The horse reared and almost threw Connor off. Corriwen moved, quick as a cat. She pulled his sword out, rolled from the saddle and braced herself.
The ferocious beast came charging straight at her and she angled the sword to take it in the throat. The mouth of teeth gaped even wider.
"No!" Jack cried.
But then it was on her and she was down on the sand, kicking and struggling with the hairy animal on top. They heard a high-pitched cry.
Jack and Kerry crossed the distance in five bare seconds and he got a hand to the animal's neck and tried to drag it off.
"Come on! Move!"
But it had its paws planted on either side of Corriwen's head and one massive paw pinned the sword to the ground.
And Finn the Giant's huge dog was licking at Corriwen Redthorn's face with its great wet tongue.
"Come on Tinker," Kerry insisted. "Let her up before she drowns."
* * *
"I wondered why he took off so quickly," Finn boomed. "That whistle's so high, I can't hear it myself, but, Tinker always heeds the call."
They had managed to drag the dog off until Corriwen, dripping with saliva, managed to get to her feet and then it bounded excitedly around them as they climbed up the beach slope and into the trees, where they heard the boom of giant steps.
Behind them the black ships were stuck on the sandbank and Jack knew the sailors would have to wait for a full tide before they got moving again. They were safe for the moment.
Finn strode towards them through the forest, shuddering the trees with his footfalls. Corriwen looked up at him in awe.
"Well met, little people," he rumbled. "And twice as many as before."
He hunkered down low and looked Corriwen up and down. "Two old friends and two new. Welcome to Finn's headland."
They reached Finn's home before nightfall. The giant simply tucked the tired horse under one arm and carried the four of them in his creel mile after mile round the rocky north shore.
For the first in a long time Jack Flint felt out of danger.
They ate slices of a huge fish as wide as a horse while Jack put a splint on Connor's badly bruised thigh.
"I don't think it's broken, but you should keep it still for a while."
"How can I do that and keep running?" Connor gritted his teeth as Jack worked.
"We'll think of something."
"They'll come around the point on the high tide," Finn said. "And south of here, the little people are scouring the country for folk who sound just like the four of you. They say you stole something."
"Well," Kerry said. "We did…sort of."
Jack told Finn everything that had happened to them, then drew out the golden harp. The cut strings drooped like precious threads. Finn held it daintily in one hand.
"Isn't this beautiful," he said. "I never saw the like in my life. And it's a crime to see its voice cut."
"Rune says it's the Tara Harp."
"The Harp of Seasons," Finn nodded. "That figures with what's been happening, I suppose. I always imagined it was much bigger than this little thing."
"Rune says the whole of Eirinn needs it. We can't let Dermott get his hands on it again. And it seems we can't get home until we get it to Tara Hill, wherever it is."
Finn laughed. "Nobody knows where Tara Hill stands. It's a fairy hill, sure. It comes out of the mist when the Sky Lady decides and not before. You're as well searching for gold at the end of the rainbow."
"Doesn't sound like mission impossible in a place like this, with leprechauns and giants and creepy dead people that wander about the bogs."
"Well, all I know is that no mortal can find Tara Hill. It's got to call you, is what I believe."
"So we'll just sit here and eat your fish," Kerry said, "And wait for the call."
Finn laughed. "You can stay as long as you like, sure enough, and I'll protect you as I can, but yon Dermott, and that dark spellbinder of his, they won't give up easily and they won't give up any time soon. One of the fisher folk tells me they put a price on all of you, and with all the hunger, there's many would take that prize."
He stroked his big square jaw. "Those boats need a wind to get round the point. Wind and tide together, so they won't get here for a day or two, three at the most. That should give you some time to think, and your little brains are a lot quicker than mine I hope, for I can't think of a way. This is as far north as you can get, and the whole south land is a-hunting your runaway hides. Beyond here's only a few misty islands and cold ocean."
"We could check the book," Kerry volunteered.
Jack already had it in his hand and the pages were riffling back to front in their papery whisper. Finn rubbed his chin, fascinated. It sounded like a rasp-file on steel.
Harried close, o'er sea and hill
Beset on every side by ill
Journeyman must ever flee
Bearing Eirinn's harmony
Yet standing on the furthest reach
Where ocean grinds on stone
No escape, east south or west
But surely travel on.
No rest, no rest, till end of quest
The time is now at hand
To trust a friend, to steel the heart
And stride from land to land.
