Jack and Kerry made their way down to the crossroads. They had travelled for miles and miles, over hill and dale and across wide rivers and now they were further south than they had ever expected to be so soon.
Finn MacCuill had carried them on a wicker creel strapped to his back. It was like riding a balloon through turbulence as the giant's strides tossed them about in the basket, but the countryside sped past in a blur while the huge dog scampered around, for all the world like an overgrown pup.
Eventually Finn set them down at the base of a craggy ridge. Before them, low country spread out under dank clouds.
"This is as far as I go," Finn said, hardly out of breath after his long walk. Rune's potion and Jack's stitching had healed his wound overnight. "Too many little people around here."
"Like Cluricauns and Leprechauns?" Kerry asked.
"No. Little people like you. They squeak and scuttle. Too jittery for me."
He crouched down and regarded them both.
"You did me a true favour. You find trouble on your way, you just ask Finn. The MacCuill always pays back."
Jack smiled, sheepish. "It was nothing."
"Not to me it wasn't." He drew a thin wooden tube from his pocket, about the size of a flute. "You blow on this, and Tinker will hear it. I'll come apace."
"Nice big feller," Kerry said after the giant had strode back the way they had come.
"Turned out to be a big friendly giant after all."
* * *
They had dined like kings, even though Finn was surprised at how little they could actually eat, compared to him. He had tied the canvas bandage tight round his foot and limped up towards the smoking peak of the mountain and when he came back down he carried a side of beef spiked on a sharpened log, cooked so well that the fat still sizzled on the seared surface and the smell of it made them groan in anticipation.
"My fire-mountain, Old Grumbles," he said, carving off great chunks which they ate until they were stuffed. "Best roasting oven in all of Eirinn." Finn slapped half the side between two monstrous crusts of bread and went through it like a buzz-saw, bones and all.
As the chair and table were beyond their reach, Jack and Kerry made themselves comfortable on the kerb beside a blistering hearth in which two sections of tree-trunk burned fiercely. Tinker, the dog, edged in beside them, inching his way between them and the glow of the fire until it felt as if they were leaning against a shaggy warm cushion.
"So what brings you to these parts?" Finn wanted to know.
"We came looking for a girl," Kerry piped up.
"Maybe I should do the same. I been on my own too long. And there's not many of my kind around hereabouts."
He gnawed some more. "But its along way to travel for romance, if you ask me."
"No. She's a friend of ours," Jack said. "We've sort of lost her."
He explained how they'd met Rune the Cluricaun, then got lost in the darkwood and told him about the snakes and the oppressive presence they had sensed in the strange forest house.
"Aye, there's bad things woken right enough. From the old days before these hills were even raised. There's evil in the land. I keep my own company and my own counsel, as the McCuill always do, but I fear there's trouble brewing. Bad trouble."
He was about to say more when the dog suddenly raised its head, ears cocked. It emitted a strange, low whine.
"What's the matter Tinker?"
The dog growled, deep as a lion and its hackles stood up like quills.
Jack heard the whistle first, like a distant train on a night line. Finn slammed his half-eaten meal down on the table and stalked to the door. They followed him out and the whistle became a shriek, then a roar.
Suddenly a big rock came plummeting through the clouds, trailing veils of mist. It slammed the crag along the shoreline with such force it exploded into shards which burst like shrapnel. Jack and Kerry dodged back inside while Finn boomed strange curses so loudly their ears rang.
Immediately after that, they heard a crashing of waves, as if the tide and wind had turned, and Finn cursed again. They peered round the lintel, with the dog shivering between them. A bulky shape was powering through the sea, sending up a huge bow-wave as it came.
"What's happening?" Jack asked.
"Yon Fergus MacRoth. He's been threatening for months, and now he's come to square up."
"You're going to fight him?"
"Looks like it," Finn said gloomily. "Though I never was a one for the scrapping. But giants is giants."
"Can you beat him?"
"I've never seen him. Just heard him across the water. But with this foot of mine in a poultice, I can't see me having much of a chance."
