The Exiled King

by Sarah Remy

  The sidhe Hunt had begun.

  It was more frightening than sneaking into Khorit Dard’s army camp and wetting his blade on the first taste of war. It was as breathtaking as hanging upside down from The Cutlass Wind’s bowsprit, the sea splashing in his face while Baldebert steered the ship toward home. It was like waging battle, only the skirmish was between heart and head. Or dancing a sailor’s jig to a familiar but mostly forgotten piper’s tune.

  There was no sound at all, not footfalls or words exchanged or wind in his ears. Even the sidhe’s singing had dwindled to nothing. An unnatural silence, and one that Liam feared to break, if even it could be broken. But if his ears had failed in the sidhe spell at least his eyes still worked, though it was difficult not to look away from Halwn. The oddities fluttering on the edge of his vision became stranger as time passed. Bright colors, some of which Liam had no proper name for, tantalized from amongst passing shadows. Once he thought he glimpsed the trailing end of a gilt-tipped scales. And once, a darting rabbit ten sizes too big. More of Riggins’s dire things come out of the red woods, he puzzled, like the gigantic eagle or the rampaging wolves? The muscles in his neck twitched to peek, but he hadn’t forgotten Faolan’s warning. The very last thing he wanted was to be left behind.

  Liam could feel breath pumping in and out of his chest, and the flutter of his working heart. His body thought it sprinted when in truth Halwn kept them at a light jog. His nose and mouth had gone uncomfortably dry; it was difficult to work up enough spit to swallow without choking. Then he did cough, and as if that soundless gasping was a signal, Halwn stopped. Liam rocked to a halt, stumbling into the barrowman.

  They fell out of the spell. The world summersaulted. The fat moon rolled under Liam’s feet and then resolved itself overhead, shining in silver triangles through a high, sparse canopy. The king’s red woods were around them and above them, thick, springy grass beneath their feet and a glittering spring bubbling up from the ground nearby. Night animals drank from the spring: a young stag and his white-tailed doe, a spiny hedgehog, and a yellow-breasted bird. When the sidhe appeared, the animals started and fled.

  Liam’s ears popped in time to catch the sound of their frantic departure.

  “Drink,” said Halwn. Liam realized he was leaning on the barrowman’s thin shoulder for balance and quickly let go. Halwn indicated the spring. “The water is good.”

  Halwn’s kin were already drinking, on their knees in the grass, scooping up handfuls of spring water. Liam had never been so thirsty in his life, even after days aboard ship under the pounding sun, dependent on Baldebert’s rationed beer. He lurched forward, dropped alongside the barrowman, and drank. His cupped hands trembled. The water was the sweetest he’d ever tasted.

  Faolan knelt at Liam’s side on the forest floor. He scooped water from the spring with more dignity than the rest, but with equal concentration. When he had taken several swallows, he smiled at Liam.

  “The body doesn’t like it, the stepping through time. Even the sidhe suffer some effect. Parchedness is one. Sit and rest for a moment; you’ll recover quickly.”

  Liam sat. It seemed as if he had woken from a particularly vivid dream, and his wits were still trying to catch up. For a time he was content with watching the spring froth out of the earth where it bubbled up between cracks in a moss-covered stone. Then he became aware that the stone was too round and too flat, man-made and ornamented around the edges with hatch marks and spirals.

  He took a final drink, swirling cold water around his teeth, then rose to his feet. His knees were steadier. His hands had stopped trembling. He took stock and saw that Halwn had led them to a modestly sized grove, a break in the trees that allowed for clearer sky overhead and thicker grass underfoot. The surrounding evergreens grew tall and close together. Wildflowers decorated the grass around the spring, a carpet of red stars.

  It was a tranquil spot, and isolated. When last Liam had been inside the forest, he and Avani had relied on Everin to guide them along safe, well-used tracks. He did not think Halwn’s spring was near any of those commonly trod paths.

  “We’re close,” said Halwn. The barrowman sniffed at the night air. Intrigued, Liam did the same and caught a whiff of hearth smoke. “This way.” Gripping its spear, the sidhe slipped between evergreens.

