Heads You Lose
Braefoot Business Park, Lanark, 34 miles west of Edinburgh
Cooper walked back to the closed door of the conference room with Cassie scowling as she followed him, “Let’s see how Idiots ‘R’ Us is doing,” he said.
She glanced down at her hands, suit and torn tights, all filthy from the cave floor, gave him a look as dirty as her clothes were and said, “I’m going to have a shower and get changed first,” before walking away.
Inside, the briefings, blank sheets of paper and pens still lay on the long table, but the people were all gone. The time on the wall clock was just passing 6:07pm which was just a couple of minutes after he remembered having stormed out, not, he insisted, “Went in the huff,” as Cassie had called it more than once during the many hours they’d spent together in The Dagda’s domain.
As he searched the facility, checking room after empty room, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe they were being isolated to pick them off one at a time and if he planned something like that, he’d take the one without the magic powers first, to use as a hostage.
Fear clawed at his heart as he spun around and sprinted back down the long corridor, towards where the cavern had been, shouting, “Aois!” when he was a few yards away from the exit to the car park. The door started to creak and crack with age and it was hundreds of thousands of years old by the time he slammed his staff into it a few seconds later, crumbling it into dust that blew away.
Outside, an impenetrable darkness surrounded him and stopped him dead. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, his senses became more heightened than he’d ever thought possible but beyond the rhythms of his own body all he could hear was something big stumbling about in the distance, crashing loudly through the undergrowth that the car park backed onto, then silence fell once more.
He held his staff up so the tip was above his head and whispered, “Solas-siridh,” a beam of white light burst out of the top of the gnarled wood like a searchlight but shining in all directions at once, despite its brightness it only penetrated a few yards into the gloom.
As he ran towards the twin portacabins, he heard the shower running and hammered on the women’s entrance to the shower block but the running water drowned out his repeated banging.
He stopped, waiting impatiently for quiet, but when the water went off and he raised his fist to knock again, a hairdryer whooshed into life. As he was trying to work out a way of attracting her attention that didn’t involve him being brought up on a Peeping Tom charge, he heard more rustling in the long grass, although it was a lot quieter than the last time.
As he stepped clear of the building all the beams of the searchlight spell merged into one, illuminating a little, old man with a weather-beaten face approaching out of the darkness of the trees.
He was five-foot-two of bone and gristle dressed in ancient, peasant garb, consisting of tattered brown trousers, ripped jacket and a threadbare flat cap, all the same colour, he could’ve been mistaken for a tramp if it wasn’t for the eighteen-inch long dirk hanging down from his back.
“Be thee the warlock Callum Cooper?” he said in a rasping voice that sounded like he smoked forty cigarettes a day.
“Nope, I’m the caretaker but I hear that he’s a wonderful man, positively saintly, if I bump into him who’ll I say’s asking for him?”
“He’s a bodach; a trickster hobgoblin,” Cassie’s voice came from behind him. She’d tucked her hair into a grey, woollen, bobble hat and was wearing baggy, blue jeans and a white sweatshirt with “Warlocks are Dicks,” in big, black lettering on the front under a dark-grey, fur-lined jacket.
“I’m beginning to suspect that you have an iron-on transfer printer in your room,” Cooper said after taking a quick glance back at her.
“If thou art not a warlock what be that?” the bodach said, pointing at his staff.
“This old thing? Well, not everyone who carries a light-sabre is a Jedi… although, in retrospect, it occurs to me that you’re probably not the best person in the world to get that analogy.”
“Thine deceits mean nought to me, Callum Cooper, it taketh a trickster to catcheth a trickster. Surrendereth unto Morrigan so I may have mine bounty and be on mine way,” he said, drawing the dirk from the sheath on his back and waving it threateningly.
“Are you familiar with the expression, ‘Never bring a knife to a gunfight’, by any chance?” he said pulling the Glock from his belt.
“That won’t work, we’re behind a veil and weapons made by mortal man are useless here,” Cassie intoned, like she was remembering a quote.
He glanced back at her as he holstered his weapon “Of, course we are, why would anything ever be simple?” he turned back to the hobgoblin, “You know, I met seven virgins recently and I think I prefer the veils they were nearly wearing,” he said, grasping his staff two-handed as Cassie’s disapproving glare burrowed into the back of his neck.
“Swear fealty to thine goddess and the veil shalt be gone, as a morning mist fadeth to revealeth the dawn.”
“That’s very poetic, here’s the only poem I know: ‘There was a young lady from Buchan’…”
“Cooper!” she interrupted with a shout.
