Awakenings

“Get behind me, Thom,” Thordin snapped as he advanced toward the screaming, howling things left behind as the flames of Rory’s initial assault subsided.

“How the hell am I–”

“Dammit, just do what I said.  Your wife will murder me if anything happens to you.  If your damn boots hadn’t been on the bloody ground a minute ago, I’d have sent you with the other two!”  Thordin brandished his weapon at the first of the battered skinchangers to emerge from the burning brush alongside the road.  “Now stay behind me and back me up.”

Thom uttered a heartfelt curse and sidestepped until he was half behind Thordin.  “This would work a hell of a lot better if I had something with range.”

“It’s not my fault you didn’t think to bring your wife’s bow!”

Howling a battlecry, Thordin launched himself at the skinchangers, Thom and Rory plunging in his wake.

•    •    •

Cameron shuddered at the sound of Thordin’s cry, now far behind them.  Damn.  I should be there, not running like this.  He glanced back at Jacqueline, riding half a stride behind him.  Her face was pale and drawn in the moonlight, her jaw set.

She was terrified, but she hated leaving as much as he did.

“They’ll be okay,” he shouted over his shoulder at her.

“They’d better be!” she snapped, her eyes narrowing briefly.  “I won’t forgive a single one of them if they get themselves killed!”

Something tells me you’d drag them all back from the other side just so you can give them a stern talking-to.  Cameron killed the smirk he felt forming and turned his eyes back to the road.

“Do you think we’ll make it in time?” she yelled over the sound of their horses.

Cameron swallowed bile and hoped he sounded more cavalier than he felt.  “We’d better!  We’re the only backup Phelan’s got.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

Their horses’ hooves ate up the frozen roadway beneath them for the next two miles before Thordin’s screamed and threw him.  As he somersaulted ass over teakettle through the air, he swore loudly, wondering in that fraction of a second before he was rudely introduced to the ground what the hell had made his horse behave like that.

Then he hit the ground with a bone-jarring crash and blacked out for a moment, coming to in time to hear Thom shouting for everyone to draw their weapons and draw them now.

“They’re coming from the left!  Brace and hold!”

Ribs aching and head ringing, Thordin heaved himself over and onto his side, staring through the sparse branches of the bush he’d landed in.  He could see eyes in the darkness, glowing dots of sickly green-gold light that made his stomach heave.

Oh hellfire.

“Light them up, Rory,” he wheezed, then coughed and spat, trying again.  “Light them up!”

Rory darted a look in his direction, then threw himself from the saddle and walked two strides from the others, a glow already beginning to wreath his hands and arms.

“Rory!  What are you doing?”  Jacqueline yelled.  She must not have heard Thordin’s weak shout.  She was further away than the rest, riding at the rear of the group.

“Dealing with a problem!”

Rory unleashed a gout of flame toward those eyes that glowed in the darkness and was rewarded with howls of pain.  Thordin started to struggle to his feet as Thom swung down from his saddle.

“Keep riding, Jac,” Thom barked.  “You and Cameron keep riding!  We’ll hold them here.”

“But Thordin—“

“I’m fine,” Thordin roared.  “Now ride, damn you!”  He loosed his axe from the sling across his back and waded toward the screaming skinwalkers.  “You’re the only hope he’s got now.”

Jacqueline gave him a terrified look, then dug her heels into her horse’s sides and plunged into the night.

Phelan stared at Leinth.  What the hell is she laughing at, anyway?

“Dare I ask what’s so damned funny?” he asked, not trying to hide the weariness in his voice.  He was tired.  He was tired of running, tired of fighting, tired of putting all the people he loved in danger simply by continuing to breathe.  “This isn’t something to be laughing about.”

“You try so hard to run from the people who love you, Wanderer,” Leinth said, shaking her head, her eyes tearing.  “You try so hard to escape safety and they’re all so damned loyal to you that they’ll throw themselves onto bloody pikes and worse to save your skin.  You don’t realize how lucky you are, do you?”

“I’m lucky to be alive,” he muttered.  “I’m lucky I haven’t gotten more of them killed. Damnation.”  He glared at Ériu.  “You shouldn’t have let them—”

“You shouldn’t have left,” the ghost said firmly.  “And please explain to me how I was supposed to stop any of them from doing anything.”

“I—”

“You shouldn’t argue with me right now.  I came here to warn you and I’ve done as I’ve been asked.  If harm comes to those children while I’m away from them, the cost we will all pay will be dear, assuming all of you live through the next few hours.”  She crossed her arms and glared at him.  “Do you want me to stay and watch whatever’s about to come next, or should I go and see to the safety of the next generation of heroes?”

Feeling drained, Phelan shook his head slightly.  “Go, Ériu.  Go and keep them safe and tell J.T. that I’m going to tear him a freaking new one when I see him again.”

The ghost smiled faintly.  “He’ll be happy to hear it.”

Phelan swore as she faded from sight.  “Of course he will be.”

Leinth had calmed and watched him impassively.  “Now you just have to keep that promise, Wanderer.”

“Yeah,” Phelan said grimly.  “I sure as hell do.”

They broke camp ten minutes later and rode hard, rode south, each cursing the darkness and the cold and the wind that stung faces, stung lips, and tore tears from their eyes as they pelted down the frozen roadway toward the friend that had decided all on his own that leaving them meant that they’d be safe.

•   •   •

                “Where is he?”

He hated how his voice shook as he asked her the question.  He hated that he still thought that she must be lying, if she’d been hunting for his cousin for as long as she said she had been—she must have some idea where Seamus was.

What he hated more was the pained look on her face.

“I don’t know, Wanderer,” Leinth said.  “I wish I did.  He would be safe if I knew where he was because he would be protected.  I would find a way to ensure that he was protected—better than you and yours could ever hope to defend him from what hunts him.”

