The Absinthe Earl

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  God and Dana protect him, I agreed.

  “Miss Q, I fear I owe you an apology.”

  I turned to find that Finvara had drawn near. But Finvara was not in the habit of calling me “Miss Q.”

  “Duncan?” I said, searching his eyes.

  He offered a smile orders of magnitude dimmer than his usual brilliance. “Indeed, at last.”

  “I have missed you!” I cried, reaching for his hand.

  He laughed, squeezing my fingers. “And I you. But I have not really been gone. Only in a sort of prison.” He frowned. “Not unlike your own. I am sorry for my part in that.”

  “I fear Lord Meath was more to blame than you.”

  “Perhaps. But certainly, Finvara had planned it before receiving Edward’s note.”

  I couldn’t help feeling a fresh pang at this reminder of the earl’s betrayal. “Well,” I replied softly, “that does not much surprise me. And it makes little difference now.”

  “How, then, did you escape from Knock Ma?” he asked.

  “Billy Millstone.” I looked up at Death Rattler. The Fomorians were reloading their catapult. “It was a trap, but the poor fellow redeemed himself in the end. When this is over, I hope that I shall be able tell his story, for he deserves to be remembered.”

  I looked again at Duncan. “Have you banished him, then? The fairy king?”

  Duncan shook his head. “I have found my strength again, and that is all. He is with me. But I made him understand I would no longer be banished.”

  “I am glad,” I said. “I would not like to lose you. And we shall need him for the task ahead, if it involves spells.”

  “Aye, we shall.”

  I shifted my gaze west across the battlefield and all the way to the coastline, noting the continuing march of Fomorian reinforcements. The Irish army was holding its own, but I didn’t know how long that could last with this steady influx of fresh enemy warriors.

  “She comes,” said Duncan, and I followed his pointing finger. A white figure was indeed approaching swiftly across the countryside just north of the Fomorian procession. We lost sight of her as she veered around the north face of Ben Bulben, presumably to avoid the battlefield.

  “Let us be ready.”

  Enbarr soon joined us on the hillock, her sides heaving and lathered. We mounted at once and plunged back down the hillside, curving, as she had, around the north side of the mountain.

  Snow stung our faces as we rode back toward Sligo Bay. The scenery around us blurred, and I sank against Duncan for warmth.

  “We’ll make for Streedagh Point!” he yelled over the wind in our ears.

  Streedagh Point was the site of the Spanish shipwreck in the sixteenth century. It was situated at the near end of a narrow peninsula that ran parallel to the coastline. Its strand was sandy, with dark, craggy rock formations. Duncan stationed himself on a shale stack that looked like a ship’s prow pointed out to sea. I remained astride Enbarr on the sand just below. We were very exposed here, with the winter ocean all around us and dark clouds looming overhead. The snow was light but steady—icy white grains that made a pecking sound as they struck the sand and water.

  But the sea was quiet, and the sounds of the raging battle still reached us. I could see Death Rattler hovering above Ben Bulben and knew she was launching her deadly missiles.

  The queen’s ironclads were becalmed on the black and mirrored surface of the bay, their cannons and steam engines apparently defeated by magic. The Fomorian boats, propelled by oarsmen whose captains drove them by shouting commands, flowed effortlessly between and around the queen’s ships. Fomorian soldiers swarmed over the strand like ants over a dead wasp. A few of the Fomorian boats had been caught by grappling hooks thrown from the ironclads and were abandoned. Bodies shot with arrows lay sprawled inside these open vessels and on the shore. But it was plain that the queen’s fleet had been mostly ineffective.

  I glanced up at the shale stack and saw Duncan—or Finvara—on his knees, head bowed as if in prayer or perhaps deep concentration. I could hear his chanting tones but could make out only an occasional poetic phrase, such as “riders from the four directions” and “upon shale and strand.”

  After a few moments, I felt a new chill against my skin. Was a breeze picking up? I watched the fleet closely, holding my breath, afraid to hope. Did I imagine that flutter of white? The slight rocking of the closest ship’s hull? The creaking of masts?

