The Golden Queen Read online

  Seamus began swearing and shouting, “Why do you have your faces blacked, you ugly bastards? I’m not a child to be frightened by a sooty face! Off with you! Off with you!”

  Gallen half-closed his eyes and wondered, If I were the greatest knife fighter in the world, what would I do?

  In an instant, it was as if a familiar mantle began to fall over him. Gallen’s muscles tightened into coils and the world moved into sharper focus. Gallen felt the blood pounding hot in his veins, and his nostrils flared wide, tasting the night air. He sized up the ruffians before him, and though it was dark, subtle shades of light began to reveal details about each man. They were breathing hard, the way men will when they’re afraid.

  Nine men. Gallen had never fought nine men, but at that moment it didn’t matter. He was, after all, the greatest knife fighter in the world.

  Gallen tossed his head back so that his hood fell away, letting his golden hair gleam in the starlight. He chuckled softly and said, “I must offer you men fair warning. If you don’t back away and give us the road, I’ll have to kill you.”

  One robber gasped, “It’s Gallen O’Day! Watch him boys!” The men swarmed around Gallen and Seamus faster, moving warily, but none dared venture in too close. The tallest robber shouted, “Take him, boys!”

  Gallen didn’t worry about the robbers at his back. Seamus had his knife out, and even though he was drunk, no sane man would try to tangle with him. Instead, Gallen sized up the five men to his front and sides. Two of them hung back half a pace—cowards who didn’t want to look it. Another man stood close in, but he was tossing his knife back and forth between his left and right hand, hoping that the sight of it would strike fear into Gallen. Another robber was stocky, with an unsightly bulge under his cloak, and Gallen realized it was a breastplate; this robber breathed heavily and bent low to the ground on legs that were tense, ready to spring. The last of the five closest was their leader—a tall man with a longsword who likely would avoid joining the fray with such a weapon for fear of lopping the head off one of his own men.

  Gallen heard the scuffling feet of a robber lunge behind. The robber grabbed Seamus’s arm and tried to throw him to the ground, but Seamus twisted away at the last moment and made a stab. The robber yelped in pain, and hot blood splattered across the back of Gallen’s neck.

  “Take that for your trouble!” Seamus jeered, as if he’d won something, and then more robbers surged behind. A sharp blow from a club sent Seamus to the ground.

  Gallen had been watching the man who tossed his knife from hand to hand. The knife was in the air, and Gallen leapt up and kicked it away, disarming the robber. He whirled and kicked an attacker off Seamus, slashed another across the throat. The lad with a club raised his shield to protect his face, and Gallen could have dropped beneath the boy’s guard and lunged past, run to win his freedom. But Gallen knew he had to keep the highwaymen from slitting Seamus’s throat.

  Gallen dodged and came up behind the young robber, grabbed the boy’s hair and put a knife to his throat. “Hold where you are,” Gallen shouted. “I don’t want to have to murder this lad!” The boy struggled, but Gallen was ready for any move he tried. Gallen wrestled him still. “Now, off with you! Give me a clear road.”

  The highwaymen moved around them, keeping a safe distance. Gallen could see from their determined faces that they didn’t value the lad’s life. It wasn’t worth forty pounds.

  The boy cried, “For Christ’s sake, Paddy, tell them to back off!” The boy was panting hard, and he began to cry. The sweat pouring off of his neck made him slippery.

  Gallen looked up at the tall one with the sword, Paddy. Since it seemed that the boy was a worthless hostage, Gallen decided that Paddy might value his own hide more.

  Gallen tossed the boy to the ground. The robber who wore the breastplate leaned forward, dagger at the ready. Gallen had already slipped beneath one attacker’s guard, and the men held their weapons low, preventing any similar moves. One man lunged at Gallen from behind; Gallen sidestepped, slashed the attacker’s knife arm nearly in half, then Gallen leapt at the man in the breastplate. He put his toe at the top of the man’s throat and let it slide down till it hit the armor, then stepped up and used his momentum to somersault over the robber’s head.

  He hit ground, swung around and put his knife to Paddy’s throat. It all happened so fast that the robbers could barely react. Paddy swore and threw down his sword.

