Chapter 9: Mog Ruith
I had never been a helicopter before. We were picked up from the rooftop of the building by an unmarked black one, I remarked to Bauer and Cholderton that they were not doing anything to dispel the government agent cliché, they just laughed. Other than that we did not talk much, the two agents seemed quite fond of me now I had talked back to their boss but they still kept to themselves, Mister Weatherby, cowed and attacked from all corners, sat by himself and sulked.
We stopped and to refuel twice, once in Bradford, and again in Glasgow. I looked out of the window and watched the country change beneath me, the urban sprawl and concrete roads of London gave way swiftly to the ordered and neatly divided squares of home counties farms which in turn to surrendered to a more rural but still managed landscape of the north, with occasional woods and dry stone walls surrounding hillsides and grazing land. After Glasgow even this amount of human intervention over the landscape became rare and we passed frequently over wild forests and empty mountains till we arrived in Peterhead in the midst of what seemed to us, passing swiftly overhead, to be nothing more than a barren snowy wilderness. I thought of Selkie, somewhere down there, headed South and now I was headed North. The country seemed very big, and two people so far apart seemed very few.
The helicopter set down inside the prison grounds on a windswept stretch of empty snow brushed field. I got out, wrapped my coat around me and shivered, the rain there was a thick grey sleet that hammered like needles into any exposed skin and sucked all colour out of the landscape. A prison officer in a thick black coat ran out to greet us, shouted something I did not catch over the noise of the helicopter engine, and led us back into the relative warmth and comfort of the prison building where Weatherby was required to fill in several forms. The officer seemed put out that we were disturbing his routine but equally eager that we should get what we needed. A call from the illustrious Lord Leppusstrom obviously worked wonders.
'We've shackled him to the desk,' he said as he led us down a clammy stone corridor, 'but you still need to be careful, he's an unpredictable bastard. He's killed five men since we've had him and he's put three times that many in the infirmary. Are you certain you don't want an officer in there with you?'
Weatherby looked like he might, and I was all for it, but Cholderton spoke first and refused the offer. I looked at him and he patted the bulge over his left breast and said 'we'll be fine.' I realised that he had not told anyone about the gun he was carrying and the prison staff probably would not appreciate him having it. I kept my mouth shut.
'If he makes any sudden moves, anything, you shout like you mean it and bang on the door alright, I'll be right outside.'
'What can he do,' said Weatherby, 'if he's chained down?'
'With this one you just never know,' said the officer, 'chains¦ well you just can't be sure.'
I was about to ask him what he was going to say about chains but he stopped and drew back the bolt on a heavy metal door. 'This is it,' he said, looking at us as if asking us if we were really sure about this. Suddenly I was not sure, and I do not think Weatherby was either, but Bauer and Cholderton just opened the door and walked confidently in.
Inside the room was a sturdy plain desk screwed down to the floor. In front of the desk were two plain plastic chairs. Cholderton and Bauer avoided the chairs and stood to either side which meant Weatherby and I were kind of forced to use them. I think both of us would rather had stood in the corner, as far away as possible from what was behind the desk.
It was hard to think about what was behind the desk as a human being, he was clean, and his hair was shaved close, and he was wearing blue prison issue clothes, but there was something strange about him I could not put my finger on. His very presence as a physical object was unnerving, he seemed to be too big for the space he occupied, which is an expression that makes no sense to me now but is the best one I can come up with to describe what I saw. I would also swear he shifted unnaturally out of the corner of my eye, as if partially decoupled from the stricture of the usual three dimensions. As a man he was no less disturbing, he was heavily scared and weathered, it would have been impossible to tell his age, he could have been anything from eighteen to eighty, he exuded a wiry strength and leather toughness, but for the shackles I do not thing the four of us could have held him down, he slouched in his chair like a coiled spring, I flashed back to the druid in the nightclub, he was like an animal poised ready to pounce, a snaked coiled ready to strike. He was missing several teeth and a long scar across the top of his head was an unnatural white slash where no hair grew. His eyes were what really troubled me, they fixed me with a long cold determined stare, sizing me up, when he looked at me I immediately remembered Selkie's comment, beyond a point at which life and death have any meaning, the moment I thought this I knew, knew for certain, that he could tell exactly what I was thinking. The barest hint of a smile flickered across his thin cracked lips.
