Completely Folk'd Page 5

  When the killings came, mere seconds later, they were swift and efficient.

  HILL OF TARA, 46 AD

  Dusk had fallen on the Hill of Tara. From the eastern and western edge of the summit’s crest, their amassed armies grouped behind them, the Morrigan and Carman walked toward one another.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ Danny couldn’t help but ask the question.

  What always happens, in life, the Goddess of War whispered in his mind. Nothing you expect.

  BELFAST CITY CENTRE, NOW

  Cal stared down, open-mouthed, at the remains of the creature that had threatened him, even as the giant wolf released the carcass from its mouth.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the wolf grunted, glancing at the humans before it with what looked like bemusement at their paralyzing fear.

  A second wolf appeared at its shoulder, sniffing the air. ‘How goes the hunt?’

  ‘Prey is plentiful. Protect the humans. Serve the Morrigan. Honoured are the Named.’

  ‘Honoured are the Named,’ the second wolf responded, and leapt, gone in an instant.

  ‘What the fuck are you?’ Cal managed to say.

  The great wolf examined him, and despite the fact that it had just saved his life, Cal couldn’t quell the fear shaking through every part of his body.

  ‘My name,’ the massive creature said, with evident pride, ‘is Wily. And I am not a what.’

  FORMER SITE OF DUBLIN, NOW

  Tom couldn’t quite process the fact that he was still alive. He was quite pleased about it, you know. All things considered it was one of the better things that had happened to him tonight, this whole ‘not being dead’ thing. Though, seeing as how his car plunged off a ferry exit ramp into an endless abyss tonight, it wasn’t up against particularly stiff competition. It was, quite frankly, a proper fuckin’ puzzler.

  He had come to only moments ago, his head resting against the steering wheel. The car was sitting motionless on a dark, flat surface. He could see lights though the windscreen and, turning on the car’s headlights, he made out the shape of several other vehicles, also with their lights on, including an Ulsterbus tour bus and the people carrier which had plunged into the nothingness seconds before he had.

  As his senses sharpened into focus, he caught a whiff of something unpleasant and reached down to his lap. ‘Aw, fuck’s sake …’

  Strangely, his mental ship began to right itself after that. He had a case full of clothes in the boot and a toiletries bag so he got out of the car and stepped onto the table-flat surface. He wondered if he should call out – or would that bring some sort of messy death upon him? If this was Hell, would his cries attract creatures or demons or something?

  Besides, he smelt of piss. Get a pair of clean trunks on first, then exploration.

  As he opened the boot of the car he heard the unmistakable sound of a car door shutting somewhere off in the distance. So others had survived too then. Well, it was reasonable to assume they had – if his car could plummet for what seemed like about a week before coming to a gentle stop on all four wheels with no outward signs of damage, why couldn’t theirs?

  Ha ha ha, some part of Tom’s mind was giggling throughout all this. Ha ha ha.

  He was vaguely worried by this, as it seemed like a classic sign that he was losing his shit. He decided, as he found a plastic bag with tie handles and piled his pissy clothes into it, that he would worry about the ha ha ha later on.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out. He needed a torch; the only light down here was coming from headlights. He looked up, and for a wonder, saw stars, but only on about half of the sky. The other half was pure inky blackness, and … and …

  … moving. The sky was moving. More accurately, the sky was rippling.

  Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

  His phone! Of course. It had one of those torch apps on it. He fished it from the glove compartment and, before he found the correct app, realised he had full bars.

  Forty-two missed calls. It had been on silent.

  The phone started flashing again and his mother’s picture appeared on the – ha ha ha – screen of the – ha ha ha – phone. She was phoning him right now – ha ha ha.

  ‘Mu-Mummy?’ said the thirty-four-year-old man as he answered the call.

  She shouted and screamed and rejoiced for a full five minutes while he stood dumbly and listened and waited for her to stop. He was alive! Alive, her little boy! Did he realise what had happened to the entire fucking island of Ireland? Did he have any clue what had happened? And yet here he was, her precious son and he was alive!

