King of Dublin

by Lisa Henry

  Ciaran helped him down.

  “Thank you,” Rabbit whispered.

  Don’t thank me. Please, don’t thank me. Can’t you see you should hate me too?

  “Bend over,” Boru said. “Boy, you might want to hold him up so he doesn’t get a face full of gravel rash!”

  Not a kindness, Ciaran knew, but a way for Ciaran to participate fully in Rabbit’s rape. To hold him up, to hold him still as Boru hurt him. To embrace him as Boru fucked him. To make his own touch as repellent to Rabbit as Boru’s was.

  But still, Ciaran did as he was told, gathered the upper half of Rabbit’s body to his chest and belly while Boru took position behind him. “I like the sight of the two of you on your knees. Maybe after I take the virginity off this one, you can both suck my cock, see who earns his place in my bed?”

  “As it pleases you, Majesty.” Ciaran held Rabbit close, feeling him tremble. But for Ciaran’s part, he was almost relieved. Maybe this would be over soon, then. Maybe Boru just meant to fuck Rabbit as a formality, and then they’d move on. He wouldn’t have the tearing, the bleeding, the horrible pain that Ciaran had suffered for so long. Maybe it could be over quickly.

  Boru kicked Rabbit’s legs apart and laughed at the sound he made. “He whines like a bitch, too, doesn’t he? Like a real fucking dog. You didn’t whine, Boy.”

  Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember, really.

  “This one should wear a collar all the time,” Boru said. “Want me to scratch your belly, Bitch? Come on, wag your tail for me.”

  Rabbit’s face smeared against Ciaran’s chest, tears and snot, and he let out another half-smothered whimper. Ciaran didn’t shush him, thought if he tried it would only make things worse now.

  “Don’t know why they called you Rabbit when you’re so clearly a little doggie Bitch.” Boru pulled his cock out of his trousers. “Maybe I really will have your feet burned, or—oh!—nails driven into your heels, yes. Something permanent. So you can’t walk anymore, not ever. Stay on your hands and knees like a proper little Bitch.”

  Rabbit mumbled something into Ciaran’s chest, over and over. It took Ciaran a moment to understand what it was: “Can run real fast. Real fast.”

  “Don’t,” Ciaran said before he could stop himself. “Please, don’t.”

  Boru’s smile vanished. His face hardened. “What did you say to me, Boy?”

  “Don’t cripple him,” Ciaran said, while his brain scrambled for some twisted reason that Boru would believe. Would accept. Wouldn’t punish them both for. You’ll kill him before you use him up. You won’t be able to fuck him against a wall. You won’t be able to chase him around the bed and wrestle him down while he cries, like you loved to do to me once. Except, what came out wasn’t a reason at all. “He’s done you no wrong.”

  “No fucking wrong?” Boru’s face turned dark with rage. He grabbed Rabbit by his roped arms and hauled him away from Ciaran. Sent him sprawling into the stones, heedless. Then advanced on Ciaran. “You dare to tell me about my fucking grievances, you cunt?”

  Ciaran scrambled backwards, his back hitting the wall. “Forgive me, Majesty. I spoke out of turn.”

  Boru stood over him. “You always speak out of fucking turn, Boy! I would have cut your tongue out months ago if I didn’t like the sight of it on my cock so much.” He aimed a kick at Ciaran’s balls, and Ciaran was helpless to prevent the blow, unable to move, naked and small and pinned against the ancient, unmoving stone. The pain, the fear, flooded his eyes with tears. “Oh yes, I’ll keep you in my bed all right, and cut you apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left to fuck at all. Or maybe I’ll find some new holes to fuck as I go. Your eyes, maybe? Your guts?”

  Ciaran tried to crawl away. One hand scrabbled uselessly in the dirt. The other closed around something. A rock. Hard, heavy. Solid.

  I can run real fast.

  He stared across at Rabbit. No running now. No way out of here. If he did this, they were both dead men. Did Rabbit understand that? Rabbit stared back.

  “You filthy, fucking whore,” Boru leered, bending down over him. “The whole of Dublin will watch me take you apart. I’ll send the cum-soaked shreds of your body to your father in a shoebox.”

  Ciaran lifted his chin, panting heavily. “Fuck you.”

