Warstalker's Track (48 page)

“So how many we got?” he asked Aikin as he picked his way along what would never again be a peaceful shore.

“Thirty-two—I think; critters weren’t picky about tearin’ ’em up. Plus Elyyoth and…Aife.”

“Separate deal,” David told him. “We’ll ask Finno how they handle this kind of thing in Faerie.”

“The rest?” Scott wondered.

David looked to Aikin for advice. “Burn ’em, maybe? The Faeries anyway. Or just leave ’em and let nature take its course. I mean, their bodies don’t seem to hang around long over here.”

“What about the mortals, though? Can’t bury ’em. Can’t leave ’em. Can’t report ’em, either.”

“And I’d just as soon Ma didn’t know,” David finished.

“Won’t get any easier,” Aikin prompted from beside the nearest body: a slender, rather hard-faced Faery woman. “First thing I guess is to lay ’em all out in a row. You guys wanta give me a hand?”

“No,” David muttered, but joined him. “Head or feet?”

“Alternate,” Aikin gave back. “I’ll take head this time.”

David frowned as he hunkered down at the fallen warrior’s boots. No obvious wounds showed on her body, so he wondered how she’d died. But then Aikin twitched the hair away from her throat and he saw. She was one of the ones Alec had dispatched.

He wondered if he was up for this; not only from the pain in his arm but from—he faced it squarely—the way it would remind him of Brock. Still, it had to be done, and he was no better than the others, and indeed no more affected. Steeling himself, he reached for the warrior’s ankles.

And flinched back in horror, for his fingers had gone in too far!

He touched her again—higher.

Same effect.

“Oh, shit!” spat a startled Aikin. “Oh, fuckin’ bloody friggin’ damn!”

“What?” Liz wondered, looking up.

“Finno!” David called. “You got any—?”

Fionchadd padded up beside them and regarded the woman with cold, dispassionate eyes. “Two things,” he observed. “First, without spirit to maintain it, and with all Power fled, and being made of the stuff of another World, there is little to bind these bodies together. Too, the pool drank deep indeed. It drank blood, aye, for blood contains much Power. But it also drank of more subtle…energies, you would say. And since we were wet all over, it could draw Power from virtually everything.”

“Hmm,” Sandy inserted, from behind Calvin. “Makes sense. I mean, think, folks: how much energy would be required to move a mass the size of Tir-Nan-Og?—and it
was
a physical mass, no mistake! And then remember how much potential there is in a person’s atomic structure if you could tap it. Play with Einstein a while, and you get some amazing numbers.”

“An A-bomb channeled through Aife?” David snorted. “I don’t think so. No, scratch that,” he corrected. “Don’t
want
to think so.”

“Me neither,” Calvin agreed, looking pointedly at Fionchadd. “But what
you’re
saying is that if we leave ’em here, they’ll eventually just dry up and blow away?”

“Yes,” the Faery agreed. “Flesh first, then clothing, then stone and metal. Those last, however, you may have to salvage.”

“And the mortals?”

“Same thing, but slower. I
think
,”
he added, “that the spell still lingers here in this spring and would gladly suck the rest of these bodies down. I think that would provide the final…sealing.”

“Whatever,” David grunted. “Let’s just get movin’.”

It took less than ten minutes, with all the men save Alec and Piper pitching in. The women, by choice, stayed away, but Piper played a suitable lament. He settled on “Flowers in the Forest.”

Nor was it as bad as David expected. Over half of the bodies in the water proved to be essentially floating shells and were all but dissolved already. Submerging them helped, so all that remained was to wade them into deep water and hold them down for a while, after first stripping all Faeries of weaponry and jewels.
Wergild,
Fionchadd proclaimed, for Brock, Aife, and Elyyoth. And while the metal would eventually wear away, gems, silver, and gold dispersed very slowly indeed.

The humans were a larger problem, mostly because their clothing, being Faerie in origin, didn’t seem to be lasting as long as their bodies. Finally David remembered the ropes that had bound their latest lean-to together, and with them and the numerous stones that littered the lookout, they weighted the corpses. A day—two at the max, Fionchadd said—and they’d dissolve as well. Their weapons, they’d cache nearby for the nonce, then retrieve someday for burial in the Sullivan family cemetery.

Of Elyyoth, there was no sign. Then again, he’d been among the first Faeries to fall and had died in what was then very hungry water.

