Hunted

Chapter 21

We floated onto the grounds of Windsor Park like shades, unnoticed in the dark of night. On Snow Hill, two miles to the south of the castle, we paused by the statue of George III, which gave us a view of the Long Walk to the castle, tree-lined and coiffed according to royal wishes.

“See this guy?” I said, my hand slapping against the stone of the pedestal. “Not only did he lose the American colonies and usher in the twilight of the British Empire, but he pulled down Herne’s oak back in the eighteenth century. It was already dead, so I guess that was some excuse, but I can’t help thinking it was kind of a dick move. But there are still oaks there to this day, replanted by this monarch or that. We should be able to go there and call him.”

“Well, it might be wise to refrain from marking them. Herne had a whole pack of hounds. They might take issue with you claiming their trees as your own.”

“Not sure, but it’s best to be polite.”

“How do we call Herne, exactly?” Granuaile asked.

“We’ll ask Albion to help us out.”

I did my best to sound confident. In truth, I didn’t know how we were supposed to call him or how he could possibly help us against two immortals. The Morrigan’s assurance that Herne could help us somehow seemed hollow now that she was dead and we’d been unable to do anything to the Olympians except inconvenience them. But I knew he was for real. Just before the whole business with Aenghus Óg exploded, Flidais had come to visit me with a warning, and she casually mentioned that she’d been guesting in Herne’s forest. She wouldn’t have called it that if Herne weren’t a force to be reckoned with. She would have called it a forest in Albion, or perhaps simply Windsor Forest.

Like most of the world, Windsor Great Park used to be wild, but its size had dwindled over the centuries to the present 4,800 protected acres. North of Frogmore House—which was itself a bit south of the castle—lay the historical location of Herne’s death. The oak that had been pulled down on the orders of King George III had been replanted by King Edward VII. It was there I would attempt to call him.

I didn’t know much about Herne, having never met him; I’d heard the same legends as everyone else. The attempts to explain his existence were many and varied. In the view of some, he was a corrupted form of the horned god Cernunnos, or perhaps a twist on Odin, who also led a form of the Wild Hunt and had experience hanging from trees. Many of these theories had something to do with Herne’s penchant for wearing antlers and connecting dots between the name Herne and old words for horn. To others, he was an historical figure, a ranger or gamekeeper for one of the old kings, led by disgrace of some kind to hang himself and haunt the woods ever after. Shakespeare gave him a shout-out in The Merry Wives of Windsor, but he didn’t lay down the definitive legend so much as give Herne a different kind of immortality.

We padded down the grass from Snow Hill into the row of trees lining the eastern side of the Long Walk, where puffy strands of mist clung to the trunks like torn cotton balls. Some insects buzzed and an owl hooted, but otherwise the only sound was our soft footfalls on the turf.

We veered to the northeast, across trimmed expanses of grass to the slightly more verdant grounds of Frogmore House, a sometime residence for members of the royal family. A serpentine pond wound behind it, with plenty of willows weeping on the banks and hedges growing to please the gardener who loved them.

We must have tripped a passive security alarm on our way across, because a couple of guards with flashlights and guns came looking for us. The flashlights told us right where the guards were, and Granuaile and I decided to mess with them a bit. Approaching in camouflage, we snatched their guns and chucked them into the pond.

“Bloody hell!” one shouted. A trip, a takedown, and a Druid Doomhold later, and they were both sleeping peacefully on the exquisite back lawn.

“They had guns,” Granuaile remarked. That was somewhat unusual for security in the UK. “But I guess they weren’t MI6.”

“No, they were pretty low-rent. Means the royals aren’t here. That’s good.”

The few oaks north of Frogmore were truly magnificent, even if they looked a bit lonely in the too-tidy landscape of Home Park. We were in a restricted area now but had already subdued the closest security. Thick trunks and wide, strong branches formed impressive canopies, and in the mist they managed to take on a slight character of menace. Despite this, they were as susceptible to the ravages of pandemonium as the rest of the world’s trees. I hoped the efforts of the Olympians wouldn’t prevent Herne from appearing now. His specific tree—or rather the big tree that was supposedly planted in the precise spot of the original—was circled by an iron fence that bore a plaque linking it to supernatural history.

