Staring down at the wall of Balor’s Bane, Bee got no satisfaction about being right when she told Whitehead that the gateless barrier would not halt the horde. A significant breach had been torn out of what was supposed be a formidable defence. Someone had flattened the space between the broken edges, no doubt to allow the passage of the wagon bearing Lia Fáil and the Undead King.

  She pictured Balor sitting on his wagon in a position not far from where she was lying. The image of him casting power strong enough to blast a hole in West Kingdom’s defences made her shiver.

  His magic is powerful, indeed.

  “So much for the wall, then,” Sainreth said, as if reading her mind.

  “Do we know what happened over there in West Kingdom?” Volt asked. “Since they locked themselves away, I mean.”

  Bee glanced at him lying on the rock staring into the gorge with a frown of concentration. He knew so little for one the prophecy promised so much—to become so much: humanity’s saviour. Again, she wondered about Cassandra’s foretelling. Apparently, Dagda believed and so she believed up to a point. What little she knew of the horse warrior was testing her faith in Dagda. In truth, it wouldn’t be the first time her liege had proved fallible. Cassandra was said to be cursed to not be believed, and Bee could see why that might be. More especially when the warrior opened his mouth.

  “Do we know anything at all?” Volt prompted.

  “Not much,” she admitted.

  “How much is not much? What about the wall?”

  Sighing, Bee thought about the history of this narrow, mountainous slash through the Western Wall—a history directly impacted by Balor’s attempt to return to his homeland. Finally, with a shake of the head, she told how the Ochall crowned after his predecessor refused Balor succour—the latest in a long line of Ochalls—said he built the wall to keep the Fomorii out of his lands. Many believed he built the wall not to keep his enemies out but to keep his diamonds in. Of course, those not touched by Rhiannon realised that the ice-like stones were only valuable if sold or exchanged. Hoarding them was not a sound policy on the part of the King. Ochall—of the easily forgotten regnal numbers—didn’t care about their value, only their beauty, or so the legends told. Bee wasn’t sure how much was born of truth and how much of envy. The simple fact was that there was no longer any access to West Kingdom by road. There was a port on the southern coast, but no sailor had been tempted to dock there since Ochall cut West Kingdom off by road. Shortly after Balor’s Bane became a permanent barrier, they fortified the long channel to the natural harbour and mounted the approach with rows of fire-throwing catapults, enough to deter the most ardent of would-be visitors.

  “We sometimes get news through Dún Scáith, but most of us don’t give a flying shite what happens over there,” Bee said. “Not since Ochall decided the other Kingdoms could go rot.

  “Current King’s Sharvan. I assume he chose that title rather than the mouthful Ochall The Three Hundred and Thirty Third of His Name would be.”

  “There were that many?” Volt asked. Bee shrugged and ran a finger along her scar’s ridge before realising what she was doing and placing her hands on the lip of the rock.

  “I’m guessing it was enough to put him off, is all.”

  “Aye. Practical in that sense,” Sainreth agreed. “How did you stop Bairrfind from killing you?”

  “What’s that got to do with the number of eggs in the henhouse?” Bee asked, glaring at the warrior. The longer she spent in the lout’s company the more she questioned her motives ten summers before. Oh, how much easier her life would be if she’d had only a little bit of control.

  “Just wondering, so I was.”

  Much more of this and I’ll geld him.

  Since leaving the long hall in Sliabh Culinn, Sainreth hadn’t stopped asking her how she was still alive. She didn’t want to say that Whitehead had been distracted. So much so, in fact, that she contributed little to the discussions during the council gathering because she couldn’t tear her mind away from the cairn under which they’d interred her first true love.

  After much argument, the council finally agreed that they needed a scouting party to discover where the horde was and what they were doing. Deichtire, Bairrfind’s First Lieutenant, offered to lead it, but Whitehead ordered Bee and Sainreth to ride—no doubt to get them out of her silver locks—an order Bee had been happy to follow for once. The Horse Warrior tagged along like a lost puppy.

  “There’s no sign of life,” Volt said.

  Bee nodded, wondering if any undead were waiting to ambush them. She thought there might be. They could stay up on the rise staring down at the hole but in the end, they had no choice. They had to pass through the gorge to find the horde. Aside from the labyrinth, it was the only way through the mountains.

  “Come, let’s find out,” she said, shimmying down the rock to where the Leathdhosaen waited with the horses.

  Bee rode towards the wall slowly, the others keeping pace with her. The lack of life became more obvious the closer they got to the dusty ground before the breach. They were the only ones causing any noise, as if all animals were forsaking the area.

  The animals have fled through fear, but are they afraid of us or a return of what came before?