  This time when the world lurched and his senses went awry, Liam was better prepared. He’d lost Halwn in the muddle of shifting, bounding barrowmen and almost he panicked, but then he found Cleena, tall and spectral amongst her lesser kin, and concentrated on the swinging plait of her colorless hair. If she noticed his attention, she gave no sign and he was glad of it, for if Liam was certain of only one thing that night, it was that the banshee hated him.

  By all appearances it was a shorter sprint. When the hunt ceased, Liam was neither out of breath nor panting for a drink. His ears popped while the evergreens stopped spinning. He could hear a cow lowing in quiet distress.

  “Be still,” Faolan warned from beside Liam. He reached across and erased the mud-painted sigil from Liam’s brow with his palm. “This place is not unprotected.”

  It was a crumbling stone hovel surrounded by red flowers and enormous ferns. Smoke rose from a crooked chimney. A candle flickered in the single square window. A large cresset on an iron pole shed light over densely packed trees, the nervous black-coated cow, and four misshapen guardsmen made of straw and metal and gourd and stick.

  The cow turned tail and fled, crashing through the trees. Two of the sidhe detached from their kin and skittered after in chase. The barrowmen made no sound at all. The cow made enough noise to wake the sleeping forest. The candle in the window went out.

  “Get to the cresset!” Liam whispered. “They don’t like fire!”

  “Who?” demanded Cleena, but at that moment the straw mannequins began to move.

  They were larger than Holder’s original creations by at least a head, and thicker around the middle and arms. Where the monsters that snuck into the barracks were meant to resemble practice dummies, these new creatures need fool no one and Holder had spared no addition. They retained gourds for heads—carved eyes and gaping mouths—and the odd mincing walk of knees that bent backward instead of forward, but their torsos and limbs were bundled wood and stone, all wrapped about with thick strips of leather, and their hands were many dagger blades welded into deadly, shining bouquets. More iron hung all around their upper bodies, chains and rusted cogs and bristling awls, arranged sharp end out.

  “By the Aug,” Liam breathed. “He’s tried to make his own.”

  “Own what?” Cleena snarled as she backed away. The barrowmen stood motionless. Liam could not tell whether they were frightened or only confused. He was too young to have seen iron sickness at work. He wondered if they were feeling the effects of it already.

  “Automata,” growled Faolan. “The magi’s servants, conceived for the singular purpose of destroying a sidhe army. Bane of the Tuath Dé. But this farmer is no necromancer, to conjure life into insensate things. How is it possible?”

  “He’s a cunning bastard, that’s how.”

  The stick-and-stone mannequins were not as quick as their predecessors, weighed down by iron and tree branch. But it was apparent they could see in the dark as well as any sidhe, even with empty pits for eyes. Their pumpkin heads swiveled in the direction of Liam and the sidhe, and their shuffling picked up speed. They split in two directions around the crowded clearing, intending, Liam supposed, to hem the barrowmen in.

  Cleena began to snarl in earnest. The lesser sidhe, still silent, retreated into a tight cluster, pressed back to back.

  “Nay, you’ve got it wrong.” Liam made a desperate shooing motion with his hands. “It’s the fire that stops them. Get close to the cresset, don’t let them catch you up.”

  The closest mannequin was almost within striking distance. Its dagger fingers clicked together. It made a snuffling noise as its head swung back and forth. Two more of the barrowman broke, flitting away into th
e evergreens. Halwn shouted angrily after his kin, but they did not return.

  Faolan began to speak slowly and loudly. Liam did not understand the words any more than he ever did Mal’s recitations, but the intonation and the increasing glow around the aes si’s torque suggested a powerful magic about to be unleashed, so Liam did the most prudent thing and got out of the way.

  He knew from experience that Holder’s monsters preferred big, swinging movements to small. So when the first mannequin struck out, knife-hands slicing down and together through filtered moonlight, Liam ducked and darted, yawing right and then left. Dagger fingers cut the air near his head, but he dropped to hands and knees, scrambling through fern toward the roaring cresset. Glancing over his shoulder Liam saw the mannequin turn, clumsy as a drunken sailor, and give chase.

  Whatever magic Faolan worked sent a second creature to the forest floor, cut off at the knees, arms flailing. The remaining barrowmen, startled into action, swarmed over the fallen mannequin, Halwn at their head, striking with spears and sticks.