  But soon I heard the distinct ruffling of sails, and sailors’ rising voices.

  He had done it!

  The breeze begat a wind, men shouted orders, and sails filled. The ironclads began to creep like giant beasts waking from hibernation. I watched with fevered anticipation as a vessel called Manannán picked up speed, seemingly on an intercept course with one of the Fomorian boats.

  I gave a cry of triumph as the larger ship broadsided the smaller, smashing through its wooden hull and driving it into one of its brethren, fatally wounding both ships.

  “You’ve done it!” I cried as Fomorian fighters hurled themselves into the sea.

  Two dozen ironclads were moving across the bay. I discovered that the water, too, was moving when a wave slapped the base of the sea stack. Enbarr whinnied and danced into the spray.

  “Easy, my lady,” I murmured, tightening my grip on her mane. “We’ll send you home soon enough.”

  With the wind filling their sails, the queen’s modern ships were more than a match for the feebler Fomorian boats, whose spears and other projectiles bounced harmlessly off the metal-sheeted hulls.

  “I’d give a great deal to be captaining one of those vessels!” Duncan shouted, laughing into the wind.

  His enthusiasm was contagious, and I was beaming when I turned back to see the growing gap in Balor’s stream of reinforcements. If Finvara could keep up his spell, no more Fomorians would be landing on the beach. And with the banshees healing Isolde’s wounded in the field, Ireland and her allies might gain an advantage.

  Looking again to Ben Bulben, I glimpsed something strange approaching from the north—almost like a rapidly moving fog.

  “What is that?” I wondered aloud.

  Cold crept along my spine, and I felt my ancestress’s dread before she spoke. The dead.

  At first, I could not understand it, but in watching the way the mass moved—like a flock of giant birds—I recalled a passage from my own thesis.

  The Sluagh, though a classification of fairy, are in fact a host of the restless dead. The souls of the unforgiven. At night, they are cursed to rise from their rest, gathering like flocks of geese in the sky. They circle the earth, especially at All Hallows, tormenting and frightening the living, until through forgiveness they find their release.

  The host picked up speed and swooped down over the battlefield. Individual figures dispersed from the fog and plummeted to the earth one by one, their corpse cries cutting shrill above the din of battle. As each shadow figure swooped up again into the clouds, it released something that fell quickly back to earth.

  By the horrible cries that accompanied these maneuvers, I understood that the Sluagh were dropping soldiers to their deaths.

  These beings were so numerous, they were an army unto themselves—hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more. Soldiers fell like fruit from a shaken tree.

  “We must do something!” I said. “Can they be killed?”

  But I knew the answer: they were dead already.

  My mind was struggling to make an important connection. I sensed it, but horror had frozen my intellect.

  An army unto themselves, I thought. No mortal man can oppose an army of the dead.

  Then suddenly, it came to me.

  “Duncan!” I cried. I gripped Enbarr’s mane, and she began to skitter and dance in readiness. “Duncan!” I shouted over the noise of the waves. “I must go! Will you be all
right?”

  “Aye!” he called, and I could hear in his voice the exhilaration of battle. “I will find my own way back!”

  With that, I threw my leg over Enbarr, which hiked my skirt up almost to my waist, and dug my heel into the mare’s side until she spun about and galloped back toward the battlefield.

  Hurtling at top speed across rough ground had been hard enough when I was anchored by Duncan. Now I clung desperately to the mare’s lathered neck, closing my thighs against her broad back, praying I would keep my seat. But Enbarr had a practiced, even gait and was never tripped up by stone or loose earth.

  When I rejoined Isolde, I, too, was clammy with sweat, and a few moments passed before I could catch my breath enough to do what was needed.

  The queen was peppering me with questions, but I shut out her voice, and as soon as I could speak, I called to the death mourners, who still kept a respectful distance from the queen.

  “Gather your sisters,” I ordered. “Then show those bedeviled souls their way home.”

