Scamp glanced down at his knees before squeezing his magairlí between his thighs and lifting his head to glower at the warrior defiantly. Despite a tic in his cheek and a lifeless pair of eyes, Volt’s captain was grinning so widely that his teeth reflected the sunlight, glinting fiercely enough for Scamp to consider shading his eyes with a hand. He supposed it was a good thing the man was in such jovial humour because it probably meant he wasn’t there to arrest Scamp and return him to Murias to hang for murder.

  But maybe not. Maybe not. The moon might have her hand on his shoulder.

  Scamp couldn’t be sure. In fact, he had been confident of only one thing since his adventure began, which amounted to what he had known before. Not much. He’d always considered himself a product of despair and wise for his age, a boy moulded by adversity, different from his peers because his Dah would beat him whenever he felt the urge. That or Kathvar would attempt to blame him for some mischief or other.

  I used to be young. Inexperienced. But no longer.

  He was changing and not sure it was into someone he liked. Oh, he liked the idea of being shaped by his adventures. However, he thought they would shape him into a hard man, capable of facing some knocks, not into another boy, only this one incapable of suppressing his fear.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “What?” the First Warrior asked, tilting his head slightly, his cheek competing with the grass for the most impressive waves.

  There was another warrior with him—whom Scamp had never seen before—sitting astride his horse, staring at Scamp as if he had horns sticking out of his head like Bábdíbir. He had to fight against a compelling need to feel his forehead to ensure nubs hadn’t grown while he slept.

  Instead, he said, “I never murdered them women like that. You know, outside the granary. I never murdered them trackers, neither. Nor Cathal in the shed. I never murdered no one.”

  “Oh, that,” Mesroeda said, waving his words away. “You do not need to worry about that. We know who it was who murdered the guards. Same one as murdered the trackers, and she is being hunted as we speak.”

  “She. Who’s she?” Scamp asked, wondering whether this cnapán expected him to buy the horse dung he was attempting to sell.

  “That woman who abducted you, Upthog.”

  “Oh,” Scamp said.

  Where did that come from?

  As far as Scamp knew, no one—other than him the previous night—had mentioned abduction. The Champ said he thought Upthog and Scamp were accomplices, not one a criminal and the other a victim. No one, especially not Mesroeda, had seemed to think anything different. In fact, in the woods, Scamp had been afraid the guards were about to lynch him to avenge their comrades. But not only comrades. Mesroeda told him the trackers had been his friends. Here on the plains, it was as if the man thought offering him a series of platitudes would put Scamp off his guard.

  Cac on that.

  Of all the things Upthog said to him, that she didn’t kill the guards was the one he’d believed—if not straight away, then eventually. Confronted by this horse warrior with his blond head, stupid grin, and worrying tic, Scamp realised he still believed her. So, they intended blaming everything on Upthog like Kathvar used to blame everything on him.

  “I thought you wanted me for murdering your friends?”

  “Friends? Which friends…” Mesroeda hesitated and then nodded. “The trackers. Silly of me. We know it wasn’t you, of course, but the woman.”

  “So, Upthog murdered everyone, then?”

  “No. She didn’t burn the gatekeeper, Cathal. As you said in Caer Droma, it was the witch, Kathvar. The King’s Guards are on his trail. They will have him in no time.”

  Scamp shivered, feeling he needed his demon now more than at any other time. There was something off. This Mesroeda was as strange a man as he’d ever met, with his grin and dead eyes. He hadn’t noticed it before, but, in fairness, his mind had been on other things.

  “What are you doing here, and who’s he?” he asked, nodding at the stranger, who was still staring at him. He felt sure the end of this encounter would find him trussed up and slung over one of the horses Mesroeda had in a string. The sound of a guard locking the granary door rang like a bolt being driven home in the middle of these grass-filled plains.

  Cha chunk. Scamp felt his forehead as if unable to resist hunting for the horns he’d suspected before.

  I should have stayed with Upthog.

  But no, that was just pathetic. He’d had enough and left her. Wishing that away was as foolish as leaving her in the first place. There was no return; he needed to accept that and face his future with his magairlí gripped tight and tear-free eyes. He felt an urge to laugh but managed to suppress it and cover it with a cough. If only he could suppress his fear as easily.

  Listen to yourself, boy, he mimicked. If Mesroeda and the stranger hadn’t been watching him, he would have shaken his head from side to side and stuck out his tongue while doing it.

