Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Page 14

  Fiona Patton was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and, grew up in the United States. In 1975 she returned to Canada and now lives on 75 acres of scrubland in rural Ontario with her partner, Tanya Huff, six and a half cats, and a tiny little Chihuahua that thinks he’s a Great Dane. She has written six fantasy novels for DAW Books, the latest being The Golden Tower. She has also written more than two dozen short stories, most of them for DAW anthologies edited by Tekno Books.

  The soft spring rains had come early to County Meath, causing a blush of pale green to spread across the fields and hills surrounding the royal palace at Tara.

  Stretched out beside the low stone wall that separated the dozen kitchen plots from the more formal herb gardens, Brae Diardin of the Ulaidh Fianna lifted her face to the breeze, breathing in the fresh scents of newly turned earth and blossoming fruit trees with a sleepy smile. The late afternoon sun filtering through her copper hair caused the outline of her otherworldly form, a white Sidhe hound with red ears, to shimmer about her shoulders. One ear twitched lazily at the high, musical call of a lark in a nearby copse of birch trees and the lowing of a cow in the distant, gray-washed pasture fields.

  Brae yawned.

  She and her company of twenty-eight warriors, including her three siblings, Isien, Tierney, and Cullen, had wintered at Ushnagh in County Westmeath, where the five great provinces of Ireland convened. With their legendary Captain, Fionn mac Cumhail, also in residence, it had been an eventful season, and the small community of Druids at Ushnagh had been relieved to see the back of them come spring.

  The much larger community at High King Cormac mac Art’s Court of Learning at Tara were not particularly happy to receive them, but after obtaining Sub Captain Goll mac Morna’s promise that he would personally keep the rowdy band of hunters and warriors in check—especially the Sidhe hound children of Diardin—they had grudgingly made them welcome. Goll had made good on his promise, keeping Brae and her siblings busy in the surrounding forests patrolling and providing meat and game for the Court.

  Brae gave an unimpressed sniff. They were only staying long enough to refit for their journey south to Drombeg in County Cork—a fortnight at most. How many druidic feathers could they possibly ruffle in that short a time?

  A shriek of outrage shattering the afternoon tran quility answered her question.

  “Brae, that blasted whelp of yours has been in my garden again!”

  Brae opened one eye. Her new hound, Bala, a female brindle whelp just five months old, lay stretched out beside her, great, oversized paws covered in dirt and fine young shoots of . . . Brae squinted down at them . . . some plant or another. Tucking them surreptitiously out of sight, Brae raised herself up on one elbow, schooling her expression to one of purely innocent curiosity.

  Moifinn, Senior Druid at Tara’s Court of Learning, was stumping towards them, brandishing her gnarled hawthorn walking stick in the air like a club.

  Deciding at once that flight was the better part of valor, Brae scooped Bala up under one arm and vaulted over the wall, sprinting for the surrounding woods with the old woman’s shouted invectives snapping at her heels, dodging through the thick stands of oak, birch, and alder trees, barely encumbered by the ungainly dog in her arms. It was only when Moifinn’s voice faded that she paused for breath. Setting Bala onto her own paws, she threw herself down on the ground and, as the dog began to investigate a nearby stump covered in club moss, she gazed at her fondly.

  “And how does she know it was you digging in her patch, anyway,” she said. “It could have been any hound, or hare, or deer . . .” She yawned again. “Or a really big Sidhe mouse for that matter. This close to the woods, she’s only asking for trouble. Druids: all about sacred and never about practical.”

  Bala’s tail thumped in response as the whelp began to scratch at the soft earth by the stump, clods of moss and dead, rotting leaves flying out from between her back legs.

  “Just as I thought,” Brae added with a nod. “It could have been anything. But just to be on the safe side, we better stay out of Moifinn’s way for an hour or two.” Changing swiftly to hound form, she joined Bala at the tree stump, thrusting her nose into the pile of leaves with a joyful woof.

  The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the woods, exploring and hunting, until the sun dropped below the spires and pennants of Tara. Then, they made their way home with a brace of coneys to mollify Moifinn.

