Tadgh awoke slung over the back of a horse thundering through the woods. He saw the shadows of several figures running alongside them, as his eye twitched at an unpleasant sensation on his face. He reached up to touch his nose, but was prevented when the horse came skidding to a halt. A hand grabbed his back to stop Tadgh tumbling off, and once he'd regained his senses he stumbled over towards a nearby tree. Slumping down against it, his vision blurred as he felt a dull, throbbing pain on his head. All around him, the Men of Tuireann conversed with each other, with one eventually coming over to tend to him.

'Wh..What happened..,' Tadgh groaned, as the assassin studied him briefly and then, without warning, reached out and pulled his nose to one side, setting it back into place. Tadgh cried out in agony, looking up furiously to see that it was the slender woman, the one who had scouted out the Tavern.

'You cow!,' he hissed, and the woman snorted as she applied an ointment to her hand and pressed it up against Tadgh's head. He clenched his eyes shut at the sharp sting, though it proved brief as his vision cleared.

'Says you,' Tuireann remarked coldly, 'You look much more like a cow than I do'

'Did we succeed?,' Tadgh asked, ignoring her as his memory returned. The woman scowled and shook her head, looking over toward the gaggle of assassins assembled nearby. It might have been his memory, but Tadgh could have sworn that there had been more of them previously..

'We did not,' Tuireann hissed, her tone somehow colder than before, 'You, you stupid oaf, stepped on a branch and alerted some brat nearby..that said, it's not entirely your fault,' she conceded, 'Our leader was reckless, he neglected to scout the camp out first and now two of Tuireann's sons our dead on his watch!'

Tadgh swallowed, his assumption having been correct as he studied the group before them. He could see the little leader in the middle, with a short, patchy white beard and a scabby face. The crowd around him withdrew for a moment, whispering in the shadows. The lead Tuireann noticed Tadgh watching him, and their face formed into an ugly snarl. Before he could say anything though, the crowd dispersed and a lone assassin approached. They drew their sword.

It was the same person who had spoken to Tadgh at their old camp and who had spied on Harry and Siobh in the village. A fair, brown haired man with brilliant orange eyes, he had knelt before this disgraced Leader once. Now, it looked like the rolls had been drastically reversed.

'You are to die,' this Tuireann said plainly. The now ex-leader bowed his head in acceptance, before he looked up at his killer. For a brief moment, what looked like a hundred emotions passed over his face before it settled into a stonefaced, emotionless expression.

'Then let it be done,' he muttered, and before Tadgh could comprehend what was happening, the assassin had knelt down and slit his leader's throat. His body fell to one side, twitching as he breathed his last, before silence fell upon the clearing. The assassins emerged from the shadows, disregarding the body as they did. As Tadgh tried to absorb what had just happened, the woman got up and stepped away, pulling up her hood. Tadgh caught a glimpse of her wicked grin, as he realised that he was being surrounded.

'Don't look so surprised!,' Tuireann laughed, 'I didn't say that it wasn't your fault, just not entirely!'

Tadgh said nothing, angry words stuck in his throat as he felt himself go pale. The new leader approached, and in the moonlight Tadgh could see that it was the same man who had recruited him in the bar. His orange eyes were devoid of any feeling, and his sword remained drawn as the others descended into a fierce debate.

'He's a burden!' one declared, 'We'll have to kill twice as many animals just to feed him!'

'They could still have their uses, after all, who would suspect a fat oaf such as he to be a spy for us?' another added. A murmur of agreement went through one half of the crowd at his suggestion. Tadgh felt he would make a good spy too; one of his few pastimes apart from drinking and beating Harry was watching James Bond films.

'We would have to train him, a waste of valuable resources!,' one assassin on the left shot back, 'We cannot just make any man an assassin either,' he remarked, looking down at Tadgh, 'This one has a black heart, but not black enough to kill!'

'Pehaps..,' the new leader purred, 'His emotions are too entrenched, but there is another I can think of..one who is a font of raw, malleable emotion..'

'You don't mean..,' Tadgh muttered, a hand upon his head.

'Yes, your son would be the perfect to be an assassin!,' Tuireann grinned maniacally and crouching down in front of Tadgh, 'His fear, his anger..all easily moldable into something greater, all thanks to..you,' he sighed dramatically, when Tadgh leapt at him in fury. He seemed to catch Tuireann off guard, bowling him over. However, the assassin quickly recovered, launching Tadgh backwards by planting two feet firmly into his gut. As Tadgh struggled to get to his feet, Tuireann circled him, his mocking laugh almost driving Tadgh insane. The crowd of assassins behind him also did a poor job of hiding their mirth.

