Jack of Ravens kots-1

by Mark Chadbourn

  Lucia untied Church’s hands so he could climb down. ‘You’re not suggesting five of us should oppose thousands, even if Cernunnos is providing some support?’ he said. ‘We’ll be slaughtered in minutes.’

  ‘But it is your role,’ Joseph said, puzzled.

  ‘It’s not my role to lead people to their deaths.’ All of them were looking at him, expectant, demanding; he couldn’t turn away. He sighed resignedly. ‘We need to get a closer look at what we’re up against,’ he said reluctantly.

  Decebalus agreed with his tactics, and soon he and Church were skidding down the rain-slick bank to more tree cover further down the hillside.

  ‘The witch troubles me,’ Decebalus said of Lucia as they moved under the branches. ‘I do not trust her kind, and I do not like her at my back.’

  ‘You’ve got to get over it,’ Church said. ‘The only way the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons can work together is through trust. You have to be a tight unit, ready to risk your lives for each other. Or else you’re nothing … just five individuals. And what can anyone do alone?’

  Decebalus took the lead through the dense wood until they came so close to the advancing legion that they could feel the ground shake. The big barbarian selected an old tree and motioned for Church to follow as he scaled the slippery bark with a speed that belied his size. He used his powerful arms to swing himself up into the large lower branches.

  Finally they reached a branch as broad as a table along which they could crawl to a point fifteen feet or so above the place where the outer ranks of the Ninth Legion would pass. Decebalus hung upside down like a monkey to get a better look.

  Church gripped the branch tightly as the tree began to sway with the approaching thunderous footfalls. When the first of the legionnaires marched into view, Church was transfixed by the jarring chiaroscuro intensity of the scene. The contrast of black shadows and white was too strong to be realistic.

  As the legionnaires drew nearer, Church saw that to a man their faces were shockingly white, not with the bloodless look of fear, but the pure white of snow. And where their veins could be glimpsed, they were as black as ink with the poison that had spread from the metallic spiders embedded in each and every forehead. The legionnaires moved like robots, without the slightest hint of the discomfort that Numerius had shown, and Church realised this must be the final stage of the process that had been intended for him.

  Church glanced at Decebalus and quickly realised that his superstition had rushed to the fore, threatening to overwhelm him. When he had thought he was only facing men, Decebalus had been as brave as ever, but now he was pallid and shaking so much he was almost slipping from the branch.

  Tugging at Decebalus’s sleeve, Church managed to urge him back to the trunk, and soon they were on the ground and scrambling back up the hillside to the others. Decebalus was mute with fear, and Church dispatched him to the horses so the others would not see. After Church explained what they had witnessed, Joseph and Secullian crossed themselves, but Lucia and Aula took it in their stride.

  ‘What now? They are closing fast on Eboracum?’ Lucia asked.

  All eyes were on Church. ‘I don’t think any Brothers or Sisters of Dragons can be killed by the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders. The Libertarian hinted that they can capture us, torment us, but they can’t deal with the Pendragon Spirit. Everyone else can chop us into bloody chunks, but not the thing we’re supposed to be opposing, which must really stick in their spider-throats.’

  They eyed Church, still uncertain.

  Decebalus appeared on the fringes of the group. ‘The only way we are ever going to amount to anything is by trusting each other. That is what sets us apart as champions.’

  ‘We’ll ride to where the Sixth Legion is preparing to meet the Ninth,’ Church said. ‘We’ll do what we can there.’

  As the others returned to their horses, Decebalus said to Church, ‘I don’t believe a word of it, but if it gets them moving that is all that matters.’

  As Church climbed onto the back of Lucia’s horse, she asked quietly, ‘Do we face our end?’ She showed no sign of fear.

  Church couldn’t lie. ‘I don’t know.’

  10

  The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons bore down on the rolling, rain-blasted moorland as the two legions came together like two torrents of floodwater. At the point of impact, armour, weapons, bodies and limbs gushed into the air amidst a tumultuous sound of clashing.

  The Sixth Legion held their ground, though Church knew the terrors that must have been running through their minds.

