by Kim Wilkins
Thrymm whined as Skalmir was dragged out of the infirmary into the square where the army gathered, readying for war.
Bluebell stood with her eyes closed, the sun on her shoulders and an army swelled past one thousand soldiers having crossed the final fields towards Blicstowe. She gave herself a moment, quiet in the mind despite the din of armour and weapons and drums and voices. She imagined them from above, as though she were a bird with no investment in the outcome.
Hakon would know they were coming, so the flanking ditches would be full of archers and spears. But he would not have sent his best men, because he needed them inside the city. The combined forces of Thyrsland would surge through the earthworks easily, leaving only blood and bodies in their wake. Then her army would split into three. Two siege wedges for the north and west gates, ladders and rams being carried behind the shield wall. These were her secondary forces; she and the giants would take the main gate and try to keep the battle around the town square, the market, the king’s compound; away from civilian houses. If the other bands got through, they would circle the ice-men and drive them to the front, where they were impossibly outnumbered. Quick and simple.
Or so she liked to tell herself.
‘My lord?’
Bluebell opened her eyes.
Sighere was smiling at her. ‘What do you see when you close your eyes?’
‘Victory,’ she said, returning his smile.
She turned and gazed at the neat rows of soldiers with their gleaming weapons; the coloured banners catching the sun on a brilliantly cloudless morning; the giants with their clubs and shields and burnished helms. Heat rose in her blood and skin. She recognised this feeling; it was the thrill of coming battle.
Bluebell raised her sword and shouted, ‘Forward!’
All around her, the flanks locked shields. She turned towards the earthworks, locking in with Sighere and the rest of her hearthband. Her legs pumped her forward. Ahead, in the ditches, a forest of spears went up.
Bluebell began to run and the deafening clang of a thousand armed warriors running behind her cracked the sky. The dogs sped ahead as she ploughed into the first ditch, slashing out against raised spears. The familiar whoosh of arrows sailing down from the second ditch had her raise her shield. An arrow thudded into the shield, and she had only a blink to drop it in time to catch the spear tip of a raider, soon dispatched and rolling beneath her feet. She struck out to her left, where Gytha had fallen back, slashing out at a raider’s thighs, then taking the killing blow to his skull when he fell to his knees. Sighere on her other side ran another through before the raider had time to strangle Hyld off him. Bluebell scrambled up the other side of the gully and glanced ahead, where the giants had already arrived at the second ditch. With a swing of her club, Nepsed collected four archers who went flying, only to land and receive the spears and blades of Bluebell’s army. To her left and right, the wedges were already forming and splitting off. Hakon’s force in the earthworks was already thin, but the giants halved it with ease. She and her army kept up the pace, filling the flanking ditches with blood. Her shoulders ached; she had lost track of Hyld. Sighere trudged ahead, Gytha behind, walking off a glancing blow to her hip. Bluebell gave the call for the shield wall to lock in again, more difficult now there were spears to dodge and bodies to step over.
Eight long seconds later it was in place. The third flanking ditch was empty, but here they were in range for the archers on the city ramparts. The shields went overhead; the two wedges split off to the smaller gates. Up over the earthworks. Arrows fell, some finding their way through the gaps between shields. The warriors knew to close ranks over the fallen and keep moving as one, up onto the wide path that led to Blicstowe. The final ditch was deep, and the bridge nowhere in sight. Here they were most vulnerable to archers. They scrambled forward and down, barely holding formation. The sky was suddenly full of arrows, landing all around her in the ground and in her followers. One skidded past her head so close that it nicked her helmet, sending a clang through her ears. ‘Hold formation!’ she shouted, even though it was all but impossible while scrambling out of the ditch. She would lose many here; there was nothing to be done but lose them and keep going.
The giants bent to help pull others out, and soon the army was swarming back onto the path, re-forming and taking their spears to the gates. The storm of arrows continued, but the giants batted them off as though they were embroidery needles. Bluebell ran ahead and stood at the gate.
‘Here,’ she called to the giants, indicating the place she knew the iron brackets did not meet each other; the weakest place on the gate.
