The Iron Locket (The Risen King) (9 page)

"My brother, Etain," she said by way of explanation as she steered the column in the direction he had flown. "He opened the way for us."

Arthur looked around at his men as they walked. Most of them seemed curious about the beings around them, their eyes darting every which way as they tried to take in all the new creatures. But Tristan's eyes were locked on the sky, watching the beast as it ducked and dived with surprising agility, its rider clinging tightly to its back. Arthur smiled. The knight had always loved the creatures of the wood, taming wild beasts and bringing them home with him. Tristan had had several falcons, some deer, and a fox, but Arthur drew the line the day Tristan tried to bring a pair of bear cubs into the castle. Instead, he gave Tristan a small plot of land outside the city with a little lodge and allowed him to set up a wildlife sanctuary. The sanctuary fell to pieces after Tristan died. If they survived this war, Arthur promised himself, he would get the faeries to allow Tristan to set up another sanctuary, one that he could run for the rest of his days.

"We are here." Eden's soft voice broke through the king's musings. Before him stood a hedge, tall and wide. In the center was a black hole, leading off into the darkness.

"That is the way?"

The princess nodded once, looking at him expectantly.

He glanced back at Kay and Lancelot. Rarely did they agree on anything, but both had expressions of doubt and concern on their faces.

"Are you coming?" When Arthur looked back, Eden was standing in the gaping hole. She gave him an odd look, as if daring him to chicken out, then turned and trotted into the blackness.

Without hesitation, he spurred his horse forward, following her into the hole, hoping he wasn't leading his knights to their doom.

*~*~*

Arthur stood at the edge of the valley, looking down over the chaos below. Eden had not led him astray. The path they took through the strange hedge brought them out right above the largest battle he had ever seen. He could hear the soldiers moving around behind him, filing out of the tunnel and spilling onto the plateau they stood on. The knight looked to his right where his best friend sat atop his steed. The man's son was on the other side of Lancelot, hunched over his saddle, eyes large and mouth gaping as he watched the faeries below.

"Too much for you, Galahad?" Arthur kept an easy grin on his face, but his stomach twirled with nervous tension.

The young man sat up and threw his king a grin. "Not in the least. This is going to be brilliant fun. It has been too long since I have seen a real battle. I am ready." He pulled his sword to prove his point.

"The lad is right. No sense in standing around." Deklen had emerged from the tunnel, his army being the last to go through. "You and your men stay with me until you get a handle on how faeries fight. It's not quite the same as your weak human battles."

Arthur tossed him a sidelong glance, mentally warring with himself over whether to take affront at the comment or brush it off. He chose the latter, not wanting to make enemies with his only allies in this strange land. He drew Excalibur from its sheath attached to his saddle. The gems on its hilt shone brightly in the midday sun. He raised the blade high over his head and the noise around him dimmed to mere whispers.

Turning his horse around to face the throng of bodies behind him, he addressed the armies, hoping his voice would carry enough to be heard by at least half of them. "Down below us lies a fierce battle, one beyond anything many of you have ever seen. Do not fear. For while the enemy may be strong, we have fate on our side, and she will not abandon us. The vile witch Leanansidhe has taken your lands, killed one of your kings. She would enslave you if she could. Fight for your Queens, fight for your freedom. Fight to the death!"

He pumped his sword on the last word to emphasize his point and his knights roared. A few cheers went out through the rest of the crowd, but most of the faeries simply looked at him with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.

Arthur's shoulders slumped as his eyes darted over the crowd. He was used to his speeches being met with a resounding rumble of excitement, soldiers cheering and stomping their approval, weapons being drawn as the adrenal began to build. Compared to the armies he was used to, the creatures before him were somber and emotionless. He feared they did not carry the same drive to win that they needed.

"Humans and their speeches." Eden snorted beside him. She gave him a wry smirk and a shake of the head before kicking her horse hard in the flanks. As it plunged over the edge of the precipice, the telltale shnink of a blade being drawn echoed back to him, followed by a battle cry. That was all the faeries needed.

Following her lead, cries ululated around the valley, far surpassing the rumble he had hoped for. He and his knights followed Eden down into the valley, not so much by choice but because the mere surge of bodies behind them forced them forward. They reached the edge of battle much quicker than Arthur anticipated. As he plunged into the fray, he sent up a quick prayer, hoping that some god somewhere would hear him.

*~*~*

The

Faery Hunter

*~*~*

*~*~*

TEN

*~*~*

Aiofe Callaghan knelt beside the bubbling stream, pressing her lips tightly together and squinting her emerald eyes in concentration. Her fingers traced deftly across the rough bark of a fallen log as her nostrils flared on her lightly freckled face. Breaths came shallow in her tight chest and her heart beat quickly, sending her blood racing through her veins. A small smile pulled at the corners of her unpainted lips. She loved the hunt. It was the only time she really felt alive.

She took a step forward, careful to place her booted foot in a spot she had already examined, setting her heel down first and angling her foot to avoid shifting a small rock in her path. The area looked undisturbed aside from a few deer tracks in the mud in the bank, but Aiofe had been hunting for most of her life and knew what to look for. She pressed her lips together as her eyes darted over the tracks. There, in the largest of the prints lay a fragment of a leaf. She took another step forward and leaned over, examining the brown scrap. There was not a speck of mud on it.

Her smile grew to a smirk as she reached over to pick it up. She held the leaf gently between her thumb and forefinger, looking up the riverbank in the direction it pointed. "Gotcha," she whispered almost imperceptibly as she started to rise.

