Descent of Angels

by Mitchel Scanlon

  After another ten minutes, Zahariel could feel a chill breeze from above, and scented the fragrant aroma of the deep forests. He knew they must be close to the top of the tower. Ghostly moonlight grew in luminosity, and at last, worn by the journey, Zahariel emerged onto the top of the tower, a wide space high above the fortress monastery, ringed with regular crenellations along the parapet.

  The tower was quite useless for defence, too slender and tall to play a part in any siege the Order might find itself subject to, but ideal for an eagle-eyed watchman or stargazer.

  It was a clear night. The sky above Zahariel was a black, perfect dome studded with a thousand points of light. Zahariel stared up at the constellations and felt a deep, abiding sensation of peace that quite overcame his exhaustion.

  He supposed it was a feeling born of satisfaction. For many years he had exerted every ounce of his will and strained every sinew in the hope of becoming a knight. Tonight, he could be one step closer to achieving his ambition.

  ‘It is good to look up at the stars,’ said the Lion, finally breaking his long silence. ‘At times like this, a man needs to take stock of his life. I find there is no better place to take stock than beneath the stars.’

  The Lion smiled, and Zahariel found the smile dazzling.

  It was clear that the Lion was trying to put him at his ease, but Zahariel found it almost impossible to talk to him as though he was any other man. Jonson was too big, his presence too imposing.

  A man could no more ignore his extraordinary nature than he could ignore the wind and the rain, or the transition from day to night. There was something similarly elemental about the Lion.

  Lion El’Jonson was the apotheosis of all humanity’s dreams for itself. He was perfection given human form, like the first example of a new race of man.

  ‘The cleansing of the forest is entering its final stage, Zahariel. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, my lord, I had thought the campaign was likely to continue for some time.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ said the Lion, his brow furrowing slightly, though Zahariel could not be sure if it was in amusement or contemplation. ‘According to our best estimates, there are perhaps a dozen or so great beasts left in total, certainly no more than twenty, and they are all in the Northwilds. We have scoured every other region of Caliban and cleared out the beasts that were hiding there. Only the Northwilds are left.’

  ‘But that would mean the campaign is nearly over.’

  ‘Nearly,’ Jonson said. ‘At most it should take another three months. Then Caliban will finally be clear of the great beasts. Incidentally, you realise Amadis has asked that you be recorded in the annals of the Order as having assisted in slaying one of the last of them? A fearsome creature as well, from all accounts. Though Amadis killed it, you should be proud of your actions in the fight. You saved the lives of many of your brothers.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Zahariel, remembering Pallian’s screams as the beast tore him apart. ‘I couldn’t save them all.’

  ‘That is something every warrior must get used to,’ said the Lion. ‘No matter how skilfully you lead your warriors, some of them will die.’

  ‘It was only a matter of luck that I didn’t die,’ Zahariel said, ‘the sheerest chance.’

  ‘A good warrior will always take advantage of chance,’ said Jonson, looking up at the sky. ‘He should adapt to the changing circumstances of battle. War is all about opportunity, Zahariel. To be victorious, we must always be ready to take hold of opportunities as they arise. You showed initiative in fighting that beast. More than that, you demonstrated excellence, precisely as the Verbatim defines these things and sets them out as our ultimate aim. We cannot know what mysteries the universe holds, or what challenges we may face in the future. All we can do is live our lives to the fullest extent we can, and cultivate the virtue of trying to achieve excellence in all things. When we go to war, it should be as master warriors. When we make peace, we should be equally adept. It is not good for human beings to accept second best. Our lives are short. We should make merit of them while we can.’

  Abruptly coming to silence, the Lion continued to stare up at the night sky, as Zahariel stood beside him.

  ‘I wonder what is in the stars?’ the Lion said. ‘The old tales say there are thousands, perhaps millions of planets out there, just like Caliban. They say Terra is one of them. It is strange, don’t you think, that every child born of Caliban knows the name Terra? We count it as the source and wellspring of our culture, but if the tales are true it has been thousands of years since we had contact with that source. But what if the tales are false? What if Terra is a myth, a fable invented by our forefathers to account for our place in the cosmos? What if our fathers’ tales are lies?’

  ‘It would be terrible,’ Zahariel said. He felt a shiver and told himself the night was growing colder. ‘People take the existence of Terra for granted. If it all turned out to be a myth, we might start to doubt everything. We would lose our moorings. We would not know what to believe.’

  ‘True, but in other ways it would free us. We would no longer need to be responsible to the past. The present and the future would be our only boundaries. Take the current campaign against the great beasts as an example. You are young, Zahariel. You cannot be aware of the bitter arguments, the threats and the recriminations that were directed towards me when I first advanced the plans for my campaign. All too often, I found that the causes of these objections were rooted in some dated custom that had long ago worn out its welcome.

  ‘Tradition is a fine ideal, but not when it serves as a shackle on our future endeavours. If it wasn’t for Luther and his fine oratory, I doubt the plan would ever have been approved. It is the same with so many issues that confront us today. The diehards and the sticks-in-the-mud oppose us at every step, irrespective of the value of the plans I put forward. They always make reference to the past, to tradition, as though our past was so filled with shining glories that we might actually want to preserve it forever. But I am not interested in the past, Zahariel. I think only of the future.’

