Dragonslayer's Return

Chapter 15 Too Hot to Handle

Gary leaned the huge shield, Donigarten's shield, against a tree and looked anxiously back to the west, towards Dilnamarra. Gary normally wouldn't have taken the bulky shield, for fighting with it and the great spear was no easy feat. Mickey's offhanded remark that "It'd take a wall stronger than Donigarten's own shield to stop a charging haggis" had prompted Gary's decision, much to the chagrin of the sentient spear. Dost thou remember thy battle with crahg wolves, young sprout? the spear called incessantly in his mind, and Gary suspected that the spear's reversion to the older dialect was its way of acting superior to him. The spear was referring to a battle Gary had fought in the eastern reaches of these same Crahgs, when a host of wolves had come down after the companions. That had almost been Gary's final battle, mostly because he kept getting tangled up with the long spear and heavy shield in trying to keep up with the darting movements of the swift wolves. Dost thou remember that this very shield almost sent thee spinning to thy doom?
Forget the damned wolves, Gary telepathically answered. We've got a long way to go before I start worrying about crahg wolves!
The sentiment was true enough. Here they were, still well within the borders of County Dilnamarra, with a hostile army barely a day's march away. And by all reports, the Connacht army would soon be marching down the road from the west, towards Cowtangle. Kinnemore was held up in Dilnamarra, tending to the many wounded and regrouping his forces after the troubles of the battle for Tir na n'Og.
But the King and his men would come soon, Gary knew. Several times this day, he had viewed clouds of dust - small ones, from individual riders, he presumed. The truce had been signed two days before, and, as agreed, Gary and the others had traveled to Cowtangle, about thirty miles east of Dilnamarra, to await Prince Geldion's appearance.
"He is not coming," Geno griped, and not for the first time. "Unless he is at the lead of a cavalry group. Or maybe he is already here, hiding in the woods, waiting in ambush!"
Kelsey seemed similarly cynical, but Mickey, ever the optimist, tried to keep their hopes up, and Diane flatly rejected Geno's assessment.
"Prince Geldion will be here," she asserted every time the dwarf grumbled. "The truth about King Kinnemore wounds him more than anything, and he hates that truth more than he hates you."
Geno didn't show any sign that he was convinced. Nor did the dwarf concede his surly mood when Kelsey jumped up, fitted an arrow, and drew back on his bow. The elf stood perfectly still and silent, and the others, trusting in his keen woodland senses, followed his lead. Suddenly his bow came up, but as the others scrambled for weapons and position, Kelsey eased the string back - and Prince Geldion walked into their encampment, leading a lathered gray stallion.
The small man seemed badly shaken, his oily hair sticking out in back in a sharp cowlick, as though he had spent all the day nervously running his fingers over his scalp. Not only his horse was lathered in sweat; the Prince had been riding hard.
"Who did you bring along?" Geno demanded, not loosening his grip on his hammer a bit.
"You are confused, good dwarf," Geldion replied sarcastically. "This is a horse, not a companion."
Gary wisely bit back his chuckle, remembering that Geno rarely appreciated sarcasm. He heard Mickey cooing softly in Geno's ear, trying to ease the volatile dwarf's hammer down low to his side.
"The army is not far behind?" Kelsey reasoned.
"They will leave in the morning," Geldion answered. "Though scouts have come as far east as Cowtangle. Kinne . . ." He caught himself and looked to Diane, frustration evident on his angular features. "The King," he corrected, spitting the word derisively, "will take his time on the road to Braemar and Drochit, even pausing long enough to send a line around the eastern end of Tir na n'Og, just to make sure that the Tylwyth Teg mean to keep their bargain. Also, he wants to bring some of the smaller hamlets, such as Lisdoonvama, under his control before he gets to the larger towns in Dvergamal's shadow."
"Foolish," Kelsey remarked. "If Braemar and Drochit are taken - and together they could not resist the army of Connacht - then the smaller hamlets will fall without bloodshed."
"Kinnemore is running shy," Geno reasoned. "His army took more of a beating on the edge of your forest than he, and they, expected. They need to roll over a couple of smaller, defenseless towns to regain their confidence."
Kelsey agreed with the grim assessment.
"The Connacht army will not crush the towns," Geldion put in angrily. "Even more than military confidence, the King needs for the army to believe in the justice of his cause again. We ... he lost nearly as many to desertion as to wounds in the battle for the forest, and the King knows that he will lose many more if the army perceives the campaign as unjust."
