Fillan fought off the darkness, only half-conscious.
Rain drops hit his cheek. The wind dried them rapidly. He was draped over the back of a horse at gallop. Two arms pinned him to stop him from falling. Green countryside unfolded below a cloudy sky. He thought he saw a crow and wanted to raise his eyes to get a better look, but he felt a terrible pain in his face and was plunged once more into the abyss.
Dreams and reality intermingled; moments of consciousness were followed by darkness in a nauseating rhythm. The sunset seemed to show an unfathomable shimmering mirage of an army on the march. Darkness. Edan and Sören arguing over this famous Brotherhood. Darkness. Thunder rumbling without lightning, shaking the whole of Scotland. Darkness. An immense stag chasing a child. Darkness.
Every time, he did everything he could to stay in the moment, but tumultuous waves always dragged him in deeper.
Until finally, he broke out of the chaotic cycle and opened his eyes, disoriented to see the face of Moira inches from his own. He could see wrinkles that were normally hidden behind her black hair. The druid must have been at least thirty, maybe older.
She raised her eyebrows and smiled.
“I thought you’d never wake up!”
“How long was I…”
“Two days. I volunteered to carry you on my horse. I had to keep an eye on you.”
Fillan couldn’t work out what she was talking about at first, but as he tried to sit more comfortably, he thought his head was going to explode with the pain. He grimaced and put a hand to his face.
Moira gently knocked away his fingers.
“Don’t touch,” she said. “Unless you want it to get infected…”
“What did…?”
“You got sliced, remember?”
A shiver of horror ran down his spine as he remembered the icy eyes of the Norwegian.
“But why…?”
“It’s harder to recognize you now.”
Fillan hated to be interrupted. In normal times, Moira would have gotten on his nerves. He would have made a snide comment and carried on his sentence. But there was nothing normal about this situation, and every word he spoke exacerbated his injury. So, he chose to stay quiet, with a level of willpower Alastair would have been proud of.
“I’ll admit,” carried on the druid, “there was perhaps a less… barbaric… way. But, well. Sören…”
She left his name hanging with a shrug, as though Sören and barbarism went hand in hand.
Once again, they’d made camp in the woods. Edan and Craig were taking care of the horses, debating the quality of the services offered at a brothel in Glasgow. Kyle and Sören were talking in low voices, leaning against a tree. Fergus was running his fingers over his lute and singing softly.
When Fillan got up, wobbling, only the Norwegian looked over in his direction.
“Come on,” said Moira. “Let’s go to the river so you can wash up. Your face looks awful.”
The young man believed her.
“Are we far from Dalkeith?” he asked as they walked.
“About halfway.”
As he asked the question, he realized that Dalkeith was his only goal. He had to know what this Brotherhood Sören talked about wanted with him. The mystery kept him going; he had nothing else to hold on to.
The stream appeared under an embankment. Moira left him alone but kept an eye on him.
He bent down, curious to see the extent of the damage, and his eyes widened in shock. What had they done to him? A stranger stared back at him from the reflective water. A paste dressing covered the wound up to his right eyebrow, went across his nose and ended at the corner of his mouth. His hair, which the day before had reached down to his shoulders, was now only up to his ears. By some strange spell it was no longer red, but brown.
“It’s only superficial,” called Moira. “You’ll heal quick enough.”
“And will my hair heal too?”
She gave him a sad look.
“Hair grows back!” shouted Sören as he joined them. “That’s Kyle’s handiwork! Don’t worry, she still finds you attractive like that.”
Fillan was embarrassed. He hadn’t thought for one moment that Kyle might like him. The warrior had paid him no more mind than the flies behind her horse.
“Good to see you’re doing better,” added the Norwegian as he reached him.
Doing better? He’d never felt so bad! Sören had disfigured him. Fillan wanted to whack him in the face to return the favor, even if it broke all his fingers against the mercenary’s stone jaw.
“You’re one to talk,” grumbled the teenager.
“You were putting us in danger.”
He didn’t even try to say sorry. Fillan shot him a furious glare and tried to get away from him, but Sören grabbed him by the arm.
“What do the English want with you?”
“I don’t know!” he replied.
His own voice annoyed him. It sounded weak and wobbly, with no confidence. It was the voice of a kid, which squeaked in comparison to the echoing rumble of the Norwegian.
“Think!”
Fillan pulled himself away and stared along the water. He didn’t want to think too deeply into his memories. The image of the main square in Berwick came to mind, burning hotter than a furnace.
“They think I killed a captain. I think.”
Sören raised an eyebrow.
“You think?”
“Yes, but they got it wrong. It was the blacksmith.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
The young man realized that Sören thought him incapable of bearing a weapon. That wasn’t untrue, but it annoyed him all the same.
“Whether they were mistaken or not, the English won’t let such an insult go unpunished.”
He looked the boy up and down.
“Alright, we’ll get going, but make sure you get a good wash. Or Kyle and Moira will make me abandon you in a field… because of the smell.”
He left and Fillan washed quickly. The icy water made him shiver, but it also did him good. While he washed away the blood, sweat, and mud from his body, Moira pretended to cook mushrooms. He wasn’t stupid: she was watching him.
