The Red Winter

by Henry H. Neff

  The gae bolga had failed him only once. On that occasion, it had grown heavy and cold, as though reluctant to harm the enemies he’d been fighting.

  Those very enemies were outside.

  Or inside.

  “Where’s your armor?” asked Scathach, taking up her spear.

  Max tapped his chest, where a corselet of nanomail was concealed beneath his clothes. He was rarely without it, or his enchanted ring that would burn whenever demons were near. Shouldering their packs, the two made their way downstairs.

  Cooper and Hazel were waiting by the cellar door with Bellagrog.

  “Hurry!” hissed the hag. Unlocking the cellar, she pressed the ring of keys into Max’s hands. “Cooper says there’s trouble and you needs a way out quick. We gots two. One pops you out a spell down the road. The other leads west, into the woods.”

  “West,” said Max. “We want the river.”

  The hag pointed at a bronze barrel key. “That’s the one. You’ll need it this side and the other. Door’s in the root cellar. Back wall behind the potatoes.”

  “How long’s the tunnel?” asked Scathach.

  “Quarter mile. Maybe more.”

  Max looked at Cooper. “What are you going to do?”

  Before he even finished the question, the Agent’s appearance rippled and changed into a mirror image of Max. Cooper was an unparalleled phantasmal—an expert at illusions. The false Max gave a wry smile. “I’m gonna give ’em a tour of the countryside.”

  “They have that magic compass,” Max reminded him. “The one you used to find me when I was in Prusias’s dungeons. The needle always points toward me. They’ll know they’re following the wrong person.”

  Cooper disagreed. “Who uses a compass once they spot what they’re looking for? With luck, you’ll be far away when they finally figure it out. If there’s trouble, we’ll send up a flare. Godspeed.”

  Hazel embraced Max and Scathach. “Send a message to Richter once you’re safely away. She’ll get a message to us.”

  “Enough dawdling,” huffed Bellagrog, urging Max and Scathach down the cellar steps. “You’ve brought me a heap o’ headaches, Max McDaniels. But I always thought well of you. Your daddy, too.”

  Max kissed the hag’s cold wet cheek. “Thank you, Bellagrog.”

  With a teary snort, the hag shooed him away. “Be off with ya. And if trouble comes, give it a kick from the Shropes!”

  Down they went into the dark cellar, their boots scraping on the worn brick steps. Flicking his fingers, Max conjured a glowsphere that bobbed just ahead, illuminating stacked barrels and cheeses, cured meats, and jam jars. In the back was a small room piled high with carrots, beets, and potatoes.

  Max shoveled the potatoes behind him, revealing a square iron door set into the thick stone. Using Bellagrog’s key, Max pulled the door open and peered after the glowsphere as it drifted down the tunnel. “It’s going to be tight.”

  The two crawled swiftly, shuffling ahead on knees and elbows. In some places they could crouch; in others they had to squeeze past tree roots that had broken through the surrounding brick. Max’s face was slick with sweat. Within his pack, Nox mewled.

  “Almost there,” he grunted.

  They wound left for some ways before the glowsphere revealed a straightaway. Here, the tunnel widened and began to slope upward. Max could see chests and barrels—emergency supplies—stacked on either end of another iron door. He hurried toward it.

  “Wait,” hissed Scathach as Max fit the key into the lock. “If they didn’t follow Cooper, they could be outside. Let me go first.”

  Shaking his head, Max drew the gae bolga. It hummed as it left the scabbard, its handle warm as blood. Unlocking the door, Max pushed. The ancient hinges groaned as they gave way, spilling pebbles and mud into the tunnel.

  Gripping the blade, Max stepped out from a hillside into a dark glade. The woods were almost silent. This was odd. While they’d gone some distance, the party at Shrope Hovel had been in full swing. Surely they should hear some distant music or laughter. But they did not. The festivities at Shrope Hovel had evidently stopped.

  The air was clear and shockingly cold. Drizzle had given way to tiny snowflakes that twirled and floated like ash from a forest fire. Indeed, the sky looked as though a great fire were raging somewhere far off. The sun should have set long ago, but the night remained a dull, lifeless red.