  “We were sent by the King to protect you, Scamp. You’re a very important boy,” the cnapán said, causing Scamp’s frown to deepen.

  “Who’s he?” Scamp repeated, curious why Mesroeda ignored him the first time he asked.

  “Meet Mac Da Tho, Captain of the King’s Guard. He’s the best warrior in all of the kingdoms and my captain.”

  Cac on that. No, he’s not. He does what you tell him to do, cnapán.

  “What will you do, return me to the King?”

  “Return you to the King? No, foolish boy. Our task is to protect you. Nothing more.”

  “So, I’m free to go where I choose?” And I will run the first chance I get.

  “Yes. Wherever you like. Where were you thinking?”

  Scamp stared up at him and wondered where the trap lay. It had to be a trap. Despite being sure, he couldn’t think what it might be.

  “I was going to Scéine’s Cove to ask the éigeas Myrddin for help.”

  “Good idea, Scamp. We’ll escort you to Scéine’s Cove.” Scamp couldn’t have been more surprised. He expected some argument trying to convince him it was the wrong decision.

  They’re still laying a trap.

  “Can I make one suggestion?” Mesroeda asked. Scamp nodded. “We should travel by Balor’s Canyon. The Great Forest is the domain of all sorts of nasty characters.”

  ***

  The wind had picked up a good deal since they met the doomed Leathdhosaen on the highway. The gates to the settlement of Caisel were flapping and banging, making Volt’s already frayed nerves jangle. The gates sounded like the drums of a horde marching from Tartarus to consume humankind in the scourge he no longer doubted was imminent. How could he question after watching Maga staring at the apparition of the disciple, Concaire? Or witnessing Fachta kill six warriors with ease?

  The nine riders, a Tuatha Leathdhosaen, Fachta, Maga and himself, were sitting astride their horses at the top of the dyke. Since the massacre of the strangers, Maga had insisted on a gruelling pace, so horses and riders were snorting deep breaths, happy for a chance to rest.

  Volt had never felt as constricted.

  The two Tuatha warriors were still flanking him, Gul and another he couldn’t name, ensuring he didn’t consider running. Not that he would consider running. It wouldn’t need a mage to realise these warriors would catch him easily and could snuff out his life like they would a candle before going to bed. Furthermore, Maga said the Fáithe preordained his presence in The Point of Death, and who was Volt to argue with the Fáithe?

  “What’s this place?” Maga asked.

  “It’s known as Caisel. It seems to be abandoned. Still, it has the only well between here and Dún Ailinne. We need to water the horses before we go on, so I hope no one poisoned the well.”

  “Are there no rivers?”

  “None.”

  “I don’t like this place. There’s a smell of death about it, so they might have,” Maga said, staring around as if expecting trouble.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Might have what?”

  “Poisoned the water. Even unintentionally.”

  Volt understood what she meant. If there had been battle and death here, it was feasible that a body had fallen into the well. It wouldn’t matter if someone fished it out immediately, but if left to fester, the water would be undrinkable.

  Maga stood in her stirrups and stared into the settlement for several moments. Eventually, she sat down and asked, “Can the horses last until Dún Ailinne?”

  “No. We’ve ridden them hard. They need water and rest.”

  We need water and rest. Or at least I do.

  Maga sat still for what seemed a long time staring at nothing. Volt suspected the time was shorter than it felt, exaggerated by a numbness that had been building since discovering his travelling companions were not what they seemed. He prided himself on a sense of duty but this time it was proving to be his bane. If he had just told Maga to leave him be in the hostel of Lúr Cinn Trá instead of feeling beholden to a King who was three apples short of a barrel, he’d be pickled in mead and not staring over a remote settlement in the company of a troop of violent Tuatha.

  Eventually, she turned and said, “Fachta, skirt the palisade and come in from the rear.”

  Fachta swung down from his horse without saying anything. He crooked a finger at one of the other warriors and they ran down the dyke’s ramp in a crouch. Volt watched them until they disappeared behind the walls skirting the settlement.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Maga didn’t turn from staring at the flapping gates. Her face was expressionless. However, Volt could tell she was not comfortable riding into a settlement that smelled of death, as she put it. He couldn’t smell anything but didn’t possess the heightened senses the Tuatha were said to have.

  More children’s stories coming to life?

  He didn’t think so. Maga was convincing when she said Caisel smelled of death, leaving no room for him to believe her to be mistaken. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s confidence had fooled him. Kathvar fooled him for at least ten summers.

