"We've got to run for it!" Arkan cried.
He helped Jacky to her feet, then went to get Finn, who was sitting dazed by the road. The pickup was disgorging its load: three bogans from the cab, a half-dozen more from its flatbed. Eilian and Kate ran to where Jacky and the others were. For a long moment they milled uncertainly, not knowing which way to run. Then the fields around them came alive with bogans and gullywudes, hags and spriggans, and an eighteen-foot-high giant who pushed his way out of a stand of small saplings to roar at them.
"Oh, Jesus," Jacky cried. "We've had it." She turned to Eilian. "Go! Fly away! There's no sense in all of us getting caught."
Eilian hesitated.
"Do it!" she shrilled, her voice high with frustration and panic.
There was no escape for the rest of them. The ambush had been too well planned and they'd rushed right into it like a pack of fools. Black feathers sprouted all over Eilian. Arms became wings. Neck elongated. For a brief moment there was this strange hybrid creature standing there, then the black swan lifted up into the air with an explosion of wings. He went up out of range of the Unseelie Court, then circled to see if he could help. The other four bunched together as the bogans encircled them.
Jacky was so mad at herself that she didn't have time to be scared. She waited for the first creature to come at her, hands curled into fists at her side. She was going to hit them and kick them and scratch them and generally make it so hard for them to tie her up that they'd regret ever coming near her. Well, at least that was her plan. Except just at that moment there came a familiar roaring sound. The throaty engine of a big chopper. A Huntsman.
The bogans hesitated in their advance. Jacky and the rest stared as one to see one of the big Harleys suddenly pop into view in the middle of the road. One moment the pavement had been empty, in the next the big machine was thundering right for them. Only the being driving it wasn't a Huntsman, or if he was, he wasn't wearing his leathers and helmet. Red-gold hair blowing, tunic fluttering and looking like so many leaves and twigs and bits of this and that sewn together, he drove right at the bogans, scattering them. His left arm reached out and snatched Jacky up, swinging her behind him, then the chopper literally leapt forward, front wheel leaving the ground as the back one burned rubber.
"No!" Jacky cried.
She didn't know if this was a friend or foe; all she knew was that her friends were being left behind while she was speeding away. She would have jumped from the bike, but it was going so fast she knew there was no way she'd survive the impact when she hit the ground. She clung to the weird rider's weirder coat.
"Please, stop!" she cried. "Those're my friends back there. Please!"
But the stranger just drove the big bike faster.
Seventeen
Kate saw the Huntsman grab Jacky and speed off with her on his Harley, then the Host was swarming over them and there was no more time to worry about her friend's fate. She clawed and bit at the creatures, kicked and punched, all to no avail. The gullywudes danced out of the way of her ineffectual blows, then sidled close, tripping her, pulling at her short hair, at her clothes, pinching and striking her with sharp stick-like hands. Then the bogans had her.
They were great smelly brutes. The reek of them made her gag. The power in their hands made escape impossible. She saw Finn lose his own battle. She heard Arkan's sharp cries like the barking and growling of a fox. He lasted the longest of the three of them, but soon he, too, was held captive. And then the giant was there, looming impossibly tall over them. Seeing the sheer bulk of the creature, knowing how much of Jacky's besting one of them had been luck, it still boggled her mind that her friend had been able to stand up against one, much less kill it.
All the fight went out of Finn as the giant stood over them. Arkan snarled until a bogan cuffed him unconscious with a brutal blow. Then it was just Kate staring defiantly at him, held fast by bogans, her heart drumming in her chest. High above, Eilian soared, as helpless to help them as though he were caught himself. The giant gave a swift nod to one of the hags.
The grey naked skin of the creature seemed to swallow light as it stepped forth. It spread its arms, where flaps of loose skin hung batlike between arms and torso. Two, three more hags joined the first. Up they went into the air, their take-offs awkward, but once they were airborne they moved swiftly and surely after the black swan winging high above them.