"Not bad having an ear at Kinnemore's side, huh?" Diane asked slyly, aiming the remark mostly at Geno and thinking herself quite clever.
Geldion didn't seem to appreciate the comment, though, and neither did the dwarf.
"I guess that makes you one of those deserters you were talking about," Geno said to the Prince.
"The King is not Kinnemore, so I've been told," Geldion replied. He put a cold look on Diane, as if he was fearful that all of this was an elaborate ruse.
"And I do not believe that I have been deceived," Geldion declared firmly, though his dangerous expression hardly matched that claim. "Thus, I am no traitor to the crown. If Kinnemore was King, and he told me to go to war with the Buldrefolk, I would gladly kill a hundred of your kinfolk."
Geno snorted, half in humor, half in rage.
"I'm thinking that we should be going," Mickey quickly and wisely interjected. "We've a five-day ride to the Crahgs, and an army on our tails."
The group was silent for a long and tense moment, Geno and Geldion locking stares and the rest looking from one to the other, wondering which would strike the first blow. But despite their obvious hatred for each other and their surly dispositions, both Geno and Geldion were pragmatists. The mission before them was more important than their personal squabble, and so they helped break the camp and load the mounts. When the group exited Cowtangle sometime later, out the wood's southeastern end, Geldion rode up front beside Kelsey, with the elf's white Tir na n'Og stallion far outshining Geldion's gray. Next in line came Gary and Mickey, riding the same horse, another of the enchanted forest's tall white stallions (the leprechaun tucked in neatly at the base of the creature's powerful neck), and Diane, on a small and muscled black-and-white mare. Geno took up the rear, walking his brown pony far behind the others, grumbling to himself every step of the way.
"Suren it's to be a long ride," Mickey remarked, nodding towards Geno.
"I don't think so," Diane replied. "Prince Geldion is not really a bad guy - I figure that he's had more pain over what the King has become than any of you."
Gary snickered somewhat derisively. Diane hadn't been with him on his first journeys through Faerie; she hadn't witnessed Geldion's narrow-eyed viciousness or been chased long days by the relentless Prince. She hadn't witnessed Geldion's attack against the men of Braemar and Drochit on the eastern fields, or his presiding over the attempted execution of Baron Pwyll. Even if Diane was totally correct and King Kinnemore had been replaced by Ceridwen with the haggis, Prince Geldion's actions over the last few months were certainly not above reproach, and his loyal-little-son excuse echoed weakly at best.
"You don't know Geldion as well as you believe," Gary said to her.
"Nor Geno," Mickey remarked with a resigned sigh. "Suren it's to be a long road."
Actually, both Gary and Mickey were surprised at how calmly and uneventfully the next five days passed by. With news of war, the roads were deserted, and few traveled anywhere near to the Crahgs in any case. Kelsey and Geldion carried on a running conversation day to day. Gary was truly surprised that the usually judgmental elf could apparently so readily forgive the Prince, considering the recent devastation to Tir na n'Og's sacred border, but when Diane and Mickey put things in a different light for him, that amazement fast shifted to approval.
"He's thinking of the future," Diane reasoned. "What happened at Tir na n'Og wasn't Geldion's fault, but Geldion will have a lot to do with whatever might happen next."
"Aye," Mickey agreed. "Kelsey's putting aside what came before - how could Geldion have known that his father was not his father?"
"I don't know that he deserves a second chance," Gary stubbornly argued. "You remember the chase through the swamp."
"I remember it all better than yerself, like it was yesterday," Mickey said, subtly reminding Gary that while, by Gary's clock, those events had occurred years ago, a span of only a few weeks had passed in Faerie. "But these are dangerous times, lad, and I'm not one, nor is Kelsey, to push away a helping hand."
"Even Geno seems better with the Prince," Diane remarked.
"Hasn't spit on his shoes in two days!" Mickey added hopefully. "And I'm willing to take the dwarf's word that the time when he bumped Geldion into the embers was an accident."
Gary didn't openly argue, but his doubting expression told Mickey that he wasn't as certain of Geno's claim on that smoky occasion. Still, the young man had to admit that things were going better than he had expected when they had left Cowtangle. Geldion had done nothing to provoke any scorn. Far from it, the Prince was going out of his way to excuse Geno's subtle attacks, even while he was patting out the smoldering embers on his scorched behind.
