Lockeran (Prince Ciaran the Damned Book 2)

by Ruari McCallion

  “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t let him. I am not known for my mercy, even to children.” The man - the child’s father, clearly - reached out and grabbed the boy before he could quite lay a hand on the weapon.

  “You would kill a child?”

  “I have learned that children can be more dangerous than they look.”

  “Who in God’s name are you?”

  “Your worst nightmare.”

  “Go. Get out of here. Leave us alone.”

  “I don’t think you are in any position to be giving orders to me.”

  “I beg you. In God’s name, leave us what little we have and go.”

  I was about to do so when a yelp reminded me of Wolf. I turned and saw him rolling along the ground towards the horses - who were watching everything with completely calm detachment. The last member of the gang had hit my dog with a stone or something and he was now reaching for his sword.

  “Leave it! Stop, if you want to live,” I shouted.

  “Beren, don’t!” the boy’s father said. But Beren was still fighting mad. He picked up his sword, even though his arm was running with blood from the savaging Wolf had given him. He raised it in both hands and came at me. It was almost too easy. I stepped to one side, allowing his momentum to carry him past, and liberated his entrails as he went by. Whether he stumbled on a stone, as a result of his gaping wound, or tripped over his spilled guts, I don’t know. He fell to his knees and realisation began to dawn on him. He tried to gather his intestines and put them back in his stomach. He began to weep, a wordless, self-pitying wail. It would take him some time to die but he would surely not survive. Not with that sort of wound. I stepped towards him, intending to finish it and spare him the inevitable, drawn-out and painful death. Another woman appeared - not the child’s mother - and knelt down by him, cradling his head. He was still trying to gather up his guts but they were slippery, and fell out of his failing hands.

  “Haven’t you done enough? Leave him be!”

  ‘He will not live. I was going to give him release.”

  “You go to hell. He has had more than enough of your mercy.”

  A crowd was beginning to gather. Not many but if I didn’t make tracks soon, it would become too big to handle. Wolf was back on his feet. I called him over. He was growling at pretty much everything and anything. He barked at the gutless man and I restrained him from carrying out what he was clearly inclined to do: rip the fellow’s throat out. He was almost certainly bruised but seemed to be unbloodied.

  “Please, in God’s name, leave us. I beg you.” It was the boy’s father. I thought about it - I still had some bloodlust left, if I chose to indulge it - and decided to leave one opponent, at least, to tell the tale to others. He looked up at me. He looked as if he expected to die. But he still clung firmly to his son. “Who are you?”

  I had been trying to make my way across the Frankish kingdom quietly but after this incident I might as well have lit a beacon to let those hunting me know where I was. There seemed little point in concealing my identity now.

  “I am known as Prince Ciaran the Damned.”

  “Well-named you are. Damned. Merciless. A demon in human skin.”

  “Why are you provoking me? I still have my sword in my hand. I can kill you and all of your family. Why risk it?”

  He looked down and away. He seemed about to raise his hand to ward off any blow I might rain down on him, but then let it fall, limply. He had no hope left. I bent down and wiped my sword on his cloak.

  “What is your name?” I asked, but thought better of it. “Actually, I don’t care. Whoever you are, today is your lucky day. I shall not kill you nor take any other lives.” I collected my knife from the throat of the fellow whose greed had led to today’s mayhem and then pulled myself up onto Sage, tugged on Onion’s lead rein and called Wolf over. He was walking fairly easily. No long-term damage done, it seemed.

  “My lucky day?” The boy’s father said, looking at the devastation that surrounded him. Blood glinted in the sunlight. The gutless man was whimpering as his life ebbed away. His woman looked at me with - fear, yes, I expected no less, but there was real hatred there, as well. True, visceral, fundamental hatred. And a hunger, too - a disturbing hunger, as if she yearned to consume my very soul.

  “When you play the Blood Red Game you will lose,” she spat. I reeled as if I had been struck.

  “What did you say?” I demanded.

  “Go back to whatever Pit spawned you,” she snarled, and spat again. I felt a familiar headache building. I reached into my bag, pulled out my medicine and took a draft. She misunderstood what I was doing. “You really are evil. Drinking in the faces of these men you have murdered.” I considered arguing the point, or even removing her head from her shoulders, to shut her up - but that hell-spawned look had gone from her eyes and I could no longer be bothered. There were plenty of other things to do with my time. I urged my horses on and called Wolf to follow. The bridge was in pretty poor repair, with stones missing from the parapet and even some holes appearing on the spans. I felt a sharp impact on my back and turned around. The child’s mother was dragging him away, as he struggled against her grip. She looked terrified. The father looked at me, with little hope. The child had thrown a stone at my departing form and he had been too accurate for their comfort. I looked down and saw a definite hole in the roadway.

