by Dan Davis
Writer felt the power in her growing with the fear that made her heart race. Her senses amplified and she sensed the water around her. She sensed the water in the earth underfoot, thrumming and sloshing with the force driving through it. She sensed the water within the blood of the alchemists near her and the horses and the barrels of water that she was supposed to use to put out fires. There was water in the air. Uncounted millions of drops too small to see in every square foot of the air around her.
Writer focused her attention inside herself. She felt beneath her skin, into her blood, into her muscle and her guts and her bones.
Water. She was full of it. She was made of water.
Lift, she commanded herself.
Lift.
It was the strangest sensation. As though she was being picked up from the inside. Her bones felt heavy and then light and she lifted herself up in the air.
Her feet lifted from the grass a couple of feet, her toes brushing against the tallest blades. It was easy to go higher. So she did. The wind whipped her hair about her face and she looked down past her feet to see Bacon scurrying away as quickly as his stiff legs and bent back could manage.
She went up.
Her heart lifted with the thrill of it. The possibilities were overwhelming.
Noise of battle brought her to the present. A few of the shouts from below changed. They seemed to be directed at her.
She saw Bacon’s bent figure shuffling away.
Across the battlefield, one landship at the front fired a final rippling cannonade before it too was destroyed.
Up she went and she moved herself away across the centre of the battlefield towards the other side. She was going to join her friends at last.
As she moved away, she looked down and saw Cedd’s face peering up at her, his mouth hanging open. Bede’s was near him, looking completely offended. The battlemages struggled on, lifting and throwing barrels across the battlefield. But they were staggering in the shaking earth underfoot, disrupting their rhythm and breaking their flow.
‘I was never on your side,’ Writer shouted down at them, exhilarated. ‘I was just using you to learn about—’
A red-hot cannonball split the air right by her face and smashed down into the wagon of gunpowder.
A blast of raging fire engulfed the battlemages.
The heat smashed through her, even as high above it as she was. The noise was like the loudest thunderclap. It was so astonishing and startling that she lost her focus.
She fell.
And tumbled and span down toward the ground.
The damp grass rushed up. Writer slowed her fall just a moment before she slammed into the ground.
It knocked the wind out of her. She could not breathe. Had broken something? Her ribs? Legs? Her shoulder?
She rolled over and fought down the panic. Her breath returned to her. The ground rippled and shook underneath her. The rumbling almost filled her ears. There were also shouts of fear and nays of horses.
She forced herself upright and looked back to where she had been standing.
Hundreds of musketeers were, like her, laying down sheltering from the terrible blast.
There was a burning ruin, surrounded by a blackened scatter of wreckage.
Cedd, Bede. All the battlemages were gone.
All the battlemages had been together by the stores of gunpowder. The explosion of the black powder had been enhanced by the power of the conjured demons and other spells and combined into a deadly blast.
Across the hill, the landships were smashed, sunk and smoking too. A black column of smoke rose into the sky.
All those men, those magi. Talbot and Charnock. Fluctibus and Ashmole.
Cedd and Bede. They were all dead.
She would never learn their secrets.
At least, she thought, the Alchemist Bacon had gotten away just in time. The old man deserved to live another day.
She had to reach her friends.
Writer dusted herself off, took a ragged breath and lifted off again.
Archer’s Battle
Archer led his green-coated sharpshooter company forward on the left flank. He had orders from the colonel to use the light woodland and thick hedgerows on this side of the hill to help support the far left flank of the entire army. The trees were a dense tangle of willow, alder and ash. There was birch and oak, too, growing straight and tall here and there.
All the men knew how the armies had formed up on the other side of the narrow wood. There were open fields there, covering the steep hills. The sounds and smells of battle were already drifting over the hill. Ordinance cracked and boomed away, echoing through the sky.
Archer’s company trailed behind him and Sergeant Jones was at his side.
‘With your magic helping us, Captain Archer and your friend Weaver’s magic supporting Captain Smith’s horse, then we should hold this entire wing. No matter what they throw at us,’ Sergeant Jones was ever an optimistic man.
‘We have a certain amount of time that we can use our powers. Our magic.’ Archer said, trying to explain. ‘Our magic tires us greatly. Once we exhaust our strength then we will be unable to fight. I will save my magic for when it is most needed. So, only if and when we face disaster.’
‘Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, sir,’ Sergeant Jones said.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Archer said.
‘Anything, sir.’ Jones nodded once, his eye twinkling.
Archer cleared his throat. ‘Are you afraid? Of the battle, I mean.’
Jones glanced round behind them at the men and lowered his voice. ‘I try not to think about it, sir.’
‘Me too,’ Archer said, embarrassed. ‘Just wondering.’
‘We’ll have to hurry up if we want to keep up with the horse companies. Whole regiment’s moving up.’
‘I wish we could see the battle,’ Archer said, staring at the twisted thickets of thorny bushes and trees. ‘How are we supposed to see Cavaliers coming?’
‘Supposed to be messengers letting us know where to go but I’ve been in a few battles now and you never really know what’s happening. The noise and the smoke and sometimes you don’t ever even see the enemy. And then when the battle is over you still never really know what happened. Everybody reckons they saw something different. But that’s not important. You just have to concentrate on firing and reloading your musket over and over again until you’re ordered to stop. Sir.’