  The boy with the club sat on the ground for a moment, crying. Other than the boy, one of the robbers was dead, another was knocked unconscious, and two were nursing serious wounds. Paddy was disarmed. The last three robbers hesitated, not knowing what to do. Paddy said to his men, “All right lads, listen to him! Drop your weapons and give the man the road! Now!”

  The three robbers all dropped their weapons and backed away.

  “Paddy, you’re a lousy bastard!” the boy shouted, still sitting on the ground. “You were going to let him slit my gullet, but you’ll save your own? So you think you’re worth forty pounds, but I’m not worth a bob?”

  The boy got up and held his shield down low like a veteran, and he raised his nasty war club; its metal studs gleamed in the starlight. He advanced slowly, and the other robbers suddenly leered like the greedy thieves they were. As one they reached down and retrieved their weapons. Seamus moaned and began coughing. Gallen saw that he would have to fight these last four. The men quickly circled him.

  Gallen listened for the sound of a scuffing foot behind him, tried watching all directions at once. His senses were overwhelmed: he could smell the wool and sweat and scent of wet humus and ash on Paddy and the other robbers. He could smell the hot blood on his knife. A cool breeze washed through the trees, hissing like the sea. Somewhere over the hill a sheep bawled out, and Gallen wished he was there, safely over the hill, out of the dark Sidhe Forest and into the village of An Cochan.

  Gallen slit Paddy’s throat and stepped aside to meet these four robbers, hoping that a bold challenge would shake their confidence.

  Gallen knew that he stood a good chance of getting killed if he let the men circle him, so he ran head-on into a robber, stabbed the man in the chest, then tried to throw the man behind him as a shield. But the dying robber grabbed Gallen’s greatcloak and swung him back into the circle.

  For one brief moment, Gallen realized he was in trouble, and then he heard the whirring sound of a club. Every instinct in him, every fantasy he’d ever concocted about such a situation, warned him to duck. He dropped his head to the right as the club smashed into him.

  Dozens of brilliant lights flashed before his eyes. There was a roaring in his ears, and the ground seemed to leap up to meet him. Suddenly, the robbers were on him, kicking, and one man shouted, “This will teach you! Never again will you begrudge a man for a friendly knock on the head or for borrowing your purse!”

  He looked up and saw a man ready to fall on him with a knife, and Gallen tried to roll away, but his muscles wouldn’t cooperate, and he knew he was going to die.

  “Hold!” a commanding voice shouted nearby, and Gallen’s attackers stopped. As one they looked up the hill to gauge this new threat. The wind was still hissing in the trees, and the muddy road was cold against Gallen’s back. He tried to roll over, look up to see his rescuer. The newcomer said evenly in a voice hot with warning, “Those who commit murder in Coille Sidhe shall never escape alive.”

  One of Gallen’s attackers choked in fear, and the others stood up cautiously and stepped back. Gallen heard one robber mutter, “Sidhe.”

  Gallen’s head was spinning so badly, he could only roll over. He’d lived on the edge of Coille Sidhe all his life, and never had he heard rumors that netherworlders might really inhabit the forest. It was said that the sidhe were lesser demons, servants of the devil, and that Satan often sent the sidhe to herald his approach.

  “There’s only one of them,” a robber said, trying to bolster the courage of his fellows. Gallen rolled to his elbows and
looked up: above him at the top of the ridge stood a man in the darkness, the starlit sky at his back. He wore garments of solid black, all darker than the night, and his head was covered with a hood. Even his hands were covered with fine gloves. Starlight reflected dully from a longsword in one hand and a twisted dagger in the other. For a moment, Gallen thought it was just a man standing in the darkness, but his eyes focused on the creature’s face: its face shone like pale lavender starlight, as if it were a liquid mirror. Gallen’s heart pounded in terror, and the sidhe leaned back and laughed grimly at the highwaymen. In that one horrifying moment, Gallen expected the ground to split open and the devil and his legions to crawl forth.

  The robbers fled, Gallen urged his leaden arms to move, flailed about while trying to lift himself up, but his head spun and he faltered to the ground. Blackness swallowed him.

