Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(72)

“Hello, Owen,” me old apprentice says, nodding at me, and I nod back.

“Ye didn’t run into Greta, did ye?”

“No.” His head turns, eyes searching the woods. “Is she here?”

“About a quarter mile away, with all their parents,” I reply, gesturing at the kids.

“These are the apprentices?”

“Aye.” I introduce them to Siodhachan and I’m not sure if they’re more impressed with him or the hound. I think maybe the hound, because he talks to them once Siodhachan says it’s all right for them to reach out, and it’s mere seconds before they ask me if I have a snack to give him. While the kids are distracted by Oberon, Siodhachan squats down next to me and checks me progress; the way his eyes are focused I can tell he’s using true vision.

“That’s going nicely.”

“Aye. But this is going to take a while. Fifteen or twenty minutes per devil. If ye take off and don’t accelerate the healing, they can still infect others or be reinfected themselves.”

“Right. It’s why I wanted to talk to you. Perhaps we can coordinate. Thought we’d start at the point of origin at Port Arthur and secure that peninsula, then go from there, you heading west and me heading north, then we spiral in.”

“I can just head down there with the kids and you head north now.”

Siodhachan shakes his head. “I don’t think you want to take the kids down there.”

“Why not? We got a damn fine pack to protect them.”

“I’ve been talking to Tasmania about the origin since I got here. I’m not so sure it’s natural.”

“What, now? Cancer is natural, even if it’s a fecking bastard.”

“No argument there, but single-origin transmissible cancers are rare. There’s something strange behind this.”

“Now, hold on, lad. You’re handing me a bowlful of batshit and calling it beans, and I’m not about to eat it. Ye think someone woke up one day a couple of decades ago and said, ‘I know how to lure the Druids to their doom. I’ll start a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils!’ and then they laughed a cruel supervillain laugh and just waited for us to show up?”

“No, no. I don’t think there was a specific motive or that it’s a trap or anything. I think the cancer was a side effect of something else.”

“Like what?”

Siodhachan looks at the kids, at least a few of whom are not petting the hound but listening to us. “I’d rather not speculate here. But humor me, for safety’s sake?”

I shrug at him and says, “Sure, lad. I’ll need to work it out with Greta, but we have to get these kids trained first regardless. Help me do that. This first devil’s good now. I’ll send him back in. Luiz, send your healthy one back in the den too. Two more diseased ones, and we can split up the apprentices between them. Walk them through the steps, make sure they got it?”

Siodhachan nods and I assign him Ozcar, Thandi, and Tuya, while I work with Luiz, Mehdi, and Amita. It takes us another half hour to heal those two devils, with the kids learning how to craft and visualize the bindings properly.

I overhear Siodhachan giving them praise: “You know, this is really advanced stuff you’re doing. I didn’t teach my apprentice this until she was in her eighth year, and here you are doing it in your first few months. You are building impressive minds already. That’s because you have the best archdruid.”

“Really?” Thandi says. “How do you know he’s the best?”

“Because he was my archdruid too. What he taught me saved my life too many times to count. You’re in good hands.”

Damn sneaky of him to say that. Now when Greta wants to beat the shite out of him, I’ll feel like I have to step in between them.

“And these devils are in good hands too,” he continues. “You three just saved this one’s life. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

They agree, and I congratulate my three on their work as well, and we let the devils return to their den, all of us feeling better.

“Glad ye like it, because we’ll have to do it a whole lot more. Let’s go back to your parents and make some plans for how to proceed.”

Siodhachan wisely hangs back out of sight when we return, so it takes Greta a while to catch his scent and realize he’s nearby—the excitement of the apprentices helps with that. When the nostrils flare and the eyes widen, though, I step right up.

“Aye, he’s here. He’d like to discuss with us how we’re going to split up duties on the island, if that’s okay. May I let him approach?”

And that’s just enough warning and courtesy to prevent her from turning on him. She still has cords standing out on her neck and her teeth bared at him, but her skin isn’t rippling in the first signs of transformation.

She’s well aware Siodhachan didn’t kill either Gunnar or Hal, but since getting involved with him was a precondition for their deaths, she doesn’t want any of the pack associating with him anymore. And apparently that includes me.

“No,” she says, when she hears we’re heading to Port Arthur together. “There’s no way I’m letting you go off with him after something dangerous. People who run off with him don’t always come back.”