Curse of the Celts

by Clara O'Connor

  “Why are there so many, Callum?” I whispered to the bearded man.

  He slanted me a crooked smile in the moonlight, checking to see if anyone was near us before speaking.

  “Girl, you are the juiciest thing they’ve caught wind of in many years; they will pursue you to the gates of Avalon in high summer, if they must.”

  “That’s not very reassuring,” I returned. What girl being hunted by mystical slavering beasts that wanted to devour her would be pleased to hear that they would never give up?

  “I wasn’t aware you were looking for a bedtime story.” He laughed back, wincing as the movement tore at the injury slashing across his face.

  “What happened?” I asked, indicating the cut.

  His bearded face creased. “My lord steward was –” he paused, raising a hand to the tender wound “– he was disappointed to have missed you.”

  “Me?” I asked. Did he also know who I really was?

  Callum glanced at the other warriors walking behind us before shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “Marcus.”

  “Marcus plans to go to York. Why chase us?”

  “Because you’re running. He knows you travel with the Griffin, and he doesn’t know why you aren’t travelling directly to York. It makes the most sense – at least to him. The Anglians have the strongest army, and Marcus is the heir to their crown. As Marcus’s betrothed you would be safe there. As for Devyn, his fate is less certain, no matter where he goes.” He looked back at me. “Speaking of our friend of few words, where is the boy?”

  “We had to separate.” I wasn’t sure how much to reveal to Callum, but perhaps he could help. “He was poisoned and the hounds were coming. Bronwyn, his cousin, is with him, along with a handful of warriors, but they have to travel slowly, so we took a separate route to draw the hounds off.”

  “Poisoned? How?”

  I cast a dirty look at the tall man walking behind us.

  Callum raised a bushy brow so high it sought to meet the tattoo that ran along his hairline on the left side of his face.

  “Gideon?” he asked on an out breath. “Not really his style.”

  “Well, apparently it is.”

  “How?”

  “He put a dagger in him.”

  “Where was the hit?”

  “What?” I asked. “In the shoulder. What does it matter where the knife hit him?”

  “Well, if he wanted to kill him, why not take a more direct route and put it through his eye?”

  I shook my head, bile rising as I remembered the moment the dagger had sunk into Devyn’s shoulder. “Because he’s a lousy shot,” I threw behind me.

  “Humph.” Callum’s grunt indicated this was not his belief. “Gideon is many things, Cassandra, but he wouldn’t poison a blade. If he wants a man dead, he’ll do it with steel; he has no need for tricks. Tricks are for men who care what others think of their actions.”

  I thought back again to the scene; he had claimed not to have known of anything on the blade.

  “Gideon backs down to no man. Apologises for nothing. How do you think he ended up in a rival household as a teenager? If he hadn’t left when he did, either he or the steward would surely be dead by now.”

  “The Steward of York is his father?” My voice rose in my surprise. They had spoken before of Gideon’s father but my mind was a whirl and I hadn’t pieced it together.

  A growl came from behind us. “Are you two planning to gossip all the way through the night?” a sour voice asked. “It’s not like we’re being hunted by beings with supernatural hearing or anything.”

  Point taken.

  Callum and I fell silent, but my mind spun at the revelation that Gideon was the son of the Steward of York. York was no friend to Devyn, that much I knew. York had been pursuing us from the moment we left the city, but did they want Marcus in order to restore his crown or was the steward more interested in clinging on to power for himself? How had he known so quickly that we had left the city? What if he was somehow in league with the council? Was it crazy to consider the idea? Someone must have betrayed my mother to the city for them to have found her. Had it been someone here who had an interest in the balance of power being off? But why had she been so close to the imperial border in the first place? It made no sense.

  As to Gideon being an Anglian, was he a plant in the Mercian court? A boy sent to replace the friend that Rion had lost? Were we all caught in a web of York’s making? I didn’t know Gideon, and what little I did know, I didn’t like. I remembered his gentle touch when I had drawn in magic. Was it only yesterday? He had helped me. But he had also known who Devyn was when he threw that knife and now Devyn was dying.

  A howl ripped through the air.

  “Time to mount up.” Gideon’s low voice carried across the group.

  The horses had barely had time to catch their breath, much less restore enough strength to race across the dark countryside, but what choice did we have?

  Gideon stepped forwards and put his great paws around my waist, lifting me up behind Callum with ease. I scowled down at him as he released me, receiving a flash of white in reply. I was getting seriously tired of being manhandled by him.

  The hounds were coming and there were more of them. My heart thudded in my chest. At least now we had Callum and the other warriors, but I had no idea if it would be enough. Suddenly, I felt a pull come over me, a tug that called me to go right.

  “Callum, we need to go that way,” I whispered, pointing east.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He considered me gravely for a moment before he gave the order.

  We flew through the night, the barely rested horses surprisingly surefooted in the moonlight. Each howl raised the hairs on my flesh and flashes of the memory of slavering jaws only added to my terror.

  I held on to Callum’s solid torso and buried my head in his back, my stomach churning. What could I do? I had been useless last time, but this time surely I could be more help. I silently prayed to the world around us, the air, the earth, the water, as Callum had taught me. This time, I would not be defenceless.