  The forest floor was chill and damp against Liam’s hands and knees. Red flowers, crushed in his scramble, discharged puffs of pollen into the air, making him sneeze. The cresset was not far away but the straw man behind him was gaining ground, its tree-branch legs working frantically. As it grew close, terror struck Liam to the core, turning his insides to liquid and making him falter. The mannequin lashed out. Daggers sliced Liam’s leg, puncturing flesh and pinning his trousers to the grass. Gasping, he struggled, but pain and fear made him impotent. The mannequin leaned close. Liam could hear the clicking of knives as it reached for his head.

  Cleena yanked him out from underneath the monster, tearing his pant leg and the flesh of his knee in the process. “Quickly!” Her eyes were dark holes in a white face, her hair a writhing nest of snakes. She had a spear in her hand. Ichor smeared the shaft: sidhe blood. “The cresset! Go! I’ll keep it back!”

  Liam was moaning. Not for the fire in his leg but for dread. The forest echoed with the sounds of battle: wails of pain and fear, snarls of the dying. He longed to curl up in the grass and close his eyes. Cleena booted him, hard. “Go!”

  He went, staggering upright and weaving the last few paces toward the cresset. Pain scalded his right knee but the leg held. So did his fractured nerve. As he moved further from the mannequin, his courage began to return. By the time he stood in front of the fire, he’d regained determination. He snatched up a pair of long tongs lying at the base of the cresset and reached within the basket for a burning log.

  “Not so fast.” A sword point kissed the back of Liam’s neck. “That’s the only thing keeping the wolves at bay.”

  Liam knew the voice. He heard it still in his nightmares. He could see Holder out of the corner of his eye, just as he’d glimpsed shifting oddities on the sidhe hunt, a short man made larger by the changing firelight.

  “Move away,” Holder ordered. “Slowly.”

  It was possible Holder didn’t recognize him. In the night Liam’s scars were less visible, his features obscured. And Holder was looking at the ongoing struggled beyond the cresset, not at Liam’s face. The tongs were growing wretchedly warm in Liam’s bare hand; the flames licked at the cuffs of his sleeves.

  In the clearing the sidhe were failing against Holder’s straw men. Two barrowmen, sharp teeth bared, propped Faolan between them as they attempted to fend off a mannequin with their spears. The mannequin had somehow lost its pumpkin head in the fray but it did not seem at all impaired. As Liam watched, aghast, it hopped a man’s length forward and took one of the barrowman through the gut with a bladed hand. The barrowman fell. Faolan tumbled after onto fern and red flowers. The headless mannequin squatted, knees bending birdlike in the wrong direction, and raised both arms for a second strike.

  Liam grabbed the tongs with both hands, captured a burning log, and flung it at the creature’s headless torso. The point of Holder’s blade left a searing line from the nape of Liam’s neck to behind his shoulder blade, a twin agony to the throb in his calf. Holder shouted in surprise, then furious, struck out again. Liam was faster. The heated tongs took the shorter man in the temple, spinning him sideways. The sword slid from Holder’s lax hand as he fell. He lay still where he dropped.

  The headless monster was burning. Fire licked its entire right side; its tree-branch limbs caught in conflagration. It tottered in place before collapsing in a shower of metal and spark.

  Two straw men still walked between the trees. They wreaked violence with mindless concentration, slashing and stabbing at anything that moved, crushing those that didn’t. And there were many more bodies lying still on the forest floor than up and struggling. Liam saw Halwn, bloodied about the face and chest, still on its feet, and two more of its kin, both barely standing. Of the eight barrowmen who had braved the clearing, only three remained upright.

  He didn’t see Faolan or Cleena at all.

  A straw man turned suddenly in his direction. It walked over sidhe bodies without taking notice, smearing ichor in the grass. As it came near, so did that black cloud of horror. Liam let go the tongs. He took a step backward, shaking.

  The straw man crouched, readying to spring. Liam looked in its empty, hollowed-out eyes and saw nothing. He heard a strange, choking sound and knew it came from his own throat. He was more afraid of the mannequin than the death it carried.

