Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(49)
His camp, when we reach it, is largely underground, built no doubt with the help of the elemental, solid stone all around to prevent water from seeping in. For a good fifty paces all around, the land is solid and balanced. He even has a garden.
“It looks like you’ve been at it a while,” I says, and he nods.
“More of a home than a camp at this point,” he admits. “It’s slow work. It took hundreds of years to get this bad, and I can’t fix it in a week or three. I keep calling it a camp out of optimism, but it may turn out to be me life’s work.”
“Ah, I can see where ye might be worried. But I’m on it now too, and I would wager there will be more soon, and before too much longer ye may be able to move on to someplace drier.”
He takes a large ceramic jug down from a shelf and tears the cork out with his teeth, spitting it into a corner because we’ll presumably be finishing the whole thing. He pours two cups of mellow yellow, hands one to me, and says, “May the gods below make it so.”
“Sláinte, lad,” I says, and we drain our cups, being more thirsty than a whale swimming in the Sahara, and he refills them. I look around and see a wee straw tick for sleeping, some odds and ends, what looks like a woman’s fancy jewelry box, and some wicker baskets of vegetables, kept cool and dry in the usual darkness. He also has a hearth and a stack of wood next to it for fires, though I saw a fire pit aboveground that looked like it got more frequent use. He follows me gaze and shrugs when he next catches me eye.
“Not much to look at, I know. The chief luxury here is staying dry and warm when it’s cold and wet outside. I prefer it out there, honestly. Shall we build a fire up top?” he asks, and I quickly agree. After the open sky, a shelter can seem like a prison when it’s fine out.
We haul up an armful of wood and get the lot of it popping and crackling before the sun goes down. The cheese isn’t going to last long, so I offer him a wedge and he gives me an onion that I eat like an apple, which was perfectly normal back then.
“Are ye familiar with the village up north of here, on the edge of the bog?” I asks him when we have filled our bellies.
“Aye. They keep clearing land for their cattle and goats.”
“Right. But they seem to be mighty vexed about something in the bog. I nearly cut meself on the sharp words they had for me; never heard so much as a ‘good day’ when I came to town. Have ye seen any Fae in these parts what would give these people fits?”
His bottom lip juts out and his brows come together as he considers, then he shakes his head. “Not for years. There was a bog troll some years back, but I convinced him to relocate.”
“Some natural predator, then? Though I don’t know what it could be. An animal wouldn’t fit the facts.”
“What facts do ye have, then?”
“Missing cattle. The stray goat or sheep.”
“Animals could do that. Though wolves are scarce now and on their way to dying out on the island if I’m not mistaken.”
“Aye. The wolfhounds are too fecking good at their jobs, eh?”
We have a chuckle about that and I ask for another refill of that honey mead of his. He left the jug below, so he goes down to fetch it while I grab an iron poker to stir up the fire a bit and throw on another log. I notice he’s got quite a deep bed of ashes in the pit and he should empty it soon. There are bits of charred bone in there, which I don’t think is unusual, until it registers that these aren’t the bones of a hare or even a sheep or goat. They’re undeniably human.
Even with the evidence in front of me, I can’t believe it. Me first thought is, Who put these bones in Dubhlainn’s fire? As if it weren’t himself all along. And then the facts assemble themselves like a well-made boot and it fits him perfectly.
If the Fae weren’t responsible, then it had to be a man; neither wolves nor trolls left human footprints, and neither can sneak a child out of her village without someone seeing or hearing something. A Druid can, though, and Dubhlainn was the only one living in the middle of Boora Bog with bones in his fire pit. He’d been there for years, and he could strike at any of the villages surrounding the bog whenever the fancy took him.
I toss down the poker and rise, stepping away from the fire as Dubhlainn returns with the jug of mead.
“Ah, that’s what I need,” I say as I hold out me cup, even though I have no plans to drink another drop. I wouldn’t put it past him to have poisoned it while out of me sight.
He pours himself another and raises his glass to me. “Sláinte.” I mirror him and bring the cup to me lips and pretend to drink, while asking the elemental through me tattoos if there are any bodies buried nearby, specifying human remains.
//Yes// the reply comes, and far too quickly for me comfort. //Many juvenile humans//
I lower the cup and drop my pretense with it, watching his eyes.
“Is Siobhan still alive?” I asks him, and for a wee fraction of a second his eyes widen in surprise, but then he tries to deflect.
“Siobhan who?”
I throw the cup at him, mead spilling out and splashing his face. Those spots on his cheek I thought might be the dried blood of some animal were probably the blood of poor Siobhan.
“I’m talkin’ about the girl ye took from that village two weeks ago! Is she still alive, ye poxy pair o’ bollocks, or have ye already eaten her, ye feckin’ heartless monster?”