Warriors Of Legend (8 page)

“I called to her and she heard me,” she replied simply. “That is why you are here, my lord. She brought you here. You must come with me.”

Conor’s fury was being overwhelmed by confusion and, if he were to admit it, some fear. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Who in the hell are you? And no more of this bullshit you’ve been feeding me. Who in the hell are you really?”

Sounds of horses could be heard and they both turned to see the little people returning with four horses. But these weren’t any horses; they were shaggy and fat, oddly shaped. Padraigan motioned towards the beasts.

“Come, my lord,” her calm tone now had a sense of urgency to it. “We must hurry.”

Conor stood his ground. “Hurry where?” he demanded. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are.”

Padraigan remained calm. “I told you, my lord,” she said. “I am Padraigan the White. I am your
litrithe
. You do not remember now but you will in time. You must trust me and come with me; otherwise, your life is in great danger.”

Conor just stared at the woman, the sense of dread that had been gnawing at him now sprouting wings and taking flight. “My sorceress?” he repeated, translating her word. “What is…?”

“There is no time, my lord. You must come now. I will explain everything when we are safe.”

Conor pulled Destry tighter, glancing around to the overgrown mound, the heavy foliage, the fields that were wild and untamed. Overhead, clouds skipped across the unnaturally blue sky. It all looked fairly normal to him but something was different, something he couldn’t put his finger on. His defiance began to slip in favor of genuine fear.

“What in the hell is going on?” he finally pleaded, a mere whisper compared to his usual tone.

Padraigan sensed his despair; she had known this would be his reaction and struggled to get the man moving without sitting down and telling him the entire story of his existence. She would do it later, when they were safe. But at this moment, they needed to leave. The urgency was growing.

“Please,” Padraigan begged. “I will tell you everything once we reach safety. Will you please trust me?”

Conor wasn’t sure he had a choice but he really didn’t want to go with her. He wanted to find his car, but his car wasn’t there and neither was the carpark, or Aisling, or the small farm that sat just to the east of the mound. Nothing was as he remembered it. It began to occur to him that the blast that had thrown him and Destry clear of the mound had done something. He wasn’t sure yet, but something had happened.

One way or the other, he had to find help for Destry. With no car and no phone on him, since he had left it in his car, he thought that perhaps he should go with the woman. There was the larger lure of taking Destry someplace safe; once at the woman’s house, maybe she had a land line phone he could use. And he reckoned that if he didn’t feel comfortable, he could just leave. Drogheda was about a five mile walk to the east. He’d carry Destry all the way to Dublin to find help for her if he had to.

Without another word, he began to walk towards the horses. Padraigan softly commanded her three little friends to produce the fastest horse for Conor, but he looked rather blankly as a shaggy cream–colored horse was produced. There was no saddle, at least not one he had ever seen; it was a series of heavy blankets held together with a frame of wood for the seat of the saddle.

“Oh, God,” he grunted to himself. “A horse? I haven’t ridden a horse in years.”

“Mount your steed, my lord.”

He just shook his head, looking at Destry, wondering how he was going to mount the horse and hold her at the same time. After a moment, he sighed heavily. “How in the hell am I going to do this?”

In his arms, Destry suddenly stirred. She threw up a hand, which ended up thumping him on the cheek. He gazed down at her, seeing that her eyes were marginally open. The hand that had smacked him in the cheek went to her head as if to block out a throbbing headache and her eyes closed again.

“Destry?” he said softly. “Can you hear me?”

This time, she responded. “Yes,” she whispered, the bright blue eyes slowly opening again. “What’s going on?”

He sighed heavily. “I’m not sure yet,” he said honestly. “How do you feel?”

She was quiet a moment; so far, she hadn’t tried to move anything but her hand and she remained tucked against his chest, her open eyes staring into his shirt. He could feel her great, heavy sigh.

“Like I’ve been thrown off a building,” she stirred again, this time lifting her head and squinting in the light. “What happened?”

