Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (28 page)

I opened my mouth to answer Jed, but nothing would come. I was still trying to speak, still trying to tell him it would be fine, that Liath would be fine, when her eyes glazed, and Jed crushed
her desperately to his breast, and the long last breath sighed from her jaws.

‘You take her back to the dun,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

I was surprised how little I felt. Even the sight of Jed, his face pressed to Liath’s, didn’t stir a single emotion inside me. She lay across the dun stallion’s back, and he
was rubbing her lifeless head, threading his fingers into her white mane. The cold rage and grief surrounded him like an aura, impenetrable, but I felt no rage and no grief, only a frightening
emptiness. Or it would have been frightening, if I’d been capable of fear just then.

Later, maybe.

‘Who, Finn?’ Jed lifted his head.

‘I don’t know,’ I lied.

The dun horse shook its mane and glanced back, curious, at the strange weight on its withers. Jed laid a hand on its nose and it went stock-still. I’d have obeyed him too. But only if I
was the horse.

‘You didn’t see anything? Anyone?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’ I put a hand against his cheek, and felt the skin damp with silent tears. ‘I found her right here. Jed, I’m so sorry.’

‘She was his. She was
his.
’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And then she was yours.’

‘I’ll kill them. Whoever it was.’

‘I know.’

‘Finn.’ With my face so close to his, it was easy for him to catch and hold me, and search my face. His own was tormented. ‘This is too close to the dun. There’s only one
person mad enough.’

‘Conal’s wolf ?’ I shook my head violently. ‘Never. Eili would
never
do this. Go, Jed. Take her back.’

As he pulled away, his teeth grinding, his fists clenching and flexing, I put my hand behind my back once more. Jed might have noticed, if he’d been half-sane, but his look was wild and he
was grief-addled, and he never would willingly share his mind.
Just as well
, I thought.
Just as well.

Jed mounted the horse, one hand taking up the reins, the other desperately raking the white fur of Liath’s flank. His eyes were red but dry. ‘Call Seth,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I lied again.

‘Follow me back.’

‘Yes,’ I said; and this time my intention was truthful.

Just not yet, is all.

As I watched him ride away, back towards the dun, I drew the knife from behind me and turned it in my blood-sticky hands: the knife he’d forgotten in his distress, the knife I’d
pulled from Liath’s side when it couldn’t hurt her any more. It was well balanced and simply shaped, but the curve of the blade beneath the gore was elegant, and its creator had not
been able to resist a delicately carved design that ran from the handle to halfway up the blade. I wasn’t sure if the inlay was red enamel, or simply blood lodged in the engraving. It
wasn’t her usual weapon, but I knew Eili’s work when I saw it.

W
hat Rory wants. What he wants more than anything.

Which of those aching desires of his would it be, though? The kelpie; his father’s respect; or me out of his life?

Some perfect combination?

~
Why don’t you ask him?

A ripple of fear tracked down my spine. Oh, that familiar, snaking mind. ~
Udhar.

~
Not Udhar. Not Udhar! Eilid!
Her rage was almost irrepressible, leaking and seeping from the black corners of her mind. ~
Come and talk to Rory, Caorann. Before his father
does.

I bit hard on my lip. Seth was far away, fighting; there was no time. Besides, I tried to imagine the scene if Seth caught Rory at the mere. Almost immediately, I tried to unimagine it again.
Their relationship was bad enough at the moment, and that was partly my fault.

I glanced once, a little reluctantly, in the direction of the dun; but this was between me and Eili. I knew where to go, and Eili knew that I knew. I had the advantage of her. To hell with
swords and arrows: I knew the name that was sucking her old one out of her, I knew where it hurt. This, I would not let anyone else do for me. This fight I’d finish myself.

I tucked the bloody blade into my belt, climbed back up the bluff to retrieve the bridle I’d dropped, and then I started walking: fast enough and thoughtlessly enough that I wouldn’t
change my mind.

