Conall had definitely gotten fucked last night. Fucked and drunk. There was an unpleasant ache in his head, along with the lovely ache in his ass. He waited for his uncle’s shouting to pierce through his hangover, but it didn’t come.
That was nice. The bed was also nice, a warm nest of blankets with a firm mattress—a breathing, human mattress. That explained the ‘fucked’ part of last night, as well as the lack of yelling—he had to be in someone else’s house.
Or someone else’s tent, as Conall saw when he opened his eyes. The previous night came flooding back to him, and he grinned at the memory. The local lord had thrown a feast to honor some victorious mercenaries, and someone had remembered Conall’s skillful blow jobs. After that, there had been mead and song and some fun manhandling by a big fellow with delightful stamina.
Then memory gave way to realization. There was light filtering in through the tent-flap, the gray light of a misty dawn.
“Fuck!” Conall cursed. He should’ve been up an hour ago.
“Whazzat?” his bedmate groaned. “Stop yelling. It’s too early.”
”Goatherd’s hours,” Conall said, though he privately agreed. “Where’d you throw my clothes?”
“Why would you want clothes?” the man asked, rolling over. A hot erection nudged against Conall’s hip, making his resolve waver. “A few more minutes can’t hurt…”
“I-I have to get to work,” Conall said, fighting down his suicidal libido. After what had happened last night, he knew it wouldn’t be just ‘a few minutes’. “If I’m any later, my uncle will butcher me—”
“Your uncle, whoever he is, doesn’t scare me,” the man said breezily.
“Good for you,” Conall said. He spotted his robe and reached out of the blankets to grab it. “He’s not going to beat your ass.”
“Don’t worry about your pretty little ass,” the mercenary said with casual confidence and a pat on Conall’s rump. “I’ll keep him away from it.”
“I’m sure you will.” Conall scoffed—he’d heard that line a thousand times. “Right up until you ride off for the next war and leave me to his tender mercies.”
Conall ducked back under the covers to avoid the morning chill and did his best to wrestle the robe on without elbowing his large bedmate. It didn’t work—Conall was tall and gangly and the mercenary took up too much space. He almost jabbed the man in the face before a massive hand caught his arm.
“Why would I leave such a great piece of ass in a place like this?” the mercenary asked, like Conall was speaking nonsense. “You’ll come with me. When I’m rich and famous, you can stay in my big bed all day!”
He grinned like an optimistic idiot, and actually winked at Conall.
“So you’re going to be the next Cú Chulainn?” Conall asked dryly. “Make your name fighting and die horribly before you’re thirty?”
“Life’s short,” the man said, “but people will tell my legend forever. You’ll be in the stories too—‘the great hero’s honey-treat’.”
Conall couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing. The big lummox blinked at him in confusion, but didn’t resist when Conall tugged his arm free.
“Good luck with that,” Conall said, rolling out of the nest of blankets. The sharp chill of an Irish morning bit into his feet, and he grabbed his boots as fast as possible. “I’ll keep an ear out when the bards come through.”
The man blinked again, tilted his head as though trying to think, then shrugged. “Your loss.”
“Yep,” Conall said, and crawled out of the low tent.
It wasn’t until he felt cold air on his face that he rolled his eyes. Did the man really expect him to run off with a stranger after one good fuck and some grandiose promises? He couldn’t toss a rock without hitting a would-be hero in this part of Munster, and for every one that won cattle and glory, there were a thousand failures. Conall had survived twenty-five boring, safe years and fully intended to keep that streak going.
The mercenary camp was outside the hill fort and on the opposite side from the village, so Conall had to run. It was second nature by now—dodging between buildings, livestock and townsfolk.
He braided his shoulder-length hair as he went, pulling the black strands out of his face and tying them with a leather thong. A few of his regular bedmates threw out catcalls, and he grinned back.
At last, he came to his uncle’s house. It was built from stone, perfectly round and larger than many. The goat pen was out back, but Conall’s sling, staff and any chance at breakfast were inside. He had to run the gauntlet if he wanted to get them before his uncle caught him, but he’d been getting faster and his uncle slower every day.
He darted in and grabbed his weapons without even needing to look, then went for the cook-fire that a servant girl was sleepily poking.
“Hey!” she cried as he swiped three small flatbreads straight off the griddle. One went into his mouth and the other two into a fold of his cloak, the light burns worth each second of speed.
“There you are, you son of a bitch!” his uncle yelled, but Conall was already out of the door.
“Son of your sister,” Conall muttered around his breakfast. He’d weather the inevitable storm after he took the goats out to pasture. It was almost boring—he could practically recite his uncle’s rant from memory.
Just another typical day in the life of Conall mac Cormac…
* * * *
Conall sat beneath a tree at the edge of the field, watching his uncle’s goats nibble the grass. He envied their thick coats, shielding them from the chilly autumn mist. His own cloak and long robe did a decent job, but he was too tall to keep everything covered at once.
Conall grinned. Maybe when he got home, he could ‘accidentally’ leave a clump of fog-damp wool in his uncle’s bed. He was too smart to actually do it, but it was fun to imagine when there was nothing else to occupy him.
Then a sound, so faint Conall could barely hear it, drifted out of the mist. It seemed like…music? Strange, ethereal music that tugged at his heart even as it raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
The goats seemed to hear it too, as all of them raised their heads in unison. They turned toward the forest, ears pricked forward in interest.