Aife’s fate was Alec’s decision. “I don’t want her with the rest of them,” he said. “Otherwise, I…I don’t care.”

Fionchadd gnawed his lip. “I could blast her with Power—I have enough for that. But I would rather spend it healing your injuries.”

Alec smiled wanly. “Actually, I was thinking there’s probably enough dry wood left in the lean-to for a pyre.”

By unspoken consent, David and Aikin went to accomplish that, leaving Fionchadd, Scott, and Kirkwood to handle the removal of Aife’s body. Being the last casualty, and having died as affairs were resolving, she was almost intact, though Calvin commented on a disquieting lightness when he and Kirkwood lifted her onto the makeshift bier. Fionchadd shrouded her with his cloak. David laid an arm on Alec’s shoulders. “Hang in there, big guy. We’re almost done. You want us here, we’ll stay; you want us gone…we’re outa here.”

“Stay until sunrise,” Alec said. “That’d be a good time, I think.”

Sunrise was an hour away by David’s estimation, and while he was desperate to get to a phone and check on his pa, he was too fried to even think of leaving yet. With his fellows, he found towels and dry clothes in one or the other vehicles and changed. A few napped. Wounds were tended, notably David’s, Alec’s, and LaWanda’s. Scott and Kirkwood stood guard, though everyone retained a weapon.

It was David who remembered the ulunsuti. It lay where it had rolled during the first attack: lodged beneath a piece of driftwood with the pot that held it not far away. He touched it cautiously—and jumped back in alarm when the crystal pulsed with light. “Folks…!” he yelled.

Calvin was there in a trice, with Kirkwood and Liz close behind. David hadn’t moved the stone since it awakened, but had never let it out of his sight. It was still glowing, too; more brightly by the moment, in fact, and as David stared at it, images took form, in the crimson septum first, then reaching out in a glare of light to fill a circle maybe two yards across. A face appeared within that circle: black hair, dark eyes, pale face, long mustache. Crown. It wavered briefly, then stabilized into the image of Lugh Samildinach—on his throne—with a dagger thrust into its arm by way of his hand. He too looked freshly bathed and dressed.

“Greetings, Lord,” David coughed, because no one else seemed inclined to speak. “You’ve, uh…found us.”

“Not without difficulty!” Lugh laughed. “It seems the maps hereabout have…altered.”

“We had no choice,” David protested. “If it’s caused you trouble, I’m sorry. But a man’s gotta defend his own place.”

“A fact that is not unknown to me,” Lugh replied neutrally. “And a situation I can certainly understand.”

David nodded. Waiting. Clearly Lugh had his own agenda. “I doubt we will meet face-to-face after this,” the Faery said eventually with an air of genuine regret. “We have gone far together, you and I and these others. We have fought and lost and fought again and won. We have learned from each other as well, though I doubt I need to tell you that! But what you have done here—it was…
is…
unthinkable! Yet you have done it. Had I considered such a thing, I would have investigated it. That you
did
consider it brands you a wiser man than I.”

David puffed his cheeks and asked the question he knew he had to ask or regret it the rest of his life. “So, are you pissed at us, or what?”

Lugh’s brows twitched. “A man does not like his property put at risk; I have therefore some right to be angry. A man
does,
however, like his property protected, and you have done that as well. So let us call the payment even.”

A deep breath and one final question. “What about your plan? You still gonna flood the Cove if they start buildin’ that resort there?”

Lugh countered with a cryptic smile. “That place is no longer a threat.”

“Not to
you
!”
David muttered, and would’ve said more had Liz not elbowed him in the ribs.

To David’s surprise, Lugh rose from his throne and bowed, though his hand never left the arm. “I thought it right we exchange farewells,” Lugh told him. “So in my name and Nuada’s and everyone else you know here: farewell!”

David bowed in turn. His eyes were misting. “Farewell,” he whispered, and turned away, hearing the others likewise call “Farewell.”

Eventually they all made that final formal parting, even Alec, though it cost him dear. Fionchadd alone spoke more than a few words, but David never heard them, for they were in Faery speech. Still, his Faery friend looked the better for that encounter.

Sunrise was threatening the sky when a tight-faced Liz returned the quiescent ulunsuti to Alec. The fog beyond the ledge shimmered with pink and gold and orange. David had just decided he might possibly be able to snare a moment’s shut-eye when he heard someone running—staggering, rather—up the trail, virtually out of breath. “Cal,” he warned, hand on the Beretta. “There!”

