Faerie Tale (11 page)

Denny put an arm around her shoulder.  ‘Maybe,’ he said.  ‘There might be something
we
can do.’

She stared at him guiltily.

‘You don’t have to take it all on yourself, you know,’ he said. ‘We’re all fighting this one.’

‘I know, and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.  It’s just … well …
we’re
losing Denny.’

‘You’ll think of something,’ he said.  ‘You always do.’

‘We’ve beaten Djinn, vampires, gods, even the rotten little clerks in mainframe, and
they
run the whole universe,’ she said.  ‘I can’t believe we’ve met our Waterloo with a bunch of
Faeries
of all things.’

This was bad.

‘First of all, we aren’t beaten yet,’ admonished Denny. ‘And furthermore, they may be
called
“Faeries”, but they have more in common with the old style gods than storybook pixies.  And there are thousands of them too.  So don’t beat yourself up on that account. We may have never faced such an enemy before.’

‘You don’t give a lot of pep talks do you?’

‘I never had to before.’

‘
We
need help, Denny,’ she wailed.  ‘
We
can’t do this by
our
selves and if people can’t even be taught to help
themselves
… it’d be a help anyway,’ she finished off, muttering. 

Denny knew what she meant.  It was too much to expect them to fight
all
the Faeries by themselves, but that was just what they were having to do. 
Try
to do, he corrected himself.

 He took her face in his hands.  ‘We’ll beat them Tam …
No
one can beat you, I really believe that.  I’ve seen you do some amazing things, you’ll think of something.’

‘I just hope I think of something before the world ends,’ she said gloomily.

‘Sorry,’ she added seeing his face fall. 

She brightened up slightly. ‘Maybe
you’ll
think of something,’ she said.  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

He smiled.  ‘Maybe I will.’

She snuggled closer to him.  ‘Denny,’ she whispered softly in his ear.

‘Yes?’

‘Talking of doing something amazing
…’

‘Yes?’

‘Lock the door.’

Denny raised an eyebrow.  ‘Now?’

‘Now!’

Denny locked the door.  Well, they did have a lot of house guests at the moment.

* * *

There had been no sign of the King’s gypsies.  This could be considered unfortunate since they might have made reasonable allies.  Not allies they could trust of course, but at least allies that hated the Queen as much as they did and had definitely got some defence against the Faerie magic, probably learned from Finvarra himself.  This would have been a big help.

It was a damn shame then that they all seemed to have vanished.  Stiles opinion was that they were all dead by now or defected to the enemy.  He had heard Finvarra himself say that, after all, he was not human when all was said and done.  And, besides, they were still the number one suspects, in Stiles’s opinion, for the opening of the portal.  Stiles still thought they were probably Faeries too, or at least allied to them.  Finvarra definitely was – or had been.  Hadn’t Hecaté said there were
only
bad Faeries? 

Tamar was of the opinion that they were still out there somewhere, biding their time. 

‘Biding their time until what?’ said Stiles sceptically.

‘We don’t know is the point,’ she said and glared at him until he changed the subject.  Tamar hated admitting that she did not know absolutely everything there was to know. 

‘Well, we couldn’t have trusted them anyway,’ said Stiles diplomatically.  ‘This is
our
fight.’

‘It’s like a war out there,’ said Cindy.

‘It
is
a war out there,’ said Denny gently correcting her. ‘I heard some of the old folks talking,’ he continued.  ‘They were saying that it’s worse than the blitz.’

There was a silence at this. 

‘B-but old people don’t think that
anything
is worse than the blitz,’ stammered Tamar. ‘I’ve heard them, even the apocalypse war wasn’t as bad as the blitz, I mean according to them.’

‘Wasn’t an apocalypse,’ said Stiles.  ‘I mean we’re all still here, aren’t we?’

‘Not for much longer if this carries on,’ said Tamar.

‘Worse than the apocalypse,’ muttered Denny. ‘Sounds about right to me.’

Hecaté, who had been listening in silence with Jacky on her knee, now stood up suddenly, accidentally depositing her burden headfirst onto the rug. 

‘Well,’ she said, so much for our gallant heroes, if you could only hear yourselves.  I suppose you are just going to give up are you?’

‘Of course we aren’t!’ said Tamar.  ‘No one said we were giving up it’s just … I mean they’re everywhere now.  Thousands of them and no one else seems to be able to fight them.  There just aren’t enough of us.’

‘We’d need a small army,’ put in Denny.

