by Holly Race
The knights have killed a few already. The bodies of a copper and a bronze treitre lie in the centre of the battle. I catch brief glimpses of my friends. Samson shooting his bow at the reaching claws of one treitre; Natasha diving off Domino to stab at the underbelly of another. Phoebe leaps between her horse and her lion, using them each to distract the monsters from attacking another knight. In the centre of the fighting is Lord Allenby, still proudly astride his charger, shooting and whipping his crossbow back and forth faster than I thought possible.
There are far more fallen knights than treitres, though. I can barely see them beneath the fighting, but they are there, carpeting the ground. Then my heart catches in my throat. On the outskirts of the battle, one body has been half eaten. His face is the only thing recognisable about him. Rafe. The Rafe who rescued me from the angels on that first night, the first person to give me a nickname. I gulp the wind, needing it to fill the cave in my stomach.
‘Ready?’ Ollie says, his voice catching with emotion.
‘God, yes,’ I reply. Let’s turn this devastation into rage.
I force the image of all those bodies out of my head. Mustn’t think about them. Must. Not. Think. That becomes a mantra as Ollie and I dive down into the fray. I can’t dwell on the dead, but have to do what I can to keep the living safe. One treitre grabs Natasha by the waist and is about to feast on her when I pick it up and throw it against a building with such force that its metal skin cracks. There are too many to tackle at once though. Everywhere I look, knights are being killed. A boy only a year older than me has his ribcage sliced open and his organs torn out. They spread like ribbons across the road. His vacant eyes stare up at me accusingly.
In the distance, I hear a whinny. Lamb gallops into the square, dodging between treitres, searching for me. I leap towards her, landing in the saddle and snatching up the reins. A silver treitre clatters towards me. I push from beneath it with my mind and lift it into the air, before throwing it towards another one that’s tearing dreamers from the rooftops. With a flick of satisfaction, I use the first treitre’s rapier claws to stab its fellow, pinning both of them to the ground where they fall, one immobile, one dying.
Then I spot Samson. He’s fighting off a treitre four times his height. I steer Lamb towards him, drawing my scimitar from its sheath. ‘Duck!’ I shout. He throws himself to the ground as I slash at the monster. It doesn’t move, confident that a simple sword won’t do it any harm. But this is not a simple sword – not in my hands. I push some inspyre into it through the handle. A glorious blue flame ignites along the blade. When I slash at the creature, its hide parts beneath the inspyre inferno and it falls to the ground, writhing as the light works its way deep inside the skin. On my way back, I pull Samson up behind me.
‘We’re too few, and too small,’ Samson shouts above the din.
‘I’m trying my best!’
He clings on to me as Lamb swerves to one side to avoid a fallen knight. Pain courses through my ribs and shoulder.
‘I just wish we could match their size,’ Samson says. ‘It might take away some of their advantage.’
Of course. I curse inwardly at not thinking of it myself. As Samson leaps onto his horse, I slip off Lamb’s back and roll away, finding cover. I’m going to need stillness to do this, and most of all I need to be able to see everyone. I realise I’m leaning against the platform that leads out of Annwn. All I need to do is pull out my mirror and I could be safe at home. The thought crosses my mind for a second and no more.
A few of the knights are still on horseback, and it’s them that I focus on. Holding them all in my mind is difficult when I keep hearing the sounds of slicing, and metal on metal, and death, but I try my best to block all of that out.
Bigger, I think. Stronger.
My already ragged brain is stretching, wrung out like a wet sheet. The pain is almost unbearable, but underneath that is something else. I can feel every one of my fellow knights growing in stature, their horses too.
When I open my eyes, the knights match the assassins, head to head. Samson leaps on one treitre’s back and, now too heavy for it to throw off, yanks its slender throat back and stabs an arrow through its jugular. Ollie’s horse leaps like a stag into the air, giving him an opening to bring one of his chakrams down on another treitre’s head. Lord Allenby holds his horse still as he corners two monsters and peppers them with a stream of super-sized arrows.
