect on a horse-mounted army was . . . interesting.
The cavalry might largely have disintegrated, crashing through the foot soldiers, but the giant advanced. About three steps . . . before toppling.
Meb rode—flying—over its back. Other cavalry spilled around, driving men into the river—which was rising and full of something that pulled men under—or to scramble to the woods or just turn and run for the gateway back to Ys as if pursued by more than just nasty piskies. The giants that chased them were mere glamor, but no one stopped to check. They just ran.
As a battle it proved to be a complete rout, and fairly short.
Meb actually found herself feeling mildly guilty that she’d had the piskies dose the Ys men’s water with buckthorn when they’d stopped at midday. They really didn’t need stomach cramps and bowels that turned to water as well. She was glad, though, that they’d dosed the giant with arsenic and now had it tied down with cables of spider silk. It would take hammering hard steel spikes through it to kill it.
And Meb knew the heady sound of cheering.
It didn’t improve the sight of dead men or horses much.
But Ys’s soldiery would not be in a hurry to come back to this haunted, accursed and protected land.
Now the other armies had to get that message.
Chapter 23
Out on the open mountainside, Fionn sat looking down on the tranquil blue sea, far below. He patted Díleas, sitting next to him. “It’s good to breathe clean air again, air that has none of that scent of decay and intrigue. It’s helping me to think, and we have a lot to think about. It appears our Scrap must have called in help from the Spirit of the Sea. So I thought we might try Groblek, the Lord of the Mountains, instead. He’s not very fond of dogs. Do you think you could pretend to be a cat?”
Díleas turned his head away and studiously ignored Fionn.
Fionn got up. “Groblek!” he yelled. “GROBLEK!” The echo repeated it, fainter and fainter.
“I’ve no idea if that’ll work. In the meanwhile, we may as well walk up the mountain a little further, get a good line out to the Skerries, and fly out and see if we can find that Tolmen Way.”
Díleas barked. The “big trouble” bark. Fionn was getting better at telling them apart by now. Walking toward them was the reason.
A bear.
Not just any bear, but an enormous beast who must have weighed at least a thousand pounds.
And his growl was like slow thunder.
“Greetings, Groblek,” said Fionn, with a wave.
“I should have guessed it would be you,” rumbled the bear. “Waking the child, just when we had got it to sleep. And I do not like dogs.”
“Congratulations! I hadn’t heard,” said Fionn. “You’re quick about it. And that’s not a dog. It’s a cat.”
“Time moves differently for us. And it barks like a dog, and smells like a
dog. Therefore, it is a dog.”
“Appearances can be deceptive,” said Fionn mildly. “When did you last hear of a dog having anything to do with a dragon? Cats do. And it is very good with children. Besides, it’s her cat. I am just looking after it. I wouldn’t dare let it get hurt.”
“You’re incorrigible,” said Groblek. “Very well. I suppose you can come in, you and her ‘cat.’ What do you want this time?”
“To talk. The last time we spoke you said she had been drawn back to where she came from.”
“She told us that looking into the flame she’d seen that Tasmarin must lose either her or you. I thought her heart would break. But she was a brave little human.”
“More courage than common sense,” said Fionn, gruffly. “Might-be futures can be circumvented.”
“Would you have taken the chance, had things been the other way around?” asked Groblek as he led them toward a cave mouth.
“I thought I asked the trick questions. No.”
“So your choices are right, and hers wrong?”
Fionn sighed as they entered a vast hall. A noisy, vast hall. Groblek had not been joking about having woken someone. “You ask awkward questions. And I apologize for waking him. I really do.”
“I love him dearly, nearly more dearly than anything else, but sometimes he is his mother’s child. Noisy, tumultuous and restless, just like the sea,” said Groblek.
Fionn was amused. “Lady Skay, of course, sees it otherwise.”
“How right you are, dragon. Somehow he reminds her of avalanches, which is not inaccurate at times, I will admit.”
“Well, as I imagine you have tried remedying all the usual real reasons for unhappiness, let us see if he can be distracted by juggling or by . . . cats,” said Fionn.
“Is the . . . cat safe with children?” asked Groblek, to whom sheepdogs were barely a bite.
Fionn smiled reassuringly. “Children are quite dangerous to them, yes, but they’re very tolerant despite that. And this one will not bite a child. Not for any provocation. Will you bite, Díleas? One bark for yes, two for no.”
“Hrf hrf.”
“Those are of course ‘meows’ in his breed,” said Fionn. “My Scrap raised his intelligence somewhat, Groblek, and he’s of a bright breed. Your child is safe with him.”
The babe was, luckily for Díleas, not as large as his father suggested he might become. And he was distracted, almost hypnotized, by the bright balls being thrown in patterns. And Díleas’s bouncing and his soft fur. “Not so tight, little one. You’ll squeeze the life out of him,” said Groblek. Fortunately Díleas discovered he could tickle by licking.
Between them they settled a small restless, tumultuous avalanche back to sleep.
“I had no idea,” said Fionn, “just how tiring they could be. Anyway, now that you have given me a great deal to think about, can you let us out? We need to go on our way. Whatever else I do . . . she needs her cat.”
“I will let you out in the mountains of Lyonesse. And I will give you your apprentice’s advice to us. Talk about it.”
“Your kindness wouldn’t run to dinner, would it? For the cat, of course. I wouldn’t trespass on your hospitality,” said Fionn.
“You nearly made me laugh and wake him up again. You are a perpetual trespasser. And I am sure I could find a bowl of milk and some fish . . . I do believe the cat is baring its teeth at me,” said Groblek.
“He’s a very intelligent animal. And you shouldn’t tease him after your child has had such pleasure trying to catch his tail and tasting his ear. Díleas thinks it may be teething causing the unrest.”