  An egregious frown met her the next morning.

  “What?” she demanded. “Bala hasn’t been anywhere near your patch.”

  “No, but something has.” Thrusting one finger out, Moifinn pointed at a trail of deep indentations, trampled plants, and large brown piles of manure on the carefully tended pebbled pathways that ringed her herb beds.

  “That’s not hound, that’s . . .” Brae took a deep sniff. “Cow.”

  “Not my cows.”

  Keeping well out of reach of Moifinn’s walking stick, Duir mac Linne, the local farmer who tended to Tara’s herds as well as his own, shrugged deeply.

  “No?” The sweet tone in the Druid’s voice was more of a warning than a question. “Then how do you account for that?” The finger thrust out again, this time towards a telltale break in the fence that separated the gardens from the nearby fields and the accusatory trail of hoof marks and broken bracken that wound over and through it.

  The farmer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Don’t,” he said after a moment.

  “Try.”

  “Well, it’s likely cows. But not my cows,” he added as a vein in Moifinn’s left temple began to throb dangerously. “I moved all my cows to their spring pasture in the south fields three days ago.”

  “Then whose cows are they?”

  The farmer shook his head. “Don’t know.”

  “Find out.”

  Brae’s jaw dropped. “Why me?”

  “Because your whelp trampled through my garden yesterday; because you trampled through my garden last year; because I need someone who can track them with nose to ground, because you and your worthless siblings were supposed to be guarding the northern perimeter and should have seen them coming. And because I said so!”

  The last words were snarled so vehemently that Brae found herself backing up a step. Even Bala, who’d begun to growl at the Druid’s threatening tone, now slunk behind Brae, tail between her legs. Feeling much the same, Brae turned her attention to the trail of broken foliage.

  “I’ll sniff around,” she promised.

  “You do that.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t cows.” Shifting fluidly from his hound form, Brae’s younger brother, Cullen, glanced up from the deep indentation in the center of a badly mangled juniper bush. “It’s got a strange scent.”

  Brae shook her head. She’d enlisted the aid of her three siblings, and together they’d gone over every square inch of Moifinn’s herb garden, trying with little success not to cause more damage. “It was cows,” she stated, pausing a moment to sneeze as the heavy odor of crushed peppermint and catnip assaulted her nostrils. “The tracks are cow tracks, the dung is cow dung, and the smell is cow smell. The scent you’re getting is mashed juniper buds along with it.” She growled in frustration. “The problem is,” she admitted reluctantly, “that I can’t figure out how they got here. I followed the trail, and it led to this little portal grave in the north field, and that was it.”

  Her older brother, Tierney, snickered. “Faery cows?”

  “Looks that way.”

  His twin sister, Isien, frowned. “You’d better show us.”

  As Brae had told them, the trail lead through the broken place in the fence and across the north field until it disappeared before an ancient, overgrown portal grave. The meadow grasses at the entrance had been badly trampled, clearly showing the effects of cows’ hooves; but, long since fallen in, the entrance was unnavigatable. The siblings, along with their four hounds, spent nearly an hour snuffling and digging around its entire perimeter until they
threw themselves down on the ground in frustration.

  “Now what?” Cullen demanded peevishly, pulling a burr from his hound, Chekres’, back leg.

  “We wait, I suppose,” Brae answered, “to see if they come through again.”

  “Then what?”

  “Give them to Duir?”

  “How? Have you ever herded cattle before?”

  “No, but how hard can it be?”

  “As hard as getting a horn up the arse,” Tierney supplied.

  All four snickered.

  “What if they don’t come through again?” he continued.

  “Then it’s going to be a long wait without a horn up the arse.”

  Cullen grimaced as his belly rumbled. “Wish we’d brought some lunch,” he complained.

  “We still can,” Isien answered. “There’s no reason we all have to stay here all day. “You and Tierney head back to Tara and fetch some food. We’ll make a picnic of it. If no cows show up by nightfall, we’ll take it in turns to guard the entrance until dawn.”

  “And if no cows show up by then?” Tierney demanded. “We can’t spend an entire fortnight here.”