  Emerging from the tunnel, Scathach took one glance at the sky and made a sign against evil. “The Devil walks abroad.”

  Max locked the tunnel door. “Devils we know. Come on. The river shouldn’t be far.”

  The sky’s unusual, furnace-like glow was unsettling but it also lit their path. The pair ran, swift as deer, through the woods. Their footfalls made no sound; no birds cried out at their passing. They were two shadows racing against the wind.

  They’d run almost fifteen minutes when Max saw the river. It was half a mile ahead, a glittering snake winding through the dark hills. Behind them, a bloodcurdling howl tore through the woods.

  Max turned to see a fountain of screaming red flares rise above the forest canopy. At this distance, they looked like celebratory fireworks. But they were not.

  “That’s Cooper,” Max panted. “They’re coming.”

  Scathach tugged his arm and the pair kept running. Down the wooded slope they went, leaping over bushes and rocks that funneled them down to the last open stretch of country before they reached the woods that lined the river.

  Nox yelped as Max took the final leap over the misty riverbank. He landed with a splash in the shallows, surefooted on the stones and silt. The river was not the biggest Ormenheid had sailed, but it would do—the longboat had a shallow draft and could skim along in just a few feet of water. Max tossed the tiny ship out onto the river.

  “Skīna, Ormenheid.”

  The magic ship did not drift with the lazy current but remained precisely where Max had thrown it. Like a tiny serpent, Ormenheid wriggled and flailed, lengthening and growing at a prodigious rate. Rising proudly from the water, the ship’s hull stretched sixty feet from its tapered tail to its dragon-headed prow. Max and Scathach waded out to it, slipping between the oars extending from its sides.

  Tossing his pack aboard, Max pulled himself over the side even as the sail was unfurling from the ship’s single mast. Scathach was already on deck, a gray silhouette among the mists rising from the warm river into the wintry air.

  As Max set Nox upon the deck, a tiny golden light zoomed from the woods. Looping around his head, the zephyss hovered by Max’s ear like a bothersome mosquito. A voice was coming from it—Hazel’s breathless, panicked voice.

  “Run, Max. They have some weapon just for you. We’ll try to hold them off, but you have to run!”

  As Max went to draw the gae bolga, Scathach seized his wrist.

  “No,” she pleaded. “Listen to her.”

  “I’m not going to let them die trying to save me.”

  “The Atropos don’t want them,” Scathach hissed. “They want you!”

  Max seethed. “Leita Ellan Vannin,” he snarled, setting the ship’s course for the Isle of Man. As the ship eased forward, Scathach released his wrist.

  “Rowan’s needs come before your pride.”

  He nodded, but glared at the shrouded shore and the hunched, twisting willows that lined its muddy bank.

  Cries shattered the silence as birds took sudden flight from the trees, flapping and cawing into the night. Something was tearing through the woods, snapping branches as it neared the river.

  One of the Workshop clones emerged, dark and huge. One hand gripped a saw-bladed spear; the other held a small compass. Gazing up from its needle, the clone’s eyes fell first upon the Ormenheid and then upon Max. He trotted along the riverbank, keeping pace as the ship gained speed.

  “Was that your friend back there?” he called. “He was good! Not a whimper when Omega caught him.”

  Max said nothing. A grin spread across the
clone’s handsome features. He beckoned. “Come ashore, brother. I won’t make you suffer. I’ll even console the girl—”

  A blur slammed into the clone’s back, knocking him off the bank. He fell into the river, entangled with something ferocious. Cooper’s pale, bloodied face emerged from the water. The Agent’s body was wrapped tightly about the clone, one arm clamped about the assassin’s throat while the other strained to drive his kris home.

  But the clone recovered. Seizing Cooper’s wrist, he held the Agent’s blade at bay. Cooper gasped and strained with effort, but his opponent was much too strong. There was a hideous crack as Cooper’s wrist snapped. Instantly, the clone seized Cooper’s other arm and flipped the smaller man over his shoulder. The pair toppled, their struggles churning the water to red foam.

  “Max!” Scathach shouted.