Out in the water, a head and shoulders appeared, still a mile out, but close enough to be on the foreshore shelf where the water turned more shallow.
Finn let out a gasp.
"Would you look at the size of him. He'll maulicate me for sure."
Jack and Kerry glanced at each other, beside Finn they felt like midgets.
"Come on," Jack said. "I've got an idea." He reached up and took a hold of Finn's slab of a hand, tugged him inside, while Fergus MacRoth was still wading way out on the flats, roaring like a train and sending up a frothy spume as he splashed onwards.
At first Finn was puzzled when Jack told him to get into his cot, as long as a flat-bed truck and propped up on oak trunks. On request he swaddled himself from head to toe in a vast sheet and finally, even more perplexed, stuck his thumb in his mouth.
"I'll do the talking," Jack said, dragging pillows from the giant bed as Fergus MacRoth came stamping through the surf and onto the shore. Back in the living room he stacked the pillows on a stool by the fire and draped them with a grey blanket. His efforts looked surprisingly like a big woman sitting by the fire.
"Come out, ye coward," the giant roared, so close and loud the shingles on the roof rattled. Tinker barked and pawed at the floor. Kerry tried to hold him still while Jack rolled a rush mat into a sort of funnel and stayed in the shadows beside the window.
"Come out and fight, ye sniveller. There's only room on this reach for one of us, and that one's MacRoth."
Jack put the funnel to his mouth.
"What a racket you're making," he cried, letting the makeshift megaphone amplify his voice. "You'll wake the baby, and Finn McCuill won't take kindly to that."
Tinker howled like a banshee. On the other side of the window, Kerry was doubled up with laughter, trying desperately to hold it in.
"Baby, eh? And where's McCuill himself?" Fergus MacRoth loomed at the window space, face as red as sunburn and covered in thick orange bristles. It reminded Jack of Billy Robbins, but much, much bigger.
"Gone hunting with the big dog," Jack bawled back. Tinker snarled, showing canines inches long. "He's left the runt to guard the baby. You watch he doesn't take your leg."
The giant paused. He eyed the dog which was growling and slavering.
"The runt?" he growled. He bent down and peered in the bedroom window and Jack saw his eyebrows raise so quickly they disappeared into a thatch of orange.
"That's a baby?"
"And he's asleep. You wake him and McCuill will not be best pleased."
"If yon's a baby, what size is his daddy."
Kerry was almost on the floor by now, helpless with laughter.
"Oh, he's twice your height and girth. You best get over that water before he comes back and finds out you've been here. He might decide to pay you a visit, himself."
MacRoth clapped a hand to his forehead. Beads of sweat had popped out on his skin.
"I'll just be away then. And you give Finn my best regards now. I was just across to be neighbourly. Friendly like. Sorry I missed him."
"Well, thanks for dropping by. And next time, don't come empty handed, or McCuill might take offence."
The giant was backing away now, feet in the shallows, scanning up and down the shore for any sign of the giant returning with the big dog. Very quickly he turned and waded out into the drizzly mist and in minutes all they could hear was the splashing as he powered his way across the reach.
By now, Kerry was in agony. He was on the floor, both arms crossed over his belly, hardly able to breathe.
Finally the giggles subsided. Tears were streaming down his face.
"How the hell did you think of that?" he finally managed to ask.
Jack just looked at him. "I never thought of it. I read it in one of the myth books. Now I've starred in my own legend."
* * *
Now they were on the down-slope at the base of the craggy hills, in a fine cold rain that was more mist than rain, but the outfits Rune has made them, though light, were waterproof and warm.
Jack and Kerry had asked Finn to take them south, after they had opened the old Book of Ways for any advice it could give them. As before, that advice, when it slowly scrolled down the page, was encrypted in verse.
Beside Finn's fire they had read it together.
From rocky reach wends far the path
To peril, danger, hate and wrath
A friend in need, a friend now lost
New friends meet where roads have crossed
Comes here a ragged reiver band
A journey make through troubled land
The hunter rides; the die is cast
The sands of time are running fast
Journeyman, make haste, make speed
Or ever lose the friend in need.