  Sometime later he woke in a daze. The sidhe was hoisting him into the saddle of Seamus O’Connor’s mare. Gallen lurched away from the sidhe’s touch, as if it were a serpent, and bumped into something behind him. Seamus was slung over the mare’s back, and the wounded man breathed raspily. Seamus’s head had been bandaged, and the sidhe whispered, “Hurry, Gallen O’Day. Save your friend if you can.”

  Gallen’s head still spun like leaves in a whirlwind, and he could barely grip the horse’s mane to keep from falling off.

  The sidhe took Gallen’s chin, and Gallen looked into the creature’s eyes. The thing looked human in nearly every way—Gallen could make out the fiery yellow hairs of its eyebrows. It was very much a human face, if not for the fact that it glowed like molten metal. “Remember, Gallen,” the creature said with great heaviness, “I will hold you accountable for any oaths you make this day.”

  Gallen had only a moment to wonder at this portentous threat when the sidhe whistled and slapped the mare’s rear. She leapt downhill, heading for An Cochan. Gallen dug his heels into her flank and gave her her head.

  The night that Gallen O’Day fought off the nine robbers, Orick had been thinking about leaving Gallen forever. A dozen conflicting urges were moving Orick in ways that he did not wish to go.

  His love of mankind and his desire to serve God by ministering to others was leading Orick toward the priesthood. Yet Orick knew that he and Gallen were not of the same heart on such matters. While Orick revered the Tome and its companion book the Bible, hungering for the wisdom of the ancient Christ and his disciples, Gallen’s attitude toward the books was disappointing. The young man vacillated between grudging admiration for some of the Bible’s teachings and open contempt for the Tome. Obviously, Gallen did not have faith in the holy books. Although Orick genuinely liked Gallen, their sharply divergent views on religion were troubling, and Orick believed that soon he would have to leave Gallen, if only to retain some peace of mind.

  Furthermore, Orick found other urges beckoning him. He had been spending a great deal of time in the company of humans lately. But such a state of affairs could not long continue. He needed a female bear’s company.

  So, that night as the two said their good-byes at the back of the inn and Orick watched as Gallen led Seamus away on the mare, Orick’s own words rang in his ears, “God be with you then, for I shall not.”

  The young female bear next to him, named Dara, pawed demurely through the garbage. “Have you decided then? Will you be coming to the Salmon Fest next week?”

  Orick imagined the hundreds of bears that would be gathered at the fest, fishing in the day, sitting around campfires and singing all night on the rocky beach on the banks of the cold river. He imagined the smell of wet fur, the pine trees, whole salmon skewered on stakes as they leaned against the fire pits to broil. Though Orick didn’t particularly relish the idea of wading in the icy waters of Obhiann Fiain all day trying to catch fish in his teeth, he was nearly four, and certain primal urges were getting hard to ignore. Orick saw that becoming a father would confer upon him a type of immortality, for he would live on through his progeny, and he hungered for that particular blessing.

  Yet if he entered the priesthood, he would have to take a vow of chastity, and so he considered that this year he would need to go to the Salmon Fest. At the Salmon Fest many a fair young female bear would be hunting for more than a slimy morsel of fish for dinner, and frankly, as the bears say, “A she-bear in heat is the best kind to meet.”

  Sure, there would be games at the festival—competitions where the males would go at it tooth and claw, tree-climbing races, the log pull, the pig toss. Orick would have to win the right to breed, but he was becoming rather large, and he’d learned a few wrestling tricks by watching Gallen.

  Who knows, he mused, perhaps I’ll unseat old Mangan as the Primal Bear. He imagined how envious the other bears would be as he chose the best and brightest females to breed with, then Orick gobbled some cold cabbage and deep-fried clams from the garbage.

  “I’m not sure if I’ll come or not,” Orick growled in response to Dara’s question. “I’ll think about it.” It was possible to find a mate without going to the Salmon Fest, but a saying rang through Orick’s mind: “While the common bear shivers in his wet fur, the superior bear builds a fire.” So, Orick knew that if he really wanted a quality mate, he would need to make the journey to the Salmon Fest, leaving Gallen O’Day behind.

  “I saw some deer up the hill in Covey’s apple orchard,” Dara said coyly. “I really like venison. How about if we go up there and see if we can kill us a deer?”