The six of them lined up and, in perfect rhythm, began to shoulder the gate.
Once. The bang thundered for miles.
Twice. The walls shook.
With the third slam against the gate, there was a crack. Arrows flew down furiously. Bluebell crouched under her shield, tucked in a corner made by the external wall of the gatehouse and the gate itself.
‘Keep going!’ she called.
Another slam, and she heard the screech of metal.
Then another final, violent shove, and the gate split open. Gagel kicked it down and Bluebell brought her army, once more locked by shields, into her city.
Hakon’s army was waiting, and wasted no time in swarming down on them. Countless pairs of feet stirred up the muddy ground. They were inside the gate, but Hakon was going to make them battle to get another inch. The gateway was a choke point, and the raiders were doing all they could to use it for victory. Bluebell and her thanes kept the pressure hard on them. Her sword arm and her shield arm worked without thought, so used to the skirmish. She pushed and pushed, killed and killed. Sighere, Sal, Gytha, all of them did the same, the size of the army behind them buoying and inspiring them. But the giants made it easy, swiping raiders out of the way as though they were playthings. The line began to break, and Bluebell felt her foot strike the familiar flagstones of the town square. Victory on her tongue. Once the rest of the army got inside …
‘My lord!’ Sighere’s voice was urgent. Panicked.
Gytha had grasped her elbow and pulled her close, pointing. Upwards. In among the whirl of the melee, Bluebell stopped and stared in horror.
On the roof of her hall stood Hakon, completely exposed. He held Snowy by the back of his neck. The thought crossed her mind that if only she had some kind of magic ability, like Ash or Rowan, she could tell Snowy with her eyes that she was pregnant, that he would live on in his son Beorin. The sadness that filled her nearly winded her.
Hakon saw that she had finally noticed him and grinned madly. ‘Kneel, bitch!’ he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Kneel!’
Skalmir knew that Bluebell would not kneel. He knew that she loved him but her loyalty was first to her kingdom. In the violent horror of the moment, with the ground vertiginously far away, he worried for her. Would she blame herself when Hakon pitched him off the roof?
‘Let him go!’ Bluebell called.
Skalmir could see that Sighere and Sal had drawn close to Bluebell, were fending off attacks while she dealt with Hakon.
Hakon pretend-pushed Skalmir, whose stomach went hollow. ‘Let him go, like this?’
‘Hakon, if you kill him I will extinguish all of you. There will be no mercy, not for the sick or the injured, not for your stewards or cooks or even your dogs.’
Skalmir could see she was deliberately not meeting his eye, not sharing a last loving glance with him. He tried to memorise her face, but it was impossible to see it clearly with her helm on. She was lying about the dogs. She would never kill them.
‘Thyrslanders know no mercy anyway. Kneel, and I will set him free.’
Bluebell fell silent. Skalmir knew that she was about to refuse, and then Hakon would cut his throat and throw him off the roof, and Bluebell would see that over and over in her mind’s eye for the rest of her life.
He would spare her. He would jump.
Skalmir bent his head fo
rward, slipping free of Hakon’s grip, the fore-feeling of the plunge filling his guts with air –
Thwack.
In an instant, everything changed, and at first Skalmir couldn’t make sense of it. Hakon had gone down on one knee, an arrow lodged in his thigh. As he did so, he tipped Skalmir. But instead of the sensation of falling, Skalmir felt as though the air had grown dense, elastic. It caught him. Hakon shoved against him with his shoulder but Skalmir still did not fall. Hakon, though, lost his balance and half slid down the roof, grasping at the thatching. Another arrow flew out of nowhere and lodged into the back of Hakon’s hand.
Skalmir’s toes stretched for purchase. The air that had caught him slowly pushed him back onto his heels, and then released him in a crouch on the roof. He grasped at its long wooden spine and searched with his gaze for where the arrow had come from. Rowan and Ash stood together on the roof of the granary, across the other side of the square. Rowan had her bow trained on Hakon, and Ash wore the enigmatic, black-eyed gaze that meant she was performing magic. Neither of them acknowledged Skalmir. Hakon, meanwhile, was trying to climb back up the thatching, but Rowan’s arrows kept landing around his hands, and then a gust of wind began to tug at him and he lost his grip. Hakon fell like a rag doll to the ground where Bluebell was waiting with the Widowsmith.
