chapter 26
“Am I allowed to say I fecking told ye so?”
I think I’d be okay with those being me last words.
And with a giant Fir Bolg headed this way as I’m trapped under a weighted iron net, they might well be.
The big bastard doesn’t kill me, though. He just gets close enough so that I can tell he smells like bull balls and bad fish, and he gives me a wee poke in the shoulder to let me know the spearhead is sharp and he’s not afraid to use it if I try anything.
Not that I can try much. With all this iron, I can’t even shape-shift to a bear and make the fight interesting. The net be damned, if I could shift this close to the Fir Bolg I could probably take him down, and that spear would mean shite.
Meara’s to me left and Siodhachan to me right, each of us with a Fir Bolg looming nearby. The fourth Fir Bolg has a face like a badger tearing out of a cardboard box, and when he whistles up at the nearest tree, a pixie in maroon and gold livery flies down from the leaves. It squeaks in a tiny voice as its wings hum in the air: “Is it the Iron Druid?”
“Aye,” the Fir Bolg says. “Tell them as who wants to know.”
He means Fand, of course. The Fae call her queen, but it’s not a meaningful title in the ruling of Tír na nóg. Brighid’s in charge and everyone knows it. And if ye try to call Manannan king, he’ll toss your naughty bits into the bog. But I suppose the Fae want some theatre or drama and Brighid doesn’t provide enough of it for them. She was businesslike when I saw her preside at the Fae Court—powerful but not regal, I guess you’d say. The Fae in attendance seemed to hunger for a sense of ceremony or nobility, and she didn’t give it to them.
The pixie whirls off toward the castle and the Fir Bolgs grunt, happy to let it sink in that they weren’t waiting for just anyone, they were waiting for us specifically. Siodhachan doesn’t say anything, and I can practically see him working through his options—I’m working through them too.
If we grab or trap or slap away the spears of the Fir Bolgs guarding us, there’s still that extra one who can lunge in to help. And if we get skewered in any significant way, we won’t be able to heal until we get out from under the nets and onto some ground that will let us draw power again.
Siodhachan still has Fragarach, I assume, because they haven’t taken it from him, but neither do I see it. He might have hidden it beneath him. Clever boy. Though he won’t be able to swing it around underneath a net.
Our options, therefore, are about as attractive as a slug in the sun, glistening and moist and squishy and gods damn it I hate those things. We will have to wait to see if a better opportunity develops.
It’s only a few minutes until the pixie returns from the castle, though it feels like much longer. Time has a way of lengthening when you’re trapped, and Siodhachan isn’t filling the air with his talk. He hasn’t spoken a word since he tried to warn us of the ambush.
The pixie’s not alone. Four flying and liveried faeries—the willowy lads armed with bronze weapons—escort a fifth figure, who glides across the grass, a sort of sackcloth scarecrow holding an unsheathed sword pointed at the ground. A small swarm of pixies buzzes above and behind them. Once they reach us, the faeries and pixies hover overhead, while the not-so-anonymous person in sackcloth stops in front of Siodhachan. The voice is a scratchy rasp, however, not feminine at all.
“I see two Druids and a selkie. Where is the third Druid? Is she hiding, perhaps, in the woods nearby?”
Siodhachan says, “Fand, we’ve just come to talk to you. I know what you’ve done, but I’m not here to seek vengeance. I’m here to forge a peace. Can we talk face-to-face? We all know it’s you under there.”
“You all know, do you?” Instead of pulling off the hood or unfastening the robe, she removes her disguise by unbinding it. It dissolves to threads and falls slowly to the ground like autumn leaves, revealing a pale-skinned Fand without a stitch on. It’s a threat that a modern man might miss.
Siodhachan had to explain to me that people today don’t understand why the Celts of our time stormed into battle naked. They think it’s because we were trying to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies by demonstrating our own fearlessness, and, sure, that’s a secondary reason. But the truth is that you have to be daft to fight with clothes on when an opposing Druid can use them to bind you to the earth and then kill you at his leisure. A single Druid on the other side can take out your whole cattle raid if you come at him wearing clothes. So people learned very quickly that if there was a possibility of running into a Druid, your only chance of winning was to charge in naked with steel weapons, whose iron content defied easy binding.
A modern man might, therefore, misinterpret Fand’s sudden nudity as a signal that she likes him. Siodhachan and I know that it means the opposite. And, more than that, revealing herself means she’s abandoning the sneaky act. If we die now, Manannan will have his proof of her guilt as soon as he picks up our shades, and she obviously does not care. I don’t know if her open defiance signals desperation or confidence, but either way I’m as disturbed as she could wish. She drops whatever she was doing to disguise her voice and returns to her normal timbre, soft-spoken yet unmistakably angry.
“Perhaps you do not understand how far I am prepared to take this. Now, I will ask you again, Siodhachan. Where is Granuaile MacTiernan?”
“I sincerely have no idea. I haven’t had any contact with her for days.”
“You are not a guest in my home now. I will not smile and be satisfied with lies and half-truths.” She turns to the Fir Bolg to my left and grinds out a short command: “Kill the selkie.”