  The flash of surprise in Boru’s eyes was almost worth dying for, all on its own.

  His and Rabbit’s freedom most certainly was, however brief—Boru’s men would kill him for this. And Ciaran didn’t care.

  He raised the rock and slammed it as hard as he could against the side of Boru’s head.

  Night fell.

  Darragh had spent the hours leading up to dusk pacing, unable to smother thoughts of what was happening to Ciaran in the meantime. Every moment that passed, the fear and rage inside him expanded. A heady, furious combination he’d never felt before, not even when fighting off the wild dogs all those years ago. Those frantic, bloody memories paled in comparison to what was waiting for him now.

  It was the waiting he hated the most. But Noel had said night. If there was any sort of plan, it was for the night. To go blundering straight back there … Well, there was no telling how badly that might end. Except that was cold comfort indeed when he couldn’t stop thinking about how badly things must be going for Ciaran. At least, whatever was happening now, Darragh would be there tonight, there to save Ciaran, there to help him recover, there to set him free once and for all.

  If he was still alive.

  Darragh squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the image of Ciaran lying prone and bloodied in the grass, still wearing Boru’s gold at his pulseless throat. He couldn’t think like this. He couldn’t, or they’d lose this battle before it had even started. He needed to believe Ciaran was alive so he could have someone to fight for. Not the troubles of Dublin, not the rat queen and her traitor, not even the children of Garvan’s bandits.

  Ciaran. Ciaran was worth fighting and dying for. He always had been.

  How many of the bandits would come with him, Darragh didn’t know. They talked in circles, making their minds up, changing them, backing away from committing themselves. Except for the three who’d already given their word. Would three be enough? It was more than Darragh had any right to hope for, anyway. None of them really cared what happened to Ciaran, just like Darragh didn’t really care what happened to Rabbit. No matter. The one thing they agreed on was that Boru deserved to die, and that was enough. What was that thing that Maeve had read once in one of the books in the library? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It had seemed a strange, exotic notion. In Cúil Aodha they didn’t have enemies, not for more than an hour or two anyway. There weren’t enough of them to build factions, and there was always too much work to be done to hold grudges. Darragh hadn’t even known what an enemy was before he’d come to Dublin. He certainly knew now.

  When the shadows finally lengthened into dusk and the night began to creep in slowly behind, Darragh stood up from where he’d been sitting, wiped his palms on his trousers, and said, in a clear, quiet voice, “I’m going now.” Maybe he should have given a rousing speech, like he remembered from films, but he wasn’t that sort of man. Wasn’t a leader. Just a man who had given his word.

  The three bandits left with him.

  They didn’t speak on the walk back towards Newgrange, except for a quick exchange of names. Lee, the short man, and Thomas and Redmond. Lee carried a knife. Thomas and Redmond carried lengths of pipe. Darragh thought of the guns he’d seen in Dublin, in the hands of the king’s men, and wondered if the four of them had any hope at all.

  Except, when had Darragh had hope? Reasonable hope, anyway. Not when he’d lunged for Ciaran at Boru’s Sacrificial Games. Not when he’d run for him in the boot of the car at the bandits’ camp. It wasn’t hope that had pushed him to do those things. It was necessity. He would not leave Ciaran to suffer alone. Not ever.

  They walked silently, carefully, wary of ambush.

  Newgrange had vanis
hed into the night, leaving nothing behind but a gleaming band of stone that caught the scant moonlight. Darragh saw lamplight as well, but no fires. Boru and his men were settling in for a cold, dark night. Men flittered past the lamplight, black shapes. Still only eight? Impossible to tell. And in the darkness, impossible to see Ciaran. Darragh could only hope that he managed to keep his head down once the fighting started. To come this far only to lose Ciaran in the middle of the skirmish … Or even worse, to have him held hostage, and Darragh helpless but to surrender. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Boru’s men had the high ground and the vantage point to go with it. Darragh’s had the cover of the bushes and walls and the element of surprise. If the moon stayed under cloud cover, then maybe they could keep that until the last moment. And then what? Darragh had no idea. He’d never been a fighter, not by choice.

  Beside him, one of the bandit men fell to his belly in the wet grass. Darragh did the same.