"Prince Geldion has the most to lose," Diane reasoned.
"Geno could lose his home," Gary argued. "And his kin."
"But not his heart," Diane replied.
Gary accepted the logic. This entire episode, all the way back to Kelsey's quest to reforge the spear of Donigarten, and even before that, must now come as a bitter pill to the Prince. On those previous occasions he had been following the will of his Father and King, so he had thought, despite the fact that he apparently believed in his heart that course to be immoral.
Geldion had been deceived into immoral action, and for a man of honor (if the Prince was indeed a man of honor), that could be a more painful wound than any a sword might inflict.
Though they had another half day of riding, the Crahgs were in sight by this time, rolling hillocks, some shrouded in clouds, others shining green under the light of the sun. In looking at them, even from this distance, Gary remembered the paradoxical feelings the place had evoked, a feeling of alluring and tingling mystery, and also one of chilling terror. Mostly, Gary remembered the pervading melancholy, the dreamy landscape that could lure a man off guard to the very real dangers of the place.
With great effort, they coaxed the horses past the first few crahgs. Geno wanted to leave the mounts altogether. He suggested many times that they tether them in a copse of trees and pick them up on the way out, but Kelsey would hear nothing of it. The wild hairy haggis would not leave the Crahgs, but crahg wolves certainly would - and the beasts were known to have a particular liking for horseflesh.
Still, less than two hundred yards from the flat fields and first mounds that marked the western border of the Crahgs, the companions were walking, not riding, pulling their skittish and sweating steeds along behind them. The day was fast fading into twilight, and so Kelsey led them up the side of one medium-sized hillock, a hike of about a thousand feet through thick and wet grass.
The evening grew dark and close about them, and a chill wind came up, biting through their cloaks. Kelsey insisted that they light no fire, and none disagreed. The elf did pile kindling in the center of the camp, and placed some lamp oil and a flint and steel in easy reach beside it - just in case. But Diane in particular wasn't thrilled with their choice of campsite, and wondered why, if they couldn't light a fire, they hadn't found a sheltered vale, or a cave perhaps to spend the chilly night.
"It's the crahg wolves," Gary explained to her, wrapping her in his arms to ward off the cold. "Their front legs are longer than their back, so they don't go uphill very well. If they can't get above their prey, they won't usually attack."
"They will attack," grumpy Geno was quick to put in, and he threw a glare at Kelsey (who was paying no attention). "If they catch the smell of those horses."
With that, the elf turned about, facing Geno squarely.
"But their eyes are usually turned down the slopes, not up," the dwarf conceded, seeing Kelsey's scowl.
Geno's blood was up, but he realized that if a fight came, his best ally would likely be Kelsey, and he needed no open arguments with the elf at this point.
"Let us hope that this will be our only night in the Crahgs," Geldion said, and even Geno nodded at the sentiment. "Kelsey said that you would call to the haggis," the Prince remarked to Mickey.
"And so i already am," the leprechaun explained. "As soon as we set the camp, I put some o' me magic into the hill. Nothing'll set a haggis to running like the noise o' working magic. If the beast is anywhere near the western side, we'll likely catch sight of it tonight or tomorrow."
"I still don't know how we're supposed to catch the thing," Geno grumbled.
"If the haggis is Kinnemore . . ." Kelsey began.
"The haggis is Kinnemore," Diane promptly corrected. "And he'll be tamed by the sight of his son." Geno didn't seem convinced. He picked up a fair-sized rock and bit into it, but his expression soured and he tossed the remaining piece of stone away.
Nor did Gary or Kelsey, or even Mickey, seem convinced. Gary remembered the creature's curious shriek, an ear-splitting cry that sent chills along the marrow of his bones, that stole the strength from his knees. And Mickey remarked more than once that illusions had little effect on the likes of a wild hairy haggis. Only Geldion held out beside Diane's reasoning, and Gary, who felt keenly the loss of his own father, sympathized with the Prince's need to hope.
And so they spent the bulk of that night, huddled against the wind, sitting in a circle as though the light and warmth of a campfire was between them. The horses nickered nervously a short distance away, and stomped their hooves and banged against one another whenever the piercing howl of a crahg wolf cut through the stillness of the night air.
But mostly, it was quiet and it was cold, luring Gary into his dreams.
