The Language of Stones

by Robert Carter

  He had begun to expect a rude reception, perhaps a hail of arrows as he came upon the Tonne, but the soldiers there watched him riding alone towards their lines with shouts of glee. Cheers and whoops rang out and he was beckoned in, the king’s soldiers making much of a lad who was deserting from the enemy and showing the way for others.

  When they let him past the breastworks he snatched a piece of folded parchment from his pouch and called out to them, ‘See! I bring with me an important paper for the king! It may yet save all our lives!’

  They laughed at first, but seeing him unarmed and without livery and holding up the written word, they thought again. And having once let him inside their barricade they were now at a loss what else to do but keep him among them.

  ‘Hold him!’ said one of the defenders.

  ‘You hold him,’ said another. ‘We’ve no man here to spare as his keeper.’

  ‘Let him go up into the town if he will!’

  ‘He’s a chancer! What if he means the king harm?’

  ‘Then let him try himself against the king’s guards!’

  ‘If he’s to fight, let him stay here and fight with us! We’re soon to bear the brunt, and we’ll have need of spare hands once the enemy sets upon us!’

  ‘Aye! Aye!’

  But then a big man among them pushed his companions aside, saying, ‘And what if he really does have a message for his grace the king? What then?’

  ‘If he does, then let him show it!’

  ‘See here!’ Will opened out the folded page over them. It was one of the Wortmaster’s recipes and spoke of peas and oats and thyme. He opened it up and showed them the black ink marks and they looked up at it in awe. None of them had ever seen a proper written page before, though all believed in the power of words. They jostled, marvelling at the magic marks, knowing that the king’s laws and tithe bills and property titles and most other items of high importance were always done out in writing.

  ‘Quickly!’Will said with all the authority he could muster. ‘Where am I to find his grace the king?’

  ‘His standard flies up by the sign of the Castle Inn,’ one of the soldiers said, pointing up the hill towards an alehouse.

  Will turned to the road that led up to the market square. He thanked the soldiers and kicked the horse on until he arrived among the buildings of the town and at the foot of a great, square curfew tower. It was tall, and he saw the eight-sided stair-house that was built up from one corner of its top. Eight stone gargoyles projected from it. Around the tower stood many neat timber-framed houses and tradesmen’s shops, all of one or two storeys. Paving stones had been laid at the place where, on a market day, a dozen money-changers and Verlamion’s far-famed hazelnut sellers would ply for trade, but all that remained of the market now were a dozen tattered traders’ awnings, for thousands of soldiers were packed into the street, and Will could now see that there were just as many men inside the town as there were outside it.

  Three or four alehouses stood facing the market square. Above the door of the nearest was a painted board showing a castle, and nearby Will saw the royal standard. It was more than just a flag of quartered red and blue set with golden leopards and lilies and fringed in gold – this was the sign of present kingship. Under it stood a mass of lords in full armour gathered about the person of the king. Around these noblemen many royal soldiers stood guard with glaives and bill-hooks in their hands. They were watchful now and anxious, for all in the market square was brittle since the fear and thrill of war had settled fully upon the army.

  Will could ride no further. He jumped down and pushed his way towards the curfew tower. When he looked back down a side street, the sound of drums from the approaching army assailed his ears. He heard a spattering of loud bangs from distant arquebus men, as they burned their sorcerer’s powder and cast lead and stones towards their fellow countrymen. Then there came the deeper, louder noises of a great wall-smashing engine as it roared forth flame, and he knew that Lord Warrewyk must have unleashed his attack on the Tonne.

  A horse whinnied at the sound, and began to rear dangerously, and when Will turned he saw men in the red-and-silver livery of Lord Strange, then the Hogshead himself, looking more pig-like than ever, lips foaming and yellow tusks gleaming, his wedding ring still hanging moistly in his nose. Doubtless he had brought men to fight in the king’s name, no doubt seeing his opportunity to regain the queen’s favour after the loss of the armoury waggons.

