Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(50)
For a small moment, there’s fear in those eyes. Maybe a flash of guilt too, for he’s been caught and he knows it. I’m expecting him to lash out at me, but instead he throws back his head and laughs, and ye could have shoveled me jaw off the ground, I was that surprised.
“You’re so young and full of yourself!” he says, and beams at me. “I’m doing Gaia’s work out here and nothing else matters, ye see? This goat, or that cow, or that girl Siobhan—they’re all just meat to Gaia, and ye know it to be as true as Brighid speakin’ in three voices. If Gaia gave a damn about what I ate one day and shat the next, I wouldn’t be here now, would I? The earth wants to be healed, Eoghan, and who’s makin’ it hurt like this? Those same fecking villagers on whose behalf ye come here, all full of outrage. Where’s the outrage for this great big bog, lad, that we are supposed to fix because they’re too stupid to think of the long term?”
“We can fix the land and we can educate the villagers and we can sacrifice when we have to, but we can’t become the horrors we’re supposed to be fighting. There’s a reason that Druidic law overlays the laws of Gaia! How can ye stand there and tell me it doesn’t matter?”
“Because it doesn’t,” he replies, his voice cold as a penguin pecker in an Antarctic winter. “And besides: Children are delicious.”
Well, after that, there wasn’t much use for talking. It was going to be a fight and nothing for it, except it’s not often that two Druids try to end one another. If we face off in a cattle raid, we don’t do much apart from trying to give our side an advantage or make things tough for the enemy—summoning some fog or softening the earth, that sort of thing. We rarely attack one another directly, because the truth is we are bound to Gaia, not this king or that warlord.
But Dubhlainn had somehow decided this meant he was no longer bound to humanity. I knew he had to be torn from the world before he could tear apart any more lives.
I shift me shape into a bear and he shifts to a tiger and we try our best to rip up the other guy’s flesh faster than he can heal it—for what else can we do? If we cast camouflage, the aura is still visible in magical sight.
He scratches up an eye and blinds me on one side, but I back up and keep the other eye on him while it heals. He keeps coming, thinking to press his advantage, but he’s never fought a bear before and doesn’t realize I’m perfectly happy to swipe at him while I’m back on me heels. He charges right into a timed haymaker, and me claws—powered by a whole lot of muscle and more than me usual store of anger—take off most of his nose and knock out a tooth as well, spraying his blood into the fire, where it sizzles and hisses. That makes him pull back and think some.
While we circle and regroup, I contact the elemental and ask that Dubhlainn’s access to energy be cut off. It asks me why and I explain that he’s broken Druidic law by eating the children of those he’s supposed to protect. The answer is basically, //So what?// and it chills me—changes me too. Dubhlainn had been right: He hadn’t used bindings to commit murder, and he was doing what he could to amend the soil, so according to Gaia he was finer than a frog’s hair. It threw into question all the pillars of morality I’d been taught: Me archdruid had presented everything as if it had been received wisdom from Gaia herself.
If I wanted him dead, I’d have to somehow prove to be more savage than he was. And if I failed, he’d probably not be bothered, much less challenged, for years, free to prey on all the villages around Boora Bog.
I charge at him, head cocked to keep me good eye on him, thinking I will take whatever he wants to dish out so long as I can give him an answer. Tough to anticipate whether he will try to sidestep and come at me blind side or take a swipe at the target of me other eye—he’d surely love to have a blind opponent, but maybe he’s the type of fighter to attack weakness every time. I try to be ready for either: I’m going to be taking claws to the head regardless, so it’s kind of like choosing whether to place your head in a hippo’s mouth or up its arse.
Just before I reach him, his muscles bunch and give me a tell: Tigers aren’t built to sidestep, and that blow’s going to come at me good right eye. I rise up on me back legs a bit and lift a paw in time to take the brunt of his attack. It knocks me near off me feet, but he’s committed to it so hard that the follow-through has him out of guard and vulnerable. He sees me left coming but can’t avoid it because I still have plenty of momentum left from me charge. It catches him square on the side of the head, ear to bottom of the jaw, and there’s a crunch and a deep gouge left behind, no chance of him opening that mouth to bite me for a while, and he tumbles over besides.
I press in before he can regain his feet, me teeth at his throat. He tears into me with all the claws, ripping open me belly in a desperate bid to repel me, and I back away all right, but not without taking his jugular out for some fresh air.
That proves too much for him and he bleeds out before he can heal it up, and I spit out the flesh in me teeth before I can vomit.
As I collapse and try to focus on me healing, a crow spirals down and lands on Dubhlainn’s face. It wastes no time but plucks out the eyes and swallows them. I’m thinkin’ that crow better not try such shenanigans with me when a scratchy voice enters me head, as if in answer.
Ye have nothing to fear from the Morrigan today, Eoghan ó Cinnéide. The head turns and the eyes glow red and I realize I’m looking at the Chooser of the Slain herself. Me hackles rise and I shudder in fear, no help for it. And then I wonder if the Morrigan had anything to do with me victory.