  “We spread out,” the man said. Lee. “Get close as we can, then make some fucking noise coming in. Make ’em think it’s an army coming from all directions.”

  He waited for a moment. For dissent, Darragh realised. Maybe bandits didn’t give orders, or at least didn’t take them, without all agreeing first.

  “That illusion won’t last long,” Redmond whispered.

  “Surely won’t,” Lee agreed. “So take the fuckers down fast as you can.”

  “They’re tired and wet and they’ve got a bloodthirsty tyrant rapist for a king who Darragh says they don’t even like in the first place. Maybe they’ll see us and run.”

  “Maybe,” Darragh whispered.

  “Five minutes,” Lee said. “You hear me yell, you lot better join in.”

  They spread out, the bandits slithering away on their bellies into the tall grass. Darragh slid the knife out of his belt and held it at the ready.

  “Come back to the king’s camp tonight, and there’ll be trouble.”

  How much could he even trust Noel? The man had been waving a gun around at Milbourne Avenue, after all. Waving it around like he didn’t have the first idea how to use it. Which maybe should have clued a cleverer man in from the beginning. Noel hadn’t wanted to kill the rats.

  Not that Darragh had much of a choice but to trust the man. He had to save Ciaran, whether Noel proved his worth or not. Maybe the bandits were good enough fighters that they’d make up for the wild card Noel represented. After all, they had to have ambushed and robbed enough people in the past to have earned the name of bandits, even if they seemed peaceful now.

  Things had been so simple in Cúil Aodha. There was none of this deception that came so easily to people in the outside world. They had no use for it there. No violence beyond the simple and necessary brutality of killing for food. And, maybe, the occasional bloodied nose.

  For Ciaran, though, Darragh would be bloodthirsty. He remembered the adrenaline rush of the wild dogs. The others had depended on him, then. Ciaran depended on him now. He would be as bloodthirsty as Boru. As bloodthirsty, even, as the heroes of the old stories, the ones Ciaran still carried inside him like precious treasure. The ones from the old, mouldering books that were worth more to Ciaran than gold. That were worth his tears.

  Darragh drew a deep breath and held it until his hands stopped shaking. He could do this. He had to do this.

  Five minutes never passed more slowly in his life.

  Then, from some distance away, a shout—no, a roar—sounded. A war cry. A rallying cry. A call to arms. Darragh didn’t know which of the bandits had called out, but suddenly there they were, rising from the grass like ghosts, howling and screaming, their voices mingling with the shouts of surprise coming from Boru’s men.

  Darragh launched to his feet as well, tossing and catching his knife so he held it overhand. He threw all of his rage behind his own bellow, and the sound of it was like nothing he’d ever heard come out of his mouth before. He rushed the hill, running for the first human shape he saw. Not Noel, another man with a shaven head, holding a strip of dried meat, of all things.

  Darragh barrelled into him and knocked him to the ground. Brought his fist down before he’d even thought about it, that rage carrying him through, and buried the knife in the man’s soft side as easily as killing a rabbit.

  “Where’s Boru?” he shouted into the man’s face as he writhed, pinned and teeth gritted. Darragh’s hand was drenched in warmth. “Where’s Boru? Where’s Ciaran? Where’s Boy?”

  The man opened his mouth, but all that came out of it was a high, pained scream. Dying rabbit indeed.

  Darragh roared in frustration and tore his blade free. Then he was on his feet again, still running.

  The makeshift camp was in chaos. Shouting, screaming, men everywhere, but no Ciaran. No Boru. Someone was yelling for the king’s men to fall back, to regroup. Was it Michael? Darragh thought he recognised the voice. It certainly wasn’t the king himself; the man was no hero of old, no warrior king like in Ciaran’s stories, just some violent, petty, coward brute.

  There were two men—no, three—gathered now near the entrance stone. And another, loping towards them in the dark. One of their own or one of the bandits? Too dark to tell. Darragh ran towards them, clutching his knife. Were Boru and Ciaran inside? Is that what the men were guarding?

  Were they guarding anything at all?

  No way of knowing if he didn’t fight through them first.

  He brandished his knife as he approached. “Let me through!” The men gathered at the entrance turned, hefting makeshift clubs and even an axe. “Is Boru in there? Let me through!”

