The boat sped towards the shore under Gerumbel Mountain, where the wrecks of two of Dermott's ships lay broken on jagged rocks. As Fennel steered them towards a shingle beach, Jack recalled the pursuit at sea. Ahead of them, the land was heavily overcast with dark clouds. It gave Jack a sense of foreboding.
Now the boat ground on the shingle and they stepped onto the mainland under rumbling Gerumbel. Hedda stalked up the beach, using her lance as a stave. They followed her. Finn held his hand out and helped Fennel step over the gunwale and she blushed as redly as he did.
They gathered at the edge of the trees.
"Does anybody know where this Tara Hill is?" Kerry asked.
"Hidden from the eyes of men," Hedda said.
"That's a great help now," Connor said. "How do you find something that's hid?"
"We ask the book," Jack said simply. He sat down and opened the old leather cover and let the pages flicker by themselves and they waited until the words formed.
Sea behind, the hills before
Journeyman take foot once more
On the way, the wand'ring band
Travels on through shadowland.
Bearing Eirinn's harmony
Harried now by enemy
Friends beside and foe before
Walk the misty way once more.
The end of quest is now at hand
Friends united make a stand
By Tara Hill to hear the song
To end the winter, right the wrong.
"The usual gibberish," Kerry said. "You translate it Jack."
"Sea behind," Jack said. "So we head south."
"Straight for Dermott's lands," Connor said. "We'll be walking right into a trap."
"The misty way," Corriwen said. "Where is that?"
Jack considered a moment. "I think it's the way Brand took us with the troupe. It was pretty far from here, a long way south. But I think I could find it again."
"That creepy place?" Kerry interrupted. "It gave me the heeby-jeebies."
Jack shrugged. He turned to Hedda. "What do you think?"
She shrugged, her face completely relaxed, as if nothing mattered.
"There will always be enemies. Your book speaks in riddles, but you say it tells the truth. Why doubt it now?"
"Okay," Jack said. "We head south. But watch out for enemies."
Hedda smiled. There was more glee than humour in it. "I will watch, have no fear on that score."
They walked on for two days, through thick forests where weasels and snakes crawled and rustled in the undergrowth, but stayed hidden. They reached the mountains and Hedda remembered a trail from long ago that took them, through winding passes and over jagged ridges and Jack was glad they met no more of the gaunt fell runners.
Kerry and Connor kept their spirits up, teasing each other along the way. Connor walked tall on two straight legs, delighted not to be limping any more. In his new cloak and bearing a fine sword, Jack had to admit that he had changed radically. He did look like a young noble. Jack had let him keep the torc, which he wore on his neck, adding to the perception.
"You know," Kerry said, looking ahead at Finn and Fennel who walked close, trampling a decent path through the brush and brambles. "Beside those two, I feel like a hobbit."
"What's a hobbit?" Connor asked.
"Sort of little people. On a quest."
"Like Cluricauns?"
"But with hairy feet. And a magic ring that makes you invisible."
"Ah, now your really at the kidding. That's totally made up now, isn't it?"
"No. Really. I saw it in a movie once."
Connor gave him that blank look again that told them he had never before now been more than twenty miles from home.
They tramped on as the south sky grew darker with the threat of storms in the air, but Jack suspected it had more to do with Fainn the Spellbinder. The air felt cold, but heavy and threatening. Occasional pulses of lightning would illuminate the low clouds in the far distance. Something was brewing, and Jack knew it wasn't just a storm. The book had told them the end of the quest was near. And it was time to take a stand. His hand automatically found the hilt of the magnificent double-edged sword in its scabbard and for a moment he felt comforted.
* * *
The horsemen came at breakneck speed along the road.
Hedda heard them long before anyone else heard a thing and she turned the group off the path and into the trees at the base of the mountains. The storm turned like a dark whirlpool in a lowering sky and thunder rolled across the land, bringing cold rain and fleets of hail that hit like pebbles. They pulled their hoods up against the onslaught and plodded on, heads down. Only Finn and Fennel and Hedda seemed unaffected by the hail. And Finn and Fennel seemed so absorbed in each other's company that they didn't appear to notice much else. The giant had told them back then that his kind tended to be solitary. Now that two of them had met, they seemed shy and tongue tied, yet still unwilling to travel unless it was together. Jack thought it was pretty cool.
They stayed back with the four of them in the shadow of the trees while Hedda stood out on the road, lance jammed in the ground, feet braced apart, her hood pulled right over so that her face was in shadow. The image of a Valkyrie came to Jack: one of the spirit warrior women of the Norse Legends.