  Orick grumbled, looked at her askance. He didn’t like hunting for deer. The bucks had antlers, and even the females had sharp little hooves to kick with. Orick didn’t like undertaking unnecessary dangers. Besides, he was hungry, and being hungry made him grumpy.

  “Nah, I never developed a taste for venison,” Orick lied. “I know where some squirrels have a midden. Do you like acorns?”

  “Well,” Dara said, “I’ll go catch one myself.” She left the garbage to Orick and headed up the north road. Orick watched her longingly. He knew that she expected him to follow. The chances were slim that she’d be able to sneak up on a deer herself. But deer usually ran uphill when frightened, so if Orick were to go uphill and wait for Dara to scare the deer up to him, the chances were pretty good that he could catch one.

  Orick imagined a huge six-point buck charging uphill, antlers lowered like pikes, hooves slashing, and decided not to risk it.

  He crept beneath the shadows of the pine boughs that sprouted from the inn, then lay down. The clouds were quickly blowing away and stars dusted the sky in a fiery powder while the moons sank lower, staring down like the eyes of God. For awhile Orick watched for falling stars and thought about Dara. She was a flirtatious young thing. Orick suspected that she had no idea how strongly her charms affected him, and he felt as he laid there that he was making a momentous decision: should I follow her to the Salmon Fest and see if I could win the right to mate with her, or should I stay with Gallen for one more season?

  Above Orick’s head, someone blew out a candle in one window of the inn. Orick suddenly noticed how dark it was. Nearly all the lights in town were out, and only the pale fires of heaven shone in the streets. The shushing whisper of waves breaking on the beach a quarter of a mile away lulled the bear.

  Orick closed his eyes and rested his muzzle on the ground. He slept lightly for some time, but a dog’s yelp interrupted his dreams. It was an odd bark, the noise a startled dog makes, but it was cut short, as if someone had kicked the dog in the ribs. Orick would have gone back to sleep if he had not noticed a faint, peculiar scent barely distinguishable above the salt tang of the sea air—blood. He blinked and looked down the road south of town, and for a moment thought he was dreaming.

  Something was walking up the road. It resembled a human creeping on all fours, but its spindly legs could have been no less than eight feet long, as were its arms, while its torso was very short, perhaps only two feet. It moved jerkily, wary as a mantis, its tiny round head pivoting as it tried to gaze in all directions a
t once.

  It carried something in one hand—the mangled body of a whippet. The creature got to a crossroad and hesitated in the shadows, then dropped the dead dog and bent its elbows so that its forehead nearly touched ground. Orick could hear the creature sniffing. It crept toward Mahoney’s stables, keeping its nose to the ground, then suddenly seemed to catch a scent. It swerved back toward the inn.

  The monster sneaked to the darkened windows of the inn, not twelve feet from Orick. It stopped, sniffed at Orick and regarded him a moment. The monster had large eyes that showed orange in the moonlight, and Orick saw that its marvelously long hands looked very powerful. Orick didn’t move, and the creature must have decided that Orick was asleep and therefore didn’t matter. Let sleeping bears lie.

  It began inhaling near the small round windows of the inn, tasting the scents. The head was indeed human in shape, but the monster really did not move at all like a human. Its jaunty twitches reminded Orick more and more of an insect.

  The thing reached up sixteen feet to a small window, grabbed the sill in one hand, and pulled itself up to sniff at the crack under the window. In performing this maneuver, it seemed to defy gravity, as if it were a mosquito clinging to its victim.

  It reached one long arm sideways eight feet to the next small window, swung over to it, tasted the scent there.

  Mahoney’s Inn, like most structures in town, had grown from a house-pine seed. As with many such homes, the owners were of course obliged to put in windows and doors only where openings for such grew naturally, and new windows and doors had to be fitted every few years as the openings grew larger. So it happened that sometimes the window didn’t fit snugly.

  The creature must have known this, for it stuck its long fingers into the lintel, scrabbling with heavy claws to pull the window free. Orick heard wood splinter under the force of its assault, and though Orick had never before seen anything like this monster, he knew that this thing was intent on mayhem.