  Again, the Lion paused. Standing beside him, Zahariel wondered what Lord Cypher would make of this speech decrying the value of tradition. Might this be another test, one designed to see whether he would simply acquiesce to what the Lion was saying or stand up for the values of tradition.

  As he looked upon the Lion’s countenance, he saw a strange intensity to the way he stared up at the sky, as if he loved and hated the stars at the same time.

  ‘Sometimes, I wish it was in my power to wipe the past away,’ the Lion said. ‘I wish there was no myth of Terra. I wish Caliban had no past. Look at a man without a past, and you will see a free man. It is always easier to build when you build from scratch. Then again, I look at the stars and I think I am too hasty. I look to the stars and I wonder what is out there. How many undiscovered lands? How many new challenges? How bright and hopeful might our future be if we could make it to the stars?’

  ‘Such a thing seems unlikely,’ said Zahariel, ‘for the moment, at least.’

  ‘You are right,’ said the Lion, ‘but what if the stars were to come to us?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Zahariel.

  ‘Truthfully? Nor do I,’ said the Lion, ‘but on nights when the stars are bright, I dream of a golden light, and of all the stars of the heavens coming down to Caliban and changing our world forever.’

  ‘The stars come down to Caliban?’ said Zahariel. ‘Do you think it means anything?’

  The Lion shrugged. ‘Who knows? I feel I ought to know its relevance, but every time I think I sense a connection to the golden light, it fades and leaves me alone in the dark.’

  Then, as though shaking off the last of such a dream the Lion said, ‘In any case, the stars are denied to us, so we will build the future here on Caliban. Still, if we are to be limited in that way, then we will not allow it to limit our vision. If we are only able to build our lives on Caliban, without access
to the stars, then we will make this world a paradise.’

  The Lion extended an arm, sweeping it in a broad gesture across the night-time panorama of dark forest and treetops below the walls of Aldurukh.

  ‘This will be our paradise, Zahariel,’ the Lion told him. ‘This is where we will build a bright new future. The campaign against the great beasts is only the first step. We will create a golden age. We will make the world anew. Does that sound a noble aim to you?’

  ‘It does, my lord,’ said Zahariel, the words coming out as a reverential whisper.

  ‘An aim worth committing our lives to?’ asked the Lion. ‘I raise this question, here and now, because of your youth. It is the young who will build this future, Zahariel. You have shown promise. You have the potential to be a true son of Caliban, a crusader, not just against the beasts, but against every other evil that ails our people. Does that seem a worthy purpose?’

  ‘It does,’ Zahariel replied.

  ‘Good. I am glad. I will look to see how you perform in the years ahead, Zahariel. As I say, I think you have potential. I will be interested to see you live up to it. Now, you have been kept from your duties long enough, I think.’

  The Lion inclined his head, as though listening to the slight sounds drifting from the forest below. ‘I should return also, it is not good form if I am away for too long. People notice. My place in the Order is as much about forging bonds of brotherhood among the knights as it is being wise and canny in matters of war.’

  A moment later, the Lion was gone, disappearing into the tower like a banished shadow. There was nothing showy or contrived about this sudden disappearance, for the habits of stealth simply came easily to Lion El’Jonson in a way that only a man who had lived alone as a youth in the forests of Caliban could know.

  With the Lion gone, Zahariel looked at the stars high overhead.

  For a while, he thought of what the Lion had said. He thought about the stars, about Terra, about the necessity to build a better world on Caliban. He thought about the golden age that Jonson had promised.

  Zahariel thought about these things, and knew that with men like Luther and Lion El’Jonson to guide them, the Order could not fail to achieve this Utopian vision of the future.

  Zahariel had faith in the Lion.

  He had faith in Luther.

  Together, these two men – these giants – could only change Caliban for the better. He was sure of it.

  It occurred to Zahariel that he had been blessed with good fortune of the kind few men were granted in their lives. No one could choose the era in which they would be born, and where the majority of men struggled through times not unlike the times their fathers had known, Zahariel had been lucky.

  As he saw it, he had been born in an age of great and momentous change, a time in which a man could be part of something bigger than himself, a time when he could devote his efforts in line with his ideals and hope to make an achievement of real significance.

  Zahariel could not see precisely what the future might hold, he could not see his destiny written in the stars, but he had no fear of what it might be.

  The universe, it seemed to him, was a place of wonder.

  He looked to the future and was unafraid.

  SIX

  THE CRUSADE AGAINST the great beasts was to continue for another year before the last bastion of monsters was ready to be assailed. The dense, tangled and lethal forests of the dark Northwilds remained to be purged of the monsters, yet this was the one place the warriors of the Order and its allies had not yet entered.

  In part, this was due to the due to the difficulty of mounting any organised, systematic hunt within its depths. Much of the forest was so dense as to be virtually impenetrable to riders, and even the hardy warriors of the Ravenwing would not ride within such places unless called to do so by their masters.

