“Yes,” she’d replied simply and without embarrassment. His jaw had gaped and eyes gone wide. He had a scruff of ginger hair atop his head and wore a tweed riding coat patterned with greens and yellows. She’d come to find out he was called Alan Thornwood. He hailed from the village of Denholm originally and had worked with his father on the grounds of Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford home for a time. Though he’d never met the late writer, he spoke of that employment with great pride.
Effie glanced askance at him. He blushed and turned away. They all had stared at one time or another, the riders from Hawick. But the three with her and Gaelyph had leaped to join their hunt, despite its dangers. She wondered if that made them heroic or overly foolish. The remainder of the riders had stayed at Hermitage Castle, along with the injured soldiers and the men Sergeant McGrady had tasked to seeing to their wellbeing.
The sergeant huffed behind her. “Nonsense,” he uttered in a harsh whisper. “The crown will never allow it to pass.”
“The French have recalled their ambassador, it is said,” came a deeper baritone. “Their ships load arms and soldiers at ports from Calais to Le Havre, and that is just for a sea crossing. Never mind what might come from the sky. They intend to invade. This Lord Granville only delays the inevitable. War will be declared before the week is through.”
Effie caught the name and turned in her saddle. The man who spoke had a thick nose and dark hair. He clutched a spear in one hand and a torch in the other. His horse clomped along with its head bent against the rain.
“It is Lord Granville who begs for peace, you are certain?” she asked.
“Aye,” said the man. “But peace with the French alone. For the Scots, he begs for more regiments to repel this plague of barrow wights.”
“Plague of barrow wights.” Brandon snickered. “Perhaps Grigg’s nan had it right.”
Effie chewed her lip. Lord Granville no doubt saw only his own interests in his actions, but she would need to thank him all the same. If he could hold back war with France a few days more, it might make all the difference. Yet none of it would matter if the Barrow Witch were not stopped. The riders of Hawick had not stumbled on the mob at Hermitage by accident. They had tracked it from a local village that now stood abandoned, its inhabitants fled, slain, or cruelly enslaved to the will of the Sidhe Bhreige.
The riders had spoken of other villages equally ravaged. The town of Kelso had seen a devastating fire, and a pack of wulvers had been spotted near Jedburgh, the largest gathered since the Horned Host had descended on Caldwell House.
“Whatever they are called,” she said, “their threat will not end, nor their numbers truly dwindle until their master is put down.”
“You mean the Hag o’ Maiden Paps?” Alan Thornwood asked.
Effie started. The Maiden Paps were conical hills rising close to Hawick, but she had never heard of a hag, or any creature, related to them. The crow squawked a protest at the sudden movement and fluttered its wings.
Alan read the confusion on her face. “The Hag o’ Maiden Paps is an old tale,” he said. “Some say it was she that whispered in the ears of the de Souleses of Hermitage Castle and drove them to the black arts. Boiled alive by his tenants, one of them was, wrapped in lead. Another tried to steal the crown after dancing in the moonlight with the hag’s barrow wights.”
He leaned closer. “Thomas the Rhymer said the barrow wights protected her, striking down any who seek her earthen tomb. That’s why none has ever laid eyes on her and lived. The Rhymer ken all kinds of uncanny things, it is known, learnt from the fey queen herself.”
“None lived until recent days,” said the man riding behind Effie. His tone sounded more worried than boastful.
“Och, aye,” Alan agreed. “Ask Donald Langthumb. Seen her, he has.” He hooked a thumb at their companion, a dour looking man with sunken eyes and loose jowls that wobbled as he turned his head.
A jolt of energy washed through Effie. “You’ve confronted this hag?”
“Confronted? Nay, I wouldn’t say that.” The man shifted in the saddle with a bit of discomfort. “I was standing atop the Mote the night the thing came for poor Maggie Stewart. I saw it lurking about in the trees below, all spindly armed and pale faced. Thought I mustn’t be seeing right. But when Maggie’s husband came after her, the hag made this unholy noise and called down lightning from the heavens.”
Alan shook his head. “Burnt the poor fellow with blue hellfire.”
“We tried to give chase,” said Donald Langthumb. “But by the time I climbed down from the Mote—it’s an auld hillfort mound, you see—the lads and I couldn’t find a whiff of the hag. Or of Maggie. That’s the last we’ve seen of either of them.”
“Ack,” said Brandon. He slapped his thigh. “It were probably just a play of the moonlight.”
Donald Langthumb’s jowls quivered as he glared.
“I seen the scorch marks with mine own eyes,” said Alan. “George Gresham did too.” He indicated the man riding behind Effie. “Unnatural, they were.”
“I believe you,” said Effie. Her heart had quickened as the tale unfolded. It pulsed with a steady ire. She held a picture in her mind of a creature who wielded blue fire in such a manner, but it was not the Barrow Witch, nor a hag. It was a grindylow. Tallia lurked somewhere in the darkness.
“This Hag o’ Maiden Paps is the same who captured our steward,” she said. “She is the very creature we hunt.”
The hooded crow cawed madly and took wing. It quickly disappeared into the night.
Sergeant McGrady cleared his throat but abandoned whatever he’d meant to say as a lone howl rang out. The chorus of a pack followed it, high-pitched and frenzied. The howls sounded close, yipping and crying out all around them.
Barnaby panicked. Whinnying, he pulled against his reins. Effie fought to calm him. She whispered soothing words and nudged with a bit of Fey Craft. The men around her struggled with their mounts, and she widened the sense of calm she cast out. She didn’t know quite how she’d learned to do the trick, but quelling animals, especially those familiar to her, had always come easily to her.
“Wulvers,” said Gaelyph. The warden drew his sword.
Suddenly, feeling eyes watching their group, Effie scanned the fields and trees around them. Goose pimples rose on her flesh. Though she had faced the creatures before, the fact that she had escaped those encounters did nothing to quell her fear. Wulvers might well be a smaller cousin of the wolf, if a wolf could walk upright and have fangs longer than her fingers, but they moved at great speeds and bore fangs and claws to rival a lion.
“There!” said Sweet Tom Reedling. He’d unslung his rifle and waved it toward a cluster of ash and alder trees barely lit by their torchlight. Brandon followed the lad’s aim with his own rifle. Sergeant McGrady cocked his pistol, holding it pointed skyward and peering at the trees.
Effie squinted and caught movement. Dark shapes slinked toward them, moving through the grass like beads of water dripping down a window pane. She reached for the wulvers with her senses but could not feel their auras.
The hairs on the back of her neck stiffened. These were not a random pack. Someone masked them with Fey Craft. Effie cast her senses wider. Hunters by nature, wulvers would attack animals they considered prey, even humans. But their predatory nature also allowed them to be easily manipulated by the Sidhe Bhreige and Unseily.