Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Cath divided the patrollers into three groups, sending one into the shadows of the forest and the second to scale the trees nearest the troll’s ha’.
The rest fanned out around him in front of the cave, standing ready as he chose a clear swatch of ground and built a small fire with the kindling and some deadfall in a spot where the breeze would carry it inside.
As thick white smoke funneled into the rough opening in the rocks surrounding the mouth, one of the men with him stepped up and pulled a long narrow object wrapped in sacking from behind a rock near the entry.
“War Master.” The patroller brought the thing to him. “’Tis a dirk.”
The weapon Cath pulled out of the sacking had been sheathed in dark brown leather inlaid with black crystals that glittered with copper-violet glints.
The hilt, which had been skillfully carved from a thick yellowed bone, had hundreds of tiny eyes carved all over it.
When he gripped the hilt to unsheathe the weapon, the eyes blinked against his flesh.
The blade, some two hands long, had been hewn from a single flake of pale green Fae crystal.
Dark streaks of dried blood mottled its transparent surface.
In Elphyne Cath had seen such weapons, all rendered by a clan of trows that smithed all the weapons for the dark Fae court in exchange for servants, usually females that had fallen out of favor with the queen.
What the trows did to those females no one knew, but once sent to their kingdom, the servants were never again seen.
The dirk likely had been given to the thieves as payment for some service to a dark Fae.
“Mayhap the bastarts didnae come here to hide.” He hung the dagger sheath from his belt.
The smoke did its work, for soon coughing sounds echoed from deep within the cave. Rather than alert the thieves to their presence, he made a hand signal for his men to ready themselves for disarming and disabling the intruders.
In Elphyne Cath would have gone inside and killed them all before they could attempt to escape, which was what he badly wanted to do now.
Yet the weight of the dagger at his hip stayed him as much as his vow to protect all mortals.
Whoever had owned the dagger would have been too strong for the thieves to overpower and rob.
How had this weapon fallen into their filthy hands?
The first mortal to stumble out appeared scrawny and smelled as foul as his garments looked, and opened his mouth as if to screech a warning.
Cath clapped a glove over his maw of broken, blackened teeth and used a quick, leashed blow to the back of his skull to render him unconscious.
After passing him to one of the patrollers to be gagged and bound, he caught the second and third that emerged, slamming their heads together and hurling them aside to parry a blow from the pitted blade of the fourth.
Another four barreled out of the troll’s ha’, all swinging what weapons they had and shouting with false rage.
One dropped his pitchfork and pissed himself as he was pinned between the points of two patrollers’ spears.
The clansmen in the trees dropped down to help subdue two more, but the last man out of the cave darted through their ranks and disappeared into the brush.
“Mine,” Cath told his men as he stomped out the smoking fire. “Bind the others and take them to the docks. We’ll transport the lot off the island on the laird’s boat.”
He strode after the escaping thief, wrinkling his nose as the mortal’s pungent stink provided an almost tangible trail for him to follow.
When he reached the next clearing, the patrollers he had sent into the woods now formed a living wall that shifted to block the thief, however he attempted to go around them.
“You think to outrun us all on our island, eejit?” Cath asked. As the thief turned around and hurled a sledge at him he easily caught the weapon and slung it back so that it slammed into the mortal’s knee.
The satisfying crunch of bone that came just before that thief’s howl of agony made the patrollers grin with dark delight.
The thief dropped onto his side, clutching his leg and writhing. “Mercy, my lord, for we’re but poor, starved farmers driven from our land. We’d work, only no one trusts us now that we’re reduced to begging–”
“Enough.” Cath grabbed him by the leine and pulled him up as he unsheathed the dark Fae dagger and showed it to him. “Who gave you the dirk?”
“I cannae tell you,” the mortal said instantly.
“Why did you hide the blade outside the cave?” When the man remained silent he shook him. “’Twas giving you nightmares, aye?”
When it became obvious the thief would saying nothing more, Cath dragged him back to where the patrollers had just finished tying the other thieves.
“Send word to the magistrate,” he told his patrol chief. “Once we cross the loch we’ll cart them to his jail.”