“And everything hunts him,” Phelan said dryly, eyes narrowing slightly.  “Because nothing’s more tempting than the former Taliesin.”

“That is what I said.”  Her eyes narrowed slightly.  “You’re perhaps the most trying man I have ever met in my life, Wanderer, and that says a great deal because I loved Seamus and knew his brother, too.”

The back of his neck prickled, the hairs on his arms stirring.  Phelan went tense for a moment, looking around slowly, taking a deep breath and drawing a tendril of power from the ground beneath his feet up and into his staff.

“My mother used to tell him the same thing,” Ériu’s voice said dryly.  He caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and relaxed a fraction, frowning.

“What are you doing here?”

“The Spiritweaver asked a favor,” she said, as if that explained everything.  “So here I am, about to tell you again that you’re a bloody idiot and they’re angry at you for running away.  Oh, and Scandinavian bitches have sent their skinchangers for you again.  Cameron and Thomas and some others rode out after your sorry carcass.  It would be polite to be alive when they finally reach you.”

Leinth stared at the shade, her expression caught between annoyance and amusement.

When she started to laugh, Phelan wasn’t sure if he hated her or sympathized.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” he sighed.  “Just great.”

Now what am I going to do?

Another wolf called in the distance.  Jacqueline shivered, tugging her blanket closer.  “They’re getting nearer,” she said.  “Think the world ending’s just pushing their range further and further south because they can’t find enough food up in the UP?”

“Maybe,” Thom said, staring at the flames.

Rory frowned.  “You sure it’s not more of those skinwalkers coming after Phelan?  We can’t be that far, right?”

Thordin swore softly.  “Damnation.”

Jacqueline looked toward him.  “You don’t think that’s what those are, do you?”

“I hope not,” he said, lurching to his feet and heading for the horses.  “But in case they are, we need to get to Phelan first.  Before it’s too late.”

“Before it’s too late?”  Jacqueline swallowed the urge to swear herself.  “You really think they’re still hunting him?”

“I know that they’re still hunting him,” Thordin said, already re-saddling their horses by firelight.  “They won’t stop.  Those witches won’t stop until he’s dead or they are.”

“What the hell did he do to them that made them hate him so much?” she asked, pushing to her feet and watching as he finished with one horse and moved on to the next.  “Not that I’m not familiar with his ability to piss people off, but this is a little extreme, even by the standards of Cariocecus and—what was that other chick’s name?”

“You mean Menhit?”  Rory asked, watching the two of them.

“Yes, her.  That one.”  Jacqueline crossed her arms.  “I know he dealt with Vammatar, but she was trying to kill him—and all of us—before he did what he did.”

“I’m sure Vammatar’s death only has a very little to do with how much her sisters want Phelan dead.”  Thordin shook his head.  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say Phelan was the original Puck archetype—the inspiration for him.  I never knew all of the trouble he’d gotten himself into, but there was a lot.  I imagine that one of his misadventures was what won him this particular set of tenacious enemies.”

“So we’re going to ride out after Phelan in the dark and hope we reach him before the other people hunting him do?”  Thom asked, still sitting by the fire, arms crossed as he watched.  “Before those skinwalkers find him?”

“I don’t see us having much other choice,” Thordin said.  “Unless you want to bring home a corpse, we ride now.”

Thom sighed.  “Then I guess we ride.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.  “You know, just once I wish that one of you could show up and not utter some kind of ominous warning like that.  Or spew threats.  It’s always one or the other.  Why can’t anyone just pop in to say hello?”

Leinth just stared at him for a long moment.  “You’re trying to make light of the situation.”

“I am absolutely trying to make like of the situation,” Phelan said.  “Because if I don’t, I have a feeling I’m going to run screaming off in that general direction over there until I hit the lakeshore and find a way to drown myself.  At least then my fate would be in my own hands.”

“You’re the Taliesin!”  Leinth practically shouted.  “Your life and fate stopped being wholly yours to command the day you shouldered that mantle!”

“I didn’t have to,” Phelan said with stark honesty, staring back at her.  He took two steps away from the fire, two steps closer to her and the limits of his wardings.  “I did it for Seamus, so he’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of being happy.  I gave him what few choices he could make after he agreed to marry into your clan.  A great deal of good I did him, huh?  He died.  He was murdered.  Assassinated.”

“No,” Leinth said softly.  “No, Phelan, he was lost.  There’s a grave difference.  No one knows what really happened to him.  Not a single one of us.”  Pain hung heavy in her voice and Phelan almost—almost—winced to hear it.

“What the hell are you talking about?  He was killed.  They brought us his armor.  Your people brought us his armor.”

“And they blamed his supposed death on me, on my betrayal.”  A muscle in her jaw twitched.  “I would never have hurt him.  I loved him—more than my sister ever did and ever could.

“You and yours think me a traitor,” she said in a soft, shaking voice.  “But I’m not, Wanderer.  I’m not.  I never was.

“Whatever happened to Seamus the Black was not my doing.  I had nothing to do with his disappearance at all.”

“Then where is he?”  Phelan demanded.  “Surely you’ve been looking for him.”

“For centuries,” she snapped.  “And if you can find him, I’d damned well thank you for doing it!”

Phelan rocked back against his heels, blinking at both her and himself.

Do I actually believe she might be telling the truth?  Is Seamus alive?

Hell.  I do, don’t I?  I really do.

“Hell,” he breathed, then glanced toward the east.  “If he’s still alive—”

“Everything that hunts you and more will be after him.  The only thing more tempting than the Taliesin is the former Taliesin.”

Phelan swore and grabbed his staff, then stopped, realizing there was nothing to fight here.  This was one battle he couldn’t win.

Not here, anyway.  Not now.

But maybe someday.

Someday.