Chapter 48
Chapter forty-eight
LOCKE
Finn stared at Locke, mouth pressed into a thin, tight line under his white-and-black beard. “If Aoife takes the heart of the ó Flannagáin king,” he persisted, “then she will have everything she needs to awaken Meiche.”
“Yes,” said Locke. “I am aware.”
Finn exhaled shakily. “And if Aoife awakens Meiche,” he said, “all of éire, including yourself and your men, will die.”
“I am aware of that as well, yes.”
“You would risk everything,” Finn said, moss-green eyes fierce and dark, “the fate of éire itself, thousands and thousands of lives, in the hope of bringing her back?”
Yes, Locke thought. Without question, without hesitation, he would do whatever, kill whomever, sacrifice whatever, if only in the hope of bringing her home.
A brief silence was all the answer Locke made. “She is not worth it,” Finn said after a moment. “I love her as a daughter, but I would never see the world burn for her sake. You must know that, you must see reason –”
“It won’t come to that,” he said, praying that it would somehow be the truth.
“Rory will sense the cailleach’s threat to her brother, and it will wake her from whatever stupor she – the real her – is in.
I know it will.” He reached for Finn’s stallion, pulling himself astride and gathering the reins in his hand.
“And you do as well.” He leaned down, hand outstretched.
"Come now, , Oisín mac Cumhaill. Be bold, and brave, and rash with me — just this once," and after a tense moment, Finn sighed, then slowly stumbled to his feet.
Finn glanced once more towards the gray ghosts of the Fianna, still raging amongst the Albion forces, bareback on their wraithlike horses, empowered by the thundering ríastrad of the Mórrígan.
“They will fade soon,” he said, more to himself than to Locke.
“They will fade, as the magic fades, and be lost forever to this world.” He looked up at Locke, and there it was again, that shimmering image of an old man’s face superimposed over Finn’s youthful, fine-boned features. “And so will I.”
Locke’s grip tightened around the bard’s wrist, hoisting him up behind him in the saddle. “Then make your last ride a glorious one,” he said. “I am honored that it shall be with me.”
“As it is mine, mo rí,” Finn said, and despite his exhaustion, his terror for Rory and what soon might become of them all, Locke felt a thrill unlike anything he had ever before known at hearing the hero of his boyhood address him, acknowledge him as king.
Locke drove his heels into the side of the stallion as he yanked on the reins, back towards the disheveled front lines of the Ulaid and Connachta forces, the Leinster cavalry on the western flank, the Munster archers perched above on the ridge.
“Can you get her attention somehow?” He shouted Finn over the whistle of the wind whipping past as the stallion galloped across the corpse-strewn plain.
“She seemed to pay a lot of attention to you at the parley – do you have a way to lure her to you, some kind of song or spell or – I don’t know, something? ”
“Yes,” Finn yelled, somehow still managing to inject a fair amount of dryness into the word. “I have many ways. Locke MacMurchada, of which you know nothing.”
“Excellent. I’ll find the boy – the king of Connacht. I’ll bring him back to where we met for the parley – to Dumha na nGiall.”
“You know,” Finn shouted. “My father once fought Aillén the Burner at that very spot – fought him and nearly killed him.”
“I do know,” Locke shouted back. “I read it in a book once.” He reined the stallion in as they neared the clustered, shouting horde of their remaining army, and Locke leapt to the ground.
“Go,” he said to the bard, who took up the discarded reins in his shaking hands.
“Find the cailleach, and get her to Dumha na nGiall.”
“I can do that,” Finn said. “And you?”
“I’ll meet you there,” said Locke, and then he was surrounded by a mob of shouting, blood-and-sweat soaked soldiers, all shouting at him in a strange mixture of both joy and fear.
Locke ignored all of them, instead shoving his way through them towards Mac Duinn himself, who was also pushing to the forefront of the mass of bodies, bloodied axe in hand.
“MacMurchada,” he shouted. “She did it, she made it roar –”
“Where is ó Flannagáin?” He interrupted tersely. “The boy-king – where is he?”
Mac Duinn’s brow knitted in concern, but he turned and pointed to the south.
“He and ó Briain and the Bréifne chief were fighting off a push led by the general down near Ráth Laoghaire, but they fled once the bocanách appeared – Medb’s cairn, Locke, was that her doing?