“Dinnae take us back,” the thief he’d crippled suddenly begged. “Our master, he’ll end us all.”
He lifted him off the ground, holding him dangling in the air. “Why did you come here? To run away and hide from your master?” When he said nothing he gave him a hard shake. “Shall I smash your other knee, so you must crawl the rest of your miserable days?”
“’Tis for the–” The man’s voice abruptly cut off, and his eyes bulged as he clutched at his throat.
Putting him down, Cath told his men to move away from the thieves. The hideous iciness of dark magic crawled from his fingers back onto the man’s gaping, choking mouth, which it sealed along with his nostrils. The same suffocating spell had struck the other seven men, cutting off their air.
“Dinnae attempt such, lad,” he told one of patrollers who had drawn a dagger and knelt down beside one of the writhing thieves. “’Twill do naught to save them. They’ve triggered a killing spell cast over them, and ’twill seal their mouths and noses the moment after you open them again.”
Cath knelt down and cast the only healing spell he knew over the dying men, but whoever had cursed them had been extremely powerful.
A few moments later all eight men lay dead on the ground, their faces mottled blue and purple from suffocation.
The very thing he’d come on this hunt to prevent had happened, but not because he’d released the dark magic that dwelled in his own cursed hide.
Cath knew of only one other type of power that could kill so swiftly, and turned the thief over to brush his snarled hair away from the back of his neck.
Five claw-shaped crescents glowed with a faint but still malevolent red-green, a mark he knew only too well from his life in Elphyne. ’Tis the doing of the dark Fae queen’s hunter.
“Do you ken what did thus to them, War Master?” the patroller asked as he sheathed his dagger again.
“’Twas dark Fae sent by the queen.” He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to work out what the thief had done. Dark Fae wouldnae wipe their boots on the carcasses of these thieves. Why should one recruit them to come to Gealladh? As spies?
Cath ordered the men to return the bodies to the cave where they had been hiding. As laird and ruler over the island, Tair would have to decide what to do with the remains.
“I shall return to the stronghold and gather our trackers,” he told the men. “Block the entry after you stow the remains inside.”
Leaving the patrollers there to deal with the dead mortals, Cath headed back in the direction of Gealladh.
Once out of sight of the men, however, he climbed up a towering fir tree, scaling up to the highest branch that would hold his weight before he wrapped his forearm with one end of his tartan and extended his fist. The words he murmured weren’t a spell, but an old, simple call to one of the creatures in the mortal realm known to be sympathetic to all Fae.
The white and black-flecked predator came gliding out of the canopy, as silent as its namesake, its bright golden eyes wide as it landed with its feathered talons on Cath’s arm.
Unlike the other avians that made their home on the island, the snowy owl did not sleep away the day.
It regarded him with the usual long-suffering patience of a creature annoyed by humans and yet long accustomed to the strangeness of the war master and the clan.
In turn Cath politely averted his own gaze to give the bird time to once more grow comfortable with being so close to him.
When the owl’s grip on his arm eased a fraction, he took out a charm, holding the stone near his lips as he began to speak softly.
“I ken I’ve disturbed you, but you’re the eyes and ears of the loch, old friend.” He nodded in the direction of the troll’s ha. “Something no’ of the mortal realm placed a death curse on eight thieves. Do you ken if the caster hides on the island?”
The owl flapped its wings, and made a sound like a large dog barking. At the same time, in Cath’s head he heard a deep voice say ’Tisnae on your side of the waters.
That meant it was somewhere in the area. “Will you come and warn me if you spot it during one of your hunts?”
The owl made a high-pitched sound like a shriek – Aye – and then flew off.
He climbed down, relieved and worried all at once.
At least here on the island the clan might have hunted and captured the dark Fae that had used and cursed the thieves.
On the mainland he might use more hapless mortals unable to elude him and his death magic.
The dullahan was long dead, but during its long life it had spawned more of its kind.
Amanda had been the only mortal to survive being taken by the dreaded hunter, but saving her had not been an act of kindness by Cath.
Never before or again had he done something so selfish or dangerous, and it had cost him almost everything that mattered.
Never shall I regret freeing her.