  Another driver must have regained consciousness then, because a new set of headlights flicked into life close to where he was standing. This car was facing the other way.

  As his mother raved her delight, Tom walked forward, slowly and deliberately, into the path of light. Others were there too, he saw. Others had already seen what they were close to and had approached it also.

  He was barely feet from it now.

  Towering above all of their heads, stretching high towards the heavens, was a great wall, a towering immensity which had blocked half the stars from view.

  Well, okay, it wasn’t a wall, per se. Walls were solid and not, for example, made out of water, because that would – ha ha ha – be crazy! You couldn’t form a small bucket of water into a wee tiny wall, let alone get what looked like tens of millions – ha ha ha – of gallons of water to act as a fucking massive wall! Except that presumably you could. Because here it was.

  The blackness that he now knew to be water seemed to stretch on as far as the eye could see. Kneeling down, he ran his fingers along the ground. It was impossibly smooth, impossibly featureless. There was not a grain or a pebble. Something had buzz-sawed Ireland down to its bedrock and spirited it away. Something held the seas in place around where its borders once lay.

  ‘Thomas!’ his mother was screaming down the phone. ‘Thomas speak to me! Where are you? What’s going on?’

  He was already running back to the car. It roared into life first go, thank God, thank God. Others around him were doing the same. The driver was piling passengers back into the Ulsterbus as fast as he could shove them. Sightseeing was over.

  ‘Can’t talk now, Ma,’ he said, ending the call, setting off across the great plains of the former Irish landmass. Everyone standing before that great wall had had the same thought, all at once – if an entire sea could be held back at a whim, it could be let go just as easily.

  LIRCOM TOWER, BELFAST, NOW

  Dother’s opponents hadn’t stood a chance. They’d barely had time to register his attack before he had cut them down, one after the other, with barely a pause between kills.

  He stood in the midst of the carnage, surveying the corpses strewn at his feet.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, completely unscathed, Tony, Ellie and Dermot tried to process the last few moments.

  Dother had cut clean through his own guards. As they had been poised to take revenge on the humans who had caused Carman’s death, her own son had eviscerated them without even breaking a sweat.

  Dother had saved their lives.

  ‘Right,’ their saviour said briskly, wiping blood and entrails from his previously-immaculate Savile Row suit with a faint look of distaste. ‘Questions?’

  If there were indeed questions to be asked, they never got a chance to voice them, for, in the centre of Dother’s office, an object had popped into existence and a creature emerged from its depths.

  Ellie’s first instinct was to scream.

  The Rescue

  HILL OF TARA, 46 AD

  Danny didn’t know what kind of battle to expect. He’d half-anticipated some sort of all-out gymnastic extravaganza, with Carman pulling off triple somersaults, blades flying, like something from Star Wars.

  It wasn’t like that at all. Oh, it wasn’t dull, or amateurish – both of the fighters were obviously immensely skilled. The Morrigan wielded Nuada’s Sword while Carman had a pair of daggers which,
if Danny was honest, didn’t seem very magical at all. At least if you didn’t count the skill with which she manoeuvred them through the air, fending off her opponent’s attacks.

  They circled each other, probing, waiting for some sign that the other wasn’t quite as ready as they should be. If such a sign was given, then the other would immediately close in and blades would whirl and clang, almost too fast to follow, yet there was no hint of showiness. This wasn’t about pretty choreography – it was about finding an opening and using it to press the advantage. It was about trying to take the other woman’s head clean off her shoulders.

  Throughout this the two armies had gathered on either side to watch. The only beings within the circle of combat were the two opponents, Carman’s three sons, and the Morrigan’s sons Gaim and Glon.

  Hatred crackled in the air. The periods of calm between the short exchanges of metal on metal were, he found, much more intense than the actual fighting. Neither woman taunted the other. No words were spoken, but plenty was communicated in that silence. It was mostly of the I’m gonna kill you slowly and painfully variety, admittedly, but there was plenty of it.

