A Rage in the Heavens (The Paladin Trilogy Book 1)

by James A. Hillebrecht

  For several moment, Joshua had been aware of someone looking at him, someone who had come up the pass behind him and had paused once they had drawn even with his rock. He turned to look and was startled to see a fully armored knight seated upon a great white stallion, the shining plate mail making him look like an image out of the past. The warrior had no helm, the mountain breeze stirring his long blonde hair, and his expression was attentive, quizzical, and just slightly amused as he studied the boy.

  Joshua frowned. Madman or fool, he had no time to spare for the newcomer. He turned back to the crowd. “Does the land mean not to you any longer? The land you have tended, the land you have loved, the land within which your ancestors are buried! Will you yield all that without so much as a whimper, without raising a single fist? Have you lost even the ability to feel?”

  No head was turned, no face was raised, and the shame and frustration of failure made Joshua burn. These were his people who had always held their land and their freedom above even life itself, and yet they were running now at the first sign of invasion like so many broken cowards. He had to resist a sudden, overwhelming desire to simply go berserk and jump down among these running sheep with both fists swinging.

  “Your heart’s in the right place, Lad,” the knight said unexpectedly. “But you’re going about it all wrong.”

  “What’s your business with me?” he snapped angrily, rounding on the only person to pay him heed.

  The big man smiled at him. “To start a fire, you must first have some fuel. And you can’t blow so many words on it.” Joshua bristled, but the man continued easily, “Is there any force still holding the Pass?”

  “Laird McCullen holds the crest of the Pass with his clan and a handful of others,” the boy answered proudly. “He says he’ll die a Highlander rather than live a coward.”

  “A single clan?” the man repeated, his eyes going up towards the pass. “Brave men or fools to wait so for their deaths.”

  “Laird McCullen is the bravest warrior in all the land,” Joshua answered hotly, “and I’ll not have his name sullied by the likes of…”

  “Peace, Lad,” the man interrupted, holding up a hand. “I honor such courage, too. Let us see if we might bring them some help.”

  He looked around at the stream of people hurrying past, and he seemed to pick one out. He jumped down from the saddle and walked forward to the front of the rock, intercepting Siras McGiver, the big blacksmith, who was struggling along with a huge pack on his back.

  “Ho, my good man,” the warrior said cheerfully. “Where are you rushing in such a hurry?”

  “Let me by,” muttered Siras, trying to walk around. The warrior reached out and put a gentle hand on the blacksmith’s shoulder.

  “Are you a turtle that you walk with your home upon your back?” the warrior asked with a smile. “Have you no house of wood or stone?”

  The blacksmith blinked, trying to focus. Slowly, he said, “It’s…behind…”

  “It must be a poor place indeed to leave it thus for the Northings,” the warrior observed. “Is it a poor place?”

  The blacksmith stirred, some sign of life returning. “The best forge in all the mountains. A warm cottage in the lee of a cliff with the shop right next to a mountain spring.”

  The warrior’s eyebrows rose in appreciation. “A fine home, by the sound of it. So have you tired of being a smith?”

  “Nay,” Siras replied. “It’s…it’s my life.”

  Several people had slowed, a puzzled expression shifting across their faces as they listened to the words passing between the two men, as if coming from a language they had nearly forgotten.

  “So you flee now to find a lesser place in a strange land,” said the stranger. “To huddle there awhile until the Northings come to chase you out of that, too.”

  The blacksmith frowned, his face now beginning to show a hint of anger. Many people were now slowing to take in the byplay, several stopping and thus bringing others to a stop, slight frowns on their faces like people trying to rouse themselves from an unpleasant dream. Joshua, watching closely, felt it was more than just the words which was reaching out to touch all of them.

  “Have you tired of the high country, then?” the warrior asked, a touch of goad entering his voice. “Have you tired of the wind and the free air? Have you tired of the feel of good stone beneath your feet? Have you tired of being a Highlander?”