  The howls were closer now, and while they were infrequent, they weren’t just behind us anymore. When the eerie hunting calls began to split the night, they were identifiably coming from different directions.

  One was directly behind, another, higher-pitched, to the right somewhere in the dark. Two more behind and to the left. One, now two more…

  “Callum, they… Was that one in front of us?” Were they now all around us?

  The road in front of us went uphill and the horses were visibly tiring, even as they too trembled at the sound of the hounds.

  We crested the hill and took in the sight of the Severn in front of us.

  A howl tore through the dark. Closer.

  No one said a word.

  I had led them this way. My mouth went dry. I had led all these men to their deaths.

  “Well, city girl, where to now?” Gideon’s voice was dry, rather than the castigating sneer I deserved. He was genuinely asking, as though I might have the answer.

  But maybe I did have the answer. The glitter of moonlight across the wide expanse of the river was a path and the path spoke to me. Not literally, not out loud, but it called to me and I had to follow it.

  Callum turned his head.

  “Girl?” he prompted.

  “I…” My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out. “To the river.”

  Another howl. Closer still.

  The lead warrior nudged his horse forward.

  “The river is suicide; we’ll be trapped,” he objected.

  “And yet, that is the way we go,” Callum stated flatly, and he started down the hill, Marcus and Gideon following closely behind.

  Was I losing my mind? The Anglian was right; I was leading us into a dead end. Yet I felt sure that this was where safety lay.

  As we approached the river, it became clear that we had stumbled upon a cr
ossing point, the road leading right up to the gravel bank. However, there was no sign of a ferry or footbridge.

  “It’s a ford all right,” Gideon said after leading his horse several feet into the rushing water. “In the summer, sure, but this late in the year, who knows how—”

  The howl was closer and I spotted two sets of twin red lights waiting unmoving on the other bank. Their vile stench came across on the wind. They had surrounded us.

  “I’ve counted four, maybe five behind,” Callum assessed.

  “Do we cross?” Marcus ventured.

  There were two on the far bank, and four or five behind. Surely twenty men could take on two of these things? We had managed to chase them off the last time, but back then, one had been injured and power had flooded my veins. But now, nothing. I commanded nothing.

  We stepped out into the river, the cold water swirling ever higher up the horses’ legs as they took each tentative step.

  One of the hounds in front was visible now, its white coat flashing as it stalked the water’s edge… waiting for us.

  Two more sets of eyes had become visible on the road behind, another appearing from the trees to our left as the rotting smell closed in on us.

  We were nearly in the middle of the river now and the water was as high as the horses’ chests so our legs were submerged in the icy waters. Yet here we were safe, I was sure of it. The river fairly sang to me to stay, stay.

  “Stop,” I whispered.

  My voice was barely audible over the babble and whoosh of the water, yet everyone stopped.

  A snarl came at us from the fourth hound on the bank behind us as he entered the water, his fellows following, spreading out as they came.

  The York warriors took position around us, their swords glinting in the moonlight as they waited for the hounds. The two beasts on the bank facing us grew tired of waiting and slipped into the dark water, their white heads visible as they made their way to us. They seemed to be swimming more slowly than I would have expected. Their path was clearly more difficult, the fight against the current on that side more challenging perhaps. But still, the flash of white and the glint of their eerily bright eyes came inexorably closer.

  The river pulled at my focus as the soldiers in the front drew closer together. One of the horses descending the bank behind us screamed as it disappeared under the water, its Anglian rider surfacing once and then disappearing into darkness. The water glittered where once the mounted warrior had been.

  There was a flash of white in the darkness of the bank and a horse reared. Another flash and more screams. The warriors still on the bank urged their mounts into the water, bunching together to close the gaps in the circle around us. The water suddenly seemed louder and there were more cries from behind. More men disappearing into the darkness. I was somehow calmed by the lulling rhythm of the river as it flowed past us, past this momentary disruption in the eternal flow from the hills and mountains towards the sea. Inevitable, timeless.

  I was barely aware of the hounds now; all I could feel, all I could hear, was the river. The Severn whispered to me of the hills, of the moon, and of its journey to the wide, open sea. The hounds were mere flashes of white, as were the pockets of moon reflected on the bubbling water’s surface that tugged ever more forcefully around the bodies of our horses. The current rushed by my legs, the drag pulling at the horses. Soon we all would be gone, taken by that current, washed away, lost in the darkness…

  Until it suddenly wasn’t there anymore. We stood in the middle of the rushing, foaming river, yet where we were had quietened to the glassiness of a pond. It was all still, so still.

  We were fewer now. Not everyone had made it to the waiting stillness. The hounds were now nearly impossible to see as they slipped into the river. There were fewer of us left to fight them off as we stood motionless and vulnerable in the water. And then all of a sudden a roar came towards us, a boom exploding upriver, a surge of water, and high on the surface of the river was a wave, endlessly frozen in an almost cresting state, coming straight for us, many feet high in the air. It would surely take us all, drown every last man and beast beneath its foaming wash, but from nowhere came a certainty that it wouldn’t. I slipped off the back of Callum’s horse.