Gary felt a tapping on his face and opened his heavy eyes. Diane was in front of him, breathing rhythmically. Asleep, and apparently he had been asleep as well. The tapping continued, and it took the groggy man a few moments to understand that it had begun to rain, lightly but with big drops.
It was still dark, though the sky had lightened considerably above the rim of the eastern horizon, a lighter gray area reaching a quarter of the way up into the sky. Around the dozing couple, the camp was stirring. Gary saw sparking flashes as Kelsey struck steel to flint, lighting the piled kindling.
Diane stretched and yawned and came awake as the oiled kindling caught and threw out a soft light, the flames hissing against the press of rain.
"We're thinking it's the haggis," Mickey whispered, moving near to the pair.
Gary and Diane pulled themselves to their feet, immediately recognizing the leprechaun's serious tones. The horses were crowded together, and though the light was meager at best, thick lather glistened on the sides of the nervous animals, mixing with the streaking droplets of rain. The couple from the other world could feel the tension in the air, a tangible aura, a taste on their lips.
"It is the haggis," Gary whispered, and Diane didn't doubt him.
The hillock was too quiet. Even the horses made not a sound. Geno threw himself to the ground suddenly, putting an ear to the soft turf. Almost immediately, the dwarf's face crinkled with confusion.
"What's it saying?" Mickey asked.
Geno shrugged.
"Who is he talking to?" Prince Geldion demanded.
"The ground," explained the leprechaun.
"The ground?" both Geldion and Diane said together.
"Dwarfs can do that kind o' thing," Mickey replied.
"Be quiet!" Kelsey demanded in a harsh whisper, and Geno accentuated the elf's command by hurling a piece of sod the companions' way. As luck would have it, the flying divot struck Gary, the only one who hadn't said anything.
Geno lifted his head and looked curiously back to the turf, then turned his head around and firmly planted his other ear into the wet grass.
"What's it saying?" Mickey asked again.
"I do not know!" the flustered dwarf admitted. "It's screaming at me - I have never heard the ground so emphatic - but I cannot make out a single word!"
"Perhaps it is the rain," Kelsey offered, but Geno scowled at him.
Gary and Diane, standing side by side, each lurched to the side suddenly in opposite directions, as some burrowing thing plowed between them, just under the ground, making a straight run for the prone dwarf, and for the fire, which was sputtering between it and Geno.
"Geno!" Kelsey called in warning.
Flaming brands and lines of orange sparks went flying up into the night sky. Beyond them, the dwarf lifted and turned his head curiously, then soared into the air as though he had been sitting in the basket of a catapult, spinning out of sight into the dark sky. A short distance farther along, across the top of the hillock where the slope descended once more, there came a tremendous, ground-shaking explosion, and out popped a hunched and hairy form.
"Ee ya yip yip yip!"
Diane felt her bones ringing with vibrations; Price Geldion grabbed his stomach as though he would throw up, and Gary Leger, having heard the cry of the wild hairy haggis before, clenched his fist and firmed his jaw, determined to fight away the dizziness and the terror.
Kelsey grabbed up his longbow and rushed about, trying to follow the creature's path. Gary and Diane scrambled for their own weapons, Gary scooping up the spear and Diane hoisting his large shield.
Now is the time for heroes! the proud spear screamed in Gary's thoughts.
"I never would have guessed," Gary whispered sarcastically.
They caught a glimpse of the creature, running clockwise around the fairly uniform slope of the hill. It seemed little more than a large ball of fur, the size of a curled-up man, except that one side of this hairy sphere was cut, practically halfway across, with the widest maw Gary had ever seen, with teeth that looked like they belonged in the mouth of a great white shark. Most curious of all, the creature's left arm and leg were longer than its right limbs, so it was perfectly level as it ran along on the uneven crahg!
"Ee ya yip yip yip!" it wailed, and black spots appeared before Gary Leger's eyes. He looked to Diane for support and saw that she was swaying, grabbing at her ears.
Geno landed with a thump and a groan, and bounced back to his feet, pulling out a hammer.
Kelsey cut across the top of the hillock, angling to intercept the haggis, but the beast disappeared suddenly, as abruptly as a fish going under the water.
A mound rolled up onto the hillock's top once more as the creature tunneled as fast as it had been running. The elf leaped to the side, but Geno, still trying to get his bearings from his unexpected flight, never saw the danger coming. Up the dwarf went again, cursing his rotten luck. He tried to turn so that he could launch his hammer towards the running mound, but it had happened too fast, and when he threw, he was already spinning back around.