‘You’ve got a rifle now, Sergeant,’ Archer said. ‘And to use them properly we need long range. So let’s push up the hill to the east a bit more. Through the trees. Perhaps we can see what’s coming, either our or theirs.’
Jones sucked air through his pursed lips. ‘Can’t really be leaving position, Archer, sir. What if the Cavaliers come right through here and we’re not here to stop them? They’ll get right behind our lines.’
‘It’s our horse troops’ job to stop the Cavaliers from getting through. It’s our job to support our horse troops. Which we can’t do unless we know where our horse troops are.’
‘Can’t argue with that, sir,’ Sergeant Jones said, grinning, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. He turned to shout at the men. ‘We’re pushing through the trees, lads.’
Archer hoped he was doing the right thing. But taking command meant taking decisions and not just blindly doing what you’re supposed to do even if it doesn’t make sense.
They pushed east, towards the horse companies that were supposed to be on their right. The bushes snagged Archer’s uniform and even he had to duck under some of the low branches. Distant cannon fired nonstop and there were faint drums and whistles on the wind. The trees, even though they were mostly bare, blocked sounds. Archer had excellent hearing but he could hear nothing.
‘Where are the horse, Sergeant?’ Archer asked Sergeant Jones.
Poxy Tom cackled and did that thing where he muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘Boy ain’t got a clue, has he?’
Poxy Tom. The
man was the bane of Archer’s existence. If it were not for that man, Archer thought, then being a Captain would not be bad at all.
Tom was always there. All the time, he was needling away, making comments and causing trouble. The worst thing was his constant undermining of Archer’s authority. Endlessly reminding the men of Archer’s youth, his inexperience, his magical, almost-alchemist powers.
And worst of all, Poxy Tom was a reminder of Archer’s failure. Archer had failed to solve the problem of Poxy Tom. No matter what Archer said to him, he merely smirked. No matter what punishment he received, he laughed, did them and rejoined the company. Archer entertained the idea of getting rid of the man. But Sergeant Jones and Corporal Harry said there was no getting rid of him unless he did something seriously bad. And Tom was too cunning to do anything that would get him in trouble. Cromwell himself had recruited Tom, so if they tried to get rid of him then they would be saying Cromwell made a mistake.
Something was burning. It was different to normal smoke or the gunpowder smoke that was drifting in. It reminded him of the smell of Cobnut House when the Coalschester garrison troops had burned it down looking for Keeper and Burp.
‘There’s smoke up ahead, Captain,’ Sergeant Jones said, squinting his one good eye. ‘Over the trees.’
‘Spread the men out,’ Archer said. ‘Let’s take a look.’
Archer’s company spread out as they walked, covering each other and watching and listening. There were still no Cavaliers anywhere. His men reported hearing and seeing flashes of horses nearby but Jones assured him it was probably their own side.
They came to the source of the smoke. It was a farmhouse, burned almost to the ground. A family clutched each other, crying. One of them, an old man with one leg, was all beaten up in the face. A woman screamed at them to leave them alone.
‘Orders, sir?’ Sergeant Jones said.
‘These people have nothing to do with our mission,’ Archer said and ordered his men to give the farm a wide berth. ‘The ground has been churned up by hooves here. Lots of horses.’
‘The hoof prints lead away along that hedge, sir,’ Jones said. ‘Past the burned farm.’
‘Let’s follow them.’
The woman kept shouting at them as they filed past.
‘Who did this to your house?’ Archer shouted.
‘Soldiers did it,’ the woman shouted and spat on the earth.
‘What side, I mean,’ Archer said.
‘What difference does it make?’ she shouted back.
‘I’m sorry,’ Archer said and walked off with his men, following the line of trees and bushes that screened the battlefield. The ordinance duel continued to echo through the trees.
Poxy Tom sneered at Archer’s compassion for the farmers and Archer wondered again how he could be rid of the man. In a way, Archer wished Tom would commit a crime serious enough to get him thrown out of the army.
Archer was lost in thought. His company was spread out, evenly spaced in a line alongside the dense hedgerow and ditch. Then came the warning he had been both hoping for and dreading.
‘Captain Archer, sir,’ Corporal Harry shouted at his elbow. ‘Ware Cavaliers. Through the trees to the east.’
‘Form up here behind the hedge!’ Archer bellowed.
‘Fine battlefield voice, you have there, sir,’ Sergeant Jones said before letting his own voice loose. ‘You heard the officer. Form up here, you laggards.’
His sharpshooter company trotted to line the tall, ragged hedge. The twenty men kneeled and lay down at the base of the bushes and poked their rifles through, ready to fire on the horsemen that galloped toward them. Archer jumped the ditch and peered through to see whether they were truly the feared enemy.
Cavaliers.
Dozens of them, swords drawn and on great horses, charged at Archer’s men.
The sharpshooters were well trained and the men did not wait for orders. Archer’s men fired.
Some of the Cavaliers had carbines and they returned fire from the saddle. The distance was close and so the extended range of his men’s rifles meant nothing. The enemy shots whipped through the branches and twigs in the hedge and slapped against the trunks.
Archer had