Sure, she’s a terrible thing indeed, isn’t she now –”
“Yes.” Locke snapped. “And now we are perilously close to losing her altogether. The cailleach,” he continued impatiently, cutting off the Ulaid king’s startled cry. “Have you seen her? During the battle, or afterward, once the Lia Fáil roared?”
“Gods no,” said Mac Duinn. “I’m yet living, am I not?
Let her go, MacMurchada,” he said when Locke turned away, searching the crowd for any sign of the Connachta king.
“Let her slink back to her nest high in the Mhám Toirc. Whatever you seek from the likes of that witch, it’s not worth you dying to achieve. ”
Locke caught sight of him then – dark hair and blue eyes, the bronze-and-white insignia of Connacht blazoned across his chest. “I disagree,” he said, and then he was pushing through the crowd of soldiers, cheering and shouting with swords and spears lifted high aloft in the air, yelling the king’s name, over and over again.
Eóin ó Flannagáin turned, dark hair matted to his forehead, a shallow slice from a blade marring his beardless cheek. “MacMurchada,” he called back, blue eyes bright with triumph, but his smile faded at the sight of Locke’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
Locke seized him by the back of his shirt, dragging him towards a riderless horse. From all around him, Connacht soldiers yelled in shock, in protest, but he ignored them, pulling the king along behind him. “Get up,” he said, shoving him towards the horse. “Let’s go.”
Eóin whirled around, anger darkening his boyish features. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Locke pulled out his sword, leveling it at his chest. “I said, get up.”
The shouts turned to a roar as the Connachta charged at him, but Eóin held up a hand, and they halted immediately, grumbling under their breaths, spears half-raised as they glowered at Locke.
“What do you want, MacMurchada?” Eóin asked.
“I will remind you that I am the king of Connacht, for now at least, until your wife strips me of my title and claims it as her own, and –”
“She’s in trouble,” Locke said curtly, sword still pointed at the king’s chest. “She’s in trouble, and you’re going to help me save her. Now get on the gods-damned horse or I swear, I’ll run you through myself right now and risk myself dying from her wrath.”
Eóin shot a wary glance in the direction of the still-raging battle – the massacre, not a battle, Locke thought, stomach twisting, gods, she was slaughtering them like a butcher slays the lambs – and frowned. “She doesn’t much look like she needs saving from anything.”
“Believe me,” said Locke, “she does.” The tip of his sword dug into Eóin’s leather breast-plate, but the young king stared at him, stone-faced, even while his men roared anew. “Last chance,” Locke said. “Get on the horse.”
Eóin said nothing for the space of a few heartbeats, then without a word, turned and flung himself up on the back of the horse.
Locke let out an imperceptible sigh of relief, then sheathed his sword and followed suit, snagging the reins from a Leinster soldier who stood nearby, watching the scene unfold with wide, frightened eyes.
“Now,” he said. “Let’s go find that cailleach. ”
“That won’t be necessary, little lord.”
He froze, only for a heartbeat or two, but it cost him, that moment of shock, of surprise, because then it rolled over him, that guttural tongue, and suddenly he was keeling over in the saddle, on fire with the bite of a thousand white-hot knives driving deep into his skin.
Dimly, he registered that he was surrounded by screaming – dozens of agonized shrieks ripped from the throats of the men surrounding them, and as he tumbled to the ground, writhing in agony, he saw her, the small, straw-haired boy stumbling behind her, hands and mouth bound with thick leather straps, her fingers curved into talons over her white palms as she advanced on the king of Connacht.
She was going to kill him – kill him, and feed his heart to the boy at her heels, and then –
He should think of éire, he knew, of its inevitable destruction, of the loss of so many lives, consumed by the darkness she would soon unleash upon them, of the beauty and the magic and the music and the wonder of these people, his people, erased forever from the face of the earth.
That, he knew, should be for whom he screamed, for whom he wept, in this moment of their final and most awful doom.
Yet all he could think of was Rory – her grief, and her guilt, if she failed to save yet another brother.
Rory, he thought, wildly, desperately. Wherever you are, come home.
Come home and save him.
Come home and save us all.
Then he gathered all the strength that remained in his aching body, and threw himself forward, to use himself as a shield between the gleaming knife of the witch and the heart of Rory’s last remaining brother.