  As soon as I gave this command, the banshees left us, swarming out over the battlefield.

  The queen stood at Enbarr’s shoulder. I could feel her impatience, but to her credit, she watched and waited. Up close, the Sluagh were even more dreadful, with shrieking, broken-toothed maws, gaping eye sockets, grizzled hair, and the talon-like fingers of those long in the grave. It sickened me to think of the terrifying last moments of their victims.

  May I not have been wrong, I prayed breathlessly, still gripping Enbarr’s mane in my two fists.

  The banshees formed an active cloud, as small winged insects do, and when the cloud first enveloped some of the ghastly Slaugh, the figures went rigid. Then they shot across the sky like falling stars.

  “Huzzah,” murmured the queen in a tone of curious surprise, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  The keening women maintained their cloud-like formation and moved with more purpose than I had yet seen. They caught up a dozen or more of the dead at a time, and the ranks of the Sluagh began to thin. Were the banshees healing or merely banishing? I wondered.

  Both, let us hope.

  Soon, the departing Sluagh were more numerous than those still hunting, their forms leaving blue trails of light against the clouds behind them. It made me think of the storm of the Leonids that had happened in my grandparents’ time.

  “Nicely managed,” said the queen, and I was surprised to find her earnest and thoughtful as she continued to observe this strange release of souls.

  But it was not to last. “What news of my ships, Miss Q?”

  I had to lower my gaze to look at her from the back of Enbarr, yet I still managed to feel small. “The ships are again sailing, Your Majesty. Duncan has blocked the flow of reinforcements.”

  “Excellent!” She clapped her hands together as she stared out over the field. “Between Diarmuid’s sword and your healing women, I think we shall turn this around.”

  I followed her gaze and located the earl, still cutting through the enemy. It was clear how the Danaan warrior had earned his reputation. I wondered, would we have to kill every last one of them? Or was there hope of surrender?

  A shadow passed over the battlefield then. It drew my attention because there was no visible ray of sun. The shadow belonged to the Morrigan, whose crow form circled just beneath the low clouds.

  The hair at the nape of my neck stood up, and a bolt of silver lightning forked down from the sky. I screamed as it struck the ground where I’d last spotted Edward, and for a horrifying frozen moment, I saw him suspended above the field, arm raised, Great Fury glowing with hot blue light—as if he wielded the lightning itself.

  Then the flash was gone. Aughisky shrieked and reared, and the earl toppled and slumped to the ground, his enemies closing around him.

  Without thought, I kicked Enbarr and pounded down the hill with the queen shouting after me. I screamed orders at the banshees.

  The thunderous approach of Enbarr was enough to stun enemy and ally alike, and a path opened before us.

  I jumped from Enbarr’s back, tumbling to the ground and landing hard on one hip at Edward’s side. Ignoring the stab of pain, I grabbed Great Fury and scrambled to my feet, swinging the weapon in a circle around us.

  “Get back!” I shouted, my voice raw with fear and fury.

  The Fomorians flinched back as the sword flashed. They hissed and spat, taunting in a language I could not understand. But I knew that it was a language of menace, vengeance, and death.

  I felt the pulse of power in the weapon I held. It wanted to cleave and rend, and so did I. Even now the enemy warriors were pressing closer. Two Irish soldiers managed to break in among us, but they were viciously cut down by an ax-wielding goblin with corpse flesh and bloody fangs.

  I swung Great Fury in a violent arc, and a goblin hand, ornamented with spiked rings, dropped into the mud while what remained of the owner’s arm sprayed me with silvery blood.

  Before I could lift the sword again, the fist of another goblin smashed down on mine, knocking the weapon from my hands.

  I felt the strange stirring of the air as the first banshee reached me. “The death song!” I commanded.

  The woman was young, with luxuriant black hair that reached to her bare feet. Her dark gown of mourning was of rich cloth, like a garment made for nobility. Her delicate chin tilted back, and she let out a keen that rolled forth like a herd of wild horses over the battlefield. Every creature in our vicinity stumbled to its knees, heads falling upon breasts, some even dropping their weapons. I could feel their despair—it pulled at me too—but I forced myself to kneel at Edward’s side.

