Bloodstone (40 page)

I shut my eyes, the better to focus on them all, but I was losing them; they were drifting out of the map in my mind, and in a few moments it would be impossible to protect my flanks. When that
happened I would be as good as dead, or perhaps not as good as dead. It wouldn’t be so quick as death. For all my stupid bravado I didn’t want to be ripped in quarters, and Gealach was
not bluffing.

Then I felt the warm presence of the wolves at my side, heard Branndair’s low growl. It made me oddly happy, and a little courage trickled back to me. Despite everything, they were with me
still. Even if their protection couldn’t buy me enough time, then to die with friends, however slowly, however badly, would be better than dying alone.

I wanted to link my mind to Branndair’s. I needed the comfort it always gave me, that wild half-wolf feeling, but I couldn’t spare the concentration. Maybe later, when they had me,
maybe I’d get the chance then, if Branndair lived long enough. Maybe it would help a bit. I couldn’t imagine it would help much.

‘Well,’ Kate went on. She knew my fear, and despite the bite of her own necklace on her throat, her mouth twitched with merriment. ‘At least you’ll be seeing your brother
soon enough.’

‘Is that how it happens?’ Sweat trickled into my eye. ‘Tell me.’

‘How would I know better than you?’ she murmured. ‘It’s a comforting thought, isn’t it? But in line with current scientific thinking? On balance, perhaps
not.’

I let out a rasping breath that was almost a laugh. ‘You’re funny.’

‘I always thought you were too. What a shame it is, what a shame. You could lie down with me this very moment, couldn’t you? Ah, Seth. What a waste.’ She sighed dreamily.
‘You see, when I said you’d be seeing Conal soon, I didn’t mean very soon. It won’t be nearly soon enough for you. You’ll be begging me to make it sooner.’ She
licked her lips. ‘I’ll like that.’

‘I know you will. Don’t go thinking I had any illusions.’ I breathed hard through my nose, trying to loosen the numbing knot of terror in my guts.

She laughed.

That did it. In my head I could feel the last traces of Conal, dissipating slowly but inexorably. I couldn’t hold on to him, couldn’t keep him. Reckless hate raced through my veins,
chasing out the fear. ‘See when you’ve got me begging for mercy?’ I hissed in her ear. ‘You remember this, witch: however much I beg, whatever I tell you, I
don’t
mean it
.’

From her throat came a sound of frustrated fury. I’d spoilt her fun. A tiny fraction of it maybe, but it was enough to madden her, however I paid for it in the coming hours and days. It
was my turn to laugh. A small, hollow sound, but I’d laughed in her face, at least.

Behind my back was the passageway to night and blackness. On the nape of my neck I felt a breath of wind from the north, the tang of winter on it, but it was gone in less than an instant and I
could smell nothing but the scent of her flesh. Grinding my teeth, I heard as if from a long way off the growling snort of the roan, the sparking ring of a hoof on granite.

I took the blade tip from her neck and kissed the welling blood on her skin. Kate sighed, arching her neck blissfully. Twisting the knifepoint into the jump ring of the necklace, I snapped it,
and caught the emerald pendant in my palm as it fell. ‘This isn’t yours.’

She stumbled and I shoved her forward with my foot, seeing Laszlo reach for a crossbow even as I turned to the passageway and ran.

‘Kill him.’ Kate’s calm words echoed in the hall behind me. ‘Slowly, now.’

The weight of their hate slammed into my head, almost making me lose my footing, but I recovered and ran stumbling on, the wolves at my back, a flimsy block barely protecting my mind. Sheathing
my knife I drew my sword. The horse was a pale impatient shape at the mouth of the cavern and I reached for its withers and flung myself onto its back even as they swarmed from the archway.
I’ll grow up now, Conal, I promise. I promise I will. Please let me.

‘Shoot the kelpie!’ yelled Kate, and the beast beneath me screamed and staggered sideways with a crossbow bolt in its flank. Snatching at it, I hauled it out with an effort.
Green-eyed, the roan turned on Kate’s fighters, pawing the earth, while I fought it, swearing obscenely. Its fury was too demonic now to carry me away.

Kate smiled, wide and lovely. ‘Skinshanks! Where’s Skinshanks? Fetch the Lammyr!’

I gasped as a thrown dagger sliced into my arm, making me drop my sword. Thank the gods for the order to kill me slowly; Alainn’s aim wasn’t truly as bad as that.

I drew my hunting knife once more and grinned at Kate. ‘You want Skinshanks? All yours.’

I reached down for the Lammyr’s head, slicing through its hair to free it from the roan’s mane, brandishing it in my fist.

All sound died. Watching their shock turn to predatory scorn, I could feel their collective dare in my mind. They knew I wouldn’t do it; I didn’t have the guts. I wasn’t the
man my brother was.

Well, I wasn’t. And I wasn’t sure I did dare. I thought of what it might bring. And then I stopped thinking of that, because what was the point?

I closed my eyes, half-smiling, then snapped them back open.

‘I curse the ground you cross,’ I screamed. ‘On my life and my soul and my heart, I curse it for your children and your children’s children.’ Viciously I flung down
the head between myself and the horde.

It seemed to grin, one final time. Then it exploded into vile fragments, showering the ground between me and Kate’s Sithe, burning all that it touched in sparks of congealed blood like
pale flame.

I heard Kate’s shriek of unearthly fury, felt the turmoil of incredulous minds, but I didn’t wait to enjoy their horror, finally dragging the roan’s head round as it recoiled
from the Lammyr’s spattered remains. It fought me for a moment more before springing forward into a gallop, and that was long enough for me to feel two hard blows in my back that knocked me
forward against the roan’s neck, the breath stunned out of my lungs. Then we were both running with the wind into the northern winter.

