C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

An’ Jo had just made it real clear she couldn’t ride with him. But we were coming from the other end of time, so we knew the cauldron got bound. It got destroyed, too, eventually. On our end of time, after the binding spell started coming loose. So the binding happened, an’ that meant somebody had to go do the heavy lifting. I figured I was that somebody.

Jo, though, wasn’t having any of that, from how she looked. She came right at me, like being up close would make her extra clear. “No way. Not a chance. Are you nuts? We’re a million years out of time, Gary, and you want to go riding off with the Wild Hunt without me at your back? Are you crazy? Are you nuts ?”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Ain’t like I haven’t done it before.”

Joanne waved her hands in the air, voice rising as fast as they did. “With Morrison! And Suzy! And Billy! And that was in our own time! And—”

“And I didn’t have the Sight,” I interrupted. “And somebody’s gotta go, right? There’s a big fight brewing, and Brigid’s gonna be waiting for us, and we got no way to get there except Cernunnos. And you can’t ride with him.”

I was asking a question there, and she knew it. She gave the god a desperate glance, then shook her head as she looked back at me. “I can’t. I really can’t. Not if I want to live my life, Gary. Not if I want to go home to Morrison. If I ride with Cernunnos again I’ll never come back. He’s…” She swallowed, and that time I didn’t have to ask. Cernunnos was god of the Wild Hunt, master of beasts. I hated to say it, but Jo was suffering a case of genuine animal magnetism.

“All right, so you can’t go, so who knows, maybe it ain’t you the cauldron spell got bound to. Maybe it’s me. Besides.” I jerked my chin at Cernunnos, whose pointy face was smug. “Horns here ain’t gonna let anything happen to me, are you? ‘cause if he does, he’s gonna have you to reckon with, and I don’t figure that’s the kind of reckoning he’s looking for with you, Jo.”

Cernunnos smiled, real close to a leer. Joanne growled and turned on Cernunnos. “Help me out here. Your memory works both ways. I mean, it must, right? Because we’re way before you and I met the first time chronologically, but you still know who I am. So you should already remember it if Gary went gallivanting off with you in the past!”

I squinted one eye shut, tryin’ ta follow her logic, then gave up. I didn’t figure gods worried too much about when somethin’ happened. Linear time was for humans, mostly ‘cause we kept thinkin’ it would help us make sense of things. After seventy-four years I knew better, but I still hadn’t let go of today followin’ yesterday an’ chasin’ tomorrow.

Cernunnos shrugged. Jo said my shrug looked like plate tectonics ‘cause I had big shoulders. If I was plate tectonics, Cernunnos was the water ripplin’ over ‘em, smooth an’ fast. “Perhaps the past I remember most clearly is one the old man did not come here in.”

I grunted with offense. Being immortal meant he had to be older than me, so he had no place laying out words like old man, even if I called myself that from time to time. He ignored me and kept talking to Jo. “Of all mortals, you should realize there are paths not taken. Nothing is immutable, Joanne. Not even for a god.”

Jo bared her teeth like she was gonna take him by the throat. “Okay, okay fine , but you’re the one who said you needed a force for life—”

“He is as bright a force of life as I have seen, and never doubt that I have seen many, gwyld .” He threw out that word on purpose. Jo an’ I had looked it up ages ago. It meant shaman, or magic man, or druid, in old Irish, and Jo didn’t like him using it. Most of the time he humored her, so he was drivin’ home a point now. Her eyebrows pinched, sure sign she knew it, too. “More,” Cernunnos said, “he carries with him a spirit of tenacity, a creature of great age and soul. He—”

“That’s his spirit animal! ” Joanne howled. “I helped him find that!”

“So much the better.” Cernunnos sounded like a cat who’d stole the cream. “It binds you together and adds some aspect of your strength to his.”

Joanne stomped a foot. I grinned at the ground, then tried to solemn up as she waved her hands again. “I said no! Just because I got you into this doesn’t mean you have to go gallivanting off across time and space to—”

“Save the world, doll? Like you done a hundred times or so now?”

My girl’s mouth snapped shut. I stepped up to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “I’ve told you I don’t know how many times, Joanie. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. You got me all tangled up in this crazy fantastic world of yours, and I ain’t never lived like I done the past year. You keep throwin’ yourself in headlong into you don’t know what, and you do it every time because you’re tryin’ ta make the world a better place. You keep saying you want to grow up to be like me. Kid, I wish I’d been young like you.”

All the fight went outta her, just like that. She had pretty green eyes and did her best to look tough most of the time, but right then her eyes softened and there wasn’t anything tough about her. She was just my girl, soft-hearted and hard-headed through and through. I squeezed her shoulders. “I’m doin’ this thing because it’s what you’d do if you could,” I told her, then winked. “Besides, this might be my one chance to kick death in the balls. You ain’t gonna stop an old man from that dance, are you?”

Jo laughed. She looked like she didn’t want to, but she laughed anyway, and hugged me and said what I knew she would: “Old man. I don’t see any old men here. Okay, Gary, but if you don’t come back…” She let me go, then repeated the threat, this time with a waggling finger at Cernunnos.

The god dipped his chin, eclipsing the setting sun and throwing the budding horns on his temples into relief. His voice went formal, making him seem just a little more alien, just a little more god-like, than he was when he sat and smirked. “You have my word, and that is not a thing I give lightly.”

Joanne thrust her jaw out, staring at him, then turned back to me all sharp and business-like to shove her rapier into my hands. “All right, fine. Here. You take this. You can use it, right? I mean, hell, you can do everything else.”

I took it with a chuckle and rotated my wrist, feeling its weight. The thing was balanced perfectly. I coulda held it on a fingertip and spun it around if my arms were long enough. “I’m better with a saxophone, darlin’, but I’ll make do. You sure, though? You might need it.”

Her jaw was still stuck out. “I’m not the one proposing to go face down the man himself. You need it more than I do. Gary, are you sure? Because this is nuts.”

“You can’t do it, sweetheart. It’s time you learn we’ll go into battle for you, even if you ain’t there.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Good generals don’t.” I pulled Jo close and kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you on the other side, darlin’.”

She backed up enough to gimme a fierce scowl. “Of time. Just the other side of time. No stupid heroics, okay, Gary? Not when I’m not there to save you.”

“I promise.” I gave her my best charming smile, then turned the same grin on Cernunnos. “Mind if I share your ride?”

He looked like I’d stuck him in the eye with a pin, and pointed at the boy rider beside him. “Share his. The mare is accustomed to mortal riders.”

“All right. You okay with that, kid?”

The boy offered me a hand. I took it to be polite, but he showed inhuman strength in pullin’ me up on the horse behind him. I shoved the rapier into a loop on the saddle and winked at Jo. “Go get ‘em, sweetheart.”