  Ten summers and more.

  “As soon as Fachta has had time, we ride in like we’re on a Samhain outing,” Maga said, still staring into the seemingly lifeless village.

  “Sounds sensible,” Volt said, while thinking that if anyone was in there waiting to ambush them, riding into the trap was stupid. And then he remembered the ease with which Fachta dispatched a Leathdhosaen of warriors. There would be nothing in the Five Kingdoms that could stand against that level of skill and brutality. He doubted if Balor and his Fomorii could stand against the might of these Tuatha warriors.

  “That should be enough time,” Maga said, kicking her horse into motion.

  Volt’s watchers guided him forward in her wake. He wondered how they would manage the ramp down from the dyke, which was only wide enough for one horse. His question was answered when Gul relieved him of his reins before taking the lead. Volt nodded at him and grinned, not seeing any point in losing his temper over something so simple. Not that he would show anger in the company of these killers—supposing they were all as violent as Fachta. He didn’t think they would be less violent. They might be less skilled, which would explain why Maga had selected Fachta to lead the way both times she needed to.

  Riding through the gates, Volt could smell the odour of death that Maga had complained about. The gruesome scene in the space between the block houses showed him the reason. There was dried blood everywhere. He’d once heard a sailor say he was going to paint Indber Colptha the colour of blood, which Volt took to mean have a good time—in the way of sailors all over the Five Kingdoms. Whomever had painted this settlement took a more literal meaning from the saying.

  As well as the blood, there were bodies and parts of bodies strewn about the settlement. Unlike the battlefield, where Volt was convinced men had done the killing, here he was sure they hadn’t. Some of the bodies were in places they could not be without superhuman strength, like the body skewered on the flagpole he could see in the centre of the settlement. The corpse was wearing a leather cuirass and wrist bands, over muscled arms and chest, obviously a fighter. Whatever killed him must have been enormously strong. It was as though something had flown above the settlement and dropped the warrior from a long way up. So high up, in fact, the blunt end of the pole pierced the body, which didn’t come to rest until several hand spans from the top.

  “What in all the Tua… all the Fomorii happened here?” Volt asked.

  “This is demon work,” Maga said.

  The words sent a shiver down his back until it was tickling his spine’s base like a lover with a bunch of Great Eagle feathers tied to a stick. Unlike being tickled by a lover there was no sense of excitement to this sensation but a sense of foreboding. He wanted to laugh. The doom of the Five Kingdoms was tickling his arse out in the middle of nowhere.

  “Has the scourge begun?” he asked.

  “No. I would have—”

  “No one moves,” interrupted Maga’s words.

  Volt was surprised to see they had arrived in the central square. He could see the wellhead and the figure of a woman with a drawn bow within its shadows.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Maga said. “We are seven. How many can you kill before we take you? Two?”

  “I’d say three, but ye’ll be the first. Besides, ye’re only six. Magón’s Champ there seems more like a prisoner than one of the band.”

  “You know me?” Volt asked, sure he had never seen the woman before. “Who are you?’

  “Name’s Upthog. I think ye were hunting me and the boy. Matter of a pair of trackers I killed on the road.”

  Ah, the woman. Where’s the boy?

  “Killed? I think not. You murdered them in cold blood,” Volt said, feeling his anger rising.

  “That, now, would be a matter of perspective, no.”

  “How so?’

  “As well as abducting the boy, they were the bodaláin who murdered me brother during the witch hunts.”

  “The boy, Scamp, is wanted on suspicion of murder.”

  “Wasn’t Scamp, though, was it? It was the witch, Kathvar, no. Besides, I can’t allow the murder of me brother to go unavenged.”

  Volt shook his head, wondering what she was talking about. Her words made less sense than anything else happening.

  “I don’t understand why Ruairí and Oisín would murder your brother. I don’t know who your brother was.”

  “Are ye saying ye’d nothing to do with it? Cos, if y’are, I don’t believe ye. It would mean Kathvar had more control over yer men than ye did.”

  Kathvar, of course. Always the witch.

  “Why don’t you come out of the shadows, and we can discuss it,” Maga said.

  “Ye’d like that, wouldn’t—”

  Fachta’s strike to the back of her neck caused Upthog to crumple in a heap at his feet. Volt hadn’t seen the Tuatha’s approach and the woman obviously hadn’t heard him. Fachta picked her up and slung her over his shoulder before walking to the flagpole and dumping her in a heap at its base.