  Will had no wish to be recognized. He turned away, hiding his face until Lord Strange had pushed his way past, then he found he had come to a barrier manned by royal guards. Will craned his neck and recognized in their midst a pale-faced man with long nose and sad eyes. A face less likely to be looking out from a suit of armour could hardly be imagined. Among the crowd of lords that surrounded him were two small, frightened boys who were acting as his pages. Both carried cushions, one supporting a sheathed war-sword, the other a helm set with the crown.

  Will marvelled at the king. At Clarendon he had appeared fallow-minded and stupid. Now he seemed alert and fully aware, though horrified by all that was happening around him. Nearby stood Queen Mag, who was so concerned with the arrangements that she had overlooked her own departure to safety. She was wrapped in a blood-red cape trimmed with black fur made from the tail-tips of a hundred ermine. Her gloves were red, and her face so white that it seemed almost waxen, yet set with coal-black eyes and perfect lips of crimson. The burly figure of Duke Edgar was at her side, bellowing orders and doing whatever she told him.

  Will’s eyes narrowed as he looked upon the man who had once tried to cut him in two. Then suddenly he sensed a familiar reek, and he turned his head in fear.

  Maskull!

  Where was he?

  Will shrank against a wall, looking to left and right, not daring to open his mind again for fear of giving himself away. Fear froze him, and he felt the Doomstone’s malice take a firmer grip on his heart. A press of men were suddenly all around him, their faces red and angry. They looked on him cruelly, for the emanations were stirring them into a blood frenzy. An uncontrollable shiver passed through him, and his thoughts began to dissolve.

  Why not go to Lord Maskull? he asked himself. Why not seek him out while I yet may?

  ‘No!’ he shouted, staggering now under the pain in his head.

  The soldiers nearby cast monstrous glances at him.

  But what if Lord Maskull is the rightful Phantarch, and Gwydion the impostor? he thought. What if it was Gwydion who refused to take the long journey to the Far North with Semias? Perhaps a new Age is coming into the world, an Age of War and Wonders that will endure five hundred years. It must be that Lord Maskull is its appointed herald, and Gwydion the broken reed. He could not even draw himself from the elder tree without help.

  ‘Help me!’ Will wailed and sank down to his knees.

  ‘Courage, lad!’

  He felt the pulsing inside his head slacken. Then an arm was under him and lifting him up. Gwydion was there, and as Will was raised to his feet his whole body flooded with relief. He stared round, not knowing how the wizard had come here, or for what reason, unless it was to foil his plans. He began to struggle, but Gwydion steadied him with a single touch on the forehead, then he produced a scroll from a fold in his robe.

  This was no crumpled parchment but a real instrument of peace. ‘See here! I have a sealed letter from Duke Richard, got by no art of mine. Richard has, by an effort of his own free will, given us one last chance, a promise in writing that he means no ill to King Hal, but that he has assembled here in arms only to redress certain grievances. Now let us see how the king receives the news!’

  ‘But the fighting has begun.’

  ‘It has reached the barricades, but the madness can still be stopped before Richard’s men reach the town.’

  ‘I…I’m going to find the Doomstone,’ Will said doggedly. ‘And you mustn’t try to stop me!’

  The wizard’s eyes filled with admiration. ‘
You are terrified, and yet still resolved on your course?’

  ‘Don’t try to stop me, Master Gwydion. It’s not the Doomstone that’s telling me what to do. I know it in my own heart.’

  ‘Go then, and tread softly. But before you do, see out my diplomacy, for it may yet suffice.’

  Gwydion drew back, and Will watched him thread his way along the cordon. The sergeants tried to bar his approach to the king, but signs made over their foreheads caused them to forget their duty and turn away. When the wizard slipped into the very centre of the royal army, even the watchful chamberlain did not see him. Will saw Duke Edgar, attended by his son, Henry. They were dressed in glittering steel and arrayed in blue and white, and seemed to be very much in charge, but they were too busy issuing orders to notice an old man garbed in mouse brown.