I wade out into the fray again, keeping half my concentration on holding my comrades in their new forms and half on the scimitar in my hand. Now my comparatively small height is an advantage. The treitres are so focused on the larger knights that they don’t notice me. Swiping at back legs, I hobble a few of them, before darting underneath their bellies and stabbing upwards.
In amidst them all I can just spot Ollie and Phoebe, fighting back to back. Phoebe’s lion, snapping its powerful jaws left and right, pushes the assassins back. Arrows rain down on us from above, and I look up to see reeves and harkers firing makeshift bows from the parapets. A raincloud emerges from the highest tower of Tintagel to divebomb the fray. The morrigans flit from treitre to treitre, pecking at their eyes. They are no match for the monsters, though – the treitres gobble them up, ten to a mouthful.
‘No!’ I hear Ollie shout, and twist round to see Phoebe’s lion with its claws dug deep into the flank of one of the assassins. Then I spot why he’s so distressed. Instead of fighting off the lion, three more treitres have pounced on Phoebe. They hold her down. I run towards them, dodging the spiked tail of one treitre and leaping over the open maw of another. Phoebe screams incoherently. Between them, her figure looks tiny. Ollie bats at the assassins helplessly. Phoebe thrashes against their grip. For a split second her eyes meet mine. Two different kinds of desperation punch together: the desperation of knowing I cannot save her; the desperation of knowing that she cannot be saved. I throw my power towards her, but it’s too late. One of the treitres rakes its claws across Phoebe’s chest, blood blooms in neat lines, and her lion falls to the ground beside her still body, a stuffed toy once more.
For an instant the other knights return to their usual size, like a lightbulb flickering, before I kick myself back into focus. I can’t go to pieces yet, or everyone else will die, just like Phoebe, just like Ramesh and Rafe. Their deaths are already on me, I can’t bear any more.
‘Fall back!’ Allenby shouts in the distance. Some of the knights try to obey him, but more treitres block their way, leaping easily in front of the castle steps.
Ollie tugs at me, and I jump up behind him. He rides away from Phoebe’s body as though he’s haunted.
‘It’s too much,’ Ollie gasps. ‘It’s too hard, Fern.’
‘I know. We can’t … We’re not enough.’
The castle doors open and people stream through them. Thanes in tunics of every colour, clad in ill-fitting armour, charge, seeing us faltering and refusing to let us fight alone. None of them are trained warriors, though. Drew the apothecary is tossed high into the air. A flying treitre swoops down to catch him. I don’t see him again.
I’m forced to cling on to Ollie as Balius dodges wildly to avoid a treitre. We come so close to it that we brush its flank as we pass. For a split second, I am jolted by a vision. A little red-headed girl, clutching a red-haired man’s leg. Ollie gasps in pain, and I am back in Annwn.
‘Did you see that too?’ I say in his ear.
‘Of course I did. That was his sister.’
Something Mum wrote springs to my mind. As with everything that is frightening to us, the most important thing is to find out what makes it human.
‘I have an idea,’ I breathe. Maybe it’s not much of an idea, but it might just do the trick. It relies on these creatures having some humanity left in them, and I don’t know if they do. Who knows if it can be done at all? The image of Rafe, what was left of him, discarded on a pile of corpses, flashes before me. Deep breaths, Fern. Phoebe, trapped, those claws in her chest, her scream, her sc
ream, her scream.
Focus. I have to do this. For all of them.
I fixate on the treitre we just brushed past. Inspyre gathers in front of me, ready to do my bidding. I imagine the little red-haired girl – the treitre’s sister – and there she is, hovering in midair. With a flick of my mind, I conjure a knife and hold it to her throat. She calls out to her brother in fear. Instantly, the treitre twists round and transforms into a burly teenager, a scar stretching from cheek to cheek. The nearby knights don’t wait to ask what’s going on. They pounce on the man as he runs towards his sister, his human form now no match for the knights’ swords and arrows.
