Hunted
(The sixth book in the Iron Druid Chronicles series)
A novel by Kevin Hearne
For the Confederacy of Nerds:
AK, Barushka, Alan, Tooth,
and Pilot John
Pronunciation Guide
As always, please remember that while I provide these for reference, I’m completely okay with you pronouncing these names however you wish, because the entire point of reading is to enjoy yourself and not stress out about unusual names from mythology. If, however, you enjoy knowing how to pronounce them, here you go:
Aillil = ALL-yill (In The Wooing of Étaín, this name is held by both Étaín’s father and the brother of Eochaid Airem. It’s used here to refer to the brother.)
Amergin = AV er ghin (legendary Irish bard whose name is spelled and pronounced many different ways. The modern Irish spelling is Amhairghin and pronounced something like OUR yin, but the Morrigan would use the Old Irish spelling and pronunciation.)
Brí Léith = Bree LAY (the síd or home of Midhir)
Eochaid Airem = OH het EH rem (High King of Ireland once upon a time)
Étaín = eh TEEN (so epically hot they wrote an epic about her)
Fódhla = FOH-la (one of the poetic names of Ireland and the name of the Irish elemental)
Fúamnach = FOO am nah (Midhir’s wife)
Midhir = ME er (member of the Tuatha Dé Danann; half brother to Aenghus Óg and Brighid)
Orlaith = OR la (Yep, that –ith on the end is just to make it look pretty)
Dukla = DOOK la
Gościniec pod Furą = gohsht NEE etz pohd FOO roh (basically long o wherever you see oh)
Jasło = YAHS woh
Katowice = Kat oh VEET suh (city in southern Poland)
Pustków Wilczkowski = POOST kov wiltch KOV ski
Sokołowska = SO ko WOV ska
Wojownika = Vai yov NEE ka
Wrocław = Vroht SWOF
Żubrówka = Zhu BRUF ka (bison grass vodka, popular in Poland and available here, quite tasty mixed with apple juice or cider)
Translation Note
There is a passage in the novel where Atticus recites some verses from Dante’s Purgatorio in the original Italian, but he neglects to share an English translation. I have duplicated the verses here and followed each with a translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
From Canto V:
Là ’ve ’l vocabol suo diventa vano,
arriva’ io forato ne la gola,
fuggendo a piede e sanguinando il piano.
There where the name thereof becometh void
Did I arrive, pierced through and through the throat,
Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain.
Quivi perdei la vista e la parola;
nel nome di Maria fini’, e quivi
caddi, e rimase la mia carne sola.
There my sight lost I, and my utterance
Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
Chapter 1
It’s odd how when you feel safe you can’t think of that thing it was you kept meaning to do, but when you’re running for your life you suddenly remember the entire list of things you never got around to doing.
I always wanted to get blindly drunk with a mustachioed man, take him back to his place, do a few extra shots just this side of severe liver damage, and then shave off half his mustache when he passed out. I would then install surveillance equipment before I left so that I could properly appreciate his reaction (and his hangover) when he woke up. And of course I would surveil him from a black windowless van parked somewhere along his street. There would be a wisecracking computer science graduate from MIT in the van with me who almost but not quite went all the way once with a mousy physics major who dumped him because he didn’t accelerate her particles.
I can’t remember when I thought that one up and added it to my list. It was probably after I saw True Lies. It was never particularly high up on my list, for obvious reasons, but the memory came back to me, fully fantasized in Technicolor, once I was running for my life in Romania. Our minds are mysteries.
Somewhere behind me, the Morrigan was fighting off two goddesses of the hunt. Artemis and Diana had decided that I needed killing, and the Morrigan had pledged to protect me from such violent death. Oberon ran on my left and Granuaile on my right; all around me, the forest quaked silently with the pandemonium of Faunus, disrupting Druidic tethers to Tír na nÓg. I could not shift away to safety. All I could do was run and curse the ancient Greco–Romans.
Unlike the Irish and the Norse—and many other cultures—the Greco–Romans did not imagine their gods as eternally youthful but vulnerable to violent death. Oh, they had nectar and ambrosia to keep their skin wrinkle-free and their bodies in prime shape, changing their blood to ichor, and that was similar to the magical food and drink available to other pantheons, but that wasn’t the end of it. They could regenerate completely, which essentially gifted them with true immortality, so that even if you shredded them like machaca and ate them with guacamole and warm tortillas, they’d just re-spawn in a brand-new body on Olympus and keep coming after you—hence the reason why Prometheus never died, in spite of having his liver eaten every day by a vulture who oddly never sought variety in his diet.
That didn’t mean a fella couldn’t beat them. Aside from the fact that they can be slain by other immortals, the Olympians have to exist in time like everyone else. I’d tossed Bacchus onto an island of slow time in Tír na nÓg, and the Olympians took it personally—so personally that they’d rather kill me than get Bacchus back.
I didn’t think for a moment I could do the same to the huntresses. They were far more adept in combat, for one thing, and they’d be watching each other’s back while doing their best to shoot me in mine.
“Where are we going?” Granuaile asked.
“Roughly north for now. Situation’s fluid.”
<I may have left some fluid back there when I saw those arrows coming,> Oberon said. The Morrigan had taken both arrows in her shield and told us to run.
“I almost did too, Oberon,” Granuaile said. She could hear his voice now that she was a full Druid. “I should have been ducking or tackling Atticus or almost anything else, but instead I was just trying my damnedest not to pee.”
“We’ll have to take a potty break later,” I said. “Distance is key right now.”
“And I’m guessing stealth isn’t? This is going to be an easy trail to follow the way we’re moving through the forest.”
“We’ll get crafty when we have the space to do so.”
The Morrigan’s raspy voice entered my head. It wasn’t my favorite habit of hers, but it was convenient at the moment. Her tone was exultant.
Here is a battle worthy of remembrance! How I wish there were witnesses and a bard like Amergin to put it down in song!
Morrigan—
Listen, Siodhachan. I can keep them from pursuing you for some while. But they will hunt again soon enough.
They will? What about you?
I am better than they. But not immortal. My end is near; I have seen it. But what an end it will be!
I slowed down and looked back. Granuaile and Oberon paused too. You’re going to die?