His gaze was soft on her. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “One minute I was in the tunnel with you and in the next minute, we were both lying on the grass.”

She gazed up at him, her bright blue against his sky blue. “Are you okay?”

He smiled faintly. “I’m fine,” he said gently. “I’m more worried about you.”

She reached up and wound her arms around his neck, pulling herself up so that she was sitting up somewhat. But as she struggled to settle herself, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Padraigan came into view, an unfamiliar and somewhat odd sight, and Destry startled with fright.

“Oh, God,” she gasped, suddenly pressed up against Conor as close as she could without actually crawling inside the man. “Who’s that?”

Conor looked at the small, thin woman with the dirty pale nightgown on. “She says her name is Padraigan,” he said quietly. “She says… well, she says a hell of a lot of weird things, but she mostly says we need to get out of here because we’re in danger.”

Destry’s head came up, the bright blue eyes wide with fear and disorientation. “What danger?”

He shook his head, his gaze on the strange woman and her three companions. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “They won’t say but they want us to come with them.”

Destry looked over her shoulder at the very small woman with the extremely pale face before turning back to Conor, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face against his shoulder.

“I just want to go back to the hotel,” she muttered. “I need to lie down. Please take me back.”

He sighed faintly. “I would, except the car is gone.”

Her head came up, her face within inches of his as she fixed him in the eye. “Where did it go?” she suddenly scowled. “Did Aisling take it? Where in the hell did she go? Oh, my God, my head is killing me.”

Her head flopped back down on his shoulder and Conor laid his cheek against the top of her head, rocking her gently. In spite of the bizarre and concerning circumstances, he had her just where he wanted her. He could have stayed like this forever. But Padraigan approached the pair timidly, rattling him out of his fantasy world.

“Please, my lord,” she said. “We must leave immediately.”

Destry’s head came up again, her eyes wide as she looked at him. “What did she say?” she hissed. “What kind of language is that?”

Conor pursed his lips reluctantly; he didn’t particularly want to tell her, fearful that it might set her off. But he had no choice.

“Gaelic Irish,” he said quietly.

Her face screwed up, confused. “Doesn’t she speak English?”

Conor looked at the tiny wisp of a woman “Do you understand English?

Padraigan stared at him, having no idea what he had said. After a moment of confusion, she pointed to the horses again.

“Please, my lord,” she begged. “Please ride with me to safety. Time grows short and your children await.”

Conor’s eyebrows lifted. “Children?” he repeated. “What children?”

Padraigan’s gaze moved between Conor and Destry as a faint smile graced her lips. “Your sons,” she said. “Perhaps they will help you remember.”

Destry was looking at Conor as the woman spoke her bizarre language. It was clear that he was communicating with her but Destry couldn’t understand a word. She felt like she was on another planet. Her head was killing her and her body ached terribly, and she was feeling woozy and weary. With a big surge of strength, she suddenly pushed herself out of Conor’s enormous arms and almost fell to the ground.

Conor steadied her as she gained her feet and her balance but she shrugged him off. Looking around, she spied the mound several yards away and her eyebrows lifted; it was lumpy and overgrown with foliage. It didn’t look anything like the well–manicured mound she had arrived at a few hours earlier. It didn’t even look like the same relic, in any way. An odd sense of foreboding swept her.

“What happened to the mound?” she asked, pointing.

He turned to look at it. “I have no idea,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t look like it did just a few minutes ago.”

Destry’s hand went to her head, a gesture of utter bafflement, as she started to walk in the direction of the mound. “It’s all covered with bushes and grass,” she said, overwhelmed with confusion and curiosity. She turned to Conor. “You said we were thrown out of the tunnel?”

He was walking after her. “Yes,” he replied. “When I woke up, we were about three or four meters from the tunnel entrance.”

Destry wasn’t feeling at all well but her sense of curiosity, and fear, were taking over. “Then there must have been an explosion,” she was trying to be logical about it. “Is it possible that the explosion threw us out and made it look like this? It looks like some of the tunnels are collapsed.”

