The Golden Queen

Chapter 2 (part 1)

Gallen dodged and came up behind the young robber, grabbed the boy's hair and put a knife to his throat. "Hold where you are," Gallen shouted. "I don't want to have to murder this lad!" The boy struggled, but Gallen was ready for any move he tried. Gallen wrestled him still. "Now, off with you! Give me a clear road."

The highwaymen moved around them, keeping a safe distance. Gallen could see from their determined faces that they didn't value the lad's life. It wasn't worth forty pounds.

The boy cried, "For Christ's sake, Paddy, tell them to back off!" The boy was panting hard, and he began to cry. The sweat pouring off of his neck made him slippery.

Gallen looked up at the tall one with the sword, Paddy. Since it seemed that the boy was a worthless hostage, Gallen decided that Paddy might value his own hide more.

Gallen tossed the boy to the ground. The robber who wore the breastplate leaned forward, dagger at the ready. Gallen had already slipped beneath one attacker's guard, and the men held their weapons low, preventing any similar moves. One man lunged at Gallen from behind; Gallen sidestepped, slashed the attacker's knife arm nearly in half, then Gallen leapt at the man in the breastplate. He put his toe at the top of the man's throat and let it slide down till it hit the armor, then stepped up and used his momentum to somersault over the robber's head.

He hit ground, swung around and put his knife to Paddy's throat. It all happened so fast that the robbers could barely react. Paddy swore and threw down his sword.

The boy with the club sat on the ground for a moment, crying. Other than the boy, one of the robbers was dead, another was knocked unconscious, and two were nursing serious wounds. Paddy was disarmed. The last three robbers hesitated, not knowing what to do. Paddy said to his men, "All right lads, listen to him! Drop your weapons and give the man the road! Now!"

The three robbers all dropped their weapons and backed away.

"Paddy, you're a lousy bastard!" the boy shouted, still sitting on the ground. "You were going to let him slit my gullet, but you'll save your own? So you think you're worth forty pounds, but I'm not worth a bob?"

The boy got up and held his shield down low like a veteran, and he raised his nasty war club; its metal studs gleamed in the starlight. He advanced slowly, and the other robbers suddenly leered like the greedy thieves they were. As one they reached down and retrieved their weapons. Seamus moaned and began coughing. Gallen saw that he would have to fight these last four. The men quickly circled him.

Gallen listened for the sound of a scuffing foot behind him, tried watching all directions at once. His senses were overwhelmed: he could smell the wool and sweat and scent of wet humus and ash on Paddy and the other robbers. He could smell the hot blood on his knife. A cool breeze washed through the trees, hissing like the sea. Somewhere over the hill a sheep bawled out, and Gallen wished he was there, safely over the hill, out of the dark Sidhe Forest and into the village of An Cochan.

Gallen slit Paddy's throat and stepped aside to meet these four robbers, hoping that a bold challenge would shake their confidence.

Gallen knew that he stood a good chance of getting killed if he let the men circle him, so he ran head-on into a robber, stabbed the man in the chest, then tried to throw the man behind him as a shield. But the dying robber grabbed Gallen's greatcloak and swung him back into the circle.

For one brief moment, Gallen realized he was in trouble, and then he heard the whirring sound of a club. Every instinct in him, every fantasy he'd ever concocted about such a situation, warned him to duck. He dropped his head to the right as the club smashed into him.

Dozens of brilliant lights flashed before his eyes. There was a roaring in his ears, and the ground seemed to leap up to meet him. Suddenly, the robbers were on him, kicking, and one man shouted, "This will teach you! Never again will you begrudge a man for a friendly knock on the head or for borrowing your purse!"

He looked up and saw a man ready to fall on him with a knife, and Gallen tried to roll away, but his muscles wouldn't cooperate, and he knew he was going to die.

"Hold!" a commanding voice shouted nearby, and Gallen's attackers stopped. As one they looked up the hill to gauge this new threat. The wind was still hissing in the trees, and the muddy road was cold against Gallen's back. He tried to roll over, look up to see his rescuer. The newcomer said evenly in a voice hot with warning, "Those who commit murder in Coille Sidhe shall never escape alive."

One of Gallen's attackers choked in fear, and the others stood up cautiously and stepped back. Gallen heard one robber mutter, "Sidhe."

Gallen's head was spinning so badly, he could only roll over. He'd lived on the edge of Coille Sidhe all his life, and never had he heard rumors that netherworlders might really inhabit the forest. It was said that the sidhe were lesser demons, servants of the devil, and that Satan often sent the sidhe to herald his approach.

"There's only one of them," a robber said, trying to bolster the courage of his fellows. Gallen rolled to his elbows and looked up: above him at the top of the ridge stood a man in the darkness, the starlit sky at his back. He wore garments of solid black, all darker than the night, and his head was covered with a hood. Even his hands were covered with fine gloves. Starlight reflected dully from a longsword in one hand and a twisted dagger in the other. For a moment, Gallen thought it was just a man standing in the darkness, but his eyes focused on the creature's face: its face shone like pale lavender starlight, as if it were a liquid mirror. Gallen's heart pounded in terror, and the sidhe leaned back and laughed grimly at the highwaymen. In that one horrifying moment, Gallen expected the ground to split open and the devil and his legions to crawl forth.

The robbers fled, Gallen urged his leaden arms to move, flailed about while trying to lift himself up, but his head spun and he faltered to the ground. Blackness swallowed him.

Sometime later he woke in a daze. The sidhe was hoisting him into the saddle of Seamus O'Connor's mare. Gallen lurched away from the sidhe's touch, as if it were a serpent, and bumped into something behind him. Seamus was slung over the mare's back, and the wounded man breathed raspily. Seamus's head had been bandaged, and the sidhe whispered, "Hurry, Gallen O'Day. Save your friend if you can."

Gallen's head still spun like leaves in a whirlwind, and he could barely grip the horse's mane to keep from falling off.

The sidhe took Gallen's chin, and Gallen looked into the creature's eyes. The thing looked human in nearly every way-Gallen could make out the fiery yellow hairs of its eyebrows. It was very much a human face, if not for the fact that it glowed like molten metal. "Remember, Gallen," the creature said with great heaviness, "I will hold you accountable for any oaths you make this day."

Gallen had only a moment to wonder at this portentous threat when the sidhe whistled and slapped the mare's rear. She leapt downhill, heading for An Cochan. Gallen dug his heels into her flank and gave her her head.