"It's like I told you," Finn said. "Hunters all over the south, and nowhere left to run."
"Maybe we could get a boat?" Kerry looked hopeful. Finn just shook his head.
"Nothing those sail-ships can't catch."
"Then we're stuck here at the end of the earth," Connor said.
"We must make a stand," said Corriwen.
"Yes," Jack said, with more sarcasm than he intended. "Four against the world."
"Five," Finn said. "Even if I'm no scrapper. And Tinker. He's good for a bite or two. Maybe he can lick them to death."
"It's not your fight," Jack said. "It's our quest. Rune told us we have to see it through or we'll never find the homeward gate. It's some kind of rule."
"I'd be no good anyway," Finn said. "I might be big, but I'd rather fish than fight."
"Me too," Kerry said wistfully. "It's been a long time…"
* * *
Finn had estimated three days at most before the black ships rounded the point, but whatever wind Fainn managed to conjure up hauled them off the sandbank and into deep tide water and then carried them past Tallabaun Strand and round the cape. They made it in only two days.
And by then, a horde of hunters had hemmed the fugitives in on the rocky headland that was Finn's lonely home.
It seemed the whole of Eirinn had joined in the chase. From a vantage on the rumbling mountain that overlooked Finn's haven, they could see lines of men, on foot and horseback, spreading out through far valleys. The sound of horns and drums came faint on the wind. Here, on the furthest reach, they were trapped with nowhere left to run. Beyond, to the north, the grey sea roiled as far as the eye could see.
Jack scanned it, desperately thinking of how to get out of this when the heartstone gave a slow beat against his skin.
Danger. But he already knew that.
Out to the west, still far enough to be mere dots on the horizon, the sails of black ships heeled against the wind.
Too soon! They hadn't had enough time to think or plan. And Dermott and Fainn were coming fast. They'd be trapped between the ships and the hunters for sure.
They stood there together, a forlorn little group with one giant and his dog. Here the rock was bare and glassy. The side of the mountain was spiked with thin spires of stone from which smelly yellow fumes spewed and here and there, the rock was twisted like toffee where it had melted and run in some distant past. It reminded Jack of the searing fissures of Temair when the Morrigan's power had split the ground.
They were in as much danger now as they had been then, and they had no leprechauns or bards to help them.
Jack pointed north to where the sea disappeared in thick mist.
"What's in that direction?"
"I'm not sure. I've never been anywhere but here. Us big folk don't wander much."
Below them, waves crashed against the rocky headland. From this height Jack could see the great hexagonal columns of stone packed together like giant pencils. There was something familiar about the shapes. He was sure he must have seen a picture of them somewhere in one of the major's travel books. The pillars marched out for half a mile, gradually descending until they disappeared under the surf.
"What's that?" he asked Finn.
"Damdation, I forgot about the sea wall."
"The what?" Kerry asked.
"Oh, it's an old story," Finn said. "My great-great-seventeen times great-grandfather. He's supposed to have raised the dyke to keep the kelpie out of the reach. It's a kind of stone fence."
"Where did it go to?" Corriwen wondered.
"Maybe it's just a story. I heard it when I was little."
Jack couldn't imagine Finn being little.
"It was supposed to stretch over to some island." Finn scratched his head and frowned in concentration. "See if I can remember. "
His face eventually brightened. "Blind Fingal's Island. That was the name. Never seen it. Never been."
"If it's a dyke, then it's been worn down by the tide," Connor said.
"Like I said, it's an old story. My Ma used to tell me about it. About Finnan Flannan and the Kelpies. And there's a dragon in it too."
"I don't think we've got time…" Jack began.
But Finn seemed not to have heard him.
"She told me it was true. I was only knee high, but I remember the rhyme. The Kelpies were hunting in the reach eating all Finnan's fish. And they swam too fast for him to catch, with spear or net. Anyway, Finnan had enough on his plate, for he was fighting a dragon called Gerumbel."
Finn squatted down beside them, closed his eyes, and began to recite from distant memory.
And climbing high, he looked and saw
The furnace of Gerumbel's maw
A hillock High, the stone he smote
Then stuck it down Gerumbel's throat
In fire and flame and steam and smoke
Gerumbel then began to choke
And quaking all from ridge to ridge
His struggles raised the stony bridge.
"Nice story," Kerry said.
"That's how he raised it high enough to keep the Kelpies out."