He just shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “Whatever damage you see looks as if it has been that way for years. And none of the overgrowth has been disturbed, as it would have been by an explosion.”

She couldn’t wrap her mind around his assertion. “But there has to have been an explosion,” she insisted. “How else would we have been blown out of the tunnel?”

Conor was feeling just as much trepidation as she was but he was more in control of it. “I have no idea,” he replied. “But it happened.”

She looked at him, the bright blue eyes pleading and searching. “But how?” she demanded softly, then her eyes grew suspicious. “Were we gassed? Maybe someone gassed us and then dragged us outside to rob us.”

He almost laughed but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it; she was serious and so was he. It was a serious situation.

“We would have seen someone, or heard them,” he took a couple of steps and ended up very close to her, looking down into her lovely face. “Even though my attention was on you, I’m sure I would have heard someone sneaking up to gas us.”

“Did you check your pockets? Is your wallet still there?”

“I left my wallet in the car.”

She pursed her lips as if he had just made an awful mistake. “Now Aisling has it and is probably charging up all of your credit cards.”

He grinned. “If she does, I’ll take it out on you.”

“Oh, yeah? And how are you going to do that?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. No. Well, maybe.”

Conor laughed softly. They had come to a halt about twenty feet from the mound, facing each other, when an object of some kind suddenly zinged past Conor’s head and he turned, startled, in time to see several creatures in the trees off to the north side of the mound. Creatures were the only way to describe them because they were green and brown, blending in with the foliage like woodland wraiths. They whooped and yelled and threw things, and started dropping out of the trees. When they began to run, Conor could see that they were human; naked human men painted in dirty shades of green and brown.

They clutched crude bows in their hands made of thin, stripped branches and some kind of animal sinew. Conor could hardly believe what he was seeing; it was like watching an ancient reenactment only this one had the distinct element of danger; people didn’t launch arrows because they wanted to be friendly. They launched them because they wanted to kill. One of the group launched a very crude arrow again and it weakly sailed off to the left.

As they drew closer, Conor knew the meant to attack them but he still couldn’t believe it. He just stood there and observed, like an anthropologist would. Beside him, Destry let out a shriek.

“Holy Crap!” she yelped.

Her cry seemed to startle him from clinically evaluating the situation. Although he was an expert in ancient warfare, he’d never really had cause, other than an occasional bar fight, to use his skills. As big as he was, at six and a half feet tall, he’d never really been called upon to use his hand to hand combat skills in a mortal situation and, truth be told, he was a little frightened. But he could see that all of that was about to change. He was about to put his money where his mouth was. Something in his gut told him that these men were not the reasoning type. They looked like wild animals and he responded in kind.

A fist the size of a ten pound ham came flying out at the first man, delivering a crushing blow that sent him to the ground. Conor grabbed the second man by the neck and tossed him off into the trees. Two others descended on him and he found himself in a vicious fight, tossing men to the ground only to have them jump up and try to strike him. One man had a crude bronze knife blade and he swiped it at Conor, catching him in the arm and drawing blood. Furious, Conor drove his fist into the man’s head.

Destry had darted away when Conor threw the first punch; she had nowhere to go and no place to hide, but she didn’t want to get clobbered in the fight. She’d never in her life heard of gangs hanging out in the countryside of Ireland, beating up tourists. But there were at least six of them, three of them who were already out cold thanks to Conor’s crushing blows. The man could deliver a punch like nothing she had ever seen this side of a movie screen. But as she watched him, she began to realize that he might need help. She’d never been in a fight in her life but that was about to change; she had to help him.

Over to her left, the strange woman was trying to get her attention, beckoning her to come, but Destry had no intention of going with the woman or of leaving Conor alone. Forgetting her splitting headache and nausea, she quickly looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. Rocks would do but she quickly spied a fairly thick branch on the ground, about four feet long and with leaves and smaller branches still growing out of it. Swiftly, she retrieved it and the next time one of those skinny naked guys came around, she whacked him over the head with it. He fell like a stone.