The Unicorn Hunter (24 page)

In Blarney the mare had been struck by a poisoned dart in her shoulder and it had been easy to see the wound and the veins around it turning black as the poison spread. In Tír na nÓg, the mare's shoulder was pure, unblemished white. Her body was showing them what world she was hurt in.

Finn tried to step past Fachtna with a length of rope in his hand, but she grabbed his arm and stopped him. She raised an eyebrow at him and he tried to shrug her off, but she held on as they glared at each other until Finn stepped back, pulling her with him.

‘What are you doing?' she hissed at him once they were deeper into the trees.

‘I'm going to catch the stallion and lure the hunter to us,' said Finn. ‘We need to move him to a location that will make it easier for us to lay an ambush, make him look like an easy target. I can leave guards with the mare.'

‘No one touches them!' said Fachtna.

‘Besides, there's no need,' said Maddy as Finn's face began to turn black with rage again. ‘The mare was attacked in Blarney, and in the mortal world she's surrounded by Tuatha guards. As the boundary between the worlds is breaking down, they're able to stay with her. If the hunter is both faerie and mortal and able to move between the worlds, then it makes sense to attack her here, before anyone else finds her, and then finish the stallion. He won't leave her side, the hunter knows that. But the hunter doesn't know we got here first.'

Fachtna snorted. ‘We hope! We made enough noise getting here.'

Maddy ignored her.

‘All we have to do is wait,
quietly
, and the hunter will come to us,' she said.

Finn looked at her for a moment and then nodded. ‘Fine, we'll go with your plan. I want men on foot to skirt around them and take up a defensive position behind
the mare, while mounted soldiers will wait deeper in the forest, ready to chase.'

‘You'll need this,' said Maddy, taking the walnut from her jacket pocket and cracking it open on the pommel of her saddle. A poisonous green net drifted from the shell, hanging on the night air like a cobweb. Sparks of spells glinted in its knots and the whole thing seemed to whisper as it floated in Maddy's hands.

‘What in the name of all that is sacred is
that
?' asked Finn.

‘Meabh wove this net to catch the split soul,' said Maddy. ‘It will hold it in the form it chooses to take and trap it in its folds.'

‘Meabh again,' said Finn, his face twisting with hatred. He spat on the ground. ‘I'll not take anything from the Witch Queen.'

Maddy took a deep breath. ‘I know you have reason to hate her,' she said. ‘I don't blame you. But I need all the help I can get. If you stop arguing with me, this will be over more quickly and you can go back to brooding in your castle.'

Finn glared at her and fingered his sword hilt. Maddy tensed and waited to see if she had made him angry enough to hit her. It was Fachtna who broke the tension, by ignoring it.

‘Go with your foot soldiers in case the hunter is
desperate enough to try to fight their way through,' said Fachtna. ‘I'll wait with the horsemen and the Hound.' She looked down at Maddy. ‘In a few more hours it will all be over and then you can have the justice you so crave.' She smiled a cold, reptilian smile.

Justice. Maddy felt her stomach sour with fear.

Danny was so exhausted he nodded off sitting upright in the saddle, but Maddy brooded while they waited for the hunter to make a move. She had been so convinced that it was a faerie who had attacked the mare. She was not sure any more. She thought of Cernunnos and his warning that she did not know what she was asking for when she had demanded justice. Now, with a cooler head, she wished she had listened to him.

She thought about what Meabh had said, that sometimes people taken by the faeries did find their way back to the mortal world, leaving a small part of their tortured souls behind. Any of the people that she knew in Blarney could be responsible for this; it could even be a member of her own family, and she had promised to hand them over to the Tuatha. She had demanded justice. She had no idea what a Tuatha's idea of justice was. What would the faeries do to someone who had
dared raise a hand against a creature they considered sacred? She had not thought about this when she made her demands on Cernunnos. As the faces of aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbours flashed in front of her eyes, she tried not to think about what fate she might have condemned one of them to with her rash words. She thought of that little girl who had stared up at her in the Hansel and Gretel cottage. Who was she in Blarney? Was she old now or a child Maddy didn't recognize? It had all seemed so simple before.