  “You tell Moifinn that.”

  “Oh, no,” Tierney shook his head vehemently. “Brae tells Moifinn that. Because it was your hound that got us into this in the first place,” he added as Brae opened her mouth to protest.

  “Oh.” Brae hunkered down with her back against the portal grave. “I still think it could have been anything in her patch,” she grumbled, fondling Bala’s ears absently. “She didn’t actually see you there, exactly.”

  Beside her, Bala began to dig in the hard earth before the entrance, dislodging stones and plants in her fervor. As the strong scent of ravaged catnip wafted over them, Brae gave a resigned sneeze.

  “That’s not a cow.”

  “No.”

  “That’s a bull. A young bull . . .” Brae twisted her head to get a better view between the distant animal’s back legs. “But still a bull.”

  “Yes.”

  The moon had risen high in the sky, casting a bright, clean light across the darkened field. Brae and Tierney had taken over the watch from Isien and Cullen nearly an hour before and had settled in with Bala and Tierney’s hound, Tukre, a hundred yards from the entrance, listening as Tara’s main bell tolled three. One by one, lulled by the cool, spring breeze and the mating sounds of crickets and frogs, they’d fallen asleep.

  Only to be jerked awake by the otherworldly crack of the portal grave’s entrance stones being thrust aside as a large brown and white cow emerged. Dropping her head, she’d cropped at the plants by the entrance, and once again the pungent smell of catnip had wafted past them.

  Tierney’d covered Brae’s nose at once, muffling her sneeze, but the matriarchal cow had paid them no heed as another, smaller cow became visible behind her. Another followed, then another and another until finally a herd of nearly a dozen perfectly normal looking cattle had stood grazing placidly in the shadow-cast field. The matriarchal cow had waited a moment, then given an impatient low as if to a reluctant calf, and, finally, the last of the herd had emerged into the bright moonlight.

  Now Tierney peered at the animal as well. “It’s a white bull,” he pointed out, catching hold of Tukre’s collar as the dog began to growl. “With red ears.”

  “Faery bull or Sidhe bull?”

  “Can’t tell from here.”

  “If it’s a Sidhe bull, we could talk to it, explain how it should keep out of Moifinn’s patch before she sacrifices it for Tarbh-feis or something. Bala, be quiet.” Brae caught her whelp by the muzzle as, following Tukre’s lead, she began to growl as well.

  “We could,” Tierney agreed reluctantly, “but if it’s a faery bull, it might skewer us before we had a chance to open our mouths. It’s got really big horns.”

  The renewed lowing of the matriarchal cow cut off Brae’s answer. As the young bull joined her, she turned and, with a purposeful air, made for the distant palace with him by her side and the herd cows trailing after.

  Brae swallowed. “Um, I don’t suppose Duir got a chance to mend that break in the fence?” she asked in a worried tone.

  The sound of fence rails cracking like twigs made Tierney wince. “I don’t suppose it really matters,” he answered.

  “Great. Moifinn’s going to skin me.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Get help keeping them out of her patch.”

  “From Duir?”

  Brae shook her head. “It’ll take too long. No, one of us has to go get Isien and Cullen, and the other has to start heading the cows off before they wreck the place.” She paused as Tierney hesitated. “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just . . .” He flushed in embarrassment.

  “They have, you know, really big horns.”

  “So? They’re cows. We fought a giant weasel last year; it had really big claws. How much worse could it be?”

  “There’re more of them, and one of them’s a Sidhe bull.”

  “Might be a Sidhe bull.”

  “Either way, it’s a bull, which means it belongs to someone else, which means we can’t just kill it even if it tries to skewer us. That cuts down our chances.”

  As Brae opened her mouth to argue, the crack of another fence rail sounded in the distance. “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “We’ll both go for Isien and Cullen, then the four of us’ll tackle the cows. We’re Sidhe hounds, we should be able to herd a . . . herd without getting skewered. And in the morning we find out just exactly what kind of bull it is. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “It sounds familiar. Wait here.” Cnu Deireoil, Chief Bard of the Ulaidh Fianna, turned, his bright yellow hair gleaming in the sunlight that streamed through Tara’s main library windows. “Don’t touch anything.”