The hammer shot out to the side, cutting the air right between the wide-eyed, horrified faces of Gary and Diane.
The turf exploded again on the side of the crahg as the haggis came back above ground, and Prince Geldion was there to meet the creature.
"Father!" he yelled, and felt heavy feet run straight up his legs and up his chest. He cried out and tried to throw himself backwards, only then realizing that he was already lying prone on his back, sunk several inches into the soft turf.
The haggis was long gone, taking up its clockwise, circling run around the side of the hillock again. "Ee ya yip yip yip!"
Geno landed with a thump and a groan, and bounced back to his feet, pulling out another hammer.
The poor horses kicked and scattered, thundering down the hillside. In the growing gray light of the impending dawn, Gary spotted his stallion, cutting across the path of the fast-running monster.
He started to cry out for the horse, but the words stuck in his throat as the haggis intercepted, barely seeming to shift its angle, moving so brutally fluidly that Gary hardly realized it had leaped off the ground. He heard the impact, though, a sickly, slapping sound as the haggis plowed into the horse's side.
The stallion stopped abruptly and stood perfectly still, and the haggis ran on around the curving mound. Then, to the amazement and horror of all looking on, Gary's stallion fell in half.
Geno pitched a hammer, perfectly leading the fast-running monster and scoring the first hit. The haggis never slowed.
Outraged, Kelsey again took up an intercepting route, but wasn't quite quick enough, and the haggis ran past him and out of his reach before his sword completed its downward cut.
Geldion, pulling himself up to his elbows, saw the creature completing its circuit, bearing down on him once more.
"Father," he said weakly, and he wisely fell back into the Geldion-shaped hole in the ground. The haggis ran right over him, blasting the breath from his lungs and knocking him in even deeper.
Geno and Kelsey scrambled wildly; Gary and Diane simply tried to get their bearings on the dizzying creature.
"Ye got to anticipate the thing's moves!" came a suggestion from high above. Gary looked up to see Mickey, the leprechaun catching the first rays of sun, floating under his umbrella about twenty feet above the top of the hillock.
"Only place to watch a haggis fight," the leprechaun said weakly.
Geno closed fast on the running haggis. He pitched another hammer, but the creature cut an impossibly sharp turn and dove underground.
"Stonebubbles," the dwarf grumbled resignedly as the mound rushed under him, and then Geno was flying again.
Kelsey, off to the side, quickly calculated the haggis's exit point and ran with all speed across the mound, his elfish sword gleaming in the morning light.
"Ee ya yip yip yip!" came the bone-shaking shriek as the haggis changed tactics and direction, bursting up out of the ground atop the hillock and bearing down suddenly on Gary and Diane.
Gary's only thought was to save his wife - and her only thought was to save him. They turned on each other simultaneously and slammed together as each tried to push the other from harm's way. Gary was much heavier (and heavier still because of the metal armor and shield), and it was Diane who went flying.
Gary nearly tumbled to the ground, as surprised by Diane's movement as she apparently had been by his. He kept the presence of mind to pivot, though.
Brace! came the sentient spear's warning cry in his head.
Gary lifted the spear, trying to put it in line, and fell aside. The tip only grazed the rushing haggis. "Ee yaaaa!" it wailed, seeming for the first time as though it was in pain.
Geno landed with a thump and a groan, and bounced back to his feet, pulling out another hammer.
The haggis went over the lip of the hillock - and to everyone's amazement, especially poor Gary's, came right back along the exact angle at which it had departed, but now underground.
"Sonofabitch!" stubborn Gary growled, and he planted his feet widely apart, lifted the great shield as high as he could, and slammed its pointed bottom into the turf, sinking it in several inches.
"Uh-oh," he heard Mickey remark from above.
Gary braced his shoulder hard against the shield and peeked around it, his eyes widening in shock as the haggis burst out of the turf, running, flying, right for him.
There came a blinding flash - even the haggis seemed to flinch.
"Ee ya yip yip . . ."
Slam!
Gary knew he was flying, felt the motion and heard the whistle as the air blew through the slitted faceplate of his great helm. He knew, too, that his shoulder hurt again and it felt as if something hard was biting on his arm and side.
He tumbled completely around, his helm falling free. He saw green, shining grass in the morning light, glistening prettily with the wetness of the light rain.
That pretty grass rushed up and swallowed him.