//Druid requires aid// I sent to Albion. //Request: Contact Herne / Old steward of this place / Express our wish to meet//

//Done// Albion replied. //Soon he will come//

“Oh,” I said aloud. “That was fast.”

“What?” Granuaile asked.

“Apparently Albion has a direct line to Herne.” That intrigued me. I was curious to know if Albion granted Herne any of his magic, or if Herne was living like the gods, suckling at the magical teat of belief. If it was the latter, then it was a highly localized belief. “He should be coming soon, but I don’t know from where.”

I doubted he would ride in from the north, where there was a golf course now. We scanned the landscape around us until Granuaile spotted something moving to the south, and she chucked my right shoulder to point behind me. “Over there, I think.” Even with night vision, it was difficult to see. She was pointing at something that had detached itself from the shadow of a veteran oak tree even more ancient than the one marked as Herne’s. Behind it, several other somethings moved. The figures brightened as they got closer—that is to say, they took on a minimal albedo, reflecting moonlight and providing faint outlines. There were three men on horses and hounds walking alongside. The figure in the center had a large rack of antlers floating over his head, but his features were largely occluded by a hooded cloak. Part of me wondered how he’d managed to pull a hood over those antlers and added that there was no good reason for a ghost to wear a cloak or anything at all, but another part reasoned that one of the few perks to being an unhoused spirit must be the ability to wear impractical clothing for effect.

The riders became clearer as they approached, but it wasn’t merely a function of shrinking distance; they were becoming brighter, flaring into luminosity as the spirits manifested fully. The horses and hounds were supposed to be black, according to legend, but in the light of the moon and their own ghostly glow—perhaps aided by a certain transparency—they took on more of a midnight-blue color.

Herne rode in leathers of the hunt. His eyes, visible under his hood once he drew near, lacked pupils; they were holes made of lambent cobalt.

The bottom half of his face billowed with a dark thicket of a beard. Trimming it would require pruning shears.

The antlers were quite imposing up close, and taken together with his face and disturbing eyes, they suggested what Bambi’s dad would look like if he ever decided to kick the ass of anyone who dared to be stupid in his forest.

His companions lacked headgear, but their eyes and beards were of a kind with Herne’s. Evidently, men’s grooming products had yet to penetrate the spectral market.

Herne looked first at me, then at Granuaile. “Wich is the Druyd?”

I blinked and was slow to reply. I’d been kind of expecting to hear something raspy and whispery out of his throat, or something choked with phlegm, the way ghosts always seem to sound when they vocalize in popular entertainment, but Herne spoke in a perfectly clear baritone—in Middle English. If he used short, simple sentences, he could probably make himself understood to a speaker of Modern English, but longer sentences would be difficult for contemporary speakers to decode, since half the vowels would be pronounced differently. Amongst the tales of him that purported to be historical, this fact suggested that he was much more likely to have been a subject of Richard II than of Henry VIII.

“Did he ask which was the Druid? We’re both Druids,” Granuaile said.

Herne’s brow furrowed at first, perhaps trying to process Granuaile’s modern pronunciation, but then it smoothed out and his mouth quirked up on the left side.

“Bothe of yow?”

“Is he okay?” Granuaile asked.

“Yes. It’s Middle English,” I said.

I ignored Oberon’s question and addressed Herne. “Aye, bothe.”

“An Druides be, thanne answere me: Whos love in Eire is moste fyn and fre?”

“Did he just rhyme on purpose?” Granuaile whispered.

I replied in kind, though Herne could easily hear us. “Yes. It’s a riddle in verse. If I can’t answer in the same fashion, then I’m not the old Druid I claim to be and I’m trespassing here. Even though Albion’s obviously told him I’m a Druid, it’s a sort of challenge.”

“Do you know the answer?”

Oberon had a point (Why are we here? Bacon), but that wasn’t the kind of answer Herne needed. He wanted to hear the name of an old hunting partner with a legendary libido, so I said, “Whether in bedde or in feeld do ye meet, Flidais awaiteth your limbes to greet.”