When they returned to the others, Sören addressed the group.
“We make a stop at Cranshaws,” he said. “We’ll be there by nightfall.”
“Isn’t that risky?” grumbled Craig, with an accusatory glance at Fillan.
“I doubt the English have ventured so far into the country.”
“Worst we could do is make some heads roll,” chortled Edan.
Fillan wanted to mount his horse by himself, but Moira forbade it. She wanted to keep an eye on his health and made him ride with her.
“Ah, the magic of the Lowlands,” cackled Edan as he spurred on his horse. “A maggot turned into an ugly damsel.”
He laughed heartily. From atop her horse, Kyle was watching Fillan. He didn’t see her doing it, because his blood was boiling, unable to bear being insulted or treated like an invalid. The young woman threw something at Edan’s face that made him fall off his horse.
“God damn it!” he shouted as he set off in pursuit, shouting insults that grew progressively more inventive.
“Fillan, would you please stop squeezing so hard.”
In his anger he’d dug his fingernails into the druid’s leg. Ashamed, he babbled an incoherent apology.
* * *
They rode at speed all day. The hilly country calmed him. Along the route they saw lines of peasants fleeing the war in an exodus. Fillan figured they must have been hoping for safety in the north.
When Sören made them stop to regroup at the mouth of another valley, night had already fallen half an hour earlier. The only sounds disturbing the night’s calm were the sounds of animals and the pattering of rain on the branches.
“Cranshaws is just over there,” he said, pointing a finger at the shadows down below.
“It’s darker than inside a horse’s ass!” said Edan.
Fillan was beginning to think the bald man had been staring too long at the animals’ rears. But he wasn’t wrong. In the darkness, you could barely make out the buildings in the village. The moon was hidden by the clouds.
Sören pensively stroked his beard.
“We’d better not take any risks. Craig, go ahead as scout.”
The warrior spurred on his horse, axe in hand, and disappeared into the night.
They waited in silence and darkness. An owl hooted from somewhere. As the seconds passed, the air seemed to grow more oppressive. Fillan couldn’t say how long the mercenary had been gone, but it felt like an eternity. Another longer hoot reverberated around them.
“Something’s not right,” Moira whispered to Sören.
“What?”
Another hoot.
“That’s not a bird…”
The trumpeting of a horn from the village interrupted them.
“Damn it!” shouted Edan.
They urged their mounts in the direction of the village. When they arrived in the town square, it was Kyle’s turn to curse.
“Damn it!” she repeated.
Craig was fighting the English soldier who’d just raised the alarm. He split his head in two with a vertical swipe and sent a spurt of black liquid into the night. Another soldier lay at his feet with his face caved in.
“By the Sidh*…” gasped Moira.
The village was a monstrous devastation, doors and windows of houses all battered in. Plagues of flies circled the bodies of the residents that bathed in their own blood.
The sound of footsteps approached.
“It’s a trap!” shouted Kyle.
But it was too late. Other soldiers were arriving, torches in hand.
“Fergus, you stay behind with the kid!” ordered Sören, “The rest of you, with me!”
He jumped off his horse; everyone but the bard and Fillan followed suit.
“You don’t move from there!” ordered Moira, poking him with her stick.
The teenager complied, turned the reins, and retreated with the bard, who was taking care of all the rest of the horses under an enormous elm tree.
The English threw their torches to the ground and the fight began. Painful memories assaulted Fillan. He nervously tried to chase them away by shaking his head.
Sören and his companions were battling seven English soldiers around the wells in the center of the village. The clashing of weapons echoed against the buildings and violently broke the night’s silence.
The Norwegian was up against two enemies. Fillan had never seen a battle like it. It was hypnotizing. Sören dodged their blows with an incomparable agility, folding his body and diving. When it was his turn to strike, he did not hesitate to run through one of his opponents by turning. The teenager had no idea how he’d managed it, but he’d even been able to impale the second soldier on the sword that stuck through his comrade.
Kyle, Moira, Craig, and Edan weren’t doing too badly either. They each gave the impression of fighting completely independently from each other, but when you looked closer, they were doing a danse macabre completely in sync with one another, twisting and turning to keep swapping positions and throw off their enemies. Soon there was only one English soldier still alive.
“Ah, the dogs!” spat Kyle, snorting like a bull.
An old cottage caught fire from one of the torches. At the same moment, another horn rang out from the shadows surrounding the village. Another battalion was filing through the south gate on foot.
That’s when Fillan saw him. The antler-helmeted warrior. His long blood-colored cape flew in the wind. Just like in the alley in Berwick, he pointed with his sword at Sören’s group as a signal for his men to attack, and the fight began again. Without knowing how, Fillan found himself off his horse, sword in hand. He was face to face with the man who had killed Alastair. The man who’d caused Ailéas’s death. He paid no attention to Fergus, who called after him while he tried to hold on to the horses. He didn’t listen to Sören, screaming at him, anguish piercing his icy voice. He ran straight at the warrior.
The young man was only a few yards away when the man in the helmet stared at him with his black eyes.
Hatred was replaced with an unbearable terror and Fillan was frozen on the spot.
* The Sidh is the Other World in Celtic mythology.