I’d gone perhaps two miles when the black kelpie answered my call. It trotted to my side, snorting in perplexity, nibbling and tugging at my hair. I halted to stroke its shoulder and take
a deep breath, but stopping had let the horror and the grief catch up with me, and for long moments all I could do was press my face into its sleek muscled neck, and wind my cold fingers tightly
into its mane.

~
FINN.

I jerked my head up. The black turned its head and snuffed the breeze. Not far behind the call in my head I heard the hoofbeats, and then I saw the roan, cantering towards me across a windswept
shoulder of the moor.

I thought of running, thought of trying to lose him or hide among the stones. What was the point? I sighed, and gave in, and waited for him.

The blue roan came alongside us, whickering and whinnying to the black. Seth stared down at me, and for all that had just happened, all I could think was how white he looked, how dark the
shadows were around his feverish eyes.

~
Murlainn! What happened to you?

‘What?’ His voice was harsh with pain but I don’t think he even knew it. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, Finn; what about Liath? Jed brought her
into the dun half an hour ago. What happened to her?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said; and then, because he was not Jed, I pulled the knife from my belt and handed it up to him, silently.

He let the reins fall loose on the roan’s neck and turned the blade in his fingers. I heard his breath, shaky and harsh, as he trailed a fingertip across the scarlet inlay. It came away
smeared with half-dried blood.

‘Where’s Branndair?’ I asked.

‘Still at the dun. Howling and crying for Liath.’ There was dull agony in every syllable. ‘Eili made this blade.’

‘Made it,’ I said quietly. ‘She doesn’t use throwing knives.’

He glared. ‘I know that. Who did she make them for?’

I didn’t answer. I think he knew as well as I did.

‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Both of them have: Taghan and Eili, they left the dun hours ago, Eorna says. It’s chaos; nobody understands what the hell’s happening.
And now Hannah’s gone too, and – and Rory. With Eili’s horse. Her
horse
.’

Taghan? The horse? I swallowed hard. Eili’s game had rules I hadn’t thought of, rules I would never have expected, and perhaps it was time to stop playing by them.

‘Call him!’ I said. ‘Call him
now
.’

‘I can’t,’ he said, his voice high. His fingers twitched around the knife. ‘He’s blocking me.’

I circled the black to a high outcrop of rock and mounted it. ‘He’s
blocking
you?’

All he could do was shake his head in disbelief.

‘I know where he is,’ I said, and reached across to link my fingers with his. They shook in mine. ‘I know where they all are. We have to go.’

‘Bloody hell, Finn! I can’t even think straight. Yes, we have to go. We can’t wait.’

‘No. Is Sionnach in the dun? Call him.’ This was not about my private vendettas any more. ‘Get him to bring the others.’

‘Yes.’ Seth nudged the roan into a trot, following me, and rubbed a hand fiercely across his forehead.

I frowned back at him. ‘Rory must be there,’ I said. ‘In your head. Somewhere. He’s your son. Even if he’s blocking, he–’

‘Like black water. Like stone. There’s nothing. Finn. There’s nothing.’ Seth swayed on the roan’s back, and clutched its wither. Yet again, he reined it in.

I halted the black, staring at him. ‘Seth. You’ve got to get it together.’

‘But he’s dead to me, Finn. He’s dead to me.’ And then, very suddenly, his eyes focused, as if his mind was reasserting itself; and his face paled to the colour of a
wight.

‘Finn. He’s
dead
.’

The blue roan’s sudden spring caught me unawares. It leaped into an insane gallop, but as Seth passed me his mind lanced into mine, so hard and piercing I recoiled, stung. And then, his
senses re-gathered, he was racing for the place I’d known I was going. The black tossed its head and plunged, taken as unawares as I was; then it bolted too, and we were galloping after Seth
across the moor.

I’d never have thought the roan could outpace the black so easily, but by the time silver sunlight flashed on the line of the mere, Seth was ten lengths ahead of us. The sun almost blinded
me, but I bent low to the black’s neck, trusting him to keep his footing. He was wild with the thought of a fight again, muscles thrilling with glee, and he took the last rise of ground with
his hooves barely touching the earth. When we crested the ridge I pulled him up, horror washing over me in a violent tide.

