FROST CHILD (Rebel Angels) (2 page)

They lived to kill, but when it came to the end, they didn’t mind dying. That was always the trouble with Lammyr.

I stumbled back off it, wiping my hands, then turned to seek out the light of Donal’s eyes. They still glinted in the darkness, though dully.

~
So how fine are you really?

~ I’d like to see Grian fairly fast.
His teeth showed in whatever light seeped from the cavern walls.

I gripped his arm and hauled him to his feet. Yes, he needed the healer; I could tell from the quantity of blood. I didn’t want to follow this tunnel further anyway. Distant sounds and energetic shouts told me my men were having better luck than Donal and me, and I wanted to rendezvous with them in the deeper heart of this nest. The plan had been to drive the Lammyr from the narrow passageways and into their central quarters. Lammyr, armed and forewarned and lurking in tunnels, were at their most lethal. Herd them to a hall for a fair fight, and you always had a chance of fewer casualties.

I was eager to get Donal out of the way. I didn’t think he was mortally wounded – not that I’m an expert – but the sooner he got to the healer the happier I’d be, and besides, I wanted to keep an eye on Niall Mor’s back. If he was overenthusiastic he could easily get himself killed.

I found three of my fighters guarding the entrance I’d used, so I left Donal with them; then I was running down the cleared passageways in the direction of the battle-howls.

The remaining Lammyr were backed together in a cavern lower down the tunnel system where the air was cold and dank, unwarmed by the feeble light of flames in wall recesses. Each had a blade in its hand but while Niall Mor and his men circled them warily, the leader watched me enter, licking its dry lips and half-smiling.

‘Crickspleen,’ I said. ‘Been a while.’

‘Hello, Griogair.’ It tossed its curved blade lightly from bony hand to bony hand. No hilts for these creatures; it simply bled where the steel caught its skin, and the colourless drops hissed on the stones at its feet. ‘Safe passage, and we’ll stay away?’

‘Oh come on, Crickspleen. We had that deal forty years ago, and here you are again.’

It shrugged, amused. ‘You were softer forty years ago. Over the Veil, then. We’ll go to the otherworld.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You know that isn’t allowed.’

‘Oh, of course. That’s why you’ll
never
find a Lammyr in the otherworld.’ It smirked.

I bit my lip, eyeing it, while Niall Mor fidgeted beside me.

~
Come on, Griogair. Let’s get it done.

~ Don’t be in such a rush.
‘What are you defending?’ I asked it abruptly.

It was a wild shot in the dark, but I saw wariness flicker in its eyes. My hunch was right, then. They hadn’t run because they owned something worth keeping.

‘Nothing,’ said Crickspleen at last.

Despite my mind-shield, it knew that I knew it was lying. Its mouth quirked.

‘You’d have my word,’ it crooned. ‘You know my word is binding.’

‘I don’t want it. If I let you go again, Kate would have my guts for a hat.’

‘It was worth a try.’ It gave a bleakly contented sigh. ‘No deal then.’

It flew at me; an arc of blade-light cut the air, but I hit the cavern floor, feeling the breath of the blade-edge on my scalp. The speed of the damn things could still catch me by surprise, but I wasn’t much slower.

I swore as I rolled, dodged, sprang back up. It was nothing but a moving shadow but I’d fought them before. Anticipating its moves was the trick. I bent backwards to avoid the next blow, then came at it low and brought my sword blade with me as I spun.

They look so fragile, so ephemeral. It feels almost wrong as the blade strikes. You’d think the impact in its flesh would be barely discernible, but you have to keep control to finish the blow. Like slicing metal wire.

But I had a good blade. Crickspleen toppled in two halves, the rattle of satisfaction escaping its yellow lips and leaving it lifeless.

The others hadn’t been idle, either Lammyr or Sithe. As I rebalanced and lifted my sword again, the chaos and carnage around me was in full-throated roar. I wiped sticky Lammyr-blood from my face and sought another, but we’d had them outmanoeuvred from the start, and in here they hadn’t the space to use their speed to full advantage. There was nothing for me to do but finish a few scraps my fighters had started.

When the last blade had fallen we stood in the silence, alert for a stirring hand or limb or a sucked breath, hearing nothing but the slow oozing drip of blood.

I was glad to be able to drop my block and communicate properly. And, of course, scan the caves. ~
Any of us wounded?

Niall Mor raised a questioning eyebrow at a fighter whose blood streamed from her scalp down the side of her face and neck. She shook her head, angry but not weakened.

~
Nothing serious.

I narrowed my eyes at the woman, half-blinded by her own blood.
~ Dobhran, go back to Grian. The rest of you, follow me.
I frowned as I peered into the darkest corners. ~
And block again.

‘We took them all, Griogair,’ said Niall Mor, though he kept his voice low.

‘Maybe. I want to know what else is here. Search the whole warren.’