At this, laughter erupted from the ghosts to the point where one of the hunters started coughing uncontrollably, which I thought completely bizarre since he no longer had a pulmonary system.

“Wait,” Granuaile said. “Flidais isn’t funny. I missed the joke. Why was that funny?” The easy grins of the hunters faded, replaced with a look of discomfort.

“If I explain it to you, then it won’t be.”

Granuaile noticed that the hunters now looked a bit embarrassed. “Do it anyway.”

“In Middle English, when referring to a man, a limb was a euphemism for a penis, and the verb gretan didn’t simply mean hello—it had a rather strong connotation of a sexual embrace. So I’m sorry to say I was being a bit crude.”

“Ooooohhh.”

“Perhaps more than a bit.”

Granuaile’s mouth tightened in prim disapproval, and she turned narrowed eyes on the hunters. One began to inspect his boots, and the other found something fascinating up in the sky. Herne abruptly decided that now would be a good time to pet his horse. They might speak Middle English, but it appeared they could follow Modern well enough, and Granuaile’s body language needed no translation. “I know all you boys are old school,” she said, waving her finger around to include me while looking at the hunters, “but let’s try to remember what century this is, shall we? Any ass you can kick, I can kick better, and so can Flidais.”

“Aye!” Herne barked, and glared at his men as if they had been the only ones laughing. Then he turned to us, smiled, and said, “Honored Druids, you are welcome to my forest.” His old diction sloughed away. “I have learned to speak Modern English over the years, so be at ease. You are my guests. Hunt or rest as it pleases you.”

Once he called us his guests, I finally understood what the Morrigan intended. Herne would take little to no convincing to join our side. His honor—his raison d’être—demanded that he protect both his forest and his guests.

“Is my hound a guest as well? He likes to hunt with us.”

“Aye, he is.”

I thanked him and said, “It is more likely that we will be hunted than have time to hunt anything else.”

Herne’s friendly smile disappeared. “Hunted? By whom?”

“Olympians. At least one is plaguing Albion even now—either Pan or Faunus.”

“The goat-footed god? He has passed through here recently.”

“And because of that we cannot shift to Tír na nÓg. He spreads pandemonium and upsets the order of Gaia, distresses the forest. He keeps us here so that Artemis and Diana can slay us.”

Herne scowled, and the cobalt eyes flared brighter for a moment. He dismounted and squatted, pressing the fingers of one hand into the earth. I noted that this process made no noise whatsoever—no creak of leather, no thump of foot on the forest floor. He and his companions made noise only when they wished to. After a few seconds of contemplation, Herne said, “It’s true. It’s not visible, but it can be felt. The goat disturbs my forest.” He looked up at me. “And they come to hunt my guests?”

“Aye. And it is not only your forest they disturb but all forests in Albion.”

“It shall not stand,” Herne vowed, rising. “My guests are few, and none have dared trespass on my goodwill for some time. No one attempts to hunt my forest anymore.”

That was more likely due to protections laid down by the Crown Estate than anything else, but if Herne wished to believe it was due to his badassery, I wouldn’t disabuse him of the notion.

“If any attempt it now, they shall feel my wrath. Rest now and recover your strength. Should Olympians appear to despoil my forest, day or night, we will ride.”

“My thanks. Um … forgive my ignorance, but do you have power to wound the corporeal?”

Herne stared at me in silence for a time, unable to believe I’d asked him, but then withdrew a knife from a sheath at his belt. It was barely visible, and its outlines were suggested only by reflected light. Stepping forward slowly, he raised it casually and pressed the point into my chest just enough to draw blood.

“Do you feel its bite?” he growled.

“Yes. Fair enough. I am answered.”

He nodded—a rather dangerous gesture when one is sporting antlers—and returned the knife to its sheath. I triggered my healing charm to close up the small wound.

One of Herne’s hunters spoke up suddenly, his voice surprisingly high and nasal and amused. “Ha! What means your hound to sniff thus?” he said. Herne and I turned our heads to discover Oberon with his nose snuffling at the rear end of a bewildered ghost hound.

I sighed. “Oberon, you’re embarrassing me.”

Oberon grunted. He raised his snout and swung his head around to look at me.