  Church, Lucia, Aula, Secullian and Joseph were shocked by the ferocity of the battle along the front line, but Decebalus was unmoved. He urged the others to join the fray. As they closed, they could see that the Sixth Legion was outclassed. The Roman army would be unsurpassed for centuries to come, yet it had met its match in an enemy that was oblivious to fear and pain. The living legionnaires were being slaughtered by the black and white tide. The Sixth’s archers loosed their shafts by the hundred, but wherever they struck no one fell. Church saw some of the undead legionnaires turn into marching pin-cushions, arrows protruding from heads and torsos.

  ‘Come! Let us harry their flanks!’ Decebalus bellowed. He was away before anyone could respond.

  Church lowered Lucia to the ground. ‘If you’ve got the abilities I think you’ve got, use them,’ Church said. ‘Protect Aula, Secullian and Joseph. They’ll be no good in this kind of fight.’

  Feeling out of his depth, Church urged his horse towards the battle. He’d learned fighting techniques during his time at Carn Euny, but the part of him that was still the dreamy archaeologist was apprehensive. Yet the Jack Churchill that was being forged in those ancient times was filled with a greater fear: that more would die because of him if he did not act.

  On the edge of the battle, Decebalus drove his horse in close and swung his axe. Heads leaped from bodies like sparks flying up a chimney. Decebalus retreated just as quickly before a blow could be laid on him.

  Lightning crashed into the midst of the Ninth, blasting bodies asunder. The wind gusted in unnatural eddies, slamming against shields with the force of a battering ram, Lucia was using her Craft to direct nature in their favour.

  Church drew his sword and its illumination cut a swathe through the darkness more effectively than any lantern. In the blue glow, Church saw scores of black eyes snap towards him as one. It might have been wishful thinking, but he was sure he saw a glimmer of unease in those still, dead faces.

  Shields went up to deflect Church’s first three attacks, but eventually he found a way through the defences. His blade sliced through the skull of one of the white-faced legionnaires as if it had no substance. The Blue Fire filled his system, driving out his rational thoughts until he and the sword were one, and in that moment he felt what he was supposed to be — a champion empowered by the energy of Existence.

  He fought until his body shook with exhaustion, retreating every time the Ninth’s cavalry moved towards him, only to return to the fray moments later. Decebalus fought in a berserker rage, his axe never resting.

  Yet despite their attempts to sway the battle, the soldiers of the Ninth Legion were too numerous and too inhuman. They crushed all who lay before them with machine-like efficiency.

  ‘Retreat. Regroup,’ Decebalus gasped to Church. Blood streamed from many wounds and a broken arrow shaft protruded from one arm. ‘They will not be held back. We need something more.’

  Church was so exhausted he could barely lift his sword. ‘Where’s the help Aula promised?’

  They retreated to where Lucia and the others waited, and Joseph did what he could to tend their wounds. Lucia was flagging from her exertions with her Craft and had little left to offer.

  Under the shelter of an oak, Secullian sat cross-legged in the grip of a trance. He rocked back and forth, speckles of spittle flying from his mouth.

  ‘How long has he been like that?’ Church asked.

  �
�Too long, but we are afraid to wake him,’ Aula said grimly. ‘He felt some contact from the Otherworld-’

  Aula’s words caught in her throat as Secullian’s remaining eye snapped open, the white glowing in the dark. He raised one trembling arm to point to the battlefield. ‘Across the worlds they dance …’

  At that moment, the undead legionnaires overran the Sixth Legion. The moor was covered with the mangled bodies of Roman soldiers. The spider-legionnaires marched over the remnants towards Eboracum.

  As Church watched an event history had never recorded, his vision was briefly obscured. When it cleared, at first it looked as if the moon had come down to the rain-lashed earth. A silvery glow suffused the bleak moor. Church blinked once, twice, and then realised what he was seeing. Cernunnos had been true to his word. A new army now stood where the Roman legion had fallen, their armour gleaming silver. Church recognised the banner of the Court of Peaceful Days. At the front, a goddess Church presumed was Rhiannon led a ferocious assault.