  Nearing the breach, Bee caught sight of several bodies lying in a line, laid out side by side in some sort of ritual. She stopped her horse and stared at the gruesome sight. There was no sign of scavengers, not even crows. Swinging out of her saddle, she walked over, Volt following in her wake.

  There’s a good puppy, she thought and then scowled. She was being unfair to the man who’d been dragged by his magairlí into a quest he neither wanted nor believed in.

  “What d’ye think, Horse Warrior?”

  “I’m no tracker, witch. You did for them outside Caer Scál.”

  “Ye’re more of a tracker than me. Do yer best.”

  Sighing, Volt knelt beside the first corpse and studied it for a long time. Tutting, he finally moved on to the next body and then the next, briefly inspecting each of them. He didn’t speak while he examined them, rolling the bodies this way and that. Usually impatient, Bee knew to let him formulate his ideas in his own time. The others in the group had no skill as trackers, so she relied heavily on the horse warrior. He claimed his skill was average and the trackers Bee killed in the forest had been far better. She took those claims to be modesty tinged with a little chastisement.

  “Some warrior executed them,” he finally said, turning to Bee.

  I thought ye were no tracker, Horse Warrior?

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  “Ye sure it was an execution?”

  “Aye. Single thrust into the heart from the shoulder. Definitely a soldier’s strike. There’s no sign of struggle, so they submitted to it. Definitely an execution.”

  “Why would they—”

  “Hey, come see this,” Sainreth called excitedly from just inside the breach.

  Bee walked over to an ornate, ancient-seeming cuirass, Volt following in her wake. It was propped up on a massive stone, probably one of those blasted from the wall, as though left to guard the gap like an inanimate sentry.

  Bee frowned at the gap in the wall.

  Is the cuirass magical in some way? Guarding the breach, perhaps.

  “Horse Warrior?”

  Volt whistled as he knelt beside it.

  “I have never seen such a beauty,” he said, leaning over it, gazing into the neckline, before edging closer with a shudder. “Would you look at that.”

  Bee pushed him aside and leant over the cuirass. There was a pile of dust in it, not unlike a miniature cairn. Frowning, she looked behind the rock and saw a helmet, which was obviously part of the same set—ancient and intricately moulded bronze, worth more in monetary value than in any practical sense. It would be too heavy for the fluidity of motion the best warriors craved. She knew it to be ancient because modern fighters preferred boiled leather, which was cheaper and much lighter. Even so, she didn’t think anyone would abandon such valuable pieces in the dust.

  “Greaves, too,” Volt said.

  “What’s it all mean, then?” Sainreth asked.

  “Horse Warrior,” Bee hissed when he started to rub his bristles. “Why don’t ye let it grow?”

  It would be less annoying if I couldn’t hear it.

  “It gets unmanageable.”

  Bee turned to the base of the rock, where a set of greaves and sandals were partially hidden by the grey dust that appeared to have leaked out from under the cuirass. Even so, she wondered how she managed to miss them when she arrived at the rock.

  “What’s yer read, Volt?”

  He started to rub his head again before stopping and shaking it. “I can only read this one way, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Which is?”

  “Ancient armour,” he said, pointing at the cuirass. “A pile of dust. Greaves, sandals, and a helmet behind. I would say this is a suit of armour left by an undead warrior who died... somehow. A thousand summer’s decomposition happened in what must have been no time. I don’t know what the warrior was doing here, guarding the corpses over there, or guarding the breach, maybe. But why? Was it watching for us? And what caused it to die?”

  ***

  The wash of colour above the horizon grew lighter, going from red to gold and finally blue. The sun would be a welcome sight because the night had been cold, as Balor supposed any would be with such a clear, star-filled sky. One thing he missed during his exile was the beauty of the stars.

  Not that he studied them in awe all night.

  Instead, sitting on Lia Fáil, he’d tried to make sense of the she-wolf’s attack. Nothing came to him. He thought it would have made more sense if the pack had all attacked. But a lone wolf? It was one of those puzzles that would take the genius of a renowned mage to unravel.

  Despite what he’d said to Abartach, Balor was worried about the event. The children of Rhiannon continued to call each other during the night. However, they didn’t show themselves, and Balor’s fascination became wariness. If the Moon Goddess had taken a hand in what was happening, it could mean many things, none of them good for his people.

  The Tuatha are nothing but trouble. Never been anything but trouble.

  Balor thought about what the Goddess stood for in humankind’s legends, such as fertility, wisdom, and beauty—foolish interpretations more in tune with romanticism than reality. In more realistic mentalities, her overriding characteristic was political game-playing. Intrigue. The Moon Goddess loved to get involved in intrigue; the more enigmatic, the better. Balor could imagine her manipulating this situation into a game of chance involving a victor and some sort of spoils. What he could not imagine was what the game might be.