  The Morrigan lunged, swinging the Sword in a wide arc. Carman leapt, slashing with the daggers, forcing the Morrigan to throw herself to the left. Even as she fell the Sword came up, fending off the daggers as Carman attempted to slash her throat. The Morrigan sprang to her feet, kicking out, catching Carman off-balance and toppling her over.

  Carman turned her forward momentum into a roll, and the Morrigan’s downswing found earth instead of flesh, the Sword biting deep into the hilltop. She tried to pull it free and realised that, in the time it would take to do so, Carman’s daggers would run her through. Instantly she abandoned the attempt to free her weapon, leaving it half-buried, and brought up her arms to grab Carman’s wrists and lock on.

  They stood together, toe to toe, almost nose to nose, their arms straining. The two points of Carman’s daggers glittered in the sunlight as the witch tried to force them downward, into the Morrigan’s breast.

  Only now was the silence broken.

  ‘Is this it?’ the Morrigan said. If the tug of war she was engaged in was causing her any physical stress, her voice did not betray it. ‘This is the mighty Carman of Athens? Little wonder Olympus rejected you.’

  Carman roared in anger at this, but could not move her daggers any further. Danny could see the strain etched on her face, she was no match for the Morrigan’s strength. Her wrists were being forced back on themselves, and those glittering points began to turn accordingly, to point back at their owner.

  ‘Fool,’ was all Carman said. ‘Now!’

  At this signal, her sons moved. Dub’s physical form imploded and then expanded as he morphed from oversized human into a cloud of darkness in a fraction of a second. The darkness shot across the combat circle, but did not go anywhere near his mother or the Morrigan.

  It went straight for Glon and Gaim.

  A howl of anguish escaped from Carman’s lips as the Morrigan’s hands clamped around her wrists. The daggers were lost from her suddenly-numb fingers and in the Morrigan’s control in a heartbeat. She swept Carman’s feet from beneath her and in a flash was kneeling over her prone adversary, a dagger poised at each ear.

  Meanwhile, Dub’s ethereal form had barrelled full-on into the two younger Tuatha. Confused, they had tried to fight it, but how exactly were you supposed to fight something almost entirely without substance? As Danny watched, horrified and fascinated in equal measure, he could see solid shapes in the dark cloud; onyx fists, blue-black against the blackness, that lashed out with lightning speed and effortlessly incapacitated the Morrigan’s sons. As they slumped, Dub’s form re-solidified back to human.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Carman rasped. There was no fear in her voice, only triumph.

  Poised to deliver the killing blow, the Morrigan could not help but turn her head to take in the sight of her sons, semi-conscious, their arms pinned securely behind their back. Glon was held by Dub, Gaim by Dian. Both of Carman’s sons held daggers against the throats of their hostages.

  Dother, Danny couldn’t help but notice, hadn’t moved a muscle. He stood stock still at the far end of the combat circle amongst the various bits of equipment and apparel Carman had brought.

  ‘You have broken the covenant,’ the Morrigan said heavily. She beckoned for her fellow Tuatha to come to assist. They tried to enter the combat circle, but were stopped by some intangible force at the perimeter.

  ‘I have broken nothing,’ Carman replied from beneath her. ‘We agreed on choice of weapons. Have you forgotten?’

  ‘Whatever we take with us,’ Danny murmured. Which, for both women, had included their sons. He could see realisation dawn on the Morrigan too, as her eyes moved from the helpless opponent lying at her feet, to her sons, similarly helpless, now coming back to consciousness and realising the predicament they were in.

  ‘Do it, Ma,’ Glon urged her, refusing to be cowed. Danny could see in him the little boy who had jumped onto his mother’s back in an effort to save Gaim from another ducking in the washing-pool. ‘Kill the witch and be done with it.’

  As for Gaim, he said nothing. He met his mother’s eyes and Danny could see that the younger boy – man – didn’t trust himself to speak, couldn’t be sure that his words would be as brave and self-sacrificing as those of his big brother. So he said nothing, just looked at his mother with one corner of his mouth twitched upward in a brave attempt to smile.

