Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) (22 page)

Something didn’t compute. “Hold on. How do you know who will oppose you during Ragnarok? Have the Svartálfar said they would fight with Hel?”

“Is this not proof enough, Druid?” Fjalar said, gesturing at the field where the dark elves were dissolving into tar.

“No, it’s not. These are clearly assassins or mercenaries in someone’s employ, but they do not represent the hearts of all the Svartálfar. There may be some who would oppose Hel, and, if so, they would be valuable allies.”

Fjalar growled and yanked off his helmet with his left hand. His chin was still bald and his hair in braids, in accordance with his culture’s mourning practices. He stepped up to me. “Are you such a good judge of character now? You who sent Loki Fire Hands to Nidavellir to kill thousands of my Shield Brothers?”

“I didn’t send him there to kill anyone. He did that without my urging and you know it. But what does Odin say about this plan to invade Svartálfheim?”

“Did he not tell you to wait for our arrival? Did he not send us here on the Bifrost Bridge? Is that not Bifrost, even now, waiting to take us back to Asgard?” he said, pointing behind me. The rainbow bridge shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. “What am I doing, arguing with a nude man?” he groused, stalking past me and attempting to stalk on the rainbow too, except that it wasn’t the sort of surface that allowed stalking. The Glass Knights turned and followed, denying me any more time to discuss the matter. I frowned after them, because it was a disturbing development. I wasn’t a particular fan of dark elves, but that was only because I hadn’t met any nice ones yet. From what Manannan
Mac Lir had told me, some of the Svartálfar had nobility in their nature. They tended to be the ones who didn’t take mercenary contracts.

“Odin, are you on board with this?” I shouted. The bridge retracted without an answer, though I hardly expected one.

Interesting. Where are they?

Thanks. Tell Granuaile she can fire at will
.

I turned around and raised Fragarach in time to see three dark elves with scimitars loping my way, wearing grim expressions and nothing else. I winced when one of Granuaile’s knives sank into the groin of the leader and he went down screaming and clutching the ruins of his junk.

I’m going to have nightmares
.

The remaining two Svartálfar whiffed into the air, anticipating more knives from an invisible assailant, but Granuaile stayed her hand. Their steel dropped to the ground and I pursued one of the clouds, swishing Fragarach through it, thinking I would catch him as he turned solid. I missed high. Sensing what I was up to, his substance dropped to the ground and he solidified, where he promptly swept my legs and blocked the wild swing I made, with his forearm staying my wrist. His right hand poked me in quick sequence along pressure points across my chest and froze up my muscles—where the hell had he learned that? But then it was easy for him to pin my sword arm and wrap his other hand around my throat. His buddy came back, retrieved a scimitar, and took two steps with a mind to finish me, before a throwing knife abruptly sprouted from his chest. It didn’t kill him, but
its appearance caused him to focus on prolonging his own life rather than ending mine. Oberon jumped on him and ended it—at least, that’s what I think happened, judging by the growl and the takedown. Granuaile wouldn’t have growled; she would have clocked him upside the head with her staff, which is what she did to the fellow choking me. She put a whole lot of energy behind that swing, because his head exploded like a melon and he slumped on me, leaking black blood.

“Thanks,” I gasped. “I was just about to take care of him, but, yeah, you know. That was good.”

Granuaile dispelled her invisibility and kicked the dark elf off me before kneeling at my side. “Did he paralyze you or something?”

“Partially. I’m working on it.” The muscles were locked up and I had to patiently relax them, one fiber at a time.

“That’s Far Eastern supa-sekrit martial arts, isn’t it? Where did a dark elf learn that?”

“In the Far East, I expect, just like I learned a few things there. We don’t know how long these guys live or what access they have to instruction, but it shouldn’t be a shock to discover that they’re well trained. We’ve managed to surprise them a few times and I think these Glass Knights are something new to them as well, but they’re equally capable of surprising us.” I’d seen plenty of the dark elves get taken out in ambushes so far, but I reflected that I hadn’t done too well against them in head-to-head combat. They were extraordinarily fast and strong, and if I hadn’t had Granuaile’s help a couple of different times they would have snuffed me. It would be better to avoid future conflict—or even have them fight on our side. “I’d rather get to whoever’s sending them after my ass than meet any more of them.”