  What is your goal, Rhiannon?

  Rather than marching away from the Halfmoon Ridge as he’d originally planned, Balor ordered his horde to await the dawn. He needed to think about the wolf’s attack and how best to respond. The wagon’s squeaking wheels would distract him.

  When the sun breached the eastern horizon, Balor felt the sunlight as an irritation against the skin of his cheek. Smiling, he shook his head. Many of the heroes who arrived under the mountain told him they believed the undead couldn’t abide the sun, that they would wither and burn and become a pile of ash within moments of being touched by daylight. These were the same heroes who told him his people were renowned for coming out at night and feasting on the blood of living victims. These notions were, of course, nonsense. Having spent so long under the mountain, his people had no love of the sun but no reason to fear it, and they feasted on nothing, having no need, which was perhaps the greatest tragedy of being undead.

  “Sire.”

  Balor sighed as his First Warrior came towards the wagon. He could tell by his determined stride that Abartach was bringing news, which would neither excite nor delight him. In some ways, Balor had been expecting it ever since telling the warrior to leave the wolf carcass in the wagon bed. He’d since had it moved behind Lia Fáil while he decided what to do with the pelt, no longer sure that making it into a pennant to hang above the wagon was the right thing to do.

  “Why the grim face?” Balor asked before Abartach could speak.

  “The scouts have not returned,” the warrior said. “They should have been back before the witching hour.”

  Balor studied him, searching for what Abartach believed might have caused them to stay away beyond their ordered return. His First Warrior was as stony-faced as usual. Balor wondered if the wolf cries and the attack were signs of one of the Moon Goddesses intrigues. Was Rhiannon angling towards some power struggle in the Kingdoms? Did she intend to use his Fomorii as a weapon in some way and needed him removed? Could his First Warrior be in league with her? Balor thought he could only blame himself, realising that delaying under the mountain had been a mistake. He might argue that the apathy had been felt by all but really it was the King’s responsibility.

  “You think they ran?” he asked.

  “Ran, Sire?” The First Warrior could have been feigning confusion, except Abartach was not a man likely to resort to such subterfuge. Any attack from the warrior would be head-on. If he wanted to take control of the Fomorii he would simply lop off Balor’s head and be done with it.

  Would such forthrightness satisfy Rhiannon, though?

  “Did they desert?”

  “No, Sire. They were either captured or destroyed by the enemy or perhaps by the wolf pack.” The wolf pack. So, there it is.“Nothing would have—”

  The warrior stopped talking in mid-sentence. Whatever caused him to stop must have been dire because he opened his eyes wide, and there was a look of shock on his face, something which Balor had not seen in nearly a thousand summers.

  If he opens his mouth any wider, his jaw will break.

  “Have you seen a demon?” Balor asked, shaking his head and barking a laugh.

  “No, Sire, he saw me,” Uala said, walking from behind Lia Fáil.

  Balor would have congratulated the man on his return, except he saw that it wasn’t the reanimation of the emissary causing the shock on Abartach’s face but the wolf padding beside him. The beast’s fur had gone from the sandy grey of a plain’s wolf to pure white. The animal was no less sleek for that. Balor guessed it was the animal kingdom’s version of a grey skin, the loss of colour he and his people had suffered. However, its eyes were the same fierce gold he’d seen on the ridge the previous night.

  The animal is undead. How can it be?

  The ramifications of what he was witnessing came almost immediately to Balor. His people had spent a thousand summers without the aid of beasts because they could not abide the undead. Here was a beast that Gáe Bulg had transitioned, which was as close to Uala as Balor suspected anything had ever been, living, dead, or undead.

  Except his mother.

  His First Warrior levelled Gáe Bulg at the wolf and stepped onto the wagon.

  “Wait, Abartach,” Balor said, holding up his hand. “It’s neither aggressive nor is it afraid.”

  The animal appeared to have chosen Uala as its new pack. It was resting its side against his leg and watching the activity of the horde curiously.

  “Tell me about this wolf,” Balor said to Uala.

  The emissary turned to the animal and frowned. “I’ve not seen her before. She was lying beside me when I awoke, Sire.”

  “And to think I was going to use her pelt as a pennant.”

  “You would really use such majesty in so foul a manner?” Uala asked.

  “Oh, aye.”

  As the emissary turned away, Balor considered ordering Abartach to kill him and the bitch. Instead, distracted by the possibilities, he said, “Interesting. Does this give you any ideas, Abartach?”