The cavalry troop spurred the horses towards them and pulled up only yards in front of where Hedda stood.
"Halt," a man shouted. "Who goes there. Where do you think you are you going?"
"I am halted, as you can see." Hedda said calmly. Her voice had taken on the rasp Jack had heard when she first came to challenge them. "What business of yours is my business?"
"I ask the questions on this road," the man said. He was big and bearded and wore a shaggy cloak just like Dermott's. Jack thought he remembered his face from the carousers in the castle. "Answer fast, or suffer the consequences."
"Ah," Hedda said with a sigh. "The impetuousity of youth, and the arrogance of ignorance." Jack heard the smile in her voice, a smile of confident anticipation. A little shiver went up his spine.
The man stepped down from his horse. Behind him, a number of the riders dismounted and fanned out, bows drawn back. Off to the side, another group came bearing down on them.
"The Lord Dermott hunts thieves and renegades. All travellers face questions at Wolfen Castle."
"Not this traveller," she retorted.
"Enough of this," the man said. "Take him in."
Jack realised they thought she was a man.
Half a dozen men came forward, swords drawn, while the archers lined up at the ready.
"Not a wise move," Hedda said, standing her lance straight up on the road.
The man laughed.
Hedda flipped her hood back. The six men all gasped in unison and came to an abrupt halt when they saw her ogre's mask, all teeth and horns.
Then she moved. Like lightning. Like a red streak, before they had time to recover and then she was in amongst them, whirling like a fiery tornado. They saw the sword flicker and flash, in and out. The big man dropped where he stood without a sound and his head thudded to the ground a split second after him. Blood sprayed in a fountain and then she was back where she had stood before, and the lance, which had started to fall to the ground, was back in her hand.
She stood still as a statue, not breathing hard. The monstrous face glared at them.
One of the horsed men cried out.
"It's killed Captain Gaglan. Murdered him!"
He stood high in the saddle. "Kill the beast now!"
The bowmen let loose a flight, all six of them and Kerry let out a groan of dismay. Hedda stood there. Another sword appeared in her free hand as if by magic then blurred in front of her.
Pieces of arrow, flights and points and shards of shafts scattered all around in a flurry of shrapnel as the blades cut them to shavings.
"Enough," Hedda spoke up. "Don't anger me now. Go back and tell Dermott his days in Conovar's seat are at an end. Tell him the Scatha comes to meet him."
"Is it a Fir Bolg?" One man asked. "A monster?"
"What's it talking about?" one of the archers said.
"I said kill it," the horseman bawled. "Send it back to whatever pit it climbed out of." Beside him more than a dozen archers drew their bows.
Fennel stepped from the trees to stand beside Hedda. The archers got such a fright they all took several steps backwards.
"Would you look at the size…" one of them started.
"Shoot!" the horseman roared. "Kill them both."
The horsed archers loosed their arrows in a hissing volley. Fennel stepped in front of Hedda and turned her body at the last moment and the flight thudded into her thick leather cloak. She brushed them off with a big hand, as if they were burrs from a docken plant.
But one arrow had been badly aimed and it had bit into the side of her neck. She tugged it out with a hard jerk. Deep red blood poured out and down her tunic, though her face showed no pain, nor even irritation.
But when Finn saw the blood, he suddenly went completely berserk.
He gave such a bellow of fury that all four of them jerked back. He leapt out from the trees, grabbed at a pine in the passing and snapped it off at the bole. With one hand he stripped the branches and needles and emerged, still roaring, with a tree-sized stave.
Before the horsemen could turn, he was on them, wielding the tree like a club, smashing men off their horses while the archers at the back shot volley after volley at him until he was so spiked he looked like a mad giant hedgehog.
He waded into them, scattering them into their air, throwing them into the trees, batting them skywards in a flurry. They fell like ninepins. The horsemen at the rear turned their mounts and fled, leaving their battered, bruised and flattened colleagues lying in broken heaps.
Finally Finn stopped, wiped his brow, and the red anger faded from his face.
"I'm awfully sorry about that," he said, somewhat sheepishly, surveying the carnage. "I don't know what came over me."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry," Fennel said, grinning at him. Jack saw the delight in her face. Finn had fought because of her. "They had it coming, be sure of that."
Hedda turned back, sheathed her swords and flicked the grotesque mask off.
"Well now we have horses," she said. "That should speed us on our way, and save shoe leather besides."
And suddenly Jack didn't have so much foreboding.
"What a babe," Kerry whispered in blatant awe. "I'm surely awful glad she's on our side."