“I hear that. But let me speak a word into your ear: clothes.”

“Yeah. We should get some. No one takes you seriously when you’re naked.”

“That’s wisdom right there. Hold on, I’m going to get my knives.” The first Svartálf she’d hit had bled to death, and his hands were still cupped around his groin. I turned my head away so I didn’t have to watch her yank out the knife, but the sound it made caused me to cross my legs. His body turned to a sticky puddle as Granuaile stepped away and wiped her blade clean on the grass.

I was capable of free movement after another few minutes, and we jogged through the Long Wood toward a road called Hosey Hill. I took note of the birds in the wood and paused to watch them.

“What’s up?” Granuaile asked, seeing my gaze directed at the treetops.

“Augury, if we’re lucky. We’re due for some luck, don’t you think? I’m not a proponent of augury as a rule, but since I have no other methods of divination available to me, I’ll take what I can get.”

Granuaile flicked her eyes upward, tracking the finches flitting around in the branches. “What are you aiming to get out of all that noise?”

I sat on a thin carpet of leaves and kept my eyes on the birds. “A guess about our pursuit. How long before the huntresses catch up.”

She sat next to me and rested her staff across her lap. “You never taught me how to do that.”

“I rarely use it. I prefer casting wands, because it’s quicker and you can ask multiple questions. With augury you have to wait and observe for about fifteen minutes per question and hope you didn’t miss something.”

Oberon asked.

“Sure, buddy, just don’t bark at anything.”

Oberon trotted off, and I spent the next fifteen minutes
trying to guess the future according to the behavior of the ten or so birds I could see frolicking above us. The theory behind augury was akin to chaos theory in that actions in one place can have profound effects elsewhere, and birds were acutely sensitive to changes in their environment—they could anticipate storms and dry spells and figure when it was best to migrate. Thus, if one was properly schooled in how to interpret their behavior, one might be able to tap into their sense of the future. These birds would see not only me pass underneath them but the huntresses as well. The question was when?

I wasn’t sure I caught everything that their fluttering and pecking order had to tell me, but my best guess was that, once we made it to Windsor Forest, we’d have a few hours to kill before dawn, and the huntresses would get there shortly after sunrise.

In camouflage, we resumed our run, following Hosey Hill north to Westerham. I washed off the remains of the dark elf in a public fountain and then we entered an Orvis store—a kind of outdoorsy UK chain—just before close of business. I found a black Havana shirt and jeans and declared myself satisfied; there was no use finding any shoes. It was the next best thing to camouflage when running at night. Vowing to pay them back when we could, we exited, dropped our bindings, and allowed ourselves to be seen.

Granuaile had found an all-black training outfit, a form-hugging kit that would let her move silently without restriction, as long as she didn’t wear the noisy Windbreaker that came with it. She stuck to the running tank, proudly displaying the full tattoos on her right arm.

Granuaile’s eyes roved up and down. “Mmm. Druid is the new black,” she said.

“Did you just make a yummy sound?”

We floated onto the grounds of Windsor Park like shades, unnoticed in the dark of night. On Snow Hill, two miles to the south of the castle, we paused by the statue of George III, which gave us a view of the Long Walk to the castle, tree-lined and coiffed according to royal wishes.

“See this guy?” I said, my hand slapping against the stone of the pedestal. “Not only did he lose the American colonies and usher in the twilight of the British Empire, but he pulled down Herne’s oak back in the eighteenth century. It was already dead, so I guess that was some excuse, but I can’t help thinking it was kind of a dick move. But there are still oaks there to this day, replanted by this monarch or that. We should be able to go there and call him.”

“Well, it might be wise to refrain from marking them. Herne had a whole pack of hounds. They might take issue with you claiming their trees as your own.”