'How is dear Selkie?' he said slowly in a quiet dry growl that seemed to be dredged up from stones scraping together deep within his chest.
Weatherby looked at me, thankful perhaps that it was not him being addressed.
'I don't know.' I said, truthfully. The man behind the desk let his features gradually twist into a broad wolfish grin.
'Mister Mog Ruith,' stuttered Weatherby, the grin vanished and the man immediately switched his malevolent stare to Weatherby, 'we wanted to ask you about the Black Goat.'
The man turned back and looked at me again. 'What about the Black Goat would you like to know.'
I licked my lips, which seemed to have gone very dry all of a sudden, and asked 'why is it raining?'
He smiled again, and chuckled even, it was the least pleasant chuckle I have ever heard. It was rather like being a fish on a hook held up and examined by an angler who chuckled to himself whilst watching it suffocate and die. 'The rain,' he said, again very slowly and quietly, 'is a reaction, it is fever sweats, it is the salivation of hunger.'
'What are the Black Goat doing,' I asked, 'to cause it?'
'We are fulfilling our side of the bargain, we are delivering what we were paid for.'
'What,' I said, 'were you paid for?'
He looked about the room. 'You're two friends can not protect you,' he said, 'their guns would not be fast enough.' Bauer and Cholderton did not react, no doubt they were not so easily spooked as I was. 'But,' he said, and sniffed, 'Selkie protects you, the witch has claimed you for her own, I will honour this.'
'Is Selkie safe?' I asked, the question just popped into my head and from there straight to my mouth. In retrospect I think I was under a form of hypnosis, I was not interviewing him in any normal sense, I was simply exposing my thoughts with every question, revealing my innocence.
'She may be,' he said, 'if she returns to the fold. Do not look surprised, she is thinking of returning, they all think of returning, this is why she has left you behind, she does not want to hurt you. But this is not what you flew all this way to ask.'
I asked 'what were you paid?'
'Land.'
'By whom?'
'The wolf.'
'For what?'
'To wake the dragon.'
'I do not understand.'
'You will, soon.'
'When will it happen?'
'The earth trembles with anticipation, the stones shiver with excitement, the rain is washing the land clean ready for his arrival. But first he must be called, there must be a clamour loud enough, he must hear the screams of his women and children, there must be an enemy he recognises.'
'Who is the dragon?'
'He is the son of the land. He never truly died. He rests, waiting till he is called.'
'Who is the wolf?'
He looked across at Weatherby and back at me, 'have your friend ask his Lord.'
'Lord Lepusstrom?'
He smiled again.
'Where,' I said, 'are the rest of the Black Goat?'
The smile vanished. 'The land loves us,' he said, 'we have slept in it's fold, we have shared our blood with it, we have shared our love with it, we have given it all it has desired, when it has desired bloody we have given it blood, when it has desired love we have given it love. These stones would turn at a word from me, they would crush you at my command, the metal in that door would bend at my wish, would bow before me. We will give the land back its master and for this it loves us. Ask me another question I do not like and I shall pull out your windpipe.'
He looked around the room at each of us in turn. 'Go ahead,' he said, 'run. Call for help. Draw your guns. Bang on the door and summon the guard.'
Not one of us moved. I swear my feet were rooted to the spot. I had lost all power over my own limbs.
'Your time,' he said, 'will end. The land will be given back to men and women. Not these sexless things. The bickering organisations will be dismantled. Leadership will come from a leader. Rule will come from a ruler. Men will willingly place their lives in his hands. The land will flourish where he treads. Death and life will follow in his wake. The people shall be whole again.'
At that moment, my eyes were fixed on him, I felt like a statue. It was not that I tried to move and failed, it was that I could not even try.
He reached across and touched me lightly with one finger at the nape of my neck. 'You,' he said, 'I release.'
I stood up like I had been hit by an electric shock and immediately walked back to the door and knocked on it. The guard opened it and all four of us, able to move again, dashed out into the corridor. I looked back and saw that Mog Ruith's wrists were still securely shackled to the desk. I touched the point on my neck where he had touched me, I could still feel his finger, just resting on my skin, the threat that at any moment it might hook in and strike. For about an hour afterwards I held my hand around my neck, only that way did I feel secure.