So it was, well fed and without having to travel any further, that Fionn and Díleas came out into the mountains on the borders of Southern Lyonesse.
It was late afternoon here, and from the mountainside, Fionn and Díleas got a fair prospect of the land of Lyonesse stretching out to a distant sea. If they’d been conquerors, it would be the kind of view they’d have wanted to plan their campaign. From here Fionn could see a number of towns—really forts that settlements had grown up around—roads, forests, plains, and brown rivers winding their way to the coast. There in the distance was a flash of armor. It had been many centuries since Fionn was last here. The chief settlement was further north and west. Their kings lived in a sea-girt castle with only a narrow peninsula to access it. Very defensible, and a sacred site too. That would be where he’d hope to find his Scrap. She must have got to the sea to talk to it, and yes, the First-crystal image had showed her in a coracle. Well, she was safer on the sea than almost anyone else would be.
And Díleas was already starting to walk northwards. “It’ll be quicker to fly,” said Fionn.
Díleas turned around and pawed at the basket. And as Fionn knew he did not love flying, that said a great deal. “Let me just organize it properly. Even if she’s in the very furthest corner of this place—it can’t take us more than another day, as long as you know where to go. Do you?”
“Hrf.” Díleas lifted a paw, and pointed. It was a little inland of where Fionn had expected. But perhaps the coast curved. He tucked the blankets in around the dog, and took to the wing. It was still warm enough to find some thermals . . .
They hadn’t flown more than twenty yards, when something pecked at his tail tendrils as he flapped up. It was a thrush, attacking a dragon.
Then an eagle dive-bombed him—talons missing Fionn’s eyes by a few hairbreadths, wings actually hitting the basket.
And that was just the start. With Díleas sitting up in the basket barking and snapping, and, it seemed, every bird from half a mile around came to peck or claw or beat at them with their wings, Fionn struggled to land a quarter of mile away from where he had taken to the air.
Díleas was not impressed by the landing. Or the flight, or the fact that he had feathers in his mouth.
But Fionn was very, very happy.
It was one thing to be told she was here. To follow the faithful dog, faithfully.
It was however much much sweeter to feel and recognize her magic.
“She’s gotten even more powerful. And even more prone to cause chaos,” said Fionn. “The dvergar would be proud of their work and proud of her! I am. We’ve walked before, Díleas. We can walk again. We’re here and so is she. And it feels like she has the wherewithal to look after herself.”
The air, now free of flying dragons—or any other thing that did not belong there—the birds resumed their singing, and Fionn and Díleas began picking their way down the mountain towards those forts and their towns, with Fionn choosing to appear in his normal human guise, in case they met any of the locals. The mountains were relatively bare of the things Fionn expected of mountains—sheep and bandits. There was a bear, but not even Díleas’s “let’s you and him fight” barking could get either Fionn or the bear, busy with fishing, interested. “It’s not the same bear,” said Fionn. “This one did not call you a cat, and I am not going to pick on it just because you want me to. And bears like fish. He’s not catching them for you.”
They walked on down, until met by a rock that turned into a spriggan. The spriggan was not expecting a dragon, not even one doing a very good shape-shift impression of a human. He didn’t realize Fionn could see him, until Fionn sat down next to him and took a firm hold of his ear. “Glamor has never worked very well on me,” he said, calmly but firmly. Spriggans could be decidedly nasty. In fact they usually were, unless they had reason for respect or had decided they liked you as someone trickier and nastier than themselves, or preferably, both. “Generally speaking, I find spriggans give me indigestion,” said Fionn, conversationally. “But one of my fellow dragons said that if you roast them slowly enough, they become crisp and quite tasty.”
“Dragons blowing in here, too, now. What is the place coming to?” said the spriggan. “I didn’t recognize you. I thought dragons were more on the spiky tails and bat wings and flame-out-the-nostrils side.”
“I can do that if you like,”
said Fionn, “but I find this so much better for nasty surprises.”
“I think you might get one, coming here,” said the spriggan. “We have a new Defender. I saw her birds chase you out of the sky.”
“Defender, eh? I’m looking for her. She’s . . . you might say a friend of mine. I want to return the dog that she left in my care. He’s about to mark you as his territory, so I would lose the glamor hastily, my spriggan friend, and tell me where to find Meb. Díleas and I have searched long and far for her. And yes, we’re friends of hers. I swear it on my hoard. That’s a very serious oath for dragonkind.”
“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Finn, would it?” said the spriggan, hastily becoming less than rock in appearance. “Or something like that . . . I got it from the knockyan, and they do mangle names. And it was supposed to be a black dragon, now that I recall.”
“Fionn is my name and, yes, I am called Finn among humans,” said Fionn. He remembered the knockyan. Miner cousins to the dvergar. Not great artisans like the dvergar, but good miners.
“Then you could let go of my ear,” said the spriggan. “I believe it’s due to your ideas that the men of Ys are now back in Ys, scrubbing the insides of their armor. She frightened them near witless and sent them home with their tails firmly between their legs. Said it was your idea, I’ve been told.”
“Can you take me to her?” asked Fionn.
The spriggan shook his head. “I’d like to, but I can’t, no. We’re bound to our rocks. Half a league is what I can wander.”
“It seems you’re quite informed for all that.”
“The knockyan. They love to gossip. And now that Earl Alois has pulled nearly everyone out of the mountains and into Dun Carfon, it’s quite quiet here.”
“Hmm. Why don’t you tell me some of the gossip. It might make travel easier. I’ve always preferred knowing what is happening to blundering in blindly. And if my Scrap needs help, well, best I know what help to bring.”