  Calm, I was calm to my very soul, and the Severn was grateful for the power I had given it yesterday, welcoming of the magic I had drawn and then released, given back, to the water. Now, I stood in the icy depths and closed my eyes, savouring the purity of the exchange.

  The colossal wave whooshed by us, the heavy surge of the water going against the natural flow of the stream, and suddenly the hounds were tumbling and thrashing in the white water as its icy grip surged and pushed and sucked the vile beasts down, down into its depths. And then all of them gone. Gone. In moments.

  And the roar continued north, against the stream, carrying the beasts with it.

  Silence descended once more as the warriors scanned the banks. We were alone.

  “City girl.” Gideon said no more as he reached his hand down to pull me up and out of the freezing water.

  I blinked. It was over. The taut, pale faces of the warriors who remained circling us stared down at me. The river had saved us. I was cold and incredibly tired.

  I clasped Gideon’s wrist, and he hooked me out of the river and sat me in front of him in one fluid motion, leaving me sitting sideways rather than astride.

  We had survived.

  Three men had been lost though, taken by the river. But the river would take care of them, I knew. She would take them into the depths or return them to shore.

  I rested my head on Gideon’s chest as he pulled his cloak about me. My clothes were wet and heavy against my icy skin. He smelled of cedar and the leather of his moulded body armour. My eyelids felt so heavy and I let go…

  When I woke, it was to find myself stretched out on the ground in front of a fire, my cloak still wrapped around me. My clothes were dry, though I could still smell the tang of the river on them. Callum. His talents were with fire and air.

  I felt bone-tired.

  Marcus lay stretched behind me, his warmth against my back, and Gideon’s long legs stretched out to the fire at my feet. I followed them back to find him sitting up, contemplating me. Did he never sleep?

  “Are they gone?”

  He shrugged. “There has been no further sight of them.”

  I looked over to the dark huddled shapes of the York troops.

  “What happens now?”

  “Callum and his men are going to escort us as far as Castle Dinas Brân, and then he is going to York to tell my father of your miraculous return.”

  “What?” Why would he betray me like that?

  “Callum was given a clear objective to find Marcus and his girlfriend and take them to York and there is no reason he can’t follow through on that,” Gideon explained in answer to my dismay. “However, re-routing Marcus and his city girlfriend away from Cymru and taking them to York is one thing, but forcing the returned Lady of the Lake to do so… Well, I convinced Callum that that would perhaps not be the wisest course of action. If you want to continue deeper into Cymru, the price is revealing your identity.”

  “There has to be another way.” I wasn’t ready, wasn’t even close to ready. I had barely absorbed the news of my new status myself, but if Callum and Gideon’s reaction was anything to go by then as soon as this news got out…

  They would know. Everyone would know. That was what he was telling me. No more hiding. I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready to face the expectations that came with the title; I wasn’t sure I was prepared for any of it, especially as my magic was a long way from being something over which I had control.

  Bird calls were starting to chirp through the darkness, heralding the dawn. It was a new day. We had survived the night and I was going to meet Devyn, and telling my truth would allow us to do that. So, the truth they would have. Anyway, it would take a while for the news to arrive in York and spread. Maybe by then I
would be ready to face it.

  Callum and his remaining warriors rode with us for most of the day, only turning back just before we reached Devyn’s father’s home, where Callum assured me they would not be assured of a welcome.

  Callum had chosen not to tell the troop who I was; this was a piece of information he would reserve to deliver to the Steward of York himself. Even so, I had found myself the subject of many stares as we rode together through the countryside – contemplative, curious gazes that yesterday had focused on Marcus. They knew I had power. Did they wonder how or why? And would any of them manage to put the pieces together as Gideon had?

  “I will delay for as long as possible,” Callum assured us when we stopped in anticipation of our separation. I had ridden with Marcus, needing the comfort of his closeness, however false it was, to keep at bay the memory of the night before, the men and horses disappearing screaming into the night. The unnatural eyes of the hounds. The feeling of power that had surged through me as the Severn responded to the threat against us. “If I wish to keep breathing, I will have to explain why I let you go as soon as I arrive so I will endeavour to arrive slowly.” His broad smile flashed beneath his beard.

  He glowered in Gideon’s direction. “You keep her safe.”

  Gideon raised an eyebrow in my direction before a smirk tugged at his lips.

  “Of course, Callum. It is my pleasure and my duty,” he said formally, with a glint that belied his tone. Annoying man.

  Callum’s mouth thinned but he chose not to react, turning to me with some final advice.

  “Get to Rion as soon as you can. Once you are in Mercia, you are protected. Until then, you’re fair game. Whoever gets to you first will have the advantage, and their interests may not align with yours.” He glanced at Gideon. “York would use you, and the Albans would keep you. Londinium has agents this side of the border, and when they realise you are alive, they will be coming for you both. You should be reasonably safe here; Gwynedd and Mercia have long been allies, though Devyn’s return may stress those ties some. Best you keep who you are to yourself as long as you can.”