  The straw man jumped. Liam rolled onto the grass next to Holder. The farmer’s chest still rose and fell, though his eyes were open and staring. The mannequin landed amidst scattered kindling. Liam scrambled sideways, barely avoiding its deadly hands. As he did so, he plucked his knife from his belt and used it to slit Holder’s throat. Blood gushed. The straw man hesitated, missed a step, and fell. Liam scrambled backward but the creature lay still in the ferns.

  In the clearing the last mannequin faltered and slowed. Holder’s death broke the spell that animated its body. Listless, it sagged.

  Liam rolled onto his back. The canopy above was too dense; he couldn’t see the moon. He closed his eyes, near to passing out. His leg had finally gone numb, which was a blessing, but the pain his neck had grown to agony. Everything smelled of Holder’s blood.

  “Up you go.” Cleena bent over him. She snatched Liam up out of the fern without any effort at all. Her cheek was split open, freely bleeding ichor. She smelled like death. “We’re finished here.”

  “Are they stopped?” Liam asked. For all that Cleena despised him and likely wanted him dead, for all he knew she was banshee and less than human beneath whatever glamour she wore, she would never be as frightening as Holder’s creations. “You have to burn them, or chop them, or kill their master. He’s dead. Are they stopped?”

  “They’re stopped,” Cleena assured him. Her dark eyes were flat, her mouth fierce. “Sidhe’s bane.” A growl caught in her chest, vibrating against Liam’s ribs. “Vicious, ugly, conniving mortal magic.” She took a breath. “Brace yourself. There are strange things sniffing about this place. I’m not inclined to linger.”

  “Wolves.” Liam remembered. He felt woozy, exactly as he had when Mal had tried to murder him aboard The Cutlass Wind, draining away his life one gulp at a time. “Am I dying?” He hadn’t planned on it so soon.

  “Not yet,” Cleena promised. “Hold tight.”

  The canopy overhead twisted into a whorl of evergreen bough and disappeared.

  Chapter 13

  Avani dozed in a spot of sunlight. Her half dreams were full of comfortable sounds: a lass’s low cadence, Liam’s smothered laugh, a raven’s calling. There were spring lambs playing on the Downs, a tasty stew simmering on her stove, and when the last of the snow melted off, she would begin to plant her garden.

  “Ten soldiers wide and sixteen rows deep,” said the lass quietly. “Like a square.”

  “Aye, or a rectangle.” Liam was still hoarse, a holdover from the sidhe Hunt. Mortals, even mortals so unusual as Liam, were hardly meant to traverse as barrowmen. “I think it looks m
ore like a rectangle.”

  Eyes squeezed shut, Avani turned over on her cot. She clutched her blanket up against her chin. She thought she should tell Liam to drink more of the water she’d left in a jug beside his bed. She knew she should get up and check the sutures in his calf. But the gash was healing nicely and the slice across his neck and shoulders hadn’t needed much tending at all.

  He’d been lucky. Faolan hadn’t. Nor had Halwn, nor any of its kin.

  Wakeful, Avani shifted again, chasing after pleasant dreams. Of late her sleep had been full of nightmares: the old dreams of drowning but in the depths of the sea there were frightful, hungry things waiting to drag her into darkness and suffocation. Sometimes, when she turned her head on a scream, her last bubbling exhale rising to the surface, she saw Mal sinking alongside her.

  “In the infantry Kingsmen are ordered so,” said Liam. Avani heard the shuffle of pages in a book turning. Up in the rafters Jacob sneezed. “Shield men and then spear men—”

  “Or women.”

  “Aye, or women,” Liam agreed. “Tell me this word.”

  “I can’t. It’s too long.”

  “Try,” urged Morgan from where he was perched near the window, industriously wiping down his leather jerkin, boots, and gauntlets with a rag and flaxseed oil.

  Parsnip groaned. Avani pressed her face into the mattress. Children preparing for war through words and diagrams on the page seemed a hopeless thing when they’d had so little preparation out of the schoolroom. Parsnip, at least, would have relative safety inside the city walls, but Liam and Morgan would be lambs to the slaughter.

  Despair felt like being pulled into the depths of the sea.

  “Cast him out!” Jacob shrieked from the rafters, making everyone in the room jump. Avani sat bolt upright. Jacob glared down at her, head cocked, black eye bright. “Cast him out!”