Then they galloped off into the woods as fast as their legs would take them.
“Hey!” Conall yelled, fumbling his staff as he sprang to his feet. “Wait, get back here!”
He sprinted after them, thinking only about what his uncle would do if Conall lost his charges. A whisper in the back of his brain warned him that something was wrong, but the strange song drowned it out.
It grew louder and louder in Conall’s ears as he clambered over fallen logs and dodged around trees, barely keeping the last of the goats in sight. The mist seemed to thicken around him, in the woods and in his mind. It felt like he was dreaming, save for the scrapes and bruises he got when he tripped over a rock and tumbled to his knees.
He lay, winded, on a bed of undergrowth. The pain cleared his head a little, and he cursed himself. He must have lost the goats. His uncle would kill him—
Then he looked up. The goats had stopped a dozen yards before him, standing silent and unnaturally still. Conall got to his feet and crept slowly forward, the music ringing in his ears along with his pounding heart, until he finally saw the source.
On a boulder in the center of the clearing stood a he-goat, the most magnificent Conall had ever seen. It was fully five feet at the shoulder, with curling horns as long as a man was tall. The wool was midnight black, and the High King himself would kill to have a cloak of it. Perhaps it had even belonged to a king—a glint of gold shone at its throat, a bright star against the dark fur.
Conall wished he had a rope, people to help him. If he could capture it, the lord of the hill fort would shower him with gifts, give him a house of his own—
The song stopped. The he-goat closed its mouth, lowered its head and gazed at the flock gathered beneath it. Its lips curled in a smile, wider and wider, revealing white fangs as long as Conall’s fingers.
Then it sprang down on them with savage fury. The dreamlike stillness broke, turning Conall’s world into a crimson nightmare. The goats screamed in their uncannily human way as they tried to run, but none escaped the slaughter.
Conall should have fled, but he was frozen in terror. His staff dropped from his nerveless hands as he stared, unable to look away from the gory sight. He’d seen wolves attack flocks before, but nothing so brutal as this.
Then the screaming stopped and the clearing was silent once more. The he-goat raised its bloody head, smiled its crimson smile…and looked straight at Conall.
And it changed.
Its face shortened, its rear legs lengthened and its posture shifted to stand upright. Conall watched in horrified fascination as hooves became hands and fur became a black cloak with a massive golden pin. In moments a hulking man-thing stood before him, two heads taller than Conall, with long hooked nails and crimson eyes.
“What now, goatherd?” the creature asked, its voice strangely musical and incongruously feminine. “Not going to avenge thy flock?”
Conall’s knees collapsed from under him, and a tiny whimper escaped his lips. He knew that this was no human sorcerer, but one of the monstrous Fomori. They were older than time and stronger than any man—Conall was definitely going to die.
The Fomor stepped closer, smiling its crimson smile.
“A coward, then,” it cooed. “Speak to me, coward. Give me thy name.”
There was a pull in its voice, a command, but Conall fought it. He might not know much right now, but he knew the power of words and names. ‘Giving’ his name to a creature like this would grant it complete power over him. He would be worse than dead.
“N…n-n…” Conall stammered. He finally shook his head, all the defiance he could muster. “P-please…mercy?”
“Mercy?” The Fomor laughed, a high, discordant cackle that made Conall’s whole being shudder. “Thinkest thou that I would grant thy wish, when thou deniest mine? Pathetic creature…yet thou hast caught me in a charitable mood.”
It reached into the depths of its cloak and pulled out a blackthorn staff taller than Conall. It was carved with twisting runes that hurt his eyes to look at, brimming with power and utter wrongness.
“I know thy name—cowardly bitch!” the Fomor cried, raising its staff high. “Thy body needs only to match it!”
It brought the staff down on Conall’s skull with a sickening crack. The blow sent him sprawling to the ground once more. He screamed as his head rang with pain. Not just his head, either—his whole body tingled, burned and warped like the Fomor’s had.
Every hair on his body lengthened, his fingers shrank and his spine distorted. Bones twisted and muscles tore, blotting the whole world out with agony. He yearned to lose consciousness, to be free of the pain, but something wouldn’t let him. The Fomor’s laughter echoed in his ears—it was enjoying his suffering too much to let him escape it.
Then the agony was over. Conall lay in a twitching heap, whimpering from a throat that was not his own. There was a crunch of leaves beside his head, and he flinched as the hem of a black cloak filled his swimming vision.
“This is thy true form,” the Fomor sneered. The next words rang with power, a spell that wrapped around Conall like chains. “Bitch I call thee, and bitch thou art. Thou shalt bear this shape for all thy days, until thy heart be torn and bloodied on the red and ruined earth.”
“Noooo…” Conall whined—a pathetic, canine sound to the word.
“Get up, bitch!” the Fomor commanded, kicking Conall in the ribs. “I shall watch thee run from me.”
A rush of instinctive fear surged through Conall’s veins, and in an instant he was on his feet—no, his paws. He stared up at the looming body of the Fomor, its mouth still stained from slaughter. His ears instinctively went flat, his hackles rose and his tail curled down between his legs.
“RUN!” the Fomor roared.
Conall fled for his life, chased by musical, discordant laughter.
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