‘Yes!’ Ollie hisses. Something splatters onto the hand that’s holding his waist. Blood. I feel my own nosebleed coming on. We have to be quick.
We move on through the battle, a group of knights shadowing us as they start to realise what we’re doing. One assassin is felled by the sight of his former comrade, dressed in khakis, his head split wide open. Another rises into the air as a winged treitre, but falls to the ground as a pale woman, sobbing at the sight of her lover, his face bloody and his limbs mangled.
We are winning. Some treitres flee, choosing to abandon their job rather than risk death or, worse, coming face to face with their greatest fear. My head feels as though it’s being crushed beneath Medraut’s inspyre again. I can feel the blood seeping from my ears now as well as my nose. But I’m not done yet.
‘Just … one … left,’ I say, right before it crashes into my shoulder.
My hip explodes in pain as I am thrown from Ollie’s horse and smashed against the cobbles. I curl into a foetus.
Everything is seething darkness. Then something beautiful appears through that night. The treitre that killed my mother has cornered me at last. I try to push the monster away with my power, but that rips through my head so badly that I can’t help but wail.
I can feel the other knights wink back to their normal size. The treitre walks towards me slowly, like a hunter not wanting to startle its wounded prey. It slips a long claw beneath my body and scoops me up as though I weigh no more than a sparrow.
It has no breath, but its skin is hot.
I struggle, but my strength is utterly spent. Dimly, I hear Samson’s roar as he throws himself uselessly at the monster.
The treitre’s claws tinkle prettily, like crystal.
‘Fern!’ Ollie shouts. ‘Think of Mum!’
Mum? She isn’t here. How will she help?
‘Mum is the key, Fern! Mum is the key!’
The puzzle starts to slot together.
A woman called Una Gorlois swims into focus before me. Her dark hair undulates as though she is underwater. ‘My darling,’ she says in her balsamic voice, and every syllable jabs through my head because I am making her say it. ‘Darling, I’m so proud of you.’
The treitre pauses to study the image of my mother. Still in its grip, I watch its eyes, deep and black, and to me they seem sad. But not enough to rip through its golden skin to the human beneath.
‘Fern.’ Ollie is beside me. He doesn’t step in front of the treitre, but he’s here, with me, and that’s what matters. ‘Fern, do you understand?’
All that I have learned about my mother spins together at last. Morrigans, fear, regret and long-dead friends.
I claim this life for Sebastien Medraut.
This life, not this death.
Yes, I understand. I reach out, and Ollie grabs my hand. Now we know exactly what to do.
Summoning up the last vestiges of my power, I make my mother turn away from me, towards the monster.
‘You’ve betrayed my little girl,’ Mum says.
The treitre drops me and dips its head, as though it’s trying not to meet Mum’s eyes.
‘You betrayed me,’ Mum says, ‘after everything I did for you.’
The treitre bows down, clawing at the floor as if desperate to burrow into the ground.
‘How could you? How could you, Ellen?’
And with those words, the treitre falls to all fours and convulses. It writhes as the golden hide shrivels, as the claws recede. The skin falls off it in great, ragged flakes. As the human face emerges from beneath that deformed head, I see someone I recognise. Not a stranger called Ellen at all, but one of the few people I ever respected. Before I lose myself to the oblivion of pain, I give her a name.
Helena Corday.
52
‘Hey, sis,’ a sleepy voice says close by. I crack open an eye.
The bland Ithr ceilings of our local hospital are becoming a little too recognisable these days. Ollie isn’t sitting beside me this time, though. He’s lying in the bed next to me with his head swathed in bandages. Something thick is pressing on my forehead. My head must be bandaged too.
‘What happened?’ I ask groggily.
‘The usual.’
‘Bleeding noses and ears?’
‘And eyes. Don’t forget the eyes.’
‘Of course.’
I try to sit up, but the back of my head pounds and I think better of it.
‘How long have we been out for?’
‘Most of the day.’