Standing near Kate, a gullywude took a sling from its belt and chose a smooth stone from the roadside. Then the sling was in motion, whirring above the little creature's head until it hummed. The gullywude released its missile and the stone went up, up, past the hags. It struck Eilian's wing and he floundered in a cloud of black feathers. Down he spiraled and Kate looked away, unwilling to see his end, but the hags caught him. Screeching like harpies, they bore him to where the Unseelie Court waited. A bogan thrust a nettle tunic roughly onto the stunned Lairdling, and then they were all captive. All helpless.
"OH," the giant boomed in good humor. "OH, HO! LOOK WHAT WE HAVE NOW! TRUSSED FOR STEWING, EVERY LAST ARSE-SUCKING ONE OF THEM. AND WON'T GYRE BE HAPPY WITH ME NOW, JUST WON'T HE, HOT DAMN!"
Bogans and gullywudes, hags and spriggans, all bobbed their heads in eager agreement.
"Got 'em good, Thundell," a bogan cried above the growling din of voices.
"YOU WANT A JOB DONE," the giant said, his voice carrying easily across the noise,."YOU GET A BIG MAN TO DO IT!"
Choruses of agreement followed this statement as well. The giant’s huge face bent down to peer at Kate. A big finger poked at her, knocking the breath from her. The frown on that face, almost two feet wide, made her feel faint with fright.
"ARSE-BREATHING SHITHEADS!" he roared. "YOU GOT THE WRONG ONE!"
The monster's breath almost knocked Kate out. She trembled at the increased volume of his roaring voice, eardrums aching. The bogans holding her shook her fiercely as though she were to blame for Jacky's escape.
"One of the riders took her, Thundell," a reedy-voiced gullywude piped up.
"Never saw a rider like that," another muttered.
"A RIDER GOT HER? GOOD, OH, HO! GOOD! TOOK HER BACK TO GYRE, I'LL BET, HOT DAMN!" He stared around at the crowd of creatures. "WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR, TURDBRAINS? LET'S TAKE THESE ONES IN TOO!"
Kate was dragged to the back of the pickup and dumped in the flatbed along with the other captives. So many bogans crawled on to guard them for the ride that it was hard to breathe in the crush of bodies. Gullywudes hung from the sides of the truck, danced along the top of its hood, singing shrill songs about stews and what went in them. The pickup started with a loud roar, lurching into motion with a grinding of gears. She was pushed against Eilian and Finn.
"Bad," she heard the little hob mutter despondently. "Oh, it's gone very bad."
She could think of nothing to add to that.
* * *
It was hard to judge how long the ride took from the ambush spot to the Giants' Keep. The stench was so bad, the cursing voices of the bogans and shrill shrieking songs of the gullywudes, the press of the bodies, all combined to make it impossible to think. Kate felt like she was in a state of shock, but knew that couldn't be completely right because she was aware of her state of mind – as though she were standing outside of herself, looking in, mind you, but aware all the same.
Arkan had recovered consciousness by the time they finally came to a halt. When the four of them were hauled from the back of the truck and thrown down to the dirt road, it was almost a relief. Leather thongs bound their arms behind them – except for Eilian who, with his swan wings and man's body, needed no such bindings – and then they began a hellish ascent up a brush-choked rise.
There were creatures ahead of them crawling through the brush like maggots on a corpse, and more behind, pushing and shoving, laughing uproariously whenever one of the captives lost their footing, which was often. Spriggans would dart in to trip them.
Beaten and weary, they were finally led in front of a grea
t stone face near the middle of the rise. A portion of the wall swung back at their approach with a sound of grinding stone. Torches sputtered on the rock walls of the tunnel they were now pushed and dragged into. The gullywudes' various songs had fallen into one that apparently everyone knew.
Chop in the fingers,
joint by joint,
smell that stew,
oh, smell it now;
now a tip of a nose,
now the ends of the toes,
– Better than sheep, ho!
better than a cow!
Pop in the eyeballs,
one by one,
smell that stew,
oh, smell it now …
The shrill voices rang in the confines of the tunnel, bouncing back from side to side until it sounded like hundreds of voices singing in rounds. The bogans kept up a "dum-dum-dum" rhythm that the prisoners were forced to march to. From what conversation they could make out amidst all the noise, they learned that while Eilian was bound for the Big Men's amusement, and Jacky as well, the rest of them were to meet another fate.