“Got ’im!” Kirkwood laughed from the entrance to the trail, flourishing a kicking and twisting Little Billy, whom he’d corralled by the collar. “This belong to you?” he asked David with an evil smirk that turned to an agonized grimace when the kid’s heel caught him smartly in the crotch. Kirkwood slumped backward. Little Billy sprawled on all fours, but picked himself up at once, full of outraged dignity. Which washed from his face as soon as he saw David, to be replaced with anguish mixed with tears.

“Fuckin’ fog!” the boy sobbed as he flung himself onto his brother. “Slowed me down like hell—sorry, like
heck.
Oh, dammit, Dave, who gives a fuck about…about words, when—” He broke off, tried to compose himself, swallowed hard, then tried again. “I…don’t know what you guys are doin’ up here, but you…you gotta come home right
now,
Davy! It’s Pa!”

David’s heart nearly leapt from his body as he stared his brother (not much shorter than him now) straight in the eye. “What about him?”

Little Billy gaped, wide-eyed. “He’s—Davy, I think…think he’s gonna
die
!”

“Aik!” David yelled. “Liz. Somebody! Car keys!
Now!”

“No need for haste,” a voice purred from the forest. David nearly jumped out of his skin. Calvin and Liz (but not the groaning Kirkwood) went instantly on guard.

David searched the forest frantically, but even so, it took a moment to make out the shape slipping silently from among the trees. Female (but he’d known that by the voice), smallish, oddly dressed, and eerily familiar.

Calvin recognized her first. “Okacha!”

David’s tension dispersed so quickly he almost collapsed. “’Kacha—what? I mean, I don’t want to be rude, but my pa—”

“Will be fine if you do not spill this,” Okacha replied, extending a narrow-necked pottery phial sealed with wax. She held another in reserve.

Little Billy looked seriously suspicious. “Huh?”

Okacha’s eyes danced with an amusement David didn’t appreciate, a fact she soon keyed in on. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Sometimes I forget how fear can screw you up, and that not everybody’s gonna chill just ’cause I know it’s okay for them to. Anyway, the message I have is this: Uki and the others saw everything and applaud your actions and your courage and your wits. And they know, as you didn’t until your brother got here, that your father lies in peril of his life from a shard of Faery metal that won’t let his wound heal. They’d prefer this didn’t happen, however, so they send you that phial, with another for yourselves, if you need it.”

David regarded it dubiously. “What—?”

“Water from the Lake Atagahi,” Okacha replied. “
Healing
water. If it can’t save your father, nothing can. In any event, it’ll certainly be useful.”

“Thanks,” David breathed, at once relieved, excited, and frightened. “And if you don’t mind, we’d better get to it. Feel free to come along, as soon as somebody gets me some keys.”

“You hang on to that,” Aikin told him roughly. “I’ll drive.”

Epilogue: Spoiling the View

(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Tuesday, July 1—sunrise)

David held his breath. So did Little Billy. So did their mother and most of the other people crammed into the Sullivans’ den.
Was it enough?
That tiny trickle of healing Atagahi water Sandy and Kirkwood, who between them
almost
constituted an EMT, had finally managed to get down Big Billy’s throat.

How much
was
enough, anyway? And how long did it take to have any effect? He didn’t know—couldn’t remember—was too wired to focus. The bottom line was they’d done the last thing they could to save his father. Might work; might not.

No one spoke. David held tight to Liz’s hand and squeezed his mother’s reassuringly with the other. She looked tired. Worried. Dubious. Angry. And put out.

In serious need, David thought, of some coffee-an’-’shine—without the coffee.

Big Billy’s lips worked. Every head in the room craned forward, but nothing followed. No response. A nod from Kirkwood, and Sandy pressed the phial once more to his mouth. It was still half full, David noted: good stuff to have around in light of their other injured, the most serious of whom was LaWanda, who was probably good for a whole phial herself.

A noisy slurp, and Big Billy swallowed. But that was all. Or had his breathing eased?

Silence.

Footsteps on the porch. Dale promptly sauntered off to see who it was, to return a moment later with a bleary-eyed Alec in tow. Alec eased up behind David and leaned forward to knead his shoulders and whisper in his ear. “Aife can wait. This can’t.”