Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
LOCKE
Locke lay awake for a long time that night, stretched out in the grass, staring unseeingly at the glistening canopy of stars above him.
It had been soundless, the horrific specter of his people’s slaughter which Rory had forced him to watch, but it didn’t matter.
He could hear them anyway – their screams, their cries for a mercy that would not be granted to them, their retching and their moans, the squelch of steel into their skin.
He could still see them too – their ethereal gray faces distorted with agony and fear, shadowy limbs twisted and contorted on the ground.
Nothing, he had thought, could ever be more horrific than watching Rory torture his cousin into madness, but he'd been wrong – this had been far, far worse.
He flipped over onto his stomach, shoulders shuddering.
All those people – soldiers sworn to serve under his father’s rule, women and children, the old and the young. His people, whom he had failed.
He remembered when the news reached him, years ago now, of the skirmish near Inis Córthaidh.
He remembered standing tight-lipped in the corner while Lord Ironstring read the letter aloud from Pendreghast, the careless recitation of the massacre given in such a bored, offhand tone – a small rebellious force, the general had said between sips of his wine, not even three hundred men.
“Utterly annihilated,” he’d said, lip curling under his black beard.
“Idiotic fools, the lot of them.” Then he’d crumpled up the letter and tossed it aside, returning to his roasted mutton and his strategizing with his councilors without another thought for the men and the women and the children who had died screaming under his soldiers’ swords.
And Locke, just like his father, had said nothing.
He rolled back over, hissing through his teeth.
“Can’t sleep?”
Locke sat up swiftly, hand flying to the knife strapped to his side, when he heard the low, smooth rumble of the bárd’s voice behind him. “Watch yourself,” he snapped, shifting around to face him head-on. “Good way to get stabbed, sneaking up on a man like that.”
Even through the midnight gloom, Locke could tell that the bárd was wholly unconcerned. “You are wise to be on your guard,” he said. “There’s a heaviness in the air tonight – an anticipation.”
“Anticipation of what?”
The bárd merely turned away, hands clasped behind his back. “Sleep soundly, Lord Locke,” he said. “If you dare.”
Locke scowled at his retreating silhouette, then heaved himself to his feet and stalked towards the sound of the churning river.
He did his best to ignore the sight of his wife, wrapped in her cloak and curled up at the foot of a rowan tree, fast asleep – tried to ignore the urge to sink to the ground next to her, to burrow in close to her, to savor the feel of her, icy and ruthless though she may be.
At least she seemed to care for those long lost souls, faceless and nameless though they may be. At least there was some semblance of human decency left in her.
Which was more than could be said for himself.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tadhg asked quietly from where he sat by the low-burning fire. “You’ve got the watch in an hour.”
“I know that.” Locke huffed. “I’m going to sit by the river for a bit, that’s all.”
“You ought to be sleeping.”
“I can’t – too plagued by demons of my own making.”
Tadhg frowned. “Locke, if this is about what the witch showed you –”
“She’s not a witch,” Locke interrupted, running his hand through his hair restlessly. “And of course it is. Oisín’s beard, Tadhg – it was a massacre.”
Tadhg rose to his feet and placed a hand on Locke’s shoulders. “It was,” he said. “And there’s naught you nor anyone else can do to change it.”
“I could have. I should have changed it, I should have –”
“What you should do,” Tadhg said firmly, “is sleep. You’ve got the watch in an hour, and I’m buggered.”
Locke blew out a breath. “I’ll relieve you,” he said after a moment. “Let me walk down to the river, clear my head, and then you can rest. One of us might as well get some sleep.”
Tadhg nodded, but Locke could see the worry lining his face illuminated by the firelight. Rather than face it, he strode away, hoping the churn and roll of the river would drown out the silent screams of the shadow-victims he could not for the life of him erase from his mind.
Even the dim light of the stars was lost by the riverbank, the dense, overlapping branches of the fir trees hiding the midnight sky from his sight.
Locke eased his way down the riverbank, boots squelching in the mud, then crouched to scoop the cold running water in his cupped hands and splash it on his face.