  “No!” Siras shouted, and an angry ripple ran through the gathering crowd, the word echoed from a dozen mouths. Joshua saw eyes blinking as if just coming awake, and his heart blazed with sudden hope.

  The warrior reached around and grabbed the head of a war-axe sticking out of the blacksmith’s pack. He pulled the weapon free, hefted it, checked its weight.

  “Why are you bothering to carry this with you?” the warrior asked, puzzled. “To defend your home?”

  “Aye,” Siras answered.

  “Your home is up there,” the man said, pointing behind them. “Your home is the High Pass. Will you use your axe to defend it?”

  Siras took a great breath, and he seemed to grow back to his full height. He looked up at the crest of the mountains, breathed deep, and then he let his pack fall and took the axe from the warrior’s hands. “Aye!”

  “Then let us return to your smithy,” the warrior said, his eyes shining now. “And see what together we might yet forge.”

  The two men started climbing back up the grade, pushing through the people who had paused to listen, and first one, then two, and finally many of the crowd turned and began to follow. Joshua saw one man slap his neighbor on the shoulder with a big grin as if just noticing him, and both men turned and followed Siras and the warrior up the mountain path. It felt as if the wind itself had changed, the fresh mountain breeze returning to blow away the fear.

  “It’s a miracle,” Joshua whispered, hardly able to believe his eyes. A moment before, the people had been fleeing like whipped dogs, and now, abruptly, life and energy seemed to have returned to them with only a few words between a warrior and a blacksmith.

  He leaped down from the rock to join the crowd, feeling strangely as if his people had suddenly returned. The warrior glanced back and summoned him with a gesture.

  “What’s your name, Lad?” he asked.

  “Joshua.”

  “Sing me a song, Joshua,” the man said. “Sing me a song of the Highlands.”

  “What?” Joshua asked with a frown. “A song?”

  “There’s a spell of fear on your folk,” the warrior explained quietly. “A magic that comes from wind or water or words. Perhaps all three. But fear sits uneasily on brave hearts. Sing then. Sing them a song to shake off the shadow.”

  Joshua blinked, uncertain. He thought for a moment, but as they were climbing again with the breath-taking peaks of the Mountains of the Winds before them, one song came freely to his tongue.

  Touching the sky so tall and free,

  Walls of my homeland that ye be,

  Your magic spell,

  Draws me to tell,

  What the Mountains mean to me.

  The Ballad of the Peaks, a song beloved of the Highlanders, and even as he began the second verse, others around him joined in, their voices rising to greet the mountains of the High Pass.

  Rock and ore and snow-capped cone,

  Standing together and yet alone,

  Smaller are we,

  Yet Highlanders be,

  Quarried from your same stone!

  Still more people sang, hearts filled with a common pride giving voice to the feelings which moved them, and all along the path people stopped, blinked, and slowly joined both the song and the procession, turning upwards towards the pass. The road was soon littered with abandoned carts and bundles.

  Winds of anger strike our land,

  Fury rising to test our sand,

  So yet be brave,

  To face the knave,

  And like the tall mountains stand!”

  Th
ey were passing the stone houses and shops that formed the small central village of the Highlands, the homes which many of the group had abandoned, and several men broke off from the group to dart into the buildings. They returned bearing a selection of swords, spears, and clubs which the unarmed of the crowd gratefully accepted, Joshua uneasily noting how many had fled with everything except their weapons. He himself took a sturdy club, hefting it and testing the solid wood, and a grim smile came to his lips. Now he would be able to do more for his people than simply talk.

  Up ahead, just beyond the little village, the road began to narrow as it rose towards the high pass, the sheer cliff of Hell’s Gate to the left, the easier slope of Heaven’s Stair to the right. Nearly a hundred kilted warriors stood here, looking back in surprise at the singing mob approaching them, and at first, Joshua headed in their direction. The warrior, however, pointed to the rocky paths beside the road which lead up Heaven’s Stair to the headland directly above the High Pass.