  But then Maskull’s reek came again, and Will turned his head aside and pressed himself closer into the wall. At first he could not see the sorcerer, but then his eyes rolled upward. Maskull was leaning out from the top of the curfew tower ready to survey the butchery that would soon begin below. The darkly shrouded figure peered out across the thatches of the town. He was cowled and mantled, his black-gloved hands were ringed in bands of gold and there, about his neck, flashing glints of blue-white light and hanging upon a golden chain was the great diamond that had for so long graced the death cloak of King Leir. Maskull must have taken it from the queen! he thought, alarmed that so precious a thing as the Star of Annuin was now in the sorcerer’s possession.

  Will looked desperately to Gwydion. Maskull might have seen his enemy had he chosen to look directly beneath him, but his thoughts were wholly given over to relishing a victory that he had worked most patiently to gain. Duke Richard’s troops were closing on the Tonne, and the day’s first blood was about to be spilled. Will felt another dreadful rippling in the power that streamed beneath his feet. But even as his stomach rolled over and blood welled in the sockets of his eyes, he tried to fathom the direction in which the power was flowing. Here the ligns were narrow, concentrated. He could see their effect. The mood of the soldiers packed into the market square began to grow ugly as a wave of violence passed through them. A mutinous turmoil broke out that Lord Strange’s sergeants had to move swiftly to put down.

  Then he saw Duke Edgar moving away from the king, and Gwydion seizing his opportunity. The wizard made a rapid sign over the queen’s forehead astounding her to blankness. Then the king was suddenly receiving the letter, taking the wizard’s hand in his own. His eyes were as innocent as a doe’s…and then the surge that was travelling along the lign passed directly beneath them and threw everything into the air.

  ‘Filthy meddler!’

  Will saw how the king flinched at the enraged cry. The bloody lips of the queen twisted, her eyes grew fierce as she came upon them.

  ‘Treachery! Guards! Take the old man!’

  Will saw the scroll of peace dashed from the king’s hand by Duke Edgar’s gauntlet.

  Gwydion blazed at him, staff outstretched. ‘Fool, Edgar de Bowforde! By this act you have sealed your own death warrant!’

  ‘Wrong! I shall not die today, for I’ve taken care to remember your own prophecy! I’ve brought the king’s army to do battle here by the Shrine of the Martyr for there is no castle in Verlamion!’

  High above, atop the curfew tower, the sorcerer was jogged from his great thoughts. But he had already been slow to act. So close was his enemy to the nobles upon whom he relied that he could not profitably loose off a death-dealing thunderbolt among them. His adversary sprang away from the royal guards with astonishing agility. Then Will’s heart missed a beat as, with a twirl of his mouse brown cloak, he seemed to melt away, and the men who had been about to take hold of him collided empty-handed.

  All eyes searched in vain for the vanished wizard, and Will realized that he too must make his escape when Henry de Bowforde’s eyes fell on him. There was a flash of recognition and the young nobleman started forward, his dagger drawn.

  ‘Enemies!’ he cried. ‘There! Over there!’

  Will struggled back into the crowd, but suddenly all was confusion as a great plume of violet fire spewed out over their heads. It gushed high over the thatch of the houses and down into the fields beyond.

  ‘The rebels are attacking!’ Maskull shrieked. ‘Smash them! Destroy them!’

  As if in confirmation of the warning, a shower of black motes appeared in the sky. They arced purposefully in the middle airs, and a moment later howls burst out all around Will amid the clattering of shafts as a thousand war-arrows struck home.

  It was a deadly rain and no sooner had it ended than another volley whistled in. This time a spout of unnatural flame roared forth from the curfew tower to scorch the goose quill flights from the arrows, but still the shafts dropped down to deal death among the king’s soldiery.

  And now up to meet the purple flame there came a fire of brilliant blue. Where the two tongues met, a burning ball exploded. Fire drakes snapped and snarled at one another, great sparks flew from the centre of the firestorm, and for a moment the town roofs were threatened by a scorching breath. But when the fireball died there was left only a single stream of fire, half violet, half blue, contesting, wavering, spilling sometimes down towards the ground, and at others back up into the sky. Once or twice the purple flame drove the blue out of sight. But then the blue flame blazed back and licked the grey stones of the curfew tower, turning them black before being driven back again.