"Not quite." The voice came from behind her, harsh and forced from a throat not used to speaking in human tongues. She spun around, reaching for the long knife in her belt, but she was too slow and her stance was less than ideal. The creature lunged at her, his crooked, twig-like fingers wrapping around her neck. She tumbled to the ground, her back sinking into the mud, erasing all evidence of the deer path.

The beast on top of her was light, but impossibly strong. She gasped for air as she slashed at his woody skin. He snarled, dripping sticky sap onto her face from his jagged teeth. Crumbled leaves fell around them as they tussled, his hair having grown brittle in the autumn weather.

"You stupid human. For too long have you hunted my kind." The creature spat in her face, a gob of sap splattering across her forehead to meld with the dirt in her red hair.

He maneuvered his small body so he was sitting on her chest with his feet beside her head. She could hear his legs creaking as he elongated his toes, digging them into the dirt like roots, giving him even more purchase against her. She stabbed at his arms, back, and legs, trying desperately to dislodge him, but his grip on her throat tightened. The bones in her neck ground together and she feared they would snap. Her face felt swollen and hot with blood unable to escape through crushed veins and her attacks grew weak as black spots formed along the edge of her vision.

"You..." She tried to speak, but she couldn't get the words out without the much needed air that was trapped in her lungs. She tried once more to throw him off, mustering all her strength to bring up her right knee into his back. He grunted and jerked forward, but his toes just dug into the dirt further as his fingers wrapped tighter around her already bruised neck.

"I? I what?" He leaned back slightly and loosened his grip just a bit, letting her have a delicious breath of air. She gulped it in like a horse gulps water after a hard run.

The words crawled painfully out of her throat, barely audible. "You're dead." She gritted her teeth until they creaked and swung her arm up, aiming for his head. He reacted quickly and began to move, causing the knife to hit his hard, knobby shoulder. The blade deflected violently, leaving a slimy streak in the wood, and her momentum sent it straight into the soft wood just below his ear.

The creature squealed and reared back, releasing his grip on her painfully throbbing throat. She sat up as quickly as her body would allow. The movement dislodged the wooden creature and his feet ripped from the ground with several sickening cracks, raining chunks of a dirt down around her as he toppled backward. His squeals turned into howls while she pulled herself to the fallen tree and used it to prop herself up.

She fumbled at her side, cursing herself for not releasing the catch on her holster before entering the woods. Her eyes darted between the sidearm and her prey, who had righted himself. Her lip curled and her stomach lurched as he locked eyes with her and smiled viciously, his knobby fingers wrapping around the hilt of her knife. The blade came loose with a loud slurp and sap poured down the creature's neck and over his bare chest. He stalked toward her, limping noticeably on broken toes.

Aiofe gave up on the gun and used the log behind her to rise. She clambered over it, the rough bark scratching her already battered hands. She was almost to the other side, almost had a chance, when her head jerked backward, sending her sprawling to the ground. The creature had his spindly fingers tangled tightly through her copper hair, using the braid she always wore pinned around the crown of her head when she hunted as leverage.

She reached up with both hands and dug at his skin, peeling away layers of thin bark and leaving herself with painful splinters under her nails. She grunted and attempted to twist her body around, swinging her feet violently, hoping against all hope that they would connect with something, anything that would help her free herself before it was too late.

He jerked her head back, smashing it against the log. She was stunned momentarily as black dots and white stars waltzed in front of her eyes. Through the myriad of fuzzy dancers, she watched the creature, her frazzled mind trying to decipher his movements. He had her knife in his free hand. It was shining with a dark, thick liquid that dripped slowly to the ground. He raised it above her head, aiming the point carefully for her eye.

She closed them both, not wanting to know the exact moment of her death. Instead, she prayed. To God, to Jesus, to Gaea, to Avalon, to any being out there who would listen. A loud crack interrupted her prayers. Her eyes shot open in time to see a big ax being ripped from the creature's skull. The head was split in two down to its chin. It tottered for a moment, as if trying to regain its balance, then it toppled to the side. Her body was pulled with it, the thing's fingers still tangled in her hair.

She pressed her lips together, listening as the crunch of leaves grew closer, refusing to look up until a pair of scuffed and muddied work boots stopped in front of her. She glanced up briefly, seeing the grizzled white beard and rough, leathery skin atop a camouflage hunter's jacket. Her defiant frown turned to a dejected pout and she lowered her eyes again. The man knelt down beside her, his carpenter's pants splattered with thick, dark sap, the creature's blood.

"Dammit, Aiofe," he grumbled as he pried at the fingers in her hair.

She bit down on her tongue, suppressing her cries as he jerked her head from side to side, cracking the wood and tearing out strands of hair with it.

"What were you thinking?" He didn't want a response. She knew her grandfather well enough. They had been hunting together since she was old enough to carry a gun. She had broken the rules going out alone and she had almost paid the ultimate price. Even if he had demanded an answer, she wasn't sure she could. Her entire body had started to shake, the adrenaline rush from the fight now gone, leaving her cold and vulnerable.

She squeezed her fingers together, trying to hide the fear from the only father figure she had ever known. She forced herself to take deep breaths to regain her composure while blinking quickly to fight back the tears that were threatening to flood the dam years of training had built. The taste of blood in her mouth helped to steady her, even though she knew her tongue would pay her back for the cruel treatment later.

Her head stopped moving and her grandfather sat back on his haunches. She hazarded a glance and saw his eyes through a teary haze. His hard glare softened a fraction and he sighed. "Come on," he said, leaning over to cup her under the arm. "Let's get you home and cleaned up."

She let him pull her to her feet and had to close her eyes against the feeling of nausea that threatened to overtake her.