  The four siblings obeyed, grumbling.

  Brae and Tierney had roused their siblings at once, and the four of them and their hounds had spent the rest of the night trying in vain to contain the herd as they wandered throughout Tara’s herb gardens, placidly ignoring the dog pack snapping impotently at their heels. The white bull had seemed to pay particular attention to the plants at the southern end of Moifinn’s garden while the matriarchal cow looked on approvingly and the others trampled about doing random damage to shrubs and herbs alike. When the dawn sun had finally broken over the distant forest, they’d all headed back across the north field and disappeared inside the portal grave once more. After noting that the entrance was again as impassable as before, the siblings had gone in search of Cnu Deireoil.

  Now, the Bard returned cradling a huge, leather-bound book in his arms long before boredom caused them to disobey his directive.

  “Here we are,” he said, setting the book down on the small, carved dais in the center of the main reading room. “In Cattle Raids, as I expected.”

  “That doesn’t look like the book Moifinn made me memorize Cattle Raids from before I joined the Fianna,” Brae noted.

  “That’s because it isn’t,” Cnu answered, turning the creamy smooth vellum pages with a loving expression. “This is a very special, very rare edition that grubby little Sidhe hounds aren’t allowed to touch. Or anyone else for that matter,” he added to take the sting from his words. “Even Moifinn hasn’t read from this book.”

  “Because she’s a grubby little Druid?” Cullen asked with a gleam in his eye.

  “No, because it’s mine. I wrote it. Now be quiet a moment. Yes, here it is. Tain Bo Cuailgne: the story of Donn, the brown bull of Cooley.”

  “This is a white bull,” Tierney pointed out.

  Cnu raised one golden eyebrow at him, and he subsided with a barely audible mutter.

  “Donn,” the Bard continued once silence reigned again, “was the sworn enemy of Finnbhennach, the white-horned, or white bull of Connacht.”

  He glanced up to see if this would elicit another comment, but when all four Fianna kept quiet, he returned his attention to the book.
“Finnbhennach was owned by Ailill, consort to Queen Medhbhan of Connacht, and raised with her own herd of royal cows.”

  Brae coughed apologetically, and Cnu glanced up with a flat expression. “What?”

  “Um, the Queen of Connacht isn’t called Medhbhan,” she offered tentatively.

  “No Queen of Connacht has ever been called Medhbhan,” Isien added. “And none of them have ever had a consort named Ailill.”

  “No, not yet,” Cnu replied with a crafty gleam in his blue eyes. “But I’m not talking about the past or the present. I’m talking about the future. The tale speaks of Donn and Finnbhennach fighting a great battle across time itself, and it’s from these earlier travels that I gleaned this story. They fought backward and forward, each taking new forms as it suited their struggle: animals, dragons, demons, and birds.”

  “But not people?” Tierney asked.

  Cnu sighed. “No. The story only makes mention of those four.”

  “So its a shape-shifting future faery bull traveling with a herd of cows owned by royalty,” Isien noted.

  “Which means we can’t kill them,” Tierney said to Brae with a pointed expression.

  “And that means we can’t eat them either,” she noted with regret. “Too bad. They looked really tasty.”

  “And not an actual Sidhe bull we could reason with,” Isien finished firmly, glaring them both into silence.

  Cnu closed the book in a snap. “Essentially.”

  “So now we know what it is, but we still don’t know why it’s here, how it got here, or what to do about it,” Isien growled a few moments later as they threw themselves down beside Moifinn’s damaged garden once more. “It’s clearly not fighting this other bull yet. It’s practically still a calf.”

  Brae snorted. “Not from where I was looking,” she scoffed.

  “Then look again, little sister; a mature bull’s bollocks are much, much bigger.”

  Tierney and Cullen snickered loudly at the word, then subsided as Isien cast them a scathing glance. “It’s likely just mucking about looking for nice, tender herbs to eat,” she finished.