  Down below, Will found that he was trapped amid a great press of bodies. Two thousand of the king’s troops surged fearfully beneath the raging sky. They were drawn up and ready to fight, but there was as yet no enemy to engage. Crushed tight inside the market square, they made sitting ducks for the unseen archers on the far side of the houses. The soldiers near to Will cowered down. Some tried to make for the cover of the houses or threw up arms to protect their iron-bound heads as best they could from the lethal shafts that appeared among them.

  But nothing afforded protection from so deadly a hail. The burning arrows dropped steeply to the ground, transfixing men through head, shoulder and back. Barbed tips plunged deep into flesh, and among the darts there fell many bodkins – arrows with long heads made to force open links in mail – and others with chisel tips that could pierce steel. Will saw the men who had fallen. Some were screaming, others vomited blood. Whatever their plight, they were soon crushed underfoot.

  Panic infected those who stood in the open. As men fell and arrows clattered down all around, Lord Strange squealed and grunted in fear and began to cut his way towards cover. He was followed by Henry de Bowforde, and then Duke Edgar, who grabbed King Hal and pulled him to the side of the street. ‘Hide him!’ he growled thrusting his charge towards the queen whose guards had already kicked in the door of a tanner’s house. She hurried her husband inside while the duke and his company made a dash to the far side of the street where overhanging eaves gave better protection.

  The men around Will groaned and cursed as yet another volley of arrows arrived. Dozens more died in the street, their screams pitiful. Soldiers called upon their commander to have mercy on them and send them against their enemy without delay, but Duke Edgar gave no such order.

  Will lifted himself up to try to see over the sea of leather hoods and steel helmets. Down the side street, at the barricade, men in the colours of Baron Clifton were fighting furiously with Duke Richard’s men. Sunlight glinted and flashed where the struggle was hardest. The duke himself was in the thick of the fighting, on foot, amid a well-armed bodyguard and leading his men on. And there was Edward too, wielding his sword as the attack broke upon the barriers.

  Now a flood of men in red jerkins charged in upon the barriers to deal death upon hapless defenders. There was a moment of doubt, then suddenly the attack broke through and hundreds of men were surging over the Tonne, trampling through the vegetable gardens that lay between ditch and town. It was not long before the attackers had reached the backs
of the houses, and Will saw their badge was the white bear, device of the war-loving Earl Warrewyk.

  Another hail of arrows found their mark, worse this time, for the men of Cambray had now advanced and they shot higher into the air. The darts that now rained down would have split a chapter house door. Will saw how fear turned to struggle. And there was worse, for the Earl Warrewyk’s falchion-men began to hack out the wattle-and-daub walls of the houses that fronted the market square. Warrewyk men-at-arms burst through only a few paces from where Will stood, and carried death into the street before them.

  Here the fighting became hand to hand, with great stones being thrown down from upper windows and bills and poleaxes doing bloody murder among the crowd. Will found himself carried helplessly along in the press outside the alehouse when a hundred or more of Earl Warrewyk’s troops broke through. The wall of the house next door to the inn gave way, and he saw Duke Edgar and some other nobles retreat swiftly inside. They were hoping to save their lives, for the royal army was now in rout here, having been cut off by the movement. But the alehouse was a death trap. Seeing his dilemma, Duke Edgar rallied his men too late. He gathered them with an adamant will, roaring, shouting that they must not stay to be killed one by one. Then he led a dozen of them bursting out from the doorway, rushing and slashing in a mad bid for freedom.

  But it was a fight against overwhelming odds. There was escape for only two men, one an excellent red-haired swordsman who cut his way through Earl Warrewyk’s men, and another man in blue and white who followed close behind him. That was Henry de Bowforde. But Henry’s father was not so lucky. Duke Edgar of Mells was chopped down then cut to pieces by men wielding axes and bills. The last Will saw of him was a body lying careless in death beneath the signboard of the Castle alehouse.