A rustling in the underbrush from behind him, and he spun around, hand returning to the knife at his side, but he could see nothing in the gloom, only the vague outline of bushes and boulders and –
The hairs along the back of his neck prickled.
That was no rock, no bush.
He could barely make it out in the darkness, a great hulking shape of shaggy fur and thick tail, standing still and unmoving there in the shadows.
The river itself seemed to shrink back in fear, its rumble growing muted and soft, and Locke could hear it now, the thing in the darkness – heavy, ragged pants, a low but unmistakable growl.
It moved, and Locke caught a glimpse of ice-blue eyes, preternaturally bright with violence, with rage, staring directly at him.
This was no mere wolf, no mortal-born beast.
And there was only one possible explanation for its presence here.
Locke turned and flung himself headlong into the river, away from whatever horrific thing of darkness his wife had conjured in the night to devour him.
The cold water sank through the thick wool of his clothes, biting and nipping at his skin, but not as painful, he thought as he plunged towards the far side of the river, as whatever unknown monstrous entity prowling after him through the darkness.
He clambered up the riverbank, lungs screaming with cold, chest heaving, his fingers digging into the mud, then froze again.
A pair of ice-blue eyes glinted at him from the shadows of the trees ahead.
“No,” he said. “How could –”
That same low snarl, and then it emerged from the tree line – not a wolf, he thought sickeningly, but a hell-hound, almost as tall as he himself was, with rough wiry fur that gleamed the darkest midnight black-and-blue, a lean supple body and massive jowls, its reed-thin tail dragging in the dirt as it stalked towards him on its massive paws.
A hound bred for one purpose and one purpose only – to hunt, and to kill.
And he was its prey.
Its tail began to whip through the dirt, slow and methodical at first, then faster, more furiously, and in response the trees themselves began to shiver and the wind began to howl.
Locke clung to the roots and the rocks embedded deep within the riverbank as the gusts of wind lashed against his face, tearing at his clothes and his hair.
A half-remembered story flickered in his mind – a tale of three murderous brothers and an impossible quest and a hound with the might of hurricanes in his tail and breath more volcanic than the sun itself, the beast before whom all the creatures of the world would bow.
Failinis.
The name came to him in a rush, a boyhood memory of sitting close to the turf-fire and munching on barmbrack as he read from his grandfather’s tome – the Lebor Gabala Erenn, the song of the sorrows of the sons of Tuireann, and the éraic demanded from them by Lugh himself for the murder of his father.
She had set loose the hell-hound of Lugh himself – had set it loose on him – because of what she had seen in the shadows, for what had happened to his people.
His wife, it seemed, agreed with him.
He was to blame.
For the briefest moment, he considered it, the idea of giving up, of lying down in the mud, still and unresistant, to let the hound take its éraic – to drink deep from his veins the blood-debt that was owed, to slide into the oblivion of whatever waited him in the other-world, far across the star-studded sea.
It was tempting, the idea of simply being free of it all – the constant, unceasing scheming and the fighting and the suffocating wave of guilt always threatening to consume him.
A flash of movement to the far left of the snarling hound caught his eye, a familiar figure, hood pulled low over her face, hands folded before her, watching the beast – and watching him.
His wife, come to see for herself that the debt of all those shadow-lives be paid.
“Hello husband,” she said, so soft that it was barely audible over the sound of the river rushing and the hound growling and the thudding of his own heart. “It seems that neither of us could sleep easy this night.”
Locke could not bring himself to tear his gaze away from the snarling hound before him, its curving yellow fangs glinting in the moonlight. “What have you done – what have you unleashed on the world?”
“Not on the world,” came the cool, quiet reply.
“Only on you.” A pause. “I was thinking,” she continued after a moment, “about the story you told me – about Meiche, that first, monstrous son of the Mórrígan, the child born to destroy the world. You told it so well, with such passion, and I wondered, why not let him see for himself, what manner of monsters the goddess of death can awaken?”
Something stirred within the depths of his lethargy, his despair.
Something hot, and violent, and unreasonably furious.
“Whatever happened, my lady,” he called out, “to being the sword in my hand and the shield at my back? Not even four nights ago you swore it, and now you set this hell-dog on me without a second thought?”