A slice of an ear
and a shaving of spleen,
smell that stew,
oh, smell it now;
now chop up the entrails,
just a tad, it never fails
– Better than sheep, ho!
better than a cow!
Sucking on a marrow bone
while it cooks,
smell that stew,
oh, smell it now!
The tunnel opened up into a well-lit area – a gigantic cavern that reeked like a raw sewer and was filled with capering creatures, grinning bogans, hungry-eyed hags, and other monsters they hadn't seen yet that day. Goblins and knockers, trolls and black-bearded duergar, all yammering and pushing forward to see the captives.
"BACK OFF! BACK OFF!" Thundell roared, swiping the creatures out of the way with wide blows of his big hands.
A space cleared around them. Breathing through her mouth, Kate lifted her head wearily. Every bone and muscle in her body ached from bruises. The place was a nightmare of sight and smell and sound. And there, sitting at the far end of the cavern on a throne cut directly from its rock wall, was the largest and ugliest of the monsters yet.
She didn't need anyone to tell her who this was: Gyre the Elder, greasy-haired, with a nose almost as big as the rest of his face. A hunchback that rose up behind his head. Hands, each the size of a kitchen tabletop. Chin and nose festooned with warts, some almost four inches long. If she had been at home and run across this creature in a picture book, she would have laughed. As it was, her legs gave way and she fell to her knees on the hard rock ground.
The two giants conversed, but it was like listening to thunder roaring in the confines of the cavern, and she never did hear what it was they said. They could have been speaking Swahili for all she knew. She would have fallen full length on the ground, but a bogan snared his thick fingers in her short hair and pulled her head upright. The whole weight of her body hung from his hand. Then, just as she was getting used to the thunder, to the pain, she was hauled to her feet and they were led forward.
Dragged in front of Gyre the Elder, Kate stared blearily at him, unable to keep her eyes from his ugliness. The worst thing about him – the absolute worst – was that his eyes were totally mad. But clever-looking, too. Sly, like a weasel's or a rat's.
Numbly, just as she was shoved past him and out of his sight, she saw the small ivory of a horn hanging on the wall behind him. She blinked as she looked at it, knowing it meant something, but no longer able to remember exactly what it was. It appeared to be discoloured with red dots, as though someone had splattered blood over it and not bothered to clean it. Then the bogan behind her gave her a shove that drove her into Arkan's back, and the horn was gone, out of her view. She forgot it as she fought to stay on her feet.
They were pushed and prodded down a narrower corridor, then finally herded into a chamber cut out of the rock wall, with a large wooden grate for a door. The bogans threw them into the room where they fell on the damp straw scattered across the floor. The wooden grate closed with a jarring crash. A great beam of wood that took five bogans to lift was set into place, barring the door, and then finally they were alone. Blessedly alone.
It was a long time before Kate even had the energy, much less the inclination to sit up. Then it was something snuffling in the straw near her that made her push herself rapidly away from the source of the sound, her rear end scraping the floor while she pushed with her feet.
"Moon and stars!" Arkan cried. "What is it?"
Creeping forward was a pig-like creature. It was a dirty white, eyes rimmed with red and wild-looking – mad eyes – not like Gyre the Elder's, which were sly as well, but the mad eyes of a hurt and broken creature from whom most sense had fled. It was trussed with a nettle coat like Eilian's. Belly on the ground, the creature moved slowly toward them, snuffling and moaning.
"No!" Kate shrieked as it came closer to her.
The thing backed away making whimpering noises that sounded all too human for comfort.
Beside Kate, Eilian gazed at it, horrified. "I … I think we've found the Laird of Kinrowan's daughter," he said.
"Th-that? But it … it's a pig."
"And once it had Laird's blood – why else bind it with a nettle coat?"
Bile rose in Kate's throat as she looked at the pitiable thing. "Why … why isn't it part swan, then?" she asked. "Like you?"