  The man with the axe turned. Michael.

  “Walk away, man,” Michael said. He hefted the axe, slapping his palm with it and giving Darragh’s pitiful blade a glance. “Walk away while you still can.”

  Darragh would have laughed if he’d had the breath for it. As if he had any choice in the matter. As if there were any power on heaven or earth, short of death, that would stop him from trying to reach Ciaran. “No.”

  Without warning, Michael lunged. The axe swung hard through the air, and Darragh fell back, barely avoiding taking the blade in the chest. Michael had the reach on him. There was no way he was getting through that axe with the measly knife Noel had given him. Had that been the plan all along?

  At Michael’s back, two men grappled with one another. One of the king’s men and Lee. They clutched each other, trying to hook one another’s ankles, fists swinging blindly.

  “That all you got, culchie?” Michael snarled and swung the axe again.

  Darragh twisted away, nearly tripping on the wet gravel.

  “Don’t you want your boy back? Not enough to die for?”

  A gunshot sounded, a crack like thunder echoing off the stones and sending birds crying from the trees.

  Lee fell in a crumpled heap. The man with the gun turned it on Darragh now. On one side of him stood Michael, grinning with his axe, and … Noel.

  Darragh panted for breath, clutching his knife.

  “I warned you not to come back, culchie,” Noel said, and there was a teasing note in his voice.

  No. Not warned. Invited.

  “Yeah, we fucking warned you,” Michael snarled.

  Darragh looked from Noel to Michael, and then back to the man with the gun.

  No sign of the other bandits. Just Darragh, and Lee rolling on the ground moaning in pain, and three of the king’s men. And beyond them, inside Newgrange?

  Boru. Ciaran.

  Hiding out? Had Boru gotten desperate enough to kill them both? Or just Ciaran?

  “Where’s Ciaran?” Darragh panted. Please. Please.

  “Always about the Boy,” Noel said. “I saw that in you the first day. Knew you’d be trouble.”

  Could he shoulder past them? He was bigger than all three. Could he knock them aside, leap the entrance stone? Maybe, but they’d easily catch up to him when he got to the narrower parts of the Newgrange passage. And once inside, he’d be
trapped at Boru’s mercy.

  “Please. Just take me to Ciaran. I give up. You’ve won.”

  Noel nodded. Approvingly?

  “Fuck you,” Michael said. He raised the axe. “You’ll die where you fucking stand.”

  “Hold now,” Noel said. “Boru himself will want to end this one. Put the gun down, Colm.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Michael snapped at the man with the gun. “Shoot the fucker. Shoot him, and I’ll take his head off to make sure he doesn’t pop up again.” He laughed cruelly.

  “Hold!” Noel roared.

  Colm looked between them, his hands shaking. Even if he fired, would he hit Darragh? They were too close to bet against it.

  “Colm,” Noel said, moving closer to the man. “Listen.”

  Colm turned his head to look, and Noel moved suddenly. He elbowed Colm in the face at the same time as he reached for the man’s wrist.

  Colm shouted. Michael half turned. Darragh leapt forwards, slamming the horizontal handle of the axe with his chest, using his body weight to knock both the axe and Michael backwards, closing the distance between them. He stabbed. The knife stuck, wedged free, stabbed again. Chest. Shoulder. The impact of blade on bone nearly broke his arm.

  Another shot rang out, but Darragh didn’t look. Couldn’t. He pushed Michael up against one of the standing stones. Why the hell hadn’t he dropped the axe yet? Darragh stabbed again. Felt the jarring blow all the way up to his shoulder.

  Pulled back.

  And again. The neck this time. The knife sank in easily. Michael fell backwards over the entrance stone and stayed down, except for his feet, which hung absurdly in the air.

  “All right, Darragh!” Noel called. “We’re good! John’s still out there, but he’s one of mine. Colm’s down, Michael’s down. We’ve got the mad bastard now.”

  Darragh’s heart pounded, blood rushing, body trembling. He flashed Noel a stunned grin.

  And then he heard Ciaran screaming.

  Darragh clambered over Michael’s bloody corpse and flung himself into Newgrange.

  Into the gloom and the oppressive narrow passageway.