"Even I get the picture," Kerry had said gloomily.
And now they were on their own, each thinking his own thoughts about the warning in the Book of Ways.
Before them, the land levelled, boggy from long rains, dismal and overcast, but they had made it this far, faster than they would have done alone. Jack and Kerry followed a hedgerow that followed the meandering bank of a stream, clambered over a wooden gate and found themselves on a straight road.
"South," Jack pointed. "That's where she is."
They walked for five miles or more, ready to duck for cover at any approach until they rounded a slow bend and saw the crossroads ahead of them. The two roads intersected on a bare, flat straight with no real cover nearby. A single signpost pointed in four directions down empty roads.
Jack eyed the scene warily. To keep heading south, they would have to walk out into the open. They listened, but heard no sound but the thin drizzle.
"We'll have to risk it," he said. Kerry shrugged. They had to take risks some time.
"New friends meet where roads have crossed," Jack said. "Maybe this isn't the place. I don't see a soul."
Side by side they strode out until they reached the crossing of the ways then paused at the old wooden sign on which strange lettering had been burnt with a poker. Kerry squinted his eyes, trying to make out the words when, in the distance, movement caught his attention.
"Horses," he said. Jack turned in alarm. Far to the south of hooves came faintly on the breeze, and there was no mistaking the column of horsemen making speed towards them. he spun round, looking for somewhere to hide and when he did Kerry heard him mutter in dismay.
Another troop of riders appeared round the bend to the east, galloping just as fast. Kerry could make out bright pennants above the cavalcade. The pair of them spun in circles, desperately trying to find a place to hide before they were caught in the middle of the two cavalcades.
"We're caught like rats," Kerry snarled.
They stood, paralysed and uncertain for a long moment. In the distance, the southern horsemen came on at full tilt, sending up mud and spray, and there was nothing the boys could do to escape over empty ground.
Something snorted just behind Jack's shoulder. He half-turned and then something big nudged him on the back and he almost leapt a yard into the air. The cry of sheer fright that escaped him could have been heard a mile away.
A short, fat pony snorted again, shook its head and then barged past him, hauling on a low covered wagon. Jack's heart, which had leapt into his throat, slid back down again, but still hammered like a drum.
The pony and wagon trundled past, followed by another, and another, all heading south past the cross-roads.
"Where the heck did they come from?"
It was as if the line of gaudy wagons had simply winked into existence. Jack scratched his head, unable to comprehend how either of them could fail to have noticed the caravan of carts and chubby ponies.
The fourth wagon was rolling past where they stood when the tanned leather covering was suddenly pulled aside. Four brawny arms shot out from inside and grabbed both of them by the shoulders and without a pause hoisted them up and inside. It all happened so fast the boys didn't even have time to yell.
But they did as soon as they saw what had hauled them aboard.
A big muscular man with his hair in tight bunches stared at them silently. His skin had a strange bluish shade, and his eyes were the colour of polished silver, but that wasn't what caused their jaws to gape.
The big blue man held both of them in a tight four-handed grip. Two thick pairs of arms reached out from each shoulder.
Jack and Kerry squawked in surprise and fright.
The big fellow held them in an iron grip with two hands. The other two he now brought to his lips in an unmistakeable request for silence, then clamped both free hands over the boys mouths to emphasise the request. He turned, carrying them as easily as a man carries children, into the shadows within the wagon.
He snapped open the hinge on a thick hide bag that sat on a stool and drew the sides apart until they were more than a foot apart, and then, without any ceremony, dumped Kerry head-first inside the bag. He disappeared completely.
Jack wriggled, tried to get himself free, but the four-armed monstrosity simply flipped him up and stuffed him inside the bag. It was impossible. Jack saw the bag, and he knew it was only two feet deep at the most, but in a second he was inside it and the hinged lid was closing. He tried to jump up and out, but his feet felt as if they were sinking into warm wool and he could get no leverage. Complete and utter darkness enfolded him.
Jack groped with one hand until he found Kerry tumbled beside him.
"Are you okay?"
"You have to be kidding," Kerry shot back.