Finn reined in the bay mare, who stopped gratefully, head down, limbs trembling with exhaustion. Leaning forward, hugging her neck, she slid off.

‘What are you doing?’ Jed glanced back into the darkness. ‘We have to keep going.’

‘Do that. Go on, take Rory. I’ll catch up. I can track you. I can
track
.’ She hoped that was true. But whether it was or not, she couldn’t go
any further. Not without him. Scum, traitor, turncoat: whatever he was, she was. Besides, he’d saved them, and she wasn’t going to abandon him.

‘But you haven’t got a horse!’

She shook her head violently, needing to convince herself as much as Jed. ‘Yours can’t carry us all any more.’

‘That’s not what this is about!’ Jed’s voice cracked. ‘Is it?’

‘I can’t just leave him. I have to wait and see, at least. Find out what happened to him.’

Clutching Rory, Jed wriggled forward and gathered up the reins. ‘Look, if this is some kind of thing you think you’ve got to do for Conal...’ He hesitated.
‘It’s pointless, you know? Is that what it’s about?’

‘No, no. Really that isn’t it. Please go on, Jed. Please.’
Before I start crying and begging to come with you after all.

‘Well, you’d better come soon.’ There was an obstruction in his throat. ‘I don’t want to have to come all the way back to get
you.’

She couldn’t bear to watch him ride away, so she climbed to a jutting spar of rock that glittered with mica in the starlight. Cold, it was so cold. She lay on her
stomach, feeling the deep chill radiate through her blood and into her bones. She let her focus dissipate, let her instincts kick in, and suddenly she knew how it was done. There in her brain she
found the place, tweaked it like a proud apprentice mechanic, and felt warmth churn in her bones. So that was Seth’s secret. She smiled.

Seth
. Remembering, she lifted her cheek from the stone and peered out across the moor. It wasn’t her amateur efforts alone that had chased away the cold. In the
short time she’d lain there mildness had blunted the weather, and now the stars had vanished. For a moment she thought they were drifting to earth, then saw it was only the first flakes of
snow.

He isn’t coming
, she thought, and the stab of grief surprised her.

She stood up, limbs stiff, a dull ache in her heart. Both of them: she’d only gone and lost both of them. She might as well set out on the long trudge after Jed, though
it barely seemed worth the effort. It seemed so terribly pointless, that was all. And now it was snowing.

In the distance, between earth and sky, movement caught her eye, then running shapes. Clambering down from her perch, she ran awkwardly down the stony slope, squinting into
the gathering whorls of snow. Through it the blue roan cantered, the wolves at its heels, a figure slumped across its neck.

‘Seth,’ she yelled, the snowflakes drawing in her voice and absorbing it. ‘Seth!’

He drew himself up. For a moment he seemed to have trouble focusing, then he was nudging the roan with his heels, steering it straight for her. It didn’t break pace as
he leaned down and with a grunt of pain swung her up by one arm. For a horrible instant she hung between the horse and the earth, then dragged herself up behind him.

Unexpectedly she knocked against some obstruction, and Seth screamed. Then she did too, and clapped her hand over her mouth. He hung forward once more against the
horse’s neck, gratefully clinging to it as Finn gripped his belt and stared at the two shining shafts that stood out from his back.

They overtook Jed just before dawn, the bay mare breaking into a canter to keep up. Brokentor was not hard to spot, a volcanic remnant that jutted from the
moor maybe three hundred feet, its eroded plug split and tumbled by aeons of weather. Sionnach and Eili rose as they approached. Eili’s jumper was crusted with dried blood in a swathe from
her neck to her side, and her ragged hair was gone, hacked down to dark red stubble.

The bay trotted to an exhausted halt a respectful distance from the roan, and Jed lowered Rory to Sionnach’s arms. ‘Potty!’ the child wailed.

‘I’m sorry, heart.’ Jed slid off the mare and tugged at the sodden baby jeans with some difficulty. ‘It really wasn’t the
moment.’

Finn clung to Seth’s immobile form, afraid to move in case she disturbed the crossbow bolts again. ‘Eili!’

Eili walked calmly to the horse, speaking soothing words in her own language as she stroked its flank. As she put her hand over its wound, a shiver rippled through its
muscles.

‘Eili, please!’

Branndair whined as desperately as Finn did, and nudged Seth’s unresponsive leg with his muzzle.

Eili pressed her mouth to the hole in the horse’s flank, tasting it. ‘That’s a good wound,’ she told it. ‘A clean wound. It’ll heal
fast.’ The roan whickered to her as she turned to peer with clinical interest at Seth’s back. ‘That isn’t.’

‘Please!’

Eili glanced up. ‘Begging me now, are you? For this scum?’

Finn bit her tongue, very hard, tasting blood and not caring. If she cried now, Seth was lost. She knew it by instinct; she knew it by looking into Eili’s emotionless
eyes.

‘Yes, I am. I’m begging.’

Branndair was pacing frantically, halting only to lick Seth’s foot and stare beseechingly at Finn, but she wouldn’t look at the black wolf. He too might make her
cry.

‘I’m begging you. Please. For Conal.’

‘No,’ Eili said at last, coldly. ‘Not for Conal. For me.’ She turned. ‘Sionnach!’

He pulled Seth off the horse without gentleness, ignoring Branndair’s frightened snarl, and carried Seth to the bowl-shaped hollow in the side of the hill where
they’d made camp. Sionnach dumped him face down in the thin snow beside Conal’s corpse.