Chapter Four #3
As if he’d sensed my uneasiness and my questions, Tadgh turned his horse and fell back to walk beside Braden’s, and he seemed a bit friendlier than he’d been to Braden earlier.
I heard him say that he and his men had indeed come from Jorvik, though they must have left an hour or so earlier than we had.
They’d heard the woman screaming as they passed the fort and had come to investigate.
He said that when the screaming started, the guards had been able to hear it from inside the gates, but they hadn’t been able to gather their weapons and reach the house in time to stop the attack.
If it had truly been a monster or a devil, then the human guards probably couldn’t have stopped it anyway.
I could see the small farmhouse was a little isolated from the others around it but looked similar to the ones I had noticed inside the gates, being low ceilinged, and made of wood and mud with a thatched roof.
The fields in the front of the house were snow covered, and a long time from planting in the spring.
Behind the house, at some thirty yards distant, was the dark, verdant and mysterious forest that always seemed to grow near portals.
I fancied I could see movement in its deep shadows and a shiver ran down my spine at the idea of having a mortal child living in such a place.
I thought a child would have felt unsafe to sleep there. And with good reason, it appeared.
The horses’ hooves sank deeply in the ground and slung black mud and snow and cold slush on our boots as we approached the house.
Even now, the loud weeping and moaning were unabated, and a feeling of dread began to creep over me.
What could this poor woman still be crying about so wildly and brokenly?
When we arrived in front of the house, we all dismounted.
Tadgh and his men crowded into the little house, and Darragh and I followed them to the doorway, leaning down to take a look inside.
We stood there for a long moment, blocking the doorway, and when I straightened up and turned around, Braden was there, his eyes becoming frightened at the look on my face.
****
Braden
Something inside must have been truly gut wrenching to have elicited any response at all from the stoic Faery lord. It filled me with dread, yet I still wanted to see. He put a hand on my chest to stop me.
“Brace yourself,” he said. “If you have a weak stomach, don’t look.”
I nodded. I dreaded to look inside after that, but my curiosity overrode my hesitation. Fionn finally moved aside so I could look in.
A young man and woman were both alive inside, though covered in blood and sitting on the dirt floor, surrounded by the bodies of what looked to be about three children, who might have ranged in age from an infant to around six years old.
I couldn’t be sure of how many, because the bodies were torn to pieces—they’d been ripped limb from limb, and then the body parts hurled to the floor.
The smell of blood, gouts of it, hung heavy in the room.
It was far too sickening and pitiful to go into further detail of the things I saw and smelled in that place, but it felt like standing in a slaughterhouse.
I suddenly felt burning hot all over, and I got a bitter taste in my mouth like metal and ashes.
Written on the wall was a word that plainly spelled out “death” or “dead.” I wasn’t sure which, as it was scrawled in blood.
The young mother, soaked in that blood and other nameless things, sat with a tiny, baby’s head on her lap, along with one little arm and some other unrecognizable parts.
Was she trying to put the pieces of her child back together?
She was keening and moaning all the while, and I could feel the bile rising in my throat.
From time to time, she would stroke the little head and lean down to kiss it and whisper to it.
The father was obviously in deep shock, sitting on the ground beside his wife with his hands upturned in his lap, an ugly black bruise spreading over the whole left side of his entirely vacant face. There was no light left in his eyes.
I suddenly realized that it had been his actions that brought on this attack on his children, though I didn’t know exactly how I possibly could know that, or even why I’d think it.
Tadgh’s men stood uneasily by, while Tadgh stooped low to speak urgently in the young woman’s ear.
She shook her head violently and clutched what was left of her baby to herself, continuing her useless, pitiful task until finally he took hold of her hands and gave curt orders to his men.
They plucked the head and arm from her lap, and Tadgh helped her to stand up.
He began drawing her to the door that led outside.
She followed without hesitation, and when they came to the door, he gave me a significant look so that I took the young mother by the arm and drew her farther out to sit on the grass.
