Hounded

shuffleboard and tiddlywinks. Others didn’t.
    Perry finally found some time to mess around with the Tarot decks and had a serviceable display up by closing time. I rode quickly to the widow’s house after locking up the store and retrieved the push mower from her shed in the backyard.
    » Ah, yer a fine boy, Atticus, and that’s no lie, « she said, saluting me with her whiskey glass as she came out to the front porch to watch me work. She liked to sit in her rocking chair and sing old Irish songs to me—old for her, anyway—over the whirl of the lawnmower blades. Sometimes she would forget the words and simply hum the tune, and I enjoyed that just as much. When I was finished, I always spent a pleasant time with her, hearing stories of her younger days in the old country. That day, as the sun was setting and the shadows were lengthening, she was telling me something about running around the streets of Dublin with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. » This was all before I met me husband, o’course, « she made sure to add.
    I had Oberon stationed as sentinel on the edge of the lawn, close to the street. As the widow regaled me with tales of her Golden Age debauchery, I was depending on him to tell me of approaching danger.
    › Atticus, ‹ he said, as the widow was winding up her tale with a sigh over better days in a better land, › someone comes on foot from the north. ‹
    Is he a stranger? I had put Fragarach aside while I talked with the widow, but now I stood and slung the scabbard back over my head, causing the widow to frown.
    › Yes. He is very strange. I can smell the ocean on him from here. ‹
    Uh-oh. That’s not good. Stay still and try not to make any noise .
    » Excuse me, Mrs. MacDonagh, « I said, » someone’s coming and he might not be friendly. «
    » What? Who is it? Atticus? «
    I couldn’t answer yet, so I didn’t. I kicked off my sandals and drew power from the widow’s lawn even as I walked toward the street and peered northward. One of the charms on my necklace has the shape of a bear on it, and its function is to store a bit of magical power for me that I can tap when I’m walking on concrete or asphalt. I topped off the magical tank as a possible antagonist approached.
    A tall, armored figure clanked noisily on the asphalt a couple of houses away, and it raised a hand to hail me when I came into view. I activated a different charm that I call » faerie specs, « a sort of filter for my eyes that lets me see through Fae glamours and detect all sorts of magic juju. It showed me the normal spectrum, but then there was also a green overlay that revealed what was going on magically, and right now the two layers showed me the same thing. So whoever he was, I was looking at his true form. If he had something similar to my faerie specs, he might be able to see through Oberon’s camouflage, but then again, he might not.
    He was wearing rather gaudy bronze armor that no one would have worn in the old days. The cuirass, faced in hardened leather dyed with woad, covered too much and restricted movement. He had leaf-shaped tassets hanging down over a bronze mail skirt. He also had five-piece pauldrons and matching vambraces and greaves. It would have been hot enough to wear such armor in Ireland, but here the temperature was still in the low nineties, and he must have been broiling in it. His helmet was beyond ridiculous: It was one of those medieval barbutes that didn’t become popular until a thousand years after his halcyon days of slaughter, and he must have been wearing it as a joke, though I did not find it especially funny. A sword hung in a scabbard at his side, but thankfully he did not carry a shield.
    » I greet you, Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin, « he said. » Well met. « He flashed a smug grin at me through his helmet, and I wanted to slay him on the spot. I kept my faerie specs on, because I simply didn’t trust him. Without some way to pierce his glamour, he could make my eyes think he was standing three feet away with his hands on his head while he was really plunging a dagger into my belly.
    » Call me Atticus. I greet you, Bres. «
    » Not well met? « He tilted his head a bit to the right, as much as the barbute would let him.
    » Let’s see how the meeting goes. It’s been a long time since we have seen each other, and I wouldn’t have minded if it were longer. And by the way, the Renaissance Festival doesn’t arrive here until next February. «
    » That’s not