There were other horses ahead, riderless. On the shore of the mere there was bloody chaos, men and women fighting like wild animals.

At least two bodies were down. Eili was there, hacking at two fighters I didn’t recognise and one I thought I did. Her dappled kelpie, tethered to a pine, reared and screamed wildly, but
it was too far away for Eili to cut it loose.

And Rory. Through grim and hideous shock, I felt the surge of relief.
Not dead.
Not yet, at least, though a fighter had him in a headlock and more piled in onto him.

‘Hold the bastard!’

‘Hold him!’

‘Don’t let him tear the bloody Veil, don’t–’

‘He can’t, not here, she said–’

‘HOLD HIM!’

Hannah leaped for the man who held Rory down, but she was knocked flying by a backwards slam of his free arm. She thudded into the heather, rolled, and tried to scramble back towards Rory,
shrieking. Kate’s fighter slammed his fist into her belly, harder this time, and she tumbled down the steep bank onto the beach.

As Seth rode down on them all, he pulled his sword from the sheath on his back, then flipped and caught it, the blade raised as I’d seen it raised only once before. I knew what was coming.
When Seth leaned out of the saddle and hacked savagely to the side, I jerked my head reflexively away, feeling the black’s silky mane lash my eyelids.

The blue roan scrabbled to a halt and doubled back, and the blade cut the air a second time. There was no defensive ring of metal, only the sickening sound it made in flesh. The black screamed
its bloodlust, and I had to haul on its neck till my triceps nearly snapped before it would turn from the fight. I snarled and forced it round, down to the lochan shore.

I saw flashes of the fight as I galloped the black towards Hannah. Seth slashed again. Rory stumbled to his knees, his arms clutched over his head; his captor hovered oddly, then fell forward,
the stump of his neck squirting aortal blood over the boy’s back. Somewhere in my skirling head I heard a fury of hoofbeats, and I realised others were bearing down on the battle.

A moment’s panic turned to relief: Jed and Iolaire and Sionnach had ridden from the dun, and I reckoned they’d started out before they were even called.
Sionnach,
I
realised: Sionnach must have known something was wrong
.
And Branndair had not lingered to mourn Liath; he raced alongside the riders, his eyes glowing with vengeful hate. The enemy
detachment fell back, shouting and running, and Seth was leaping off his horse onto the nearest of them.

I could not help him. All I could do was jump off the black as it slowed to a canter, and run to Hannah. She struggled up, retching and gasping for air, and seized a fistful of my t-shirt.

‘Taghan!’ she screamed hoarsely.

For a fleeting instant I thought she hadn’t recognised me; then she shook me with her almost-exhausted strength, dragging me round to see the body bent back almost double over the rocks,
its empty eyes staring skywards.

‘She’s
dead
!’

I wanted to drop the little baggage on her arse on the rocks, but something made me lower her quite gently. I had time to hope it wasn’t maternal instinct kicking in, and then I was
running to Taghan, staring down at her, sick with fear.

A long blade impaled her chest, and she hadn’t had time to fight back; her own dagger, still caught between her fingers, was free of blood. It was a beautiful thing: balanced and elegant,
with an engraved design that trailed from the handle halfway up the blade, inlaid with scarlet enamel.

Not quite a corpse yet, for all Hannah’s hysteria: there was the faintest glimmer of silver light in Taghan’s glazed eyes. Hesitantly I reached out, and touched her temple.

Her hand snatched my wrist, so fast I yelled. Her grip was so tight my blood throbbed.

‘Didn’t know,’ she rasped.

‘What?’ My brain reeled.

‘Kate’s men. Ambush. Sorry.’

‘Sod that,’ I hissed, close to her ear. ‘Why Liath? Why did you kill her?’

‘She knew. Saw us. Poor bitch. Didn’t understand, ’course. But the risk...’