Chapter Four
King Fionn
We’d ridden hard all day, stopping only to rest our horses and give them water, and once at midday we stopped for them to have some rest so they could keep up their current pace.
The ridiculously and newly named Crow wasn’t as fast as our own horses, but then he wasn’t as big either, and I thought he did well to keep up.
He seemed well-tempered, never planting his feet and refusing to go forward, as I’d had seen happen before.
He simply plodded along, doing as he was told, and I thought that if he’d ever had any more spirit, it had probably been beaten out of him long ago.
I wouldn’t add him to my own stables once we reached my kingdom, but I’d make sure he had a good life from here on.
We watered the horses from one of the many fresh streams in the area around midday and we all ate some bread and cheese that I’d had the innkeeper pack up for us. By late afternoon we were nearing the portal to Otherworld, located, as many portals are, inside a hill, accessed by a cave.
Braden had done well to keep up with us too, and he didn’t complain overly much—unless, that is, his mouth was open.
I’d told him to close it, or I’d do it for him on several occasions that day.
He always gave me a dirty look, and I was enjoying teasing him.
I looked forward to seeing what his true nature was when we entered Otherworld, when his disguise would probably crack wide open and expose the way he really looked—though I confess I had begun to grow rather used to his plain, ordinary little face, with his turned-up nose, his tousled reddish-blond hair and that sarcastic, complaining little mouth.
It was an incongruously pretty one though, set in that otherwise plain face, like a rose among the weeds.
I wondered if it was always pouty because it so strongly resented landing there on that plain face.
I might miss those lips, come to think of it.
(Not the pout, though, on second thought. I had already grown weary of that.)
Perhaps it was a bit more than that I simply liked his homely, eager, little face. Perhaps I’d begun to actually not mind his looks all that much. Sometimes, I almost found it hard to look away from him, though I wasn’t sure why. Was he using some subtle magic on me?
He had proven with his remarks that he wasn’t the least bit afraid of me, though he should have been. He was a brave little thing—or a foolish one. I was still trying to make up my mind which one.
The weather was cold and blustery and should have kept the mortals inside near their fires, but as we approached the small village that we’d have to pass to get to the trail leading to Malham Cove, I noticed an unusual amount of noise and activity—and a great deal of coming and going.
A woman was wailing somewhere close by the village, an eerie sound in the gloaming, that period of gently fading light late in the evening after the sun has set, but before it gets completely dark.
The little village fort was typical of many others I’d seen outside of the larger cities.
A collection of small wooden houses that also had some fortifications around them.
In this case, they consisted of mounded earthwork walls around the sides of the settlement.
These walls were as tall as perhaps three men standing on top of each other, with a kind of ditch filled with brownish water outside of that.
Their version of a moat? Armed guards, carrying old pikes and wearing old leather helmets and crude armor walked on platforms built inside the walls.
One of these was over the heavy oak gates, which were no doubt barred from the inside.
As we passed, I motioned to my men that we would approach the village. I was curious to see what the wailing was about and if there had been some kind of attack.
The guards challenged us with some trepidation, their voices overly loud and demanding, which meant they were badly frightened.
I spoke to them quietly in return, in their own language, and then when I’d convinced (or compelled—same difference) one of them to come down and open the gate, I managed to come close enough to him to touch his arm briefly, to put him even more at ease.
Something had scared these people, and it was to my advantage to find out if the danger was still close by and if I might be walking unknowingly into it.
After a brief conversation, I got the young guard—he was little more than an overgrown boy—to open the gates and allow us all to enter.
Once inside, we could see about ten houses, all of wood with curved walls, and the widest part of the house in the middle.
They looked like overturned boats and were arranged in two square formations with a central passage.
The guard pointed out the head man’s house that was in the formation on the left.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that everyone we met—including the people who came out to stare at us—stood with their mouths open at the sight of my soldiers’ tall forms and inhuman beauty.
The people of this village were fairly short and dark, like most of the north men in the area who weren’t warriors or soldiers and even though they had certainly seen the much larger Danes that had settled in this area, there didn’t appear to be much intermarriage with them.
I knew they weren’t accustomed to seeing Faeries in any kind of way. We took some getting used to.
The village head man came out to meet us, and he was old, though probably not as old as he looked.
His face was a knife blade of anger and pain after a no doubt hard life.
He had a sparse and wispy gray beard and rheumy eyes that gleamed like wet glass.
He looked as if something was haunting him and twisting him up with pain inside.
Maybe he was ill, or maybe it was the grief he felt over no longer being able to protect his people.
He invited us into his home, though it was small with a low ceiling, and I signaled for most of my men to wait outside.
I motioned for my captain, Darragh, and one or two of my lieutenants to come with me, because I didn’t yet know what the problem was here.
I wanted to keep Braden close too, in case there was trouble, so I pulled him along with us.
We stooped to enter the low door and came inside the dim room.
These people often made their doorways low so that anyone entering had to stoop over.
An enemy who had gained entry would thus be at a slight disadvantage and could be more easily overcome.
I realized immediately that there were a large number of people stuffed inside the dim and crowded little hovel, including some at the back lining the wall in the most shadowed part of the room, who didn’t smell human.
The chief took a seat at the far end, and he seemed welcoming yet a bit wary and bent over, as if from grief.
Perhaps he grieved because he was old and unable to fight the evil that had come to his people, or else he had some personal reason, but he seemed defeated and doomed, and I grew even more uneasy.
What exactly was going on in this place?
I could still hear the distant, keening cries of the woman, as eerie as any banshee, and a slight chill ran down my spine.
I inclined my head and began speaking. “My name is Lord Fionn. My companions and I were returning from a trading journey to Jorvik, when we heard the woman. I wanted to see if you needed any assistance.”
The chief looked back steadily at me. “Assistance? We have a monster here, sir. And I fear no one can help us.”
“A monster?”
“Or a devil. It’s a demon or shapeshifter and able to take on any form—it even appeared to us once as female.”
That was new, but not at all impossible. “A female devil? Could it be an ogress, by chance? They’re known to hunt alone at times and can be fierce and savage.”
The chief spit into a bowl by his chair.
“An ugly, demonic hag, yes. Perhaps it’s an ogress.
A curse from Satan himself.” His voice trailed off and he clutched the iron cross hanging around his neck.
“She killed our friar, a holy man who tried to help us. You are welcome to try to kill it, sir. We can give you a small reward, and we have great need of help. But others have tried and failed.” He glanced over at the other men in the room.
“Are you like them?” he nodded toward the small group of men now shifting their feet as I stared over at them.
“Are you Otherworlders here only to make a name for yourself? To grab glory from our misery?”
****
Braden
I wondered the same thing myself. Why on earth were we here?
These people obviously had some kind of really bad situation going on, and we should be headed in the opposite direction.
Of course, I wanted to help them, but a monster?
A devil? What could be done against such a fearsome thing except to call in the priests?
The Faery lord—Lord Fionn as I’d just found out, having heard his name just then for the first time as he’d introduced himself to the head man of the village—glanced over at the men by the fire, but his handsome face was unreadable to me, as always.
He studied the men the head man had indicated, as they stared back at him boldly.
They were all some kind of Fae from their appearance, as they were tall and beautiful, with fair complexions and probably pointed ears under their caps.
Their hair was a varying series of blond shades, some lighter than others.