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

A raven came up outta nowhere and took the hit for me.

Black magic exploded around it, washing off shields of white and gold. The raven tumbled wings over tail-tip, shedding feathers as it fell. I lurched for it, tryin’ ta catch it, and Imelda stepped quick enough that I snagged it without tumbling from the sky myself. The bird lay in my hands, me gawking and it panting like a dog. Fast as it had lost ‘em, its feathers grew back in, but bleach-white. Then it turned into something like a cave painting of a raven insteada the bird itself. Just lines, representing instead of containing. That idea sank into my hands, made ‘em warm, and the warmth ran through me until it settled in the back of my mind. Settled on top of a tortoise shell, where it preened white feathers, gave me a one-eyed look, then tucked its head under a wing to rest.

It all took about half a breath. When I looked up, Jimmy crack corn, the Master’d gone away. Down to the fight, I thought, ‘cause he probably had to pick up the Morrígan before he lit out of there, assuming he was the sort of fella who ran from a fight. I was in a hurry to go find out, but Cernunnos was in front of me, some of the stag gone from his face so more human curiosity could show through. “You are not her father, or her grandfather, but the ties that bind you—” He did somethin’ with his hands that made me think of a raven’s flight, then shook his head. “Be glad, Master Muldoon, that you have such affinity with Joanne. I think nothing else would have had the strength to shield you from that blow. The raven belongs to him as much as to her. It is a carrion-eater, after all.”

“And a trickster.” Sleeping or not, the bleached bird was waiting there at the back of my mind along with the tortoise. Two spirit guides, when a year ago I’d have never dreamed of having even one. Jo had told me time and again my soul was in good shape, but being backed up by a couple of spirit animals made me feel even better about it. Made me feel sharp and focused. “Reckon that’s what I need as much as anything. Tricks come in handy for old dogs.”

“And young shamans. The battle has all but ended. I must return you to Joanne.”

“Like hell.”

Horns shifted in his saddle, surprised. I guessed not many folks gave him a flat-out no when he wanted somethin’. “We’re going back to the future, buddy. I ain’t letting that son of a bitch go after my wife.”

Half a dozen expressions ran over his face, but there wasn’t nothin’ except determination on my own. I knew I oughta be tired, but there was nothing but cold anger burning in me as I wiped Jo’s rapier clean and finally sheathed it. We’d done good. The cauldron was all bound up, the Morrígan was down for the count, and the Master wasn’t gonna show his face again until he was good and certain of a win.

Problem was, he was counting my wife as that win. I kept staring Horns down, waiting. He looked away, deliberately, an’ I tugged on the last bits of magical Sight Joanne had left me with. It barely flared, just enough to tell me Cernunnos was maybe doing something, but I couldn’t tell what. His face got sour, though, like something had gone wrong, an’ just then the golden mare joined us.

The boy was in the saddle again, no sign of Brigid. I grunted, curious, an’ Horns shrugged. ‘nuff said, so he changed the subject, sounding irritated: “I can no longer sense Joanne Walker. Not dead, I think, but out of place, perhaps travelling to one of the other realms. Until she returns to where she belongs I cannot bring you to her.”

“I ain’t asking you to.”

“Your wife,” he said, and waited.

“Two good women have happened to me, Horns. You know one of ‘em. The other was Annie, an’ I just brought her to that bastard’s attention. I ain’t gonna let that stand. If you can’t get me back to Jo, then get me to Annie. I’ll do the rest on my own if I gotta.”

Damned if Horns didn’t chuckle. “And what do you suppose Joanne would do to me if I told her I had abandoned you to him and your fate in some distant future? I can bring you to your wife, Master Muldoon, but the path is not a direct one. It will take time.”

“Buddy,” I said, “time is the one thing I got on my side.”

Folks say history is defined by wars, by winning and losing. I thought riding through time, looking at it all from above, would show me that, especially when I was riding with the god of the Wild Hunt. Wasn’t like that at all, though. I touched down through the centuries as Cernunnos brought us closer to my time, not quite living through all of it, but getting enough sense of the god, an’ the riders, an’ the job they did to carry it with me forever.

Cernunnos came for the souls of the dead, sure enough, and plenty of ‘em were on battlefields. But a whole lot more were the ordinary folk, the ones just tryin’ ta get by, living and loving as best they could. Far as I could tell, they were the ones who really made up the fabric of the world, laying down their stories, weaving ‘em together and leaving a little bit of themselves behind when they died.

At the beginning there were thousands who called for Cernunnos or the Hunt at the end. Faces and names looking for him in specific, for the hounds and rooks to carry them to the other side. Time went on and they got fewer, old gods replaced by new. Horns diminished as his people died away, no joke about it: that crown of antlers he wore lost size, then barely began breaking free of his skull. At first he rode the whole year ‘round, an’ then got pushed back, bit by bit, season by season, solstice by solstice, until he rode from Halloween to the twelfth night, an’ that was the only Christian holiday that did Cernunnos any favors. Back at the start, the twelfth night had been counted from the winter solstice, but over the years it got pushed out, until finally they counted it from Christmas. He stole a few days out of every new year from there on out, an’ that was the peak of his power. Not even the failing faith of the people could take more than that away from him, and it got to where I kinda wished he could gather the flocks enough to make a stronger stand. I couldn’t bring myself to like the fella, but after watching him guide his believers over the great divide a few thousand times, I learned to respect the compassion he showed.

And besides, it was a hell of a thing, riding across the stars with the Hunt. It got hard to remember I still had a fight ahead of me. Never dreamed I’d be coming at it this way, not even in the worst of the war I’d seen. There were minutes where it was easy to think I’d laid down my own burden an’ was enjoying an afterlife like I’d never imagined.

An’ then we rode through a cloudburst one afternoon into a remote stretch of road in California. It was Horns who knocked a pretty girl outta the road just as a truck came thunderin’ outta nowhere and came half an inch from clipping her down. We were gone before she knew what had happened, but I was looking back, twisted in my saddle, to watch Annie Macready yelp and draw her feet back as the truck roared by. “So mundane,” Cernunnos said a couple seconds later, “but equally unquestionable.”

Annie was gone already, left in the rain, but the image of her stuck in my mind. Neat white blouse tucked into a bright yellow skirt, an’ flat shoes on her feet. Blond hair hardly past her collar, but not as done-up as it’d been the night I met her. I had to swallow to get words past the tightness in my throat. “This’s the late forties, Horns. Not so many cars on the road as there are today.”

He said, “And yet,” an’ I muttered. I toldja so wasn’t any better from a god than anybody else. ‘sides, I remembered Annie tellin’ me about that near miss, one night when my car overheated an’ we ended up walking through a rainstorm to the nearest town. Headlights had washed over us a few times, but we’d kept walking insteada hitching. Back then it wasn’t dangerous. We’d just liked keeping company in the rain. I smiled at the memory, then scowled at Cernunnos, who didn’t give a damn about what happy thoughts I might be thinking.