I thought she needed to be well away from the stench of the gore inside.
But it was nearly dark by this time, and the closeness of the woods was making me nervous.
Was whatever did this still nearby, watching us?
I didn’t think it was, though I had no idea how I knew.
The Faery lord had followed me closely and to my surprise he sat down beside me and the young mother.
I saw him bend his dark head over the young woman’s and say something softly in her ear.
The young mother looked up into his eyes and mewled pitifully back to him when he asked her a question, and then she lowered her head into her hands and began to sob again as if her heart would break.
He put his hand on her bowed head and some of the wild crying ceased as she sagged down onto her side in the grass, closing her eyes.
She seemed to be deeply asleep in only seconds.
I wondered if he had used some of his powers on her to give her a brief respite from her terrible grief.
I thought he had. It was so unlike anything I thought I knew about Faeries that I was speechless for a few moments, as he looked up and caught my eye, and we gazed at each other.
Tadgh came out to stand beside us, his face grim. “I’ve directed my men to wrap and bury what’s left of the children. Some parts of them are missing—probably eaten by the monster. The father is worthless—still in shock, I think, or else the blow the creature gave him has addled his brain.”
“No,” I said. “it’s the guilt he feels for killing that thing’s children in the cave and now she’s returned the favor.”
I had no idea why I’d said that, and I saw both Fionn and Tadgh giving me a shocked look. Fionn gripped my arm. “What cave? How do you know all this?”
“I-I don’t know, but I-I’m sure it’s true. This is his fault. He was the one who led the group of villagers to kill the ogre thing’s children, and that’s why she wrote the word ‘death’ on the wall of his house.”
Tadgh looked puzzled and turned abruptly to go back inside. He was in there for a few minutes and then came back to look down at me. “There’s nothing written on the wall. It’s a few smears of blood.”
“No, it says ‘death’ or ‘dead’ in demonic script.”
He looked shocked, but he turned and went back inside and Fionn sat and quietly contemplated me. We sat in silence for a while, and then he turned to look in my eyes.
“What do you know about demonic script? Tell me quickly.”
“I-I don’t know very much about it. Why?”
“Because of what you …are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I feel…sick. My head hurts.”
He started to answer me, but Tadgh returned, looking at Lord Fionn and not me. “The father says your boy’s story is true. He’s the one who set the fires to kill the monsters inside the cave. Have you had a chance to look around for tracks yet?”
Fionn nodded and pointed to the ground outside the door, leading off into the forest. “The ground was so wet with slush that the tracks had partially filled in with melted snow, and had degraded badly, but there were a few clear tracks to be seen on the plowed hillocks. They show large, barefoot prints, human-like, but with long claw-like nails curving into the ground.”
“She left those,” I said.
“Yes. It was a female ogre attack,” Fionn said, his voice matter of fact and sure as he kept staring at me. “I’ve seen this kind of killing before, and they usually travel in groups and don’t leave anyone alive.”
“She was an ogre, but not in any group,” Tadgh spoke in a low voice. “The father confirmed it. There are teeth marks on the body parts, and on one of the legs of the children—it had been chewed. Part of the limbs are missing. Ogres eat humans. Are you sure she didn’t have help?”
“Fairly sure, yes,” The lord nodded thoughtfully.
“There were no other tracks. Ogres often eat their victims, it’s true.
For warriors, it is a show of dishonor and insult, but these were young children.
That part is odd. Why did she bother to dishonor them and why did she leave the parents almost unscathed?
Was it revenge for what the young father did? Do you know what started all of this?”
I nodded and I could have affirmed what Fionn said, but they ignored me.
“The head man from this village told me they used to see this ogre only occasionally at night when it came in quick, sweeping raids,” Tadgh said.
“She took only a cow or a pig at first, but the men here, incited and apparently led by that one in there, were angry and tracked her to a cave behind a waterfall, which must have been her camp. Ogres live in those kinds of places, they said, under hills and in caves, because they don’t like the light. ”