  A tall kilted man with an air of authority tried to block the way, and Joshua recognized him as Laird Cairnsmore, one of the lords of the clans.

  “What madness is this?” Cairnsmore growled. “My lads are selling their lives to buy time, and you fools turn and come right back to the slaughter? Get you gone! The Northings are nearly here!”

  His voice was lost in the deep song of the crowd, and the warrior walked right past him, the mob slowing slightly as it started to struggle up the rougher path to the headland. Cairnsmore turned and caught up with Joshua and the big man, two of the Laird’s retainers staying at his side. Joshua noticed that the rest of the Laird’s men joined in with the crowd.

  “What in the name of wonder is going on here?” he demanded. “What do you think you do?”

  “My name is Darius, a warrior from beyond the mountains,” the big man answered. “I heard of the Northing invasion, and I’ve come to offer my service against them.”

  “One sword against a hundred thousand!” jeered Cairnsmore. “You’re a bit overmatched, man.”

  “You’ll fight no one for long in that outdated tin,” observed one of the Laird’s retainers rudely, eyeing the man’s heavy armor. “The Northings’ll gut you like a spring deer while you’re still trying to land your first blow.”

  Darius stared calmly into the eyes of the shorter Clansman before saying, “I seem to remember that the Highlanders were both courteous and courageous. It’s sad to find my memory failing.”

  The man’s face reddened angrily, but the Laird restrained him with a touch.

  “We’ve no choice, I tell you,” Cairnsmore continued. “You do no more than lead these lambs to the slaughterhouse. The Northings have been walking through stone walls and iron gates for three hundred leagues! Turn this attack, the next, and the next, what of it? We’re bound to fall in the end.”

  “Regnar’s main force moves against Jalan’s Drift, not the High Pass,” Darius replied. “This is no more than a strong probing force, testing to see whether rumor and bluff can win what war never could. And you, My Lord, are doing exactly what Regnar hopes.”

  There was a grumbling among the three clansmen, a stirring of anger at the suggestion, made worse by the fact that it seemed to be true. Cairnsmore frowned, the man’s words making him think.

  Up ahead at the very crest of the headland was yet another group of soldiers, and Joshua immediately recognized the black and red tartan of the Clan Sinclair. So the Clan McCullen was not the only group determined to oppose the invaders!

  “So, Cairnsmore, you’ve changed your mind, have ya?” called the Laird Sinclair with a grin. “Good! Good! If this rabble you’ve brought can fight as well as they sing, we may yet turn the bastards!”

  Sinclair was an older man with a white beard and a great girth, and he stood with perhaps a hundred of his warriors close to the edge of the headlands, readying rocks and arrows to shower down on the invaders. This was the legendary point at which to defend the High Pass below, and stories abounded of how several Lairds had led their clans in a mad charge down the sides of the Headlands, for while very steep, they were still sloped enough to let a man run wildly down the rock to crash against an enemy grouped below. Joshua himself had run down the slope for sport many times, a popular game among the more daring of the Highlander youths, but that was far, far different from charging in a mass of armed men to attack a waiting enemy.

  “Come,” Darius said to Cairnsmore, leading him to the edge of the bluff. “Look down upon your brethren standing below.”

  Joshua went with them to the high sloping slides which led down to the High Pass. He looked down to see the Clan McCullen in battleline across the gap, a thin double line dressed in the green and red of the Tartan Royale with shield and spears at the ready. He tried to pick out the Laird, and he spotted him easily near the center of the line, talking quietly to steady his men as he walked among them. Even from that height, Joshua could see the tears of fury on the cheeks of the Highlanders, strong men whose eyes had been dry since boyhood now wept and cursed the enemy drawing down upon them.

  A glance to the right showed the advance of the Northings, a horde of black and silver moving steadily upwards to challenge the Highlanders. The sight brought a tightness to Joshua’s chest, a mixture of fear and fury to see the enemy at last and watch them closing upon his comrades.