  “Spend some money on repairing this bridge before it falls down. Then maybe people won’t object to paying a reasonable toll,” I said. We picked our careful way across the rest of the crumbling structure. It held, which was all we needed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Corrialum

  Once on the other side of the river we were able to make good time. The next crossing was achieved with little problem, either. We were even able to find a sparsely guarded ferry across the Seine, a few dozen miles downstream from Paris and a bit tucked away from the bustle of traffic heading for the coast, in a lazy, looping meander. The guards had heard nothing of any disturbances or escaped criminals and the tradesmen of the town were happy enough to take my money for some palatable supplies of bread, cheese, sausages and ham, along with some wine and local cider. For once in this quest it seemed that luck was on my side. The border with the British kingdom of Dumnonia was normally closely and suspiciously guarded but not this week, apparently. The antics of the Allemani to the east seemed to be of greater concern to the Franks, for the moment at least - and the British had not yet sought to take advantage of the reduced level of watchfulness. All in all, pretty much everything, including the ground, got easier. I had decided to make for Coriallum, at the northern end of the peninsula at the west of the Bay of the Seine. It was the closest point to the mainland of Britannia before the kingdoms of Berec and South Dumnonia. We got there in less than five days after crossing the Seine, and without further incident - which was a pleasant relief in itself.

  Coriallum itself was a small port town. Its main business was fishing but a few of the more adventurous captains were prepared to venture across the British Sea to Dumnonia, the British kingdom that still held the south-west of the land. If trouble was brewing with the English further north, in Elmet, it would be as well to avoid travelling through the Saxon kingdoms of the south, if it could be done. While the English and the Saxons could not be described as the firmest of friends, their various kings, princes and warlords tended to be prepared to give up fighting amongst themselves if they were threatened by the British, or had reason to make common cause against them. Once upon a time they had been recruited to fill the gap in the defences when the Roman garrisons were recalled as the Empire declined. Those times were a century and more in the past. Renewed days of peace and unity were even further in the future, by all reports. And meanwhile, the ordinary folk suffered, as the fortunes of war drove armies back and forth, helping themselves to whatever supplies they fancied, as they went.

  The fishermen of Coriallum cared little for the ebb and flow of power in mainland Britai
n. They were more concerned with the corsairs and pirates who foraged out of Reginca and other havens to the south. Although the kingdom of Dumnonia was known for hosting missionaries and monks from the Celtic Church, a monastery on an island a short distance down the coast from their ports was as holy as that place got. The sight of an unknown sail from the south was enough to send any fishing boats still at sea scuttling back to Coriallum for shelter and safety in numbers.

  The view from the hills above the town was of a busy, but not overcrowded harbour, populated by boats of varying sizes. I was looking for something bigger than a fishing smack: something that would be capable of sailing across this part of the Narrow Sea. I thought I could see a couple, maybe a third, and there were sails out on the sea, towards the horizon. There would be something available.

  While there were plenty of inns and taverns, catering from the merely thirsty to the dedicated drunk, it was not so easy to find one with stables and secure sleeping accommodation - somewhere I could leave my baggage with any degree of confidence. I was tempted to retrace my steps and look for a monastery but managed to find a better-favoured place before I gave up. It was at the sign of a Three-Legged Man, which reminded me of the struggle, years before, on Innis Vannin. I took it as an omen. I selected a reasonably appointed room, which had some floorboards that I could lever up and use as a hiding place for my Frankish treasure. The horses were satisfactorily stabled and Wolf was allowed to accompany me - at least, any objections were swallowed before they were voiced. The meal, of fish stew and some fresh-baked bread, was not what Wolf and I would have chosen if we had a choice, but we didn’t. As far as fish stews go, it was better than acceptable, I suppose. The bread was tasty and the beer was good as well; we could have done a lot worse.

  I decided to have an early night and Wolf wasn’t about to argue. My head was ringing a little and the thick air of the tavern was difficult to see through. I opened the door to my room and, as I flopped onto the bed, I noticed that there was someone else there.

  All around were corpses, piled high enough to block out the sun.

  He is down! The king is down!

  The salt sea air whipped over my lips. You fool, you have killed us all!

  The child sat patiently at the waterside. The ball of wool was barely unravelled at all. Surely there should have been a long trail of it behind me, already? He looked at me.

  You must hurry. There is not much time. The English are coming and they need you.

  The land itself was alive, writhing in agony. Death throes or birth pains? Cries of death and destruction arose from everywhere. Villages were on fire, from one end to the other.

  And something else. Something shapeless and nameless but threatening. Arising from the West.

  Did we not destroy this? Did we not finish them all?

  You cared so little for them. There was a trail of dead, stretching back down the road and up into the hills, far to the south. Some were recognisable. Some had no names.

  They had names. You didn’t care to ask them.

  The child trotted over to the woods and waved at me to follow. I was surrounded by a mountain of corpses, eyeless but fixing me in their blind gazes. They knew I was there.