  He turned just in time to see another dark figure burst from the forest and leap from the riverbank some fifty yards away. It landed near Ormenheid’s prow in a tangle of black hair and skeletal limbs only to pop onto its feet more nimbly than a cat.

  The assassin bounded toward Max on twos and fours like an animal. Its eyes were dead black pools, its lips bared in a broken, jagged smile.

  Scathach intercepted him, her spear slashing across the assassin’s face even as her form faded to smoke and shadow. With a snarl, the clone parried the attack with one long knife and spun about in an attempt to bury the other in her back. But Scathach was quicker, slipping inside his reach to sweep his legs out from under him.

  Instantly, the clone was back on its feet, its blades twirling and slashing as it sought to break Scathach’s defense. But in this game, it was overmatched. Again and again, she parried or redirected his blows, driving the clone back in a furious counterattack.

  Her spear struck home with a clap of thunder. The clone slammed against the masthead, clutching its ribs and the broken remnants of a knife. With a howl, it sprang onto the mast, climbing with spiderlike ease.

  “He’s mine,” said Scathach. “Help Cooper.”

  Max had already leaped over the gunwale.

  He ran swiftly on the river’s surface, a feat Scathach had taught him in the Sidh. Once again, the gae bolga seemed reluctant to battle the clones. The blade weighed heavy and cold in his hand, an unwieldy length of dead metal. But willing or not, its edge was still sharp.

  Somehow, Cooper had broken free of the clone’s grasp. A dome now surrounded the Agent, a shield of swirling, rushing water that turned aside the clone’s spear as he slashed and hammered against it. Cursing with rage, the clone forced his hand through the churning barrier and grasped at the hazy figure within.

  Checkmate, thought Max.

  Cooper popped up behind the clone even as it realized the hazy figure was an illusion. In a blur, the Agent drove his kris’s point toward the assassin’s throat.

  The clone moved so fast it seemed that time skipped a beat. Cooper’s blade never struck home. Catching his opponent’s other wrist, the clone snapped it like a dry twig. With a howl, he seized the Agent by the throat and lifted him off his feet.

  The water shield disappeared, sinking back into the river as Cooper’s body went limp. The clone was throttling him like a terrier might shake a rat. Max would never reach him in time.

  “NO!”

  As the cry sounded, invisible hands yanked Cooper out of the assassin’s grasp. The cry had not come from Max, but from Hazel.

  The teacher stood on the riverbank, muddied and sobbing with rage. Behind her, whole trees were uprooting, their trunks twisting and cracking as they surged up and out of the soil. As her husband’s body floated toward the bank, her face twisted in a scream.

  “Ignis!”

  The writhing willows erupted in bright flames. Descending the riverbank, they strode into the river, marching toward her husband’s assailant like a platoon of massive infantry.

  The clone barely saw Max coming.

  Only his reactions saved him. The clone turned at the last instant, his spear redirecting Max’s blow just enough to save his head. Even so, the gae bolga sliced clean through its shaft to cleave the face behind it.

  The clone had not even gasped before Max struck him again with the gae bolga’s pommel. The impact shattered the clone’s nose and sent him reeling backward. Seizing his breastplate, Max held him up and swiftly reversed his weapon for the kill.

  But the gae bolga refused.

  Time and again, its point shied from the clone as though a magnetic repulsion existed between them. Its intended victim laughed, his voice thick with blood.

  “It knows its own!”

  The clone’s hand clamped upon Max’s throat like a vise. As he squeezed, there was an explosion of pain followed by numbness. For a moment, Max merely blinked at the river’s surface. The water was trembling, dancing with firelight as the trees drew closer. Squeezing harder, the assassin forced his head up so that Max had no choice but to stare into that bloody, leering face. The clone leaned close.

  “Atropos a-kultir veytahlyss!”

  Atropos cuts your life’s thread.

  A frantic rage overcame Max. Grabbing the clone’s hand, he pried it off his throat and forced it back. The two were at a stalemate, locked in a furious struggle as each sought to overpower the other. Meanwhile the earth was shaking. The trees were almost upon them, hissing and crackling as their burning limbs stretched forth.

  Blood was pounding in Max’s ears. He knew the trees were close. He knew they might crush him as well as the clone. But he couldn’t let go. The clone was weakening—he could feel it. He had to finish.