  From somewhere on the Highlanders’ line came the sudden clash of spear on shield as one man flexed his anger, and another answered to the right, then a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, all crashing together, a thunder of death rolling down out of the pass to welcome the invaders.

  “The sound of a clan in battle,” said Darius tightly. “Will you turn and run while the Clan McCullen alone holds faith?”

  The Highlanders all bristled, and Cairnsmore took his battle-axe from his belt.

  “The Clan McCullen shall not die alone!” he swore. “Win or fail, we’ll make an end worthy of a warrior song.”

  “Then we live or die as one!” said Sinclair, slapping the taller man on the back.

  The Northings were rapidly approaching the crest of the Pass, surging forward now, moving faster, preparing to rush the thin line which was all that blocked them from the pass and the Southlands beyond.

  The warrior had turned back to the seething mob behind them, leaping onto a boulder as if his heavy armor weighed nothing and standing where the gathered clans could see him.

  “Highlanders!” he cried, and every eye rallied to his voice. “Highlanders! You stand at the brink of the High Pass which your people have held since the earliest days. Below you the enemy marches and only the thunder of the Clan McCullen opposes them. Will you stop your ears and close your eyes while your brothers hold troth?”

  “No!” a thousand voices answered him. An ugly roar from below dragged Joshua’s eyes from the warrior to the scene in the pass, and he caught his breath. The Northings were charging, rushing the thin line, and it seemed nothing could resist that black wave. Darius had seen the beginning of the charge, but he still turned back to crowd before him, timing the battle with their passion.

  “‘A hundred deaths a yard’ was the battlecry of old,” cried Darius, “the toll your fore-sires demanded and took from every tyrant who came against them, and they taught invaders that this was the most expensive land in all the world. The strength of your fathers still flows in your arms, and their courage still burns within your chests. Strike now! Strike against the darkness and show these raiders why the Tartan Royale is feared from the Southern Ocean to the Earth’s Teeth!”

  With that, Darius drew forth his great sword and a light burst out around him, a beacon for all to follow. Joshua’s heart surged as if it had been set on fire.

  “Kerren nar Mortas!” Darius roared, the ancient motto of the Highlands, the words ringing through the pass, stirring the echoes that had rung here a thousand times before. “Freedom or death!”

  “Kerren nar Mortas!” the warriors thundered back. With a single motion, Darius lea
ped from the boulder and charged down the steep slope. And with one accord, heedless of the danger, they swept forward over the crest with him, rushing down upon the invaders of their land, Joshua, club in hand, right in the front rank.

  The slope was so steep that Joshua had to run or fall, his feet barely keeping pace with his hurtling body in a thrilling race, and all around, a thousand men were charging with him, a wave of humanity crested with steel. Below the Northings were looking upwards, surprise turning to terror, and the first row of the barbarians disappeared in a burst of blood as the Highlanders smashed against them, instantly crushing the enemy’s left flank.

  Joshua raised the club and swung wildly at the bearded Northing right before him, the wood striking the man’s thick battle hide, and leaving him wide open to a counterthrust. But the next minute, the rush of Highlanders simply overran his opponent, and Joshua abruptly found himself several ranks back, pushing like everyone else around him to try to get at the invaders. The narrowness of the Pass and the push from the barbarians at the rear made flight impossible, and the Northings fought with the courage of despair, selling their lives dearly. Joshua, looking over the heads of his comrades, could see places where the press was so fierce that the slain had no room to fall, the bloody corpses still standing as if trying to carry the battle even beyond death.

  Before them all, however, leading the charge, went the warrior Darius, and none of the barbarians could stand against his fury. He alone was making progress, hacking a bloody road right through the enemy horde, his sword a beacon, and Joshua could see he was making for the standard-bearer of the Northings, the black and red flag of the invaders like a hideous stain on the mountain airs.