'Kill him! Kill him!,' one of them called out, but the Leader scowled and raised a fist to silence them. Tadgh, however, felt the blood rush to his head and it was pumping from his injury. On his knees, he collapsed back to all fours as the assassin's laughter grew louder. The rage built with each moment; all he had wanted was to raise his son his way. His lowly Witch of a partner had dared to stand against him, Harry had betrayed him and now he was almost face down in the dirt, as the rejects of society laughed at him. Tuireann's boot pushing him over onto his side was the last straw.

All Tadgh remembered next was jumping to his feet, but his next act would be burned into the memory of the assassins present. The oaf had stood up in an instant, so quick that even their new Leader paused in surprise. Just as quickly, Tadgh reached out and snapped in the direction of the man who had urged Tuireann to kill him. There was a chilling crk, and the Assassin collapsed, his head permanently twisted to one side and their neck fatally contorted.

'Perhaps we were wrong..,' Tuireann purred, as Tadgh absorbed what he had done, 'Here we have a man who will not back down, who will bring suffering to all those who would wrong him. Think, friends, where someone with his ambition could take us!,' he called back over to the silent group, as Tadgh coughed violently.

'I..I killed him..how..'

'You killed him..,' Tuireann explained, turning back to Tadgh, '..Through your will. Do away with your noble delusions. Do you really think, even without having taken a life, that once you have your son, that you'll be allowed to keep him?,' he asked, 'At best, you will rot in the Gatekeeper's custody. At worst? You will be executed and publicly so. Either way, both Worlds will remember you as a failure. That is, if you do not stand up, take my hand and pledge yourself to be a Son of Tuireann!'

Tadgh rolled over on the ground, staring up at the stars. He realised that Tuireann was right; he was on the run from the Gatekeepers and even if he got Harry back, it didn't mean things would get any better. And his will..through his will he had opened this path. He had willed from Harry the magic that brought them to the Otherworld, willed himself to stand up to its guardians and now he willed himself to survive,

Mustering up his strength, Tadgh pushed himself up and to his feet. He got a handle on the pain of his head injury as in the moonlight, he could see Tuireann smiling underneath his hood. The other assassins slunk back slightly into the shadows. They had underestimated him; Tadgh was more than the fat bumbling oaf they'd previously thought him as. The Leader reached out and took Tadgh by the wrist, holding his arm up to the night sky.

'Behold Tuireann's newest child! Soon, we shall all follow his stead, and all will learn to fear the name of our Father, both in this World and the one above!,' he declared, and the assassins before them broke into a polite, yet stiff, applause. Tadgh could hear some muttering under his breath as he nursed his wrist and looked to Tuireann. Before, the fact he had quickly gotten used to the corpse splayed out before him would have unnerved him. Not anymore.

'If yer right,' he growled, 'One day I won't need you anymore..'

'Correct, but right now you need me more than ever,' the Leader replied, a small glint in his eye, 'Your will is no longer totally blind, but still needs to be guided. I can help you there, but we still have this little errand to tend to..,' he murmured. Putting a hand on Tadgh's back, they moved away from the group, who had begun to talk quietly among themselves.

'Taking care of our target?,' Tadgh asked and the Leader nodded, rummaging through a pack on one of the horses and offering Tadgh a flask of water. As he drank heartily, Tadgh found himself lingering on why the assassins were pursuing Ruadrí. All he knew so far was his name, and that he'd raised a particularly loathsome child indeed.

'Ruadrí..,' Tuireann muttered, '..is a traitor of the highest order. Like I said, not everyone who joined us is a killer. Ruadrí was just a thief, a vandal, little more than a village nuisance. But like you, he was a useful nuisance. There was a noble in Ruadrí's village who we needed dead, but our assassin couldn't get past his guards. Since Ruadrí knew the streets, he was paid to find a back way in. We told him we wanted to steal the noble's treasure..but instead our brother snuck in after Ruadrí and killed the noble in his sleep..'

'I see..,' Tadgh murmured, taking another swig of water, '..but why join us then? Would they have thought he was guilty?'

'Ah, but Ruadrí was guilty!,' Tuireann laughed, 'He had led our brother into the noble's home, and even if he had been tricked, he was still going to commit a crime! He thought he was robbing him after all! He fled with our brother like a coward..but that came back to bite us in the end,' Tuireann muttered, 'Cowards, we learned, are as dangerous as any one of us!'

Before Tadgh could ask what he meant, one of the assassins approached them hurriedly, looking over their shoulder as the others began to scramble behind them. Not too far off in the distance, Tadgh could see a light flickering among the tree, and it was only when a branch fell that he realised what it was; a raging inferno engulfing the whole forest.

