Chapter Four #2
They wore the bulky furs like north country men and were bristling with weapons like theirs.
Daggers, swords, shields and axes were piled on the floor around them, though some were already in their hands, held down by their sides, or else stuck down inside their belts.
A few of them were heavily tattooed, even their faces, in the manner of the Danes, but I was sure they were not from the Land of the Danes.
I knew them for Fae, and not the Elven tribes that lived in the ice covered Quendi Forest. There was a subtle difference in Elves and Faeries, but once you saw them together, it was fairly obvious. These men were not Elves, but Faeries.
One of them seemed to be their leader from his manner.
He was extremely handsome, almost as much as the Faery Lord Fionn, but his hair was an odd shade of white-blond that was nearly silver, and his eyes were a clear and crystal shade of blue-green.
He wore a heavy fur around his shoulders, rich from the look of it, and muscles rippled across what could be seen of his bare chest as he listened closely to what the head man said to us.
And as cold as it was, even in this little hut by the fire, he was wearing only a leather harness with golden chains attached above his waist. Over that he wore a kind of fur vest. How did he stand to be mostly shirtless?
He definitely was not human. He came forward now, standing in front of Lord Fionn, who gave him a slow and measured look back.
“I am Tadgh of the House Tremarion.” I’d never heard that name before, but he pronounced it like “tide,” but with a “g” sound in the middle. I’d never heard of House Tremarion either, but I supposed it was his family, which meant he was noble.
“If you’re here to kill the she-devil,” Tadgh said, “stay out of my way. I’m here to do the same, and my men and I were here first. We’ll collect any reward to be had and take the credit for it.”
Surely a village so small couldn’t offer much of a reward, but warriors like Tadgh often valued their reputation even more greatly and sought to build that up instead.
At least that was true of the Danes, and I thought it might be the same with these warriors.
They wanted to make a name for themselves, and I figured that may have been why he’d come to this place rather than for any small reward there might have been.
The brash young man grinned at Fionn, and his eyes roamed familiarly over to me as well, something flickering in his eyes as he looked at me.
Was it recognition? I couldn’t be sure, but how could he possibly know me?
He quickly hooded whatever it was. “You could also help us if the devil comes back though. If you like, I’ll give you a small share of the reward since you’re already here, but don't get in my way.”
He stared at Fionn challengingly, but Fionn didn’t react. He gave the young man a steady look back. “We’re not interested in any reward. Or in helping you.”
The young man’s eyes flickered unsteadily, but he made a good recovery. He laughed.
“Excellent. Even better. We don’t like to share, anyway, and we really don’t need any help.
I was merely trying to be polite. We were about to travel outside the back gates to the farm and the scene of the attack.
You and your men can come with us, if you’re curious.
We’ve only arrived, but word has come that some kind of devil killed some children.
” He glanced over at Braden again and then smiled at Fionn.
“This is likely to be gory and no place for anyone not a warrior. He’d better stay here. ”
I stared up at him in anger. “Who are you to say that?”
The handsome young man gave me a sharp and quelling look and even took a step toward me, but Fionn stepped smoothly in front of me, cutting him off.
He also gave me a dark glance over his shoulder, intended to shut me up. Fionn said, “We’ll travel there with you, but the boy is with me. And he stays with me.”
Tadgh wiped his face of any leftover anger and tried a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He nodded and shrugged. “As you choose. But if he were my boy…”
“Ah, but he’s not.”
Tadgh gave me an amused, but insolent look which I returned full force.
He only laughed again, because as I would come to learn, he really was a good-natured soul and didn’t hold a grudge for long.
Fionn turned to stare at me as we made our way outside, and I would have asked him for his opinion of Tadgh to make conversation, but I anticipated the kind of answer I’d get, so I kept quiet.
Tadgh had gone back to his men, and we all mounted our horses. We followed these strange Fae men out of the house and to the back gate where the horses were tied and where we rejoined the rest of Lord Fionn’s men.
I leaned over and spoke as softly as I could to Fionn. “Isn’t it odd that these Faery men are here? Could they have followed us?”
He glanced over at me and rolled his eyes.
“Since they were here before we were, I find it highly unlikely that they managed to ‘follow’ us anywhere. We’re close now to the portal that leads to Otherworld.
These men are from Falias, one of the four kingdoms of the Sidhe.
They were probably on their way home, as we were, when they heard the woman wailing. ”
“Oh…well…but how do you know that? Did you know they were going to be here?”
“No, of course not. I recognized the way they look and their accent. The people of the Falian tribe all have that light-colored hair and blue-green eyes. And they speak with a slow drawl, like these men.”
“But where were they? Why did they come to the mortal realm?”
“I neither know, nor do I care.”
That pretty effectively shut down any further discussion on the subject, so I gave him an evil look that simply bounced off him and let my horse fall back a few steps.
As we neared the small farmhouse, I began to feel a buzzing vibration deep in my bones.
It was almost painful and I wondered what it could be.
In my mouth was an odd taste, iron-like, not to mention bitter and dark.
Immediately, I grew even more uneasy, and I had a premonition, like the one I’d had as I’d waited for my uncle Leofric to return.
Something was very wrong here, and an evil presence was all around us.
****
Fionn
My father had been a popular king and since our people lived so long, most thought us to be immortal.
His demise had therefore been unexpected, to say the least. We could die, but usually only through some accidental or intentional act of extreme violence.
My father received a fatal blow from an ogre who had swung an axe at his head and cleaved his skull right down the middle—a blow that had proven to be exceedingly hard to come back from.
Come to think of it, perhaps I should find a good witch and invest heavily in an enchanted helm, as the skulls of our kings had seemed to become particularly vulnerable lately.
Both my father and King Callum had paid that heavy price.
My father’s death had come as a shock to all of us, including him, I’m sure, as he was a man in his prime. I was crowned king three days later, as I was the eldest male heir—the only legitimate one and the son of his first and true queen, Orlaith.
The ogres had long been a near constant source of trouble in Otherworld, and a huge pain in the ass.
They occupied dark, mysterious, and dangerous wildernesses and often used the same portals my own people did to come and go to and from Otherworld.
As a general rule, their homes were located in deep, dark forests, swampy marshes, or high mountain caves near portals, because that’s where the portals always were.
I thought it was also by design as well, for them to be so often on the edge of human settlements, so they could prey on the humans there too, like these people.
It wasn’t at all uncommon for ogres to raid these kinds of settlements.
My father had gone to investigate rumors of their increasing numbers near the Lincolnshire Marsh, a broad belt of salt marshes and sand dunes running between the Lincolnshire Wolds and the North Sea.
Not to protect the mortals, but because their location gave the ogres proximity to our kingdom as well.
Not that we were oblivious, necessarily, to the humans’ plight, but we considered it to be frankly none of our concern unless our own people had been attacked.
The mortals had their own kings and sovereign kingdoms to protect them.
At any rate, my father had gone merely to investigate, and his army had been viciously attacked by the ogres as they approached their marshland home. Our soldiers were ultimately victorious, but we paid dearly for it.
The farm we were going to was only a short distance from the back gate.
The woman was still crying and making eerie, keening sounds as if she were being tortured.
During the ride, one of my warriors riding near me told me quietly that he’d heard one of the villagers say this attack had occurred after midday.
I wondered how these men led by the Farlian, Tadgh Tremarion, had gotten here so quickly since we’d left Jorvik before dawn, and it was the only large city around the area.
Had they camped somewhere? Or had they, too, come from Jorvik?