“What? I was just being cultured,” he said without looking around. As he finished the last word, he swung his staff into a horizontal position and yelled, “Scort!” but the hobgoblin leapt to one side before lunging at him with the razor-sharp blade. It hit the staff moved to block it without leaving a mark on the magickally-strengthened wood.
“If thou wilt not surrender, thou needs must die!” The bodach screeched as Cooper parried a superhumanly fast flurry of cuts and thrusts, the light on the end of the staff jerked wildly. Step by step he was being forced back towards where the tarmac ended and the long grass began. Sweat lashed off of his brow as he struggled to cope with the ferocity of the attack, even though he was moving faster than any human possibly could, every rune flaring angrily along the length of his staff.
When his heel touched the grass, he recognised the sound that he’d heard earlier and threw himself sideways as a headless giant lunged at his back. He wasn’t quite fast enough, and it hit him with a glancing blow, knocking his staff out of his hand as he fell. It couldn’t stop, its momentum, barrelling into the bodach square on, sending him flying, and knocking the hobgoblin clean out.
He rolled to his feet, held out a hand and cried, “Fusada!” as he caught his staff he got a good look at the creature for the first time. The monster was naked with nothing to identify its sex, the body was the shade of grey of decaying flesh. It was twelve-feet tall with its muscular torso topped by a stump of a neck. It wore a belt of human skulls in various stages of decay around its waist.
He tossed his staff slowly from one hand to the other a few times, to check if it was blind, but it twisted its torso to follow the source of the light each time. He swung his staff back down, shouting, “Scort!” repeatedly as he backed away from the edge of the car park, the giant following him, seemingly unhurt.
When he was opposite the shower block, where Cassie had taken cover, he shouted, “What the hell––Scort!––is that thing––Scort!––and how can––Scort!––it see me?”
“He’s the Coluinn gun Cheann, that’s the headless trunk in English. Watch out, he ripped those heads off of the shoulders of his victims, trying to find a replacement for the one he lost, when they don’t fit he keeps them to see through their eyes or use them as weapons. Careful he doesn’t throw one at you!”
He was still backing away and missed the last part of what she was saying as the giant pulled a skull off its belt and flung it hard, he deflected it partly with his staff and it bounced downwards at an angle, slamming into his ankle, dropping him to the ground with a cry of pain.
The headless trunk covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye and reaching down it gripped Cooper’s head between its large hand and started to pull, his shoulders were wedged against the giant’s wrists and he started to scream, managing to shout, “Spreadhadh!” explosions erupted over the monster’s chest.
They were meant to blow it apart at close range without killing the spell-caster but all they did was spark little smouldering fires that the monster had let go with one hand to brush them off. Then it fastened them both around Cooper’s head and tugged at it again.
“He’s a bauchkan, a kind of fairy!” Cassie shouted at the top of her voice.
“I’ll be sure to let him know as soon as I find a pair of ears,” he said, smashing the giant with his staff to no avail.
“Cold iron!” she roared exasperatedly.
Realisation crossed his face, and he drove his staff into the gap between his knees, as he felt his head was about to explode, and yelled, “Spìc-ainn!”
An iron spike shot up out of the ground where the staff had been a second earlier. The giant writhed wildly as it drove up into its chest and out of its back. His limbs spasmed in agony and a thrashing arm caught Cooper in the solar plexus, throwing him clear. He rolled over and over on the ground until he hit something. Lying on his back gasping for air, he looked up to see that he was at the feet of the hobgoblin. The old man was holding his dirk above his head in a two-fisted grip, blood from a deep gash trickling down his brow. Cooper struggled to get his breath back, raising his staff, but couldn’t speak to conjure a spell.
The hobgoblin grinned and opened his mouth to gloat at the fate of his helpless victim when his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped forward, his weapon clattering harmlessly to the ground.
Behind him Cassie came into view holding a metal hair dryer by the nozzle, “See?” she said, pointing to the bloodstained handle, “Cold iron.”
He pushed the dead fairy to one side and stood up, looking about cautiously as he felt his neck, checking it was still the same length. The veil cleared around them, leaving the familiar twilight sky as the floodlights around the car park came into sight, causing the light on his staff to fade away. “Nobody likes a smart arse,” he said as he watched the spike retreat into the ground without leaving a mark.
“I don’t work for you, read the body language,” she said in a pompous, deeper than usual voice
“Is that meant to be me?”
“Can you please ask for a car with more room for my staff next time?” she continued with the mimicry.
“Worst imitation ever,” he said as he studded the giant carefully, making sure he was dead. He heard a muffled sound from her but before he could move a numbing blow struck his arm, knocking his staff out of his grip and at the same time someone behind him reached around and stuck a piece of duct tape over his mouth. As he turned to fight, something hard crashed into the back of his skull, sending him tumbling into oblivion.