Before Skalmir could look away, Bluebell flipped Hakon’s broken body over with her foot, unwilling as ever to stab a man through his back, and plunged the blade into his heart. That was the end of Hakon the Raven King, Lord of the Crows, the first trimartyr king of the raiders.
The battle turned. Hakon’s men surged forward, howling their rage; the giants cleaved through them. Skalmir shifted around on his belly. The ladder Hakon had used to get them up remained in place, unnoticed as Hakon’s followers ran into the fray, howling for revenge. He ached. He was afraid. He knew that Willow was in the hall; he had seen her in her silver and white battle gear, looking like a deadly pillar of ice. Any moment she would step out and if she saw him …
He thought of Thorkel and Thrymm back at the infirmary, as the battle flared around them. When Bluebell’s army got that far, they would burst in and kill everyone inside.
Skalmir reached for the ladder, steadied himself on it a moment, then scrambled down. The battle raged on; he slipped away.
‘Hakon is dead,’ Maava said.
‘As you predicted,’ Willow answered, still on her throne. He was beautiful today; golden-haired and angelic and clean-shaven, as she imagined Avaarni might one day be. Not like rough, dirty Hakon. ‘Is it time yet?’
‘Soon.’
Willow rested her feet on the lifeless body of Arna, the latest victim of blood sacrifice she had used to make Maava manifest in her world. She had wanted Bluebell’s husband; she had wanted him so very badly, but Hakon had overruled her. He had a right to, as her husband.
But she’d secretly wished Maava would make him pay for it, and it seemed He had. She kept her eyes fixed on Maava’s face. His eyes smiled down at her. He was taller now, His head almost brushing the ceiling beams.
Outside, the alarm bells began to clang. ‘One of the other gates has been breached,’ she said.
‘Good. Soon they will all be here to witness it.’
She breathed deeply, fighting her sense of urgency. Trust Him. Trust Him.
Minutes stretched out. Her army were leaderless and would be fighting with their fear and anger, rather than their heads. The bells, the clash of spears, the cries of the dying. The sounds grated on her, made her feel as though all her nerves were exposed.
Then, finally, Maava said, ‘Come.’
Willow rose, strode to the doors of the hall and heaved them open.
Thirty-six
‘I’m going to find my army,’ Rowan said to Ash, shouldering her bow and making her way to the edge of the granary roof. ‘They will be through one of the other gates by now.’
‘Take all care,’ Ash said, but Rowan didn’t respond. A few moments later she was gone.
Ash felt exposed without Rowan there with her eagle eye and her bow. She kept low and watched the battle play out. The combined armies of Thyrsland were pouring in from three gates now. The raiders were vastly outnumbered, about to be completely encircled. It would be a bloodbath from here; Ash predicted the Is-hjartan army would be completely extinguished. She had stayed away from killing. Of course she could kill if she had to, but it was a tool she was reluctant to sharpen. Instead, she had focussed on protecting those she loved. Bluebell, it turned out, had no need for such protection. But she would never tell Sighere that she had saved him from a spear point on direct course for his heart. Perhaps his mail would have saved him, but Ash had not taken that chance.
While the battle was thrilling and bloody, it seemed to Ash all but over. But then the gate to the royal enclosure opened and Willow stood there, still and cool in the chaos. Ash’s skin prickled. Something was different. Something wasn’t right. She could see that Willow was alone but had the strong sense a figure stood next to her. Someone malevolent and powerful.
The impression must have been felt more widely, because Bluebell lifted her head as though she was sniffing the wind. Then the giants froze, and turned panicked gazes to each other.