  ‘The gods were true to their word. For once.’ Decebalus flopped wearily onto the sodden turf, oblivious to the lashing rain.

  ‘But will it be enough?’ Lucia asked.

  ‘And are we simply exchanging one invading force for another?’ Joseph said.

  ‘Bring on the days when we can defend ourselves.’ Decebalus tore the arrow from his arm with barely a flinch. ‘Gods. Devils. May a pestilence fall on all of them.’

  11

  The battle raged for nearly two hours until the first light came up on a grey, sodden day. Church’s initial hope for an easy victory had quickly waned as he watched the two forces fighting themselves to a standstill. For every white-skinned spider-soldier crushed beneath the onslaught of the silver army of the Court of Peaceful Days, one of the Tuatha De Danann was brutally dispatched.

  Clouds of golden moths burst upwards towards the lowering heavens at regular intervals. It was a mesmerising sight that had a strange hallucinogenic beauty in the washed-out landscape, yet what it represented chilled Church to the bone. Niamh had been devastated when a handful of her guards had been ‘wiped from Existence’, as she had described it. How, then, would Rhiannon react to hundreds if not thousands of her own court dying?

  Secullian stood beside Church, calm now the delirium of his visions had left him. ‘Who are the enemy, and why do they choose this moment to march on Eboracum?’ he asked.

  Church couldn’t answer either question.

  ‘Where have the Ninth been these past two hundred years?’ Lucia joined them, shivering from the rain.

  ‘It wasn’t anywhere in this world,’ Church replied.

  Another burst of gold against the gloomy landscape, and another, and another, yet the fierce warriors of the Court of Peaceful Days fought on undaunted as they drove a wedge into the very heart of the Ninth Legion.

  ‘The light is beating the dark,’ Lucia noted. An owl flew out of the rain and Lucia held out an arm with a leather patch strapped to it. The owl landed and stared at her with eerily intelligent eyes. Lucia stared back, her expression growing more troubled. ‘Something is coming,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that you say? Another threat?’ Decebalus asked.

  The words had barely left his lips when Secullian pitched forward, an arrow protruding from his good eye. Decebalus grabbed him before what had happened registered with any of the others.

  Stark against the grey skyline over the ridge behind them were four riders, their outlines both familiar and chilling. Etain was there, as dead and hateful as the last time Church had seen her, and Tannis, Branwen and Owein. All of them dead, all of them seeking retribution.

  The Libertarian had said that the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders was not yet powerful enough to oppose the Pendragon Spirit, but something else could. And here it was: the original Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, now corrupted into the opposite of everything for which they had once stood.

  Joseph rushed to help Secullian, but it was obvious the North African was already dead. Aula fixed a cold eye on the bow that Etain held. ‘Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re us,’ Church replied.

  Etain reined in her horse and began to lead the others down the slippery slope. Decebalus gripped his axe. ‘Vengeance, then. For Secullian, and Marcus.’

  Church caught Decebalus’s wrist before he could raise the axe. He had a vision of more ravens following him. ‘There’s only four of us left,’ Church said. ‘We can’t face them in a weakened state — they’re too strong.’

  ‘You are saying we should run, like conies,’ Decebalus said with disbelief.

  ‘Back to Eboracum. If we have to make a stand, the defences are better there.’ He gripped Decebalus’s shoulders for emphasis. ‘Those four are the secret weapons of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders and they mean to wipe us out. They need to do that because the spiders can’t touch us, and they can’t win while we’re around. It’s more important we survive today than go out in a blaze of glory.’

  ‘Tactics,’ Decebalus sneered before running to fetch the horses.

  Joseph sobbed silently over Secullian. ‘We must give him a Christian burial so he can join our Lord at the resurrection.’

  Church rested a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘You can come back to do that when the threat has gone,’ Church said gently. ‘In the meantime, you’ve got an important role to play.’

  Joseph blinked away his tears, puzzled.