  “Why did you kill me brother?” They came in a deafening chorus - those words I had not heard for so long. That accusation that had died at last, with Coivin, my brother.

  I had to help the king, though it would destroy me. They were there - how could they have hidden from me? I was trying to fight my way out from the corpses that surrounded me on all sides, piled so high they blocked out the sun. I lashed out at the dead warriors who now assailed me. “Why did you kill me, brother?” Here are the pearls that were his eyes. You are not my brother! I don’t know you!

  A tidal wave of blood fell upon me, washed me away, washed away everything I knew.

  Who are you?

  I don’t know who I am.

  What is your name?

  I could not remember. Had I ever had a name?

  Don’t chase me away! Don’t hurt me!

  The child came out of the cave and beckoned me to follow him. He pointed to the edge of the woods. A man was sitting there, by the campfire, feeding a squirrel. The food smelled good. Squirrels tasted like rats. I wanted the food. I was cold and my pelt was matted and damp. I wanted to be warm. I tried to turn to the south but he would not have it. He grabbed my hand and pointed to the cold, cold stars and dark, untrailled woods. I tried to pull away but he was too strong and the waves were tossing the boat around there was no escape - no escape! - You have killed us you fool and then it was smashed onto the rocks but I was forward and held on as the waves crashed and all the pretty baubles were falling falling I woke up with the tidal wave of blood washing over me but it wasnt I was cold and the food smelled too good to resist -

  I woke up with a start and reached for my bag. Someone handed it too me. I rummaged through it and found my medicine. The pain in my head felt like it had been cut in two. I drank deep, deeper than for a while. This had been a savage one. There wasn’t much hope in it.

  I took a deep breath as the headache subsided. A subdued light was seeping through the windows so I reckoned I had been away for only a few minutes. As the pain eased I opened my eyes. There was a figure by the window. Before I could get up to take him on he moved away and I saw that he was a monk. His robe was drab, brown, and repeatedly patched and repaired along the seams. His head was shaved from the forehead back to a line running over the scalp, from one ear to the other. Another from the Irish church. Mostly harmless.

  “How long have I been Away?”

  “Overnight. Dawn is breaking,” he replied. I shrugged. A moment may take hours and hours last just a moment, in the Otherworld. I asked him what he wanted.

  “Some of your time, Prince Ciaran, though you do not have much to spare.”

  “What?”

  “You must get across the British Sea and north, to Elmet, as soon as you can. Time is pressing.”

  “How do you know who I am? When did you get here? I only arrived - yesterday,” I said, remembering that it was dawn breaking outside, not evening fading.

  “I have been waiting for you for a week.”

  “A week? I hadn’t even made up my mind to come this way, a week ago. I was going to head further west, into Dumnonia.”

  “I am not an expert in the ways of the Otherworld. I was told to come here and wait for you, and that’s what I did.”

  “Who told you? Are you a Seer?” He paused before replying.

  “We have a Seer in our monastery. He spends most of his life tormented by his Visions,” he said. “Much of the time, he simply raves. We have to keep him restrained, for his own protection as well as others’. Everything intelligible is written down by our younger novices - it’s a discipline and a rite of passage for them - and every so often he becomes very lucid. He did so ten days ago. He was very clear. He said you, Prince Ciaran, were to be met, in this inn, in this room - he described it to the last detail. He warned that you would have a Vision the moment you entered the room and that it would last all night, from dusk to dawn.” He paused again.

  “I have never been entirely convinced by Brother Ambrosius’ ramblings. Not until now. But everything happened exactly as he foretold.” I had managed to sit up. My head was pretty clear. Clear enough that I realised that I was running out of medicine and would have to make some more. The monk’s tale was interesting but not a shock - not to me, nor really to anyone familiar with the Otherworld. I felt sorry for his brother Ambrosius. It must be dreadful to spend his entire life lost in Visions and hallucinations. The monk was speaking again.

  “Does the Blood Red Game mean anything to you?” I leaped out of bed and pinned him against the wall, before he had a chance to get out of the way.

  “Where did you hear that phrase? Who told you to say that to me?” The monk spread his hands out against the wall, in a gesture of surrender. I had my arm across his throat - he could not s
ay anything even if he wanted to. Cautiously, I let him go and stepped back. He rubbed his throat and took a cup of water from the ewer on the chest at the foot of the bed. After a couple of coughs, he continued.

  “Bro - “ he coughed, and rubbed his throat again. He cleared it a couple of times, took another drink and then continued. “Brother Ambrosius,” he croaked. He was still having difficulty speaking.

  “I apologise,” I said. “Yes, that phrase means something to me - but at the same time, it means nothing. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know anything of a Blood Red Game. But every time I have heard it - until now - it has come from the mouth of something evil.” The monk nodded. He was about to speak again.