  Something cut through the drumming in his ears. A shout—a scream! Hazel? Who?

  “MAX!”

  The voice was Scathach’s.

  He turned just as the other clone slammed into him. The impact knocked Max off his feet. River water choked his lungs as the second clone wrapped himself about Max like an octopus. Its teeth sank into Max’s neck, worrying the flesh like a rabid animal while a hand yanked up Max’s corselet. Twisting away, Max regained his footing and broke the water’s surface just in time to glimpse the knife.

  It wasn’t iron or steel, but a wedge of chipped and sharpened stone. Something ancient. Something evil.

  When the blade pierced his side, the universe seemed to shatter.

  Ormenheid sailed west. Its oars skimmed little rivers until they merged with wider waters that would lead it to the sea. Scathach sat near the mast, huddled in a storm cloak on the icy deck.

  Beside her, Max lay bound and restrained within a cocoon of blankets. Nox lay beside him, her coppery eyes trained upon her steward. Now and again, she’d mewl and nuzzle his pale face, anxious for a response that did not come.

  Scathach was grateful Max was sleeping. She was grateful he still existed. She would never forget what had happened a few hours ago. It was seared into her memory.

  When the clone tumbled over Ormenheid’s side, Scathach thought she had finished him. Valuable seconds had passed until she spied a ripple beneath the water, a ripple streaking toward Max. She had shouted—screamed!—but Max had been battling the other clone. Only at the last second did he seem to hear her. And by then it was too late.

  The instant the assassin struck, there had been an explosion—an eruption of light and heat and sound. The river had boiled. Hazel’s trees had disintegrated. The Ormenheid had been hundreds of yards away, but even it nearly capsized from the shock wave. Only Max remained in its wake, his body floating in the hissing water, his hand still clutching the gae bolga.

  There had been no sign of Hazel or Cooper, or even the clones. Turning Ormenheid around, Scathach went to retrieve her love, almost numb with guilt and grief. Max was not moving. The wound at his neck was relatively minor, but the gash across his stomach was like a jagged smile gushing blood like a spring. She nearly despaired until she saw Lugh’s brooch.

  It was clasped to his baldric, a disk of carven ivory that looked red in the bloody, steaming water. If the brooch
remained, so did Max’s spirit. Her love was still alive, still present in this world.

  He had screamed when she pulled him into the boat. Screamed as though every nerve was afire. He did not seem to see or know her. Blinded with pain, he scratched and scrabbled at his stomach like a wild animal. He had only made his injury worse, tearing the wound as though he hoped to dig it out, to expel its very presence.

  “Morkün i-tolvatha!”

  Die and be damned. The words came from the western shore, faint and distant. But there was no mistaking the note of triumph in that voice. At least one of the assassins had survived.

  When Max heard the words, he went berserk. He fought Scathach in an effort to rise and pursue the speaker. She had to restrain him, bind him with one of Rowan’s passive fetters so she could tend to his wound. With a single, convulsive gasp, he’d lost consciousness.

  She had stitched the wound as he slept. The cut was ugly, but not particularly deep—no vitals had been pierced. But it would not stop bleeding. Time and again she staunched the wound only to see red rivulets creep out from between the stitches and dribble down his side. Max was deathly pale, his body burning up with fever.

  Scathach boiled water. Into it, she sprinkled dried leaves and herbs—agrimony and adder’s tongue, figwort and foxgrove—that swirled together, sending up trickles of steam that brought the lymrill sniffing at the kettle.

  The Sidh maiden was not a witch or a healer, but she knew some of the old rhymes and riddles that the wise chanted when wounds were grave and time was scarce. These she spoke, along with other, more personal pleas, to any old gods or spirits that might be listening.

  Boiling down her brew, she separated its contents into a brackish tea and sticky paste. She tipped the former down Max’s throat and smeared the latter on his injury before wrapping it with linen strips she’d torn from a shirt.

  For the moment, she’d done what she could do. She was weary, but there would be no rest—not until she found the Fomorian. Even if Max were not in such a state, Scathach would have found it hard to sleep beneath such a sky.