We walked in silence down the corridor and were led to a small staff canteen, a bare room with a kettle in one corner and two kitchen tables. We sat while the officer, who apparently had seen our reaction before in others, made the tea.
'That was creepy,' said Cholderton, finally.
The rest of us nodded, and grumbled agreement. The officer slapped four mugs of tea on the table together with a large plastic bottle of milk and a bowl of white sugar turned brown and clumped together from too many people using a wet spoon to serve it. 'I'll give you some time,' said the officer, and left the room. We stared at the apparatus on the table as if we had forgotten how to use it. Finally Cholderton moved first, and poured milk into his tea, the rest of us followed. I knew that if just one of us spoke, the spell would be broken, but I struggled to find something to say. I have always been like this, I am always the one at parties who clams up when meeting new people, I am always the one who lets a conversation die. I looked at the others, they moved slowly, we avoided each others gaze, it occurred to me that perhaps they did not even realise they were still under the spell, that it was entirely up to me to break it. I searched for something to say, my mind felt like porridge, simply trying to remember what had happened was like a complicated mathematical problem.
'What,' I finally managed, 'do you think he meant by the dragon?'
Like that, the spell was lifted, it was like having water in your ear and then knocking it clear, everything seemed much closer and clearer. I felt an almost overwhelming desire to feel another human beings flesh on mine, but well, we were all men and English men at that, and that was not going to happen.
'What did any of it mean,' said Bauer, 'stones coming alive, giving love to the earth.'
'He mentioned a bargain,' said Cholderton, 'with someone that Lord Lepusstrom knew about.'
'It was for land,' I said, 'we need to find out who gave them the land they live on.'
'That should be possible,' said Cholderton, 'but a lot of work, you've no idea where it is or when it was given to them.'
'Sometime in the seventies or early eighties I think, and no, apart from being in Scotland, I've no idea.'
'We could go back in there and ask him,' suggested Bauer, and it took me a horrible moment to realise it was a joke.
'There are few forces on earth,' said Cholderton, 'that would compel me to go back in there.'
'Well we know for sure that the Black Goat are behind whatever is going on.'
Cholderton nodded. 'So,' he said to Weatherby, 'are you going to ask your boss about this deal.'
Weatherby did not answer, we were all looking pale but he looked like he might faint at any moment.
'I think we can assume,' continued Cholderton, 'that Lord Lepusstrom and the wolf are one and the same.'
'I'll ask,' said Weatherby in a thin sallow voice, 'but he won't like it.'
'Well were not doing it for his bloody pleasure,' said Bauer taking another two spoonfuls of sugar and stirring them into the remains of his tea before downing it in one go. 'Dragons waking doesn't sound good, but enemies he recognises, and the screaming of women and children, that all sounds like exactly what we should be preventing. Come on,' he said, 'we've got work to do.'
The rest of us finished our tea and stood up. On the way out the officer shook us all by the hand, I gripped his hand eagerly, with both of mine, and was reluctant to let go, the touch of skin on skin, the contact with another human being, the warmth of him, felt so good. He smiled like he understood, and patted me on the back.
'You'll be fine,' he said.
As we climbed back in the helicopter Weatherby said, 'You haven't fulfilled your side of the bargain, where is Miss Pfinnenwicken?'
'She was headed to the South Downs,' I said, 'apparently there were some druids seen there she thought might be the Black Goat.'
Weatherby nodded. 'We'll head there for the goat,' he said, 'if we find her we'll just ask her to come with us.'
'What about you,' shouted Cholderton over the roar of the engines starting up, 'where can we drop you?'
'I can't come with you?' I shouted back.
'No civilians,' he said, 'not in the field.'
I was angry, but in a way, I think, I was relieved. I wanted to hand over the problem, I wanted to believe that these people were competent to handle it, I wanted to be a child, and let the grown ups worry about grown up things. I had felt like a child in the presence of Mog Ruith. I wanted to go back to my simple and safe and ordinary life. I wanted to go to work on Monday morning like nothing had happened, confident in the knowledge that I was being protected by my government.
'Bedford,' I shouted, 'I left my car there.'
Cholderton gave me the thumbs up. 'Plenty of airbases near Bedford, I'll get on the horn and make sure there is somebody to drive you in to town.'
With a whine, the helicopter floated up into the swirling sleet.