  Church spoke quietly, insistently. ‘The Watchmen are in the church to ensure knowledge is passed down through the generations to help us keep the gods at bay if they attack us in the future. Now you need to watch out for the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders, because the threat is going to get worse in the years ahead.’

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  ‘Pass on this order to your brethren: your group must watch out for anyone who bears the mark of the black spider. They’re dangerous, and they have to be stopped, in any way possible.’ Joseph blanched at what Church was implying. Church watched the slow, deliberate advance of Etain and the others. ‘And you must make sure that all future generations know that things are not unfolding as they should.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Army of the Ten Billion Spiders is changing the way things are meant to happen-’

  ‘God’s plan?’

  Church hesitated. ‘If you will … They’re loose in time, altering events … I don’t know why. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in the future need to be aware of this so they can stop it happening. And you and your group need to tell them.’

  Joseph bowed his head. ‘I will carry out this task to the best of my abilities. I am honoured-’

  ‘I know, I know. Now go. Ride south. Those four will follow the rest of us and you’ll be free to get away.’

  Joseph smiled shyly, bowed once more, then ran to his horse. Decebalus returned with the other steeds, and soon Church and the remaining Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were racing through the rain towards Eboracum.

  ‘You have a plan when we get within the walls?’ Aula said. ‘Or is it just running, and hiding?’

  ‘There’s an inn not far from the gate. I have friends there-’

  ‘That white-faced freak?’ Aula said incredulously.

  ‘My friend, Jerzy, and another woman, Niamh. We’ll collect them and decide what route to take.’ He glanced back through the never-ending rain and could just make out four grey shapes, heads down, riding hard. They appeared to be closing.

  Decebalus saw them, too, and pulled his horse alongside Church’s. ‘They are fresher than us, their mounts stronger,’ he yelled. ‘I will fall back to hold them off.’

  ‘No,’ Church said. ‘You know this world better than I do. You’ll be needed to protect the others. I’ll try to find some way to delay our pursuers and meet you at the inn.’

  Decebalus nodded, paused in thought, and then clapped Church on the shoulder in a gesture that meant more than words. He urged his horse
on to join Lucia and Aula while Church dropped back.

  Church finally found his place where the track passed between two steep banks and a rocky outcropping overhung the route. Leaving his horse, Church scrambled up the slippery bank as the noise of the four pursuers grew louder. Jamming his sword under the edge of a boulder, he drove down upon it. At first it didn’t move, but then the stone began to heave out of the turf. As the hoof-beats began to echo off the opposing banks, he made one final effort and the boulder crashed down onto the track, taking with it a landslip of soil and smaller stones.

  Church threw himself down the bank and sprinted to his waiting horse. He was almost upon it when he was hit by a force from behind. Seeing stars, he sprawled across the mud and puddles.

  When his vision cleared, a man stood over him, but it was neither Tannis, nor Owein. His hair was long and dark brown, plastered to his head by the rain, his chin bearded. The blackest eyes Church had ever seen stared out of a face like granite. The man was naked to the waist, his muscled torso covered with an array of strikingly vivid tattoos. Also striking was his left hand, which was an ornate mechanical claw that appeared to be made of silver. In his right hand he held a sword much like Church’s, but the fire that crackled along the length of the blade was a desolate black.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ he said in an emotionless South London accent. ‘It’s taken a few years to track you down, but I always knew we’d hook up sooner or later.’

  Blankly staring, Church tried to draw on the distant echoes that rang in the gulf where his memory should be.

  ‘Don’t remember me? I’m hurt. The name’s Veitch. Ryan Veitch.’

  Veitch stepped forward and swung his sword. The last thing Church saw was Veitch’s face, filled with venom.

  12

  Church woke to the creak of wood, the rhythmic splash of water and the tang of salt in the air. His head still rang from where it had taken the flat of Veitch’s blade. He was in the dark, damp confines of a ship’s hold, surrounded by amphorae, and the swelling motion of the boat told him he was at sea. Manacles had chafed his wrists raw. He didn’t know how long he had been out, but his throat was arid and his muscles ached from where his arms had been fastened behind him.