Hag of the Hills by JTT Ryder

Author:JTT Ryder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JTT Ryder
Published: 2023-06-07T20:11:31+00:00

CHAPTER XII

First light had come and gone, and the sun rose over the high moorlands. I followed the coastline, having left Cammios to his madness, and descended the shale beach. I passed where Cammios had sent the morgen slithering back into the sea, and I shuddered, and then I ran to get away from the Black Headland.

I had a plan. My plan had been to challenge the mercenaries to single combat. Tratonius would have disliked that idea, but I would evade him and goad the Celts. I’d call Antedios and Cattos cowards, insult Cicarus’ mother, and tell Verc just how much of an awful druid he had to have been to be among this traveling scum in his twilight years. I would tickle their sense of honour, I would rouse them to anger, take their honour hostage, so that they could retrieve their honour should they face me in single combat. One by one, I would defeat them, until they were all dead or shirked from my sword, or I had died in honour defending my oath to Ambicatos.

It was an ill-formed plan, Luceo. I had little combat experience, I intended to challenge veterans, and there were many of them. But I believed I would win, for I believed Cammios’ prophecy when he had read the inscription on my sword.

When the camp first came into view near the limpid sea-loch, I noticed no cooking fire. When I came closer, down the dry sheep-shit strewn grasslands, I found the camp deserted. Save for their mules tied to a post, the camp possessed no men. I found it odd, since they had left their belongings there. The mercenaries, Myrnna, and the slave girls were all gone. I spotted their tracks that led up into the moors, up a pass that went into the low mountains.

I followed their footsteps, and I could tell by their spacing that some had been hurried in the muddy track, and then it became scree and I emerged through the pass and crested the hill. There an expanse of red moorland sprawled out before me.

I unsheathed my sword because I had a feeling something went awry, and the regularity of the moorland had been broken by the presence of tall reeds around a loch. It cratered in the moorlands, sky-blue, and shimmered in the morning sun. A crane walked along its muddy banks. A chatter of birds passed by above, and frogs croaked unseen. I reminisced of the sombreness of the barren moorland. I had enjoyed hunting for pheasant in my youth in the moors, but now the hag had sullied my love for it. I disliked it, for I feared the sidhe, or another giant, or the hag herself.

Come back to the Slighan Hill…

The damnable voice had returned from the depths of my soul and rang inside of me. I had caught a glimpse of her grey crown poking up over the closer red hills. That thought left me when the faint sound of a lyre came from the other side of the loch.

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