“Not sure, but it’s best to be polite.”

“How do we call Herne, exactly?” Granuaile asked.

“We’ll ask Albion to help us out.”

I did my best to sound confident. In truth, I didn’t
know how we were supposed to call him or how he could possibly help us against two immortals. The Morrigan’s assurance that Herne could help us somehow seemed hollow now that she was dead and we’d been unable to do anything to the Olympians except inconvenience them. But I knew he was for real. Just before the whole business with Aenghus Óg exploded, Flidais had come to visit me with a warning, and she casually mentioned that she’d been guesting in Herne’s forest. She wouldn’t have called it that if Herne weren’t a force to be reckoned with. She would have called it a forest in Albion, or perhaps simply Windsor Forest.

Like most of the world, Windsor Great Park used to be wild, but its size had dwindled over the centuries to the present 4,800 protected acres. North of Frogmore House—which was itself a bit south of the castle—lay the historical location of Herne’s death. The oak that had been pulled down on the orders of King George III had been replanted by King Edward VII. It was there I would attempt to call him.

I didn’t know much about Herne, having never met him; I’d heard the same legends as everyone else. The attempts to explain his existence were many and varied. In the view of some, he was a corrupted form of the horned god Cernunnos, or perhaps a twist on Odin, who also led a form of the Wild Hunt and had experience hanging from trees. Many of these theories had something to do with Herne’s penchant for wearing antlers and connecting dots between the name
Herne
and old words for
horn
. To others, he was an historical figure, a ranger or gamekeeper for one of the old kings, led by disgrace of some kind to hang himself and haunt the woods ever after. Shakespeare gave him a shout-out in
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, but he didn’t lay down the definitive legend so much as give Herne a different kind of immortality.

We padded down the grass from Snow Hill into the row of trees lining the eastern side of the Long Walk, where puffy strands of mist clung to the trunks like torn cotton balls. Some insects buzzed and an owl hooted, but otherwise the only sound was our soft footfalls on the turf.

We veered to the northeast, across trimmed expanses of grass to the slightly more verdant grounds of Frogmore House, a sometime residence for members of the royal family. A serpentine pond wound behind it, with plenty of willows weeping on the banks and hedges growing to please the gardener who loved them.

We must have tripped a passive security alarm on our way across, because a couple of guards with flashlights and guns came looking for us. The flashlights told us right where the guards were, and Granuaile and I decided to mess with them a bit. Approaching in camouflage, we snatched their guns and chucked them into the pond.

“Bloody hell!” one shouted. A trip, a takedown, and a Druid Doomhold later, and they were both sleeping peacefully on the exquisite back lawn.

“They had guns,” Granuaile remarked. That was somewhat unusual for security in the UK. “But I guess they weren’t MI6.”

“No, they were pretty low-rent. Means the royals aren’t here. That’s good.”

The few oaks north of Frogmore were truly magnificent, even if they looked a bit lonely in the too-tidy landscape of Home Park. We were in a restricted area now but had already subdued the closest security. Thick trunks and wide, strong branches formed impressive canopies, and in the mist they managed to take on a slight character of menace. Despite this, they were as susceptible to the ravages of pandemonium as the rest of the world’s trees. I hoped the efforts of the Olympians
wouldn’t prevent Herne from appearing now. His specific tree—or rather the big tree that was supposedly planted in the precise spot of the original—was circled by an iron fence that bore a plaque linking it to supernatural history.

//Druid requires aid// I sent to Albion. //Request: Contact Herne / Old steward of this place / Express our wish to meet//

//Done// Albion replied. //Soon he will come//

“Oh,” I said aloud. “That was fast.”

“What?” Granuaile asked.

“Apparently Albion has a direct line to Herne.” That intrigued me. I was curious to know if Albion granted Herne any of his magic, or if Herne was living like the gods, suckling at the magical teat of belief. If it was the latter, then it was a highly localized belief. “He should be coming soon, but I don’t know from where.”