Tamar raised her head sharply at this; her eyes grew wide for a moment and then she seemed to be thinking deeply. 

Only Denny noticed this. ‘She’s having an idea,’ he thought.  ‘It’s about bloody time.’

‘A small army?’ she said.  ‘I might know where I can get one of those.’

Everyone looked at her. 

‘They’re fearsome fighters,’ she added, ‘especially with a drink or two inside them.  They hate Faeries and each one comes with his own armour and weapons.  A great saving.’

‘Who are …?’ began Stiles.

‘And they aren’t affected by Faerie magic at all,’ she finished triumphantly.

‘They sound perfect,’ said Stiles. ‘Who are we talking about?’  

‘Dwarfs,’ said Denny.  ‘She’s talking about Dwarfs.  But we can’t have any because they all buggered off to Valhalla – I wish
I
had.’

‘I reckon I know how to find them,’ said Tamar. 

‘Oh, no,’ said Denny. ‘We
promised
. No more messing about in mainframe.’

‘It’s an emergency,’ said Tamar stubbornly.

‘Anyway, what makes you think they’ll agree?’ said Denny. ‘They might not want to fight, and they don’t exactly like you, you know.’

‘Not want to
fight
?’ laughed Tamar.  ‘
Dwarfs
not want to fight?  You aren’t serious.’

He’s got a point though,’ said Stiles.  ‘They might not do it if
you
ask.  Just to be awkward.’

Tamar grinned like a happy cat. ‘That’s why I’m taking you,’ she said.  ‘They like
you
.’

‘Ooh, a
small
army,’ chirruped Cindy suddenly.  ‘I get it.’

~ Chapter Fourteen ~

G
etting into mainframe these days was a bit like riding a bike, as the saying goes. Denny could even get them directly into the file that they wanted.  Of course, the clerks had changed all the passwords after the last time – just because they had promised not to do it again, did not mean that the clerks trusted them.

Denny had got the new passwords in his spare time – not to use them of course (he had
promised
) but just out of idle curiosity. 

Tamar was amused when Denny reluctantly admitted that he could get them into Valhalla as soon as they liked.

‘Well,’ she had mocked.  ‘It seems that your integrity won’t stand up to much scrutiny after all.’

‘Shut up!’ said Denny, but mildly, ‘or I’ll send you to Milton Keynes.’

‘Do they have Dwarfs there?’ asked Cindy innocently. 

Denny looked sharply at her. Sometimes he felt her dumb blonde routine was a bit over-acted really.  He knew damn well that she was not
that
stupid. 

‘No, he said flatly, ‘just gnomes.’  He heard Cindy smother a laugh.

Their eyes met, and Denny shook his head reprovingly, but he was smiling. ‘Have it your own way,’ she read in his eyes.  ‘But I know better.’

He tapped at the computer.  ‘Sure you want to do this?’ he asked, bringing up the file.

‘Yes,’

‘No.’

Tamar looked at Stiles in surprise.  ‘I thought you liked Dwarfs?’ she said. 

‘’Tisn’t the Dwarfs,’ he muttered.

‘Viking’s‘re okay,’ said Denny, who had once met some and got on famously with them. 

S’not that either,’

‘Look,’ said Tamar, who exercised her very own brand of morality, ‘it isn’t breaking the rules if
we’re
doing it.’

Stiles looked dubious about this.

‘And you don’t have to have a drink if you’d rather not,’ added Cindy brightly, demonstrating a degree of insight that Tamar, at least, would not have thought she had in her.  She was apparently right anyway. Stiles looked unaccountably relieved at this summation.

‘You won’t be there that long anyway,’ she added. 

‘That’s right,’ said Tamar.  ‘Just in – get the dwarfs – out again.’

Denny slid out of the chair.  ‘Anyone not going to Valhalla stand back from the computer.’ he said.

Tamar stepped forward with Stiles and pressed, “Enter”. ‘All aboard,’ she said, and they vanished.

* * *

‘Are you sure this is the right place?’

‘Looks right,’ said Tamar.  ‘See, large mountain over there, large mountain over there, absolutely bloody enormous mountain over there.’

‘I see,’ said Stiles dryly. ‘But there are, as far as I can see, and not to put too fine a point on it, no Vikings – or Dwarfs either,’ he added.

‘They’re all inside getting drunk,’ said Tamar authoritatively.

‘Inside where?’

‘Um,’ said Tamar, scanning the skyline.