  “Test the well so we can get watering the horses,” Maga shouted to no one in particular.

  “What do you want me to do?” Volt asked.

  “Your task, going forward, Horse Warrior, is to keep her on a tight rein.”

  “My task? Why don’t you just ask Fachta to cut her throat?”

  Maga shook her head and laughed at him. Volt was beginning to resent how she treated him like an errant dailtín who needed correcting at every step. He knew they were Gods, the Creator was of Danu’s people, but the arrogance didn’t stop his jaw from dropping at her audacity. He would not have thought it possible if he hadn’t witnessed it. Her next words made his jaw drop for a wholly different reason.

  “She is far too valuable to just kill, Horse Warrior. Upthog’s Dhuosnos’s disciple. Her mission was to deliver the boy to the Bull’s Head.”

  ***

  On the plains, the early afternoon heat was that of summer rather than spring. Insects were buzzing, getting in mouths and eyes and irritating Scamp no end. The fire was giving off plumes of smoke, so they were visible for leagues.

  They don’t fear being found.

  The realisation made him wonder who they were. A pair of King’s Guards would be more wary, especially in a land full of those starving or suffering from pestilence. Something as simple as being accosted by the plague-stricken could kill them.

  He stirred the cauldron. There was a heady scent of rabbit and lentils rising from it. If nothing else, this Mesroeda liked his food. He had a pouch of herbs and a whole packhorse dedicated to carrying things to eat. Apart from the lentils, he had flour, oats, dried meats, and several casks of good mead. Scamp wondered what sort of man could carry such treasure across a country full of starving people with a smile on his face.

  A man with the moon’s blessing.

  Mesroeda had been missing when Scamp awoke, only to appear with a brace of rabbits shortly after. No one spoke as he skinned and butchered the meat. In fact, no one had said much of anything since the King’s Guards cut across his trail the previous day. Scamp was finding their reticence more annoying than Upthog’s ever was. At least she had reasons for sulking. These two were just broody; one with a lunatic grin and the other with a constantly downturned mouth.

  This is going to be a long road.

  It was not only going to be long but also slow. Mesroeda was in no rush to get to Balor’s Canyon and then south to Scéine’s Cove if he even intended to go there. Scamp suspected their intended destination was not the same as his despite their claiming the contrary. In some ways, he thought it was good that they were ambling. The longer they took, the more time he would have to plan an escape.

  It was after the sun had started its decline and Mesroeda and Mac Da Tho were lounging on the grass waiting for their meal that Scamp said, “Tell me why we’re going through Balor’s Canyon,” as he was handing Mesroeda a bowl of stew.

  “Did I not say already, boy?”

  He sounds like Upthog.

  “You said the forest is full of nasty people, but don’t the Fomorii live in Balor’s Canyon? I was always told the Undead are pretty nasty, like they come out at night to drink human blood.”

  “Ah, the Fomorii. No one has seen or heard of Balor’s people in a thousand summers. They were driven underground by the Tuatha not long after the last scourge. There’s little to worry about in Balor’s Canyon.”

  Little to worry about, and yet I fear going there.

  “I was warned to avoid it.”

  “Really. Who warned you? The witch? You can’t trust her, boy. She only has her own self in mind every time she opens her eineach.”

  “You talk like you know her.”

  Is this man in league with Upthog? Is that why she let me go? All that talk about hunting her might have been a ruse.

  “No. I just listened to Kathvar before he ran. Now, be quiet and let me think.”

  Shortly afterwards, Mesroeda was snoring with his head on his saddle. Mac Da Tho was sitting with his arms crossed, staring at Scamp with his upside-down smile.

  Scamp picked a blade of grass from between his knees and started to chew on it thoughtfully. When he left Upthog he hadn’t thought it through—hadn’t considered what would happen. That he would end up sitting on the plain in the early afternoon with a snorer and a snorter had not crossed his mind.

  I will be lucky to escape this trap.

  He knew he was the captive of these two Guards. They might dress it up differently but Scamp was not so naive as to believe their tales about being sent by the King to protect him. Chewing his blade of grass and watching the men from under lidded eyes, he knew he needed help. Upthog was either in league with these two or long gone—gone to wherever she had intended to go.

  I need you, Bábdíbir. Where are you?

  “I am here, Master. Beside the man snoring.”

  “Good. We could use some help,” Mesroeda said without opening his eyes, his cheek suddenly fluttering. “Show yourself, demon.”

  Show yourself, demon is a command. He must be a witch.