The events of last night come flooding back to me. Rafe, only his head recognisable. Drew, who knows how he died? And Phoebe’s body, the stripes of blood on her chest, her young eyes wearily accepting. I turn my face to the wall and let the tears flow. Ollie sniffs, and I turn to see him pressing his hands into his eyes to stem his own sobs.
When my grief has hollowed me out, I reach across to my brother.
‘Helena, Ollie, it was Helena,’ I say.
‘Ellen. Ellen Cassell.’
‘She’s our MP. She came to visit after … after the fire.’
‘What?’
‘She seemed … good,’ I say, more to myself than Ollie. It doesn’t make sense. She was supposed to be fighting Medraut.
‘She must have changed her name,’ Ollie says, ‘or maybe she always had different names in Ithr and Annwn, like Ramesh.’
‘How did you realise?’ I say.
‘I wasn’t certain,’ Ollie admits, ‘but the feeling I had when I was inside her memory of killing Mum was so weird. It was like she hated her and loved her all at the same time. I know something about that.’
He looks at me guiltily.
‘Then last night I remembered you talking to Lord Allenby about how close Mum was to Ellen.’
I nod. ‘I remembered that no one saw Ellen being killed, and she was the first one. She must have faked her own death.’
Ollie nods, but before we can unpick the mystery further, the door opens and my dad enters bearing two cardboard cups. Clemmie is right behind him, clutching a barrage of Get Well Soon balloons.
‘Ols, I got us hot chocolates –’ Dad sees that I’m awake and breaks into a grin. ‘Ferny! Here, have mine.’
‘It’s okay, Dad. Fern and I can share.’
I look across at Ollie. He smirks back. Bastard. He knows that sharing and chocolate don’t go together in my vocabulary.
‘Sure.’
Dad looks from Ollie to me and back again. Then he sets the cups down on the table between us and goes to the window, where he rubs his eyes vigorously.
‘Let me get the doctor,’ Clemmie says and potters out of the room.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a mix of emotions in one day. When he finally gets us signed out of hospital, Dad seems so overjoyed that his children are speaking to each other that he infects Ollie and I with a manic happiness. Even Clemmie is only mildly annoying.
Once Dad’s forced some food into us, we persuade him to turn on the news. Of course, we already know what’s going to be the leading story.
The anchor looks sombre. ‘More devastation swept the nation this morning as hundreds were found dead in their beds. Nearly four hundred lives were lost in similar circumstances just a few months ago in March. The latest deaths, which current estimates suggest are close to a thousand, could indicate a trend that scientists a
re calling a “tragic phenomenon”.’
Nearly a thousand dead. All for the sake of Sebastien Medraut’s lust for power.
It’s with some relief that Ollie and I bid Dad goodnight.
‘Sleep well.’ Ollie smiles up at me, then grimaces and puts a hand to his head. Dad follows him into his room, and Clemmie helps me up the stairs to my bed. She tucks me in and squeezes my hand before she turns the light out.
Ollie and I land in Annwn at the same time. It feels so strange to be back here, when only yesterday we were surrounded by the carnage and noise and the smell of battle. I go to the place where Phoebe died and kneel. This time I forbid the memory of her final seconds, and force myself to remember her alive instead – quiet but confident, warm but strong. The kind of woman I wish I could have been.
‘Fern? Let’s go.’ Ollie is still on edge, perhaps not quite believing that the treitres have truly gone.
The castle is silent. Thanes approach us to squeeze our shoulders or shake our hands. Rachel folds me into a hug and we just stand there, in the middle of the courtyard, quietly crying into each other’s necks.
Samson finds me before long. He holds me at arm’s length and smiles sadly. He lost more friends last night than I did. It’s only now that I realise that Rafe was always by his side – his absence is a sort of kalend. ‘You really are extraordinary, Fern King,’ Samson tells me, but I ignore the compliment. If I were that extraordinary, Tintagel wouldn’t feel so unbearably empty.