Jack didn't hear him. Something had clicked in his mind, some tenuous connection. It was the name Finn had told them. Gerumbel. As he tried to concentrate, the mountain gave a little shuddery tremor and belched a column of white steam high above them.
"Finn. I'm trying to remember. What do you call this hill?"
"Old Gumbles. That's what my Da always called it."
He scratched his head slowly, thinking again.
"No. Hold hard!" He cocked his head to the side. "Old Grumbles. Wait. No, I was wrong. It wasn't a dragon at all. It was just the way Ma used to tell it, and I was just small at the time."
He laughed in sudden comprehension. "I'm a slow old thing, but I get there in the end! Finnan breaks off the top of a hill and carried it up the side of the mountain. He jammed it in the hole and sat on it. Big man was Finnan Flannan. They were all big in them days. And the mountain bucked and heaved like a mad kelpie, but it couldn't throw him off. And all that force pushed up the rocks and formed the dyke. And it went right out to Staffa. I remember now. That's Blind Fingal's Island."
Finn looked up at the smoking peak.
"It was a long, long time ago. And old Grumbles was much younger. And here I was thinking it was a dragon."
"Gerumbel," Jack prompted. "Old Grumbles."
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Tinker leapt up and faced to the west of the point and began to howl. The black sails were no longer dots on the horizon. They were cutting fast through the waves.
"We should be getting out of here," Jack said. "There's logs down on the shore. Maybe we could lash them together. See where the tide takes us."
"You go," Kerry retorted. "I've had enough water to last a lifetime. And rafts. Remember what happened on the last one? And there's things in there, Finn. Kelpies you say?"
He turned, but Finn was gone, surprisingly silently for one so big, with Tinker at his heels. In great strides, he was climbing the jagged slope of the rumbling mountain.
"He's never going to try it," Kerry said. "You don't believe that old story, do you?"
"Finbar and the Major, they said there's some truth in every story. You have to believe in giants now, don't you?"
Finn was half-way up, on a rocky shoulder where big smoky steeples poked up from bare rock. He heaved at one, swaying it back and forth with all his weight until it cracked free with a sound like cannon shot. It was bigger than a house. Finn bent low. Even from here they heard his grunt as he straightened up with the huge rock cone across his shoulder. The mountain shivered, as if expecting something. Finn began to climb upwards, shoulders bent under the massive weight, until he was standing in plumes of white steam.
"Maybe I can't fight," Finn's voice boomed down at them. "But I can lift heavy things."
The mountain shuddered again.
"It doesn't like it," Corriwen said. "Can mountains think?"
"I surely hope not," Connor said.
Finn got both hands to the rock and heaved it high. He looked like a mighty colossus facing the fiery gates of some hell. Then he twisted and let the stone slip. There was an enormous crash, louder than thunder and another tremor, this one stronger than before, almost enough to knock them from their feet as it passed through the mountain. Below them, shock-waves sent vast ripples out across the sea.
The column of steam was suddenly cut off. Finn waved down to them, then leapt onto the stone plug and jumped up and down, jamming it deeper in the hole.
The mountain bucked like a gigantic horse and the four of them were bounced into the air to land in a tangled heap. Then the sides of the mountain slowly began to buckle and swell.
Below them the water frothed and lashed where it met the line of pillar-stones.
Then, as they watched, great hexagonal column stacks slowly began to rise, one pillar at a time, grinding up from below the water.
"The Giant's Causeway," Jack said. "It was true!"
As they stood agape, the mountain shuddered again. From its top Finn cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed down to them.
"Finnan's Dyke! There's your bridge."
And the pillars kept rising, one beside the other, fitting together like puzzle-blocks, row on row as the causeway began to rise, further and further out to sea in a thin curving line. Yard by yard, the stone bridge expanded while waves crashed on either side, sending whorls and whirlpools spinning along beside it.
"It's like the Book told us," Corriwen said in wonder. "Stride from land to land."
"Come on," Jack said. The black ships were nearer now. They were less than five miles distant and closing fast. He got Connor's arm around his shoulder and he and Kerry hustled him down the slope until they reached the giant pillars which marched like a stairway down to the causeway.
Then they were on the new bridge, its rocks still wet from years of submersion, and covered in limpets and barnacles.
Ahead of them, now far out to sea, it was still rising, pushed up by whatever enormous pressure squeezed under the rumbling mountain. Jack risked a look back and saw Finn, standing on the stone plug, waving down at them.
And together they walked out over the sea, not knowing just what they would find at the end of this strange journey.