  I bent low, turning my ear to his lips. His flesh was pale, his breath gone. I laid a palm against his chest, which was quiet and still.

  “Diarmuid!” I shouted, channeling despair into a broken and pointless rage. “What kind of god are you?” Raising my fist, I brought it down hard on his leather breastplate. Pain coursed through my hand, but I raised it again, and tears streamed down my cheeks as I beat at his lifeless body.

  When my strength was spent, I fell across his chest. My body heaved with sobs, and suddenly, he jerked beneath me.

  The gray ladies then pressed in close around me and raised their voices in the healing song.

  Edward’s eyes opened suddenly, and he looked questioningly into my face. His chest filled and emptied, and laughter escaped my lips. It was a giddy and half-crazed noise, I knew. The swings in emotion, made extreme by the supernatural mourners, had unhinged me. He took my hand in both of his and whispered soothing words that I could not focus on well enough to understand.

  The moment the keeners fell silent, the enemy began to revive. Edward grabbed Great Fury and sprang to his feet, pushing me behind him. I stayed close, watching for a chance to grab a fallen weapon. But we could not last—not like this, without Aughisky to keep us above the fray. Enbarr, too, had fled in the chaos, and the earl was handicapped by having to shield me.

  In this moment of desperation, I thought to call again on the banshees for a temporary reprieve, but then I saw the great battle crow swooping down on us from above. She alighted on a hill of fallen warriors that we had backed against for protection.

  Without words, she called to us, offering a chance to end this. We could not trust her—I felt it keenly. But before I could speak, Edward had lifted me onto her back and climbed up behind me. The Morrigan’s wings swept open, and she carried us above the battlefield. Edward raised his sword, deflecting the spears and arrows that reached after us.

  As we winged over the battle, I watched Danaan warriors close in around the knot of enemies that had threatened us, and I saw that the queen’s line had shifted to the west.

  “The tide is turning, Edward,” I spoke urgently. “We need not agree to be a part of her schemes.”

  “I am not sur
e we shall be given a choice.” His voice was low and hard. I could not have said whether it was the earl or his ancestor who spoke.

  We were passing now over the hill from which Isolde was directing her army. From above, the queen was vulnerable. One of her generals had joined her, and her personal guard kept watch just below, but none of them could stop a lightning bolt.

  “That lightning strike was no coincidence,” muttered the earl, whose thoughts seemed to be running in a similar vein.

  Even had the Morrigan not intended to threaten the queen, we had accepted the war goddess’s offer of assistance on the battlefield, and now we would face the consequences.

  “Are you injured?” asked Edward.

  “No,” I assured him. I thought some small bones in my hand had been crushed in the fight, but since the healing song of the banshees, I felt no more pain. “I lost my head for a while,” I admitted, grimacing as I recalled the relish with which I’d bloodied my enemies. “I did not know myself.”

  He grunted dismissively. “What you did was succumb to battle fever. What you did was fight fiercely, and then you saved my life.”

  Fierceness having fled me now that the immediate danger had passed, I glanced self-consciously over my shoulder. “How could you know that?”

  “Have you forgotten I am half immortal, with a shadow in another world?” He studied me intently, the light of the Danaan burning bright in his countenance. “I know that you fought the Fomorians to protect me, and I know that it was you who called me back into my body.” He bent closer, speaking into my ear. “I know that had you stayed locked away in Knock Ma, I would still be lying lifeless on the battlefield.”

  Something that had been holding taut within me released, but I had no time to consider his words or reply. The Morrigan had carried us to the tabletop summit of Ben Bulben. We slid down from her back onto the rocky ground and watched as she assumed her womanly form.

  “How may we further amuse you?” the earl asked darkly.

  Her black lips split into a cheerless smile, and we heard a roar behind us. Balor had disembarked from Death Rattler with his Fomorian guard and now led a charge across the mountaintop.