  Horns blew, long and loud.

  Danny looked for their source, Tuatha or faerie, and soon realised neither was the cause of the blast. The thousands peppering the Hill of Tara from both sides were belatedly realising that they were not alone any more.

  From all sides, from everywhere it seemed, humans were approaching, encircling the amassed ranks of Tuatha and faerie alike.

  The horns blew again. As the approaching army – as surely it was – grew closer, Danny could see standard-bearers. He didn’t recognise the colours, but something about the cut and cloth of the humans seemed familiar.

  Within the combat circle, no-one had so much as blinked. They were not ignorant of the new arrivals, but no outward acknowledgment had yet been made. Most likely each side knew that the slightest drop in guard could lead to the beginning of swift carnage.

  Still the humans came, more and more, pouring from every direction. As impressive as the numbers of faerie and Tuatha had seemed, they were nothing compared to the force of arms being demonstrated here. As far as the eye could see, heavily-armed men stood shoulder to shoulder, arranged in neat rows. They looked well drilled, professional – this wasn’t some small incursion, this was an invasion.

  The advance stopped at the foot of the hill, just shy of the Tuatha on one side and the faeries on the other. A few of the faeries snapped and circled menacingly, but there were no outbreaks of violence. He wondered if Carman, even prone and with daggers at either side of her face, was exerting some sort of invisible control over her monstrous creations.

  Horns blew again. The ranks of men parted at the bottom of the hill, and a small party emerged from within. He heard distant voices, saw the Tuatha who had earlier attempted to come to the Morrigan’s aid conversing urgently amongst themselves. Some sort of decision was made.

  A party of men began to advance up the hill, the Tuatha parting ranks to allow them to proceed. He couldn’t help but notice that the hole the Tuatha had created in their numbers swallowed up again as soon as was practicable. Whoever these men were in the advance party, they had been quickly and effectively cut off from the remainder of their numbers. It was a hell of a risk.

  The stalemate within the combat circle remained intact. The Morrigan and Carman clearly knew the game had changed and Danny imagined they were awaiting to see exactly by how much – there would be little point in hasty bloodshed given the overwhelming size of the invasion force that had just shown up in their midst.

  The Tuatha nearest the
circle parted and Danny got his first look at the advance party. If he was surprised by what he saw there, it was nothing compared to the reaction from the Morrigan, or from her sons.

  ‘Da!’ Gaim said, Dian’s dagger still pressed against his throat.

  Caderyn it was. He looked much older than the last time Danny had seen him, after the harrowing events in the village. What was the saying? It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

  Caderyn was flanked by what looked like three noblemen, all dressed in fineries, but with the unmistakable bearing of men who knew full well how to handle themselves in a scrap.

  The Tuatha were the first to break the silence. The Dagda stepped forward and inclined his head. ‘We welcome the Milesians to our shores,’ he said formally. ‘How was your crossing?’

  ‘Hellish,’ the central figure spoke. ‘The storms were the worst we have ever seen. Three of every ten of us perished in the time between shores, including five of my own brothers.’

  ‘Almost as though you were being told to stay away,’ the Dagda said calmly.

  The one who had spoken glanced at Caderyn, whose attention throughout this whole exchange had been fixed on his former wife. ‘We have been told enough,’ he said. ‘We have been informed of the chaos that exists here. How men are subjugated to the whims of beings like you. Human lives are forfeit in your games. The very land cries out to be rid of you. Even now,’ he continued, gesturing towards the frozen inhabitants of the combat circle, ‘your cycle of death plays out.’

  ‘You speak well,’ the Dagda said, genuine admiration in his voice.

  ‘I am Amergin, ruler of the Milesians. These are my remaining brothers, Eber Finn and Eremon,’ he indicated the remaining two noblemen, who did not bow to the Tuatha. They looked, in fact, as if they rather expected it to be the other way around. ‘And this is …’ he began, turning to Caderyn.