Maddy sighed and bent forward in the saddle to lean against her horse's neck. She could not think about this now. If she had to save someone else, she would come up with a plan when she knew who they were and, more importantly, what was going to be done to them. The animal shifted its weight underneath her but did not breathe a sound. She looked through the trees at the clearing where the unicorns slept, blanketed in moonlight, and sighed.

She yawned and rubbed at her eyes. She was longing for a soft bed and a nice thick duvet to snuggle under. Her eyes were dry and itchy from lack of sleep and she really wanted something hot to eat – Danny and Roisin had polished off all the food in her rucksack in one sitting.

Suddenly the unicorn stallion lifted his head and
rumbled deep in his throat. His whole body tensed while his sapphire-blue eyes searched the trees to his left. Carefully Maddy eased herself off her horse's neck with one hand until she was sitting upright and stretched her legs so they wrapped around the horse's side, ready to grip if she had to kick him into a gallop. The horse was as tense as the unicorn, but he still stayed deathly quiet. She leaned over and shook Danny's arm. He woke with a start, but luckily he did not cry out and spook the stallion. His horse was as tense and eager as Maddy's and she heard stirrup leathers creak in the dark as Danny adjusted his position and sat deep, ready for the animal to spring forward into a gallop.

There!
Maddy's eyes strained against the darkness. Did she see a darker flicker of black in the tossing branches of the trees? A more solid shape among the shivering leaves?

The stallion began to prance before his stricken mate, tossing his head and pawing at the ground in distress. An owl hooted and Maddy cocked her head in the direction of the sound. It was the signal the Fianna had agreed to get ready for an attack.

An arrow thudded into the ground next to the stallion's feet and the grass turned black where it touched. The stallion screamed and reared, his front hoofs lashing out at empty air. Maddy kicked her horse into a gallop
as the Fianna charged into the clearing, swords drawn. Another poisoned arrow sang out heading straight for the stallion's chest, before it was blocked by a Fianna shield. Finn mac Cumhaill's men surrounded the unicorns and locked shields in a protective ring, while Finn strode out to stand in front of the shield wall, sword drawn and his own shield held high. Fachtna landed in front of him, wings spread, searching the trees for something to kill.

Maddy wheeled her horse around in the clearing to look for the attacker just as the tree next to the one the arrows had been fired from started to shudder. It began to bend and shake and then stilled as the one next to it began to convulse.

‘It's moving,' Maddy whispered to herself. ‘It's moving and the trees are trying to shake it off.' One of the Fianna brought Bran to the base of the first tree the creature had hidden in and let her sniff at it, Fenris and Nero by her side. The wolfhound began to bay as she caught the scent and the Fianna warrior slipped her leash and let her tear off into the woods, the wolves bounding in her wake, Fachtna running behind them. Maddy's faerie horse raced after them and she bent close into his neck to avoid low-hanging tree branches that swept just above her skull. Bran was still giving tongue and her cries let Maddy hear where she was as she followed the
chase through the woods, the sheltering trees blocking nearly all the moonlight from the forest floor. Hoofs pounded the ground on either side of her and she knew Danny and the rest of the Fianna were riding with her. The occasional moonbeam helped her pick out a flash of horse hide, the white of a rolling eye or the foam that dripped from a mouth to coat a chest. Maddy twined her fingers in the thick mane and gripped hard enough to turn her knuckles white as she fought to keep her seat. She looked down and saw how far away the ground was and how fast it was rolling past and, as she felt her body begin to slip over the horse's shoulder, forced herself to look ahead and sit up straight as the faerie horse charged headlong through the night. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed the animal knew where he was going, as she had no idea how to steer him at this speed.

They sped on through the woods with Bran baying up ahead and Maddy's balance in her saddle becoming more and more insecure. Then they burst from the trees into the free air and bright moonlight of a clearing. The faerie horse skidded to a stop so fast that Maddy fell forward on to his neck. When she straightened up, she saw Bran, Fenris and Nero had surrounded the split soul.