"Because they've changed her," Arkan said. "Their Gruagagh's changed her."
He moved closer to Kate as he spoke. Grunting with the effort, he tried to bring his bound hands around in front of him, but his hips were too wide for the maneuver. He backed up to her then, and began to work at the leather binding her hands.
"That wasn't a Huntsman that caught Jacky," he said as he fumbled at the knots with numbed fingers.
"How can you be sure?" Kate asked.
She couldn't take her gaze from the piggish thing that might once have been Lorana, if the others were to be believed. It was emaciated, reminding her of the pictures she'd seen of starving people in Africa or India.
"That's what the giants were arguing about before we were put in here," Arkan replied. "We've been spared for the moment because the whole Court's going out to hunt her down."
Suddenly Kate's hands were free. She brought them around in front of her, rubbing her chaffed wrists. Prickles of pain started up in her hands as her circulation returned.
"Why don't they use the Hunt?" she asked.
"They're missing a rider," Arkan said. "Whoever took Jacky away had one of their motorcycles. Moon knows what her captor did with the rider. If he managed to kill it, which is unlikely, she'll be safe from the Hunt for a while at least. They don't work as well unless all nine are alive and gathered."
It was taking Kate a lot longer to remove Arkan's bonds than it had for him to undo hers. She kept starting at every noise she heard. My nerves are shot, she thought. Finished. Kaput. And whenever the piggish thing snuffled, she could feel her skin crawling. But at last she had Arkan free. Then she removed the nettle coat from Eilian while Arkan untied Finn.
"I knew it'd come to no good, talking to that girl," Finn muttered as he was freed. "All her talk about rescuing this and doing that, and here we all are, trapped in the Big Men's own Keep, damn their stone hearts. And where's she? Running free, is where. And far from here if she has any sense."
"That's unfair to say," Eilian said before Kate could voice her own sharper retort to the hob. "She led us, yes, but we followed of our own will. And it wasn't part of her plan to get snatched away while we were all ambushed."
"She had no plan," Finn said. "And that's where all the trouble began. Just pushing in here and pushing in there. Oh, I admire her pluck, yes I do, but there was never a hope. Just look at us now, ready for the stewpots if those gullywudes have us. Worse, I'm sure, if the Big Men decide they want us. And our Jack herself, out being hunted up d
ale and down by everything from Big Men to the Wild Hunt itself, I don't doubt. Oh, it's a bad time we're in the middle of, and the end'll only be worse."
Arkan had been investigating the grated wooden door while Finn was complaining. He turned back and shook his head at Eilian's unspoken question. "There's no way out through that – not unless we can match the strength of five bogans."
"I won't go easy this time," Eilian said. "They'll not do to me what they did to this poor soul. I'll hang myself first."
All gazes turned to their cellmate. The ugly head of the creature scraped the ground as it backed fearfully away from them, belly to the ground. Kate took a deep breath, let it out. She swallowed, then moved slowly forward.
"There, there," she said to it. Someone had to do something for it. "We won't hurt you. How could we, you poor thing? Come here. Don't be afraid of me. Kate won't hurt you."
It trembled as she approached, but no longer tried to back away. Forcing her stomach to keep down what wanted to come up her gorge, Kate reached for the creature, stroked the rough skin of its head as she worked at undoing its nettle coat. Her hands were already stinging from removing Eilian's and now the pain was worse – sharp, like hundreds of little knives piercing her skin.
She wasn't afraid of the creature anymore, not as she had been at first. And even her repugnance faded now that she could feel it tremble under her hands. It wasn't its fault that it was in this predicament any more than it was their own. But oh, what would the Gruagagh do if this was all that had become of his Laird's daughter? Samhain Eve was just a couple of weeks away, and the lot of them all trapped anyway. Except for Jacky. And though Jacky had killed a giant and been lucky in everything so far, what could she really do against the hordes of the Unseelie Court that were out there looking for her now?
The last fastening came loose and she tugged the coat from the creature. Its shape began to change, the emaciated pig's body becoming a sickly-thin woman's. But the head – the head didn't change at all.