Ash returned her attention to Willow and nearly cried out in shock, because now she could see the figure next to Willow. A man, tall and ugly with hate. His face shrivelled lovelessly around sharp cheekbones, his eyes cold and black as subterranean ice, a hulking body that spoke of a lifetime of unchecked greed. He was there, but not quite there. Almost ghostly one moment, but solid and real the next. And he grew. Even as Ash watched him his size increased, but it was as though he could not properly hold his shape as he grew. His head became too big, his hands and fingers too long. In moments, he stood higher than the gate, then higher than the hall.
The giants had fallen back and were running away.
Liquid dread released in Ash’s veins.
Willow’s creature raised his hands, and as he did so lightning encircled his fingers, winding around and between them like harrowberry vines. He flexed his fingers, and Ash heard rumbling thunder from the clear blue sky.
Ash could not protect the giants. Not all six. Perhaps she could save one. She turned her attention to Withowind and the elementals caught her urgent thoughts, knocked the giant sideways against the palisade wall of the royal enclosure and kept her down, lying on her side. Then vines began to grow over her, hiding her from sight.
Willow’s creature strode out and aimed his hands towards Gagel, almost as though he was throwing an invisible ball. Gagel, as though struck by something impossibly heavy, fell backwards, his chest crushed and bleeding. Bluebell’s dog Hyld broke ranks and ran for him, nuzzling against his hand. Gagel’s fingers moved once then were still.
‘No, no, no,’ Ash said under her breath, reaching out for Cammoc, who was closest to her. But before she could hide him, the invisible lightning came his way and he too fell. Willow’s creature had grown even larger, and this time had one hand each for Nepsed and Finol. Thunder cracked; both fell down dead.
Wermod was all that was left. Willow’s creature smiled horribly at him. ‘Last words, Wermod?’ he said.
‘Today Maava has proven how monstrous he truly is,’ Wermod called out, over the armies who had stopped fighting to watch, agog.
Willow, enraged, threw her spear at Wermod, but it bounced uselessly off his mailed shoulder.
Maava. Willow’s monster was a god. Ash couldn’t hide Withowind from him, not for long. Nobody could hide from him. Surely nobody could defeat him. Once he turned that lightning force onto Bluebell’s army, onto Bluebell. Onto Sighere …
Maava lifted his hands.
Ash grasped the god stone, squeezed it hard, and willed herself away.
Abruptly, the noise stopped, the air freshened. She could smell the sea. She opened her eyes and beheld Meregard. The grey-yellow sky had cleared to an unearthly blue, so bright it made her eyes ache to l
ook at it.
‘Hello?’ she called, turning around in a circle. The long grass. The rocks. Distant gulls calling. Apart from that, she was alone.
‘You can’t ignore me!’ she shouted. ‘You have to come!’
A soft voice from behind her. ‘We had not expected you so soon.’
Ash whirled around. The Horse God, in a pale blue tunic. He looked so much like her father this time that she ached, had to stop herself from calling him ‘Papa’. ‘You have to come.’
‘Come where?’ This was the Great Mother, walking towards them out of the air. Her dark hair fell in loose curls over her shoulders, and she wore a deep red dress that Ash remembered her mother wearing when she was pregnant with Willow and Ivy.
‘Come to Blicstowe. Willow has brought Maava to the battle. The giants are –’ Ash couldn’t finish. Her sorrow caught her words and strangled them.
The Horse God shot the Great Mother a desperate look. ‘Our children …’
‘They chose to go,’ she said, but for the first time she sounded doubtful.
‘The giants are your children?’ Ash said, astonished.
‘And what other horrors will you stand by and watch in defending choice?’ the Horse God boomed, pulling himself up tall. ‘They chose it because it is the land of their birth, to save it from falling into the hands of that … fool and his pious followers.’
‘The world does not matter to us,’ the Great Mother replied.
‘And when nobody left in that world understands our power any more?’
‘Being obscure cannot hurt us. What do we care?’
‘Stop fighting and come before my family are all dead!’ Ash interrupted in fury, imagining the horrors befalling her loved ones back in Blicstowe. She turned on the Great Mother. ‘You should care because we do, because we love and honour you in our rituals.’
The Horse God spoke gently. ‘You are standing outside of time in Meregard,’ he said. ‘Do not fear.’