  Settlements existed within the Northwilds, heavily defended villages with high walls built upon great rock plains or within the depths of wide hills, but these were few and far between, and populated by resentful people who bemoaned their lot in life without ever daring to improve it.

  In truth, the real reason the crusade had not yet ventured into the Northwilds was the antipathy of the Knights of Lupus.

  A knightly brotherhood known for its scholars and great libraries, the Knights of Lupus had vehemently opposed the idea of any campaign against the beasts, and had spoken out against Luther and Lion El’Jonson many years earlier.

  Alone of the other orders who had voted against Jonson’s proposal to rid the forests of the great beasts, the Knights of Lupus had refused to go with the will of the majority once the matter had been decided. Instead, they had made warlike noises, threatening to launch their own counter-campaign of war against the Order and its allies.

  In the end, Luther broached a compromise. The details of the agreement he made had never been revealed, but whatever terms had been offered, the Knights of Lupus had retreated to their mountain fastness in the Northwilds, and took no action against the Order.

  For ten years, the Knights of Lupus had watched from their fortress as Jonson’s campaign achieved victory after victory. Region by region, the great beasts were cleared from the forests of Caliban.

  As the years went by and the campaign came closer to realising Jonson’s ambitions, the minds of most people on Caliban turned to the beckoning of a golden age.

  The Lion’s campaign had progressed to the very border of the Northwilds, long a Knights of Lupus stronghold, and the only region of Caliban left where the great beasts still existed.

  Almost inevitably, when the Order entered the Northwilds there would be conflict.

  A GROUP OF armed supplicants gathered in the centre of the training halls in the pattern of an outward facing circle, their swords extended before them in a defensive posture. Zahariel stood in the centre of the circle, back to back with Nemiel, while another class of supplicants surrounded them and watched their sword drills.

  Brother Amadis walked a slow circuit of the circle, his hands laced behind his back as he oversaw this latest training session of the Order’s supplicants.

  The supplicants gathered around the circle were a year or so younger than the students forming the circle and were all armed with wooden training swords. Though blunt, each had a lead bar at its core, which would make any impact painful in the extreme.

  ‘You have trained in this manner for years,’ said Amadis, addressing the younger supplicants, ‘and you appreciate the defensive strength of the circle, but you do not appreciate its symbolic strength. Who within the circle can tell these students why we fight in this manner?’

  As so often happened, Nemiel answered first.

  ‘By standing in a circle, each warrior is able to protect the man to his left. It’s a classic defensive formation to be used when heavily outnumbered.’

  ‘Indeed so, Nemiel,’ said Amadis, ‘but why the inner circle?’

  This time, Zahariel answered, saying, ‘A circle is stronger with another circle inside it. It’s an old battle doctrine of Caliban.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Amadis. ‘The idea of concentric circles, each inside the other, has been the basis for the defences of all the great and abiding fortress monasteries of Caliban. By creating an inner circle to guard and watch over the wider grouping of warriors on the outer circle, the defence cannot be breached. Now attack!’

  The younger supplicants threw themselves at the circle, their wooden blades stabbing and chopping towards the older boys. The boys in the outer circle fought well, deflecting the blows of their attackers with a skill borne of an extra year’s training, but they were outnumbered three to one and inevitably some strikes hit home.

  Zahariel watched the battle unfold with clinical precision, turning on the spot with Nemiel always at his back as they struck out at any potential breaches of the circle. Swords clashed and clattered for ten minutes, but not a single breach had been made in the outer circle.

  Amadis shouted names as he decla
red boys ‘dead’, and those boys limped from the circle holding bruised and broken arms, and nursing their shame, as the outer circle drew closer to keep their line intact.

  Zahariel stabbed and cut as the younger supplicants threatened to overwhelm them and Nemiel did likewise on his blind side. The bout continued for another fifteen minutes, with no sign of the circle formation breaking, and then Amadis called an end to the session.

  Both Zahariel and Nemiel were drenched in sweat, the battle having taken its toll on their reserves of strength. Fighting at such intensity for any length of time was difficult, but fighting at the inner circle was particularly draining.

  Brother Amadis walked amongst the exhausted supplicants as he said, ‘Now you see the benefit of the inner circle and the strength we gain from its presence. Remember this when you go into battle and you cannot fail. It is a truism, but alone we are weak, together we are strong. Each of you will one day face battle and if you cannot look to your brother and know without thinking that you can trust him, then you are lost. Only when such bonds are ironclad do they mean anything, for the moment that trust is not instantly reciprocated the circle breaks and you are dead. Dismissed!’

  The supplicants picked themselves up from the stone floor of the training hall, in ones and twos, wearing linen towels draped around their necks, and nursing tired and battered limbs.

  Nemiel wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and said, ‘That was a tough one and no mistake.’

  Zahariel nodded, too tired to answer.

  ‘He’s working us hard, eh?’ continued Nemiel. ‘You’d think we were actually about to go into battle or something.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Zahariel at last, ‘we might be. The representatives of the Knights of Lupus are due to arrive later today, and if what I hear is true, we might indeed be making war soon.’

  ‘On the Knights of Lupus?’ asked Attias, coming over with one of his notebooks tucked under his arm.

  ‘It’s what I hear,’ said Zahariel.