It cowered flat against the ground, its wizened arms
thrown over its bald head to protect it from the bared teeth of the dog and the wolves, and it whimpered like a child into the grass. It was naked, a ropy twist of grey mottled skin and bone, long flat feet and slender fingers tapering into sharp nails. Its head was a grotesque parody of a baby's, round and hairless and bobbing about on a weak neck. It rolled pale, bulbous eyes and squeaked piteously through a tiny rosebud mouth. Maddy jumped from her horse's back as Danny and the Fianna galloped up. She gasped from the pain in her chest as her heels hit the ground. One of the Fianna walked toward her as Fachtna bared her teeth at the creature.

‘Don't hurt it,' she warned the Fianna. The man nodded grimly as they all moved slowly toward the split soul.

It didn't look up as they approached and gave no sign it was even aware they were there. It didn't flinch as Maddy threw the spell net over it, but it squealed in pain as its skin steamed where the net touched it. Fachtna stepped around Bran and grabbed the creature through the net by the shoulders. It offered no resistance as she pulled it to its feet and the Fianna began to drag it toward their horses. Its pale bulging eyes registered nothing and streamed with tears.

It broke Maddy's heart to look at it.

‘Was this the same creature that attacked us in the mist?' Maddy asked.

The faerie shrugged. ‘Who knows? They all look the same.'

Maddy walked beside it and stooped a little so she could look up into its face. ‘Who are you?' she asked it. ‘Who told you to do this?' But the ugly little thing just cried all the louder.

‘This thing can't do anything on its own,' she said to Fachtna. ‘Look at it! It would probably jump off a cliff if you told it to.'

‘What are you saying?' asked Danny.

‘Do you honestly think this thing went after the unicorns with any malice?' said Maddy. ‘I don't think it's even capable of knowing what it's doing!'

‘Don't start feeling sorry for it, child,' said Fachtna, a queer smile on her lips. ‘It attacked a unicorn and you've promised to hand it over.'

Maddy stood up and glared at Fachtna. ‘It's part of a bigger whole. We need to find the person in Blarney this split soul was tortured out of. Until then it stays under the protection of the Fianna.'

‘That is not what you vowed to do,' warned Fachtna.

‘I haven't finished the job yet,' said Maddy. She looked at the Fianna, who had bound the creature. ‘Look after it. It was one of us, once.'

She watched as Bran approached the creature swaddled in the gossamer netting, her nose twitching as she took great snuffling gulps of air.

‘What is she doing?' asked Danny.

‘She can
smell
it,' said Maddy, watching as the spells in the net flared with each sniff of Bran's wet black nose. ‘Now that the net has it trapped in a physical form she can get a scent. She can lead us right back to the host on the mortal side.'

She walked back to her horse and began the laborious climb into the saddle. ‘We need to get back to the mound,' she said, and turned her horse about to make her way to the river. ‘Bran, to me,' she called, and the wolfhound bounded over to lope at her horse's heels.

She didn't dare turn her head to see whether the others were keeping up with her or if they had decided to ignore her and she nearly sagged with relief when Danny brought his horse alongside hers.

‘What are you going to do?' he asked.

‘I have no idea,' she said. ‘Is Fachtna following us?'

Danny cast a quick look over his shoulder. ‘She is,' he said.

‘Are you still taking those boxing lessons?' she asked him quietly.

‘Yeah. Why?' he asked her.

‘We can't have Fachtna following us through the
mound,' said Maddy. ‘She must not be with us when we find the unicorn hunter.'

Danny nodded, his face grim.

Roisin looked up eagerly when they came to the river.

‘Did you catch it?' she asked.

‘We did.' Fachtna's harsh voice grated from behind Maddy. ‘And just as was suspected, it is one of your kind.'

Roisin's face fell.

‘Now we take the hunt to Blarney,' said Fenris.

Maddy looked down at the wolves. ‘Can you guys go to the mortal world?'

‘Of course,' said Fenris. ‘We were of it once. We would have no difficulty crossing back and forth if we chose to.'

‘We just choose not to,' said Nero. ‘Seeing as how trigger-happy your kind are when it comes to wolves.'

‘Well, if anyone asks, you're a German shepherd, OK?' said Maddy, grinning at them both.