‘Anyway, I thought they battled all day and drank all night.’

‘Pure hearsay,’ said a voice from behind them.  A deep, booming voice that could only belong to a man with more testosterone in him than a football team locker room. 

Tamar’s spine prickled.  She turned round cautiously.  ‘Hog?’ she gasped.

‘Djinn,’ said the Viking pleasantly.  If he was surprised to see her, he was hiding it well.

‘We don’t fight
every
day,’ he went on as if nothing at all surprising had happened at all.  ‘We aren’t barbarians you know.  At least, not anymore.’  He said this rather sadly.

Stiles stares at him. Taking in the large hairy chest, the huge untamed beard, the goatskin jerkin and the horned helmet. 

‘Really?’ he said. 

‘Oh no, we’ve evolved, so they tell me.  I don’t know, fifteen hundred years dead, and suddenly we find out that we’ve been doing it all wrong.  It’s a sad day when a proud warrior meets his descendants and finds out that they make furniture.  I mean what kind of a job is that for a race of conquerors?’

‘So, you two know each other then?’ said Stiles in a frantic effort to change the subject.  It was embarrassing watching fifteen stone of hairy Viking with tears dripping down his nose.

‘Jack, this is Hogswill the Hairy Backed,’ said Tamar wearily.  ‘We used to hang out – well I was in a bottle most of the time but it was still quite an education.  ‘Hog, this is Jack – stop blubbering will you – he’s a po-lice-man. That means he asks difficult questions and always knows when you are lying.  Where are the dwarfs?’

‘In the tavern of course,’ said Hogswill, blinking rapidly in his nervousness.  In his experience, only the Norns knew when a man was lying, and they were women.  He eyed Stiles apprehensively as if expecting him to suddenly don a corset and start singing in a high falsetto voice.  (Something
actual
women never do, but Hogswill was getting confused)

‘Of course they are,’ said Tamar.  ‘Can you take us to them please?’

‘
Please
?’ thought Stiles.

Hogswill also seemed a little thrown off by Tamar’s good manners.  Even as his slave, he remembered, she had tended to treat him with barely veiled contempt.

‘Well …’ began Hogswill nervously.  ‘There are no women allowed see. ’Cept serving wenches o’ course.’

‘I’m not a woman,’ snapped Tamar, ‘I’m a Djinn. That’s different.’

‘Oh, is it?’ said Hogswill the not overly bright.  ‘I suppose that’s all right then.’

‘What do you want with dwarfs then?’ he ventured as they trotted along.

‘We only want to borrow them for a while,’ said Tamar.  ‘We need some fighting done.’

‘Fighting,’ said Hogswill dreamily. ‘They’re good you know,’ he added.  ‘Fearsome little buggers, very handy with an axe.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Who are you fighting then?’ he asked.

‘Faeries,’ said Stiles, before he could stop himself, and immediately regretted it. He expected this giant to laugh heartily at this, but he did not.  Instead, he stopped short in the road with his mouth hanging open and turned an interesting shade of putty.

He worked his mouth a few times without saying anything then he leaned down to Tamar and whispered hoarsely.  ‘Älvor?’

Tamar nodded briskly. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

Hogswill gulped a few times to calm himself down.

‘Come back have they?’ he said eventually.

‘With a vengeance,’ said Stiles.

‘Ah, they always come with vengeance,’ said Hogswill knowingly. ‘Little bastards.’ He added with feeling. ‘Do they still steal babbies?’

‘Yes,’ said Tamar shortly.

‘Little bastards,’ repeated Hogswill.

‘You know,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Me and the lads might like to help out too. I mean we’ve a bit of a score to settle if you know what I mean?’

‘You can’t,’ said Tamar flatly. ‘You’re human and you know what the – er – Älvor do to humans. We’ll just take the dwarfs thank you, as many as you can spare.’

Hogswill took off his helmet slowly and scratched his head.

‘I reckon …’ he said after a few minutes thought. ‘I reckon it ain’t so – exactly.’

‘What isn’t?’ said Tamar impatiently.

‘I mean ter say,’ he said ponderously, ‘I meantersay, we ain’t human anymore. I mean we was, but now we ain’t, if you see what I mean.’ He beamed, happy to have managed his delivery of this radical bit of metaphysical thought.

He thought some more. ‘I reckon it’s like this. When we’re here, we’re human, right? But if we was to go back, we’d be like ghosts. The living can’t hurt ghosts’