'The Fianna have tracked us here!,' the second Tuireann exclaimed, 'They're going to smoke us out of the forest or burn us alive!'

'Scatter!,' the Leader ordered, grabbing Tadgh and leading him over to a nearby horse. Heaving himself up, the smell of smoke began to permeate his nostrils as Tuireann cracked the reins and the horse took off at a gallop. Quickly overtaking the others, also on horseback, the Leader shouted back to them.

'Keep close and form a fist! We'll charge through the first group and then we'll split up! Every man and woman for themselves!'

There was a cry of agreement from the others, as Tadgh clung on for dear life. Thundering through the undergrowth, he remembered the technique they'd used previously; travelling under the earth so they would go undetected by the Fianna.

'Not all forests are open to us!,' Tuireann shouted back over the roar of hooves, 'After we were betrayed, the Fianna took over many of our old routes..'

Tadgh lingered on the word betrayed as they came charging out of the forest and the moonlight almost blinded him. They had surprised a group of Fianna, preparing to set the other side of the forest ablaze. Swords flashed, blood spurted and three of the four Fianna fell in agony. The other was trampled underneath their horses.

'A small victory,' Tuireann growled, 'And soon we will have our vengeance!,' he called out to the group behind, who responded with a resounding cheer.

'Where will we meet you?,' the woman who had been tending to Tadgh earlier called out. Tadgh felt all eyes fall on him, and realised that only he would have that answer. After all, they needed to catch Harry en route to wherever he was going, and Tadgh snarled as the word came to his mind. The place he had escaped from all those years ago after stowing away on a ferry.

'Trollberg..HE WANTS TO DRAG ME THE WHOLE WAY BACK TO FECKING TROLLBERG!,' Tadgh roared, his head wound throbbing violently. He heard some of the assassins murmur behind him, and even Tuireann was slow in his response.

'Trollberg..out across the sea, where none of the Tuatha de Danann have set foot in centuries..,' he muttered, before he pulled the reins on the horse and wheeled around to face his minions. The remaining assassins barely managed to stop themselves from colliding with them in time.

'This is hardly a time for a speech!,' one blurted, 'Not when the Fianna are on our tail!'

'Ah, but which one of you would follow us to Trollberg, where we can strike and operate without having to hide away like rats?,' the Leader asked, drawing his sword and pointing to each of them. Tadgh remained silent. The Leader was evidently someone who dreamed big, but if his future was to be with the Men of Tuireann, he didn't want it to be in bloody Trollberg. If Johanna ever figured it out she'd set the bloody witches on him, and maybe her daughter to boot..

But the other assassins seemed more than keen, each nodding their heads as Leader continued to fill their head with dreams that Tadgh wasn't listening to. An island all to themselves where the Fianna couldn't touch them, they didn't need to think twice. They thundered off once more, as the forest behind them was devoured by the wildfire set by the Fianna. Tadgh didn't dare relax, however, as cries were heard behind them. The fire had lit up the horizon beyond, and had lit up the assassins shadows as well. Breaking off into groups of two on the Leaders order, Tadgh clung onto the man as the horse galloped down a rocky hill, the treatment to his head injury slowly wearing out.

Trollberg..Trollberg..no matter how he felt, it seemed that everything would end where it had begun. All the way back in Trollberg..

AUTHORS NOTES

Murder! Oh yes, this chapter really brings things up a notch. I wanted to write this chapter to show that the Men of Tuireann aren't your run of the mill antagonists, they're your of the mill antagonists with a splash of murder!

Character wise, Tadgh killing that assassin was a pretty big break from what I had planned for him. He was always meant to be above killing, since he saw no point in it, but re-writing this chapter I realised that there was no way he'd live without doing so. Otherwise the assassins would have killed him themselves.

In killing, Tadgh has given in fully to that deluded part of himself. Of course, he doesn't think he's deluded, he thinks it's his right to dominate Harry because he's his Father. He will have the perfect warrior son, even if it means joining forces with the worst of the worst. Course, he was always close to that anyway. Notice how he labels Hilda as "her (Johanna's) daughter"?

I was also a little aimless with the motives of the assassins for a time. For a while it was just "Grrr Ruadrí" and that was it. Now that they have the aim of making Trollberg their new home, there'll be much more at risk other than losing Harry once again..

All of this is also a preface to Part 14, which is the chapter I've had the most fun writing so far and know you guys will enjoy reading! And you only have to wait 6 days instead of 7 cause I'm a forgetful little man! Or will I make ye wait until next Monday instead?

Until then, good luck, take care and I'll see ye all soon for the most eventful part so far..