If anybody grumbled, they kept it behind their own blocks, but they went to the task without enthusiasm. This was no place for a Sithe, or not for my Sithe anyway. If someone liked living underground he could go to be the queen’s bondsman, and even Kate’s lair felt like the sweet open air next to this place. It was as if the rocks above us were pressing down slowly, shrinking the spaces between, reluctant to let us leave. I suppressed a shiver.

There were faint lights in the lower tunnels, muted by iron sconces that were surprisingly beautifully made. The Lammyr could still astonish me. There were times I could almost like them. But it never got beyond
almost
.

The air was cold and stale, but the rankness that accompanied Lammyr occupation was mostly absent. There were only the scents of earth and water and small squirming creatures. I made my way with care, and I kept my blade unsheathed, and so did Niall Mor at my back.

All the same, I might easily have missed her. She was only a shadow, small and dark, huddled in the corner of a side room. It was Niall’s intake of breath that alerted me, since his eyesight was so much sharper than anyone’s.

I went still, watching for movement. The child might have been a corpse, so stiff was she, but her eyes were wide, unblinking, and lit with the silver glow of a Sithe. No full-mortal girl, then, brought from the otherworld on one of their illicit forays, but a captured Sithe child. Their brazenness was breathtaking, but even this didn’t explain their reluctance to leave.

I stretched out my hand to the child, made a beckoning motion. If anything, she pressed even closer against the wall.

Niall stepped cautiously past me. ~
Come, child. It’s safe.

I didn’t have time to swear at him for dropping his block. He reeled back with a short scream, clawing at his forehead, and the Lammyr came down on him like a falling demon, its leather coat swirling around it.

I lashed with my sword, hacking its wrist more by accident than skill, and it was only by that outrageous chance that Niall avoided having his throat opened. Its hand spun and bumped to the stone floor, and I had to duck to dodge the squirt of blood. Niall rolled out of its way too, reaching out for the girl in the corner. But instead of taking his hand, she scuffled along the wall towards the wounded Lammyr. It gave me a twisted smile.

Still rubbing his head, Niall glanced up to ensure there were no more Lammyr skulking in the roof; I could only stare at the girl, huddling behind her captor, more afraid of us than she was of it. The Lammyr shook the stump of its wrist at me, mockingly, scattering thick clotting droplets.

‘She’s ours, Griogair,’ it hissed.

I shook my head. ‘How young did you get her?’

‘Young enough.’

‘You might as well give her back.’ Niall Mor lifted his sword with a snarl, as angry with himself as he was with the Lammyr. ‘The rest are dead.’

‘It was worth a try,’ said the Lammyr, and sprang at us.

I felt its second blade whisper past my skull, and an instant later the sting of pain, but I’d dodged in the right direction and Niall had leaped high to come down on it. His first strike missed as the creature twisted sideways, but his backslash caught its belly, making it slump with a groan to the ground. I finished it with a thrust to its back.

The girl did not look at us, but at the Lammyr. Not with grief exactly, but perhaps regret. She did not move from her dark nook, keeping her arms wrapped round her knees. When she finally did catch my eye, through a straggling curtain of black hair, I didn’t know what I saw there. The strongest impression was of nothing. Her mind-block was astonishing in its thoroughness, its smooth glassy impenetrability.

Niall was quicker than I was to break the strange deadlock. Sheathing his sword on his back, he crouched in front of her, his fingers linked so that she could see them.

‘Child, you’ll have to come with us. You don’t belong here.’

She looked from him to the corpse of the Lammyr and back, then got to her feet. For a moment she looked terribly old, but then she nodded quite meekly.

‘Where am I going?’ she asked.

It was almost a shock to hear her speak. ‘To be with your own kind,’ Niall said.

Again she glanced at the Lammyr before studying the two of us. Her reply was almost indifferent. ‘All right.’

We didn’t think to ask her if she had any possessions; we must have assumed she had none, and in that at least our instincts were right. At least, she had none but the thin dress she wore, and the leather belt and pouch around her waist, and the silver collar on her neck. She drew the stares of every one of my fighters as we emerged from the cavern mouth, but she walked on beside me with her head straight and unbowed, her expression once again not so much insouciant as indifferent. She waited only for me to mount my own horse, and didn’t hesitate to be pulled up onto its back after me. So small and skinny was she, I couldn’t even be sure she was still there till I urged the horse forward, and I felt her bony arms go round my waist.

There was no point racing home; our wounded had already gone with Grian to the dun. This meant he wasn’t there to mend the slash in my ear, but for all its copious bleeding the wound was superficial and I made do with a strip of cloth wrapped round my head. At any rate we could afford to take it easy, to revel in the faint sunlight breaking through the earlier mist. Eventually the heavy sense of ill-omen lifted even from me.

It had not gone badly, after all. The Lammyr were cleared from this particular nest, and our casualties had been surprisingly light, and the job I’d been dreading was done. Whatever Crickspleen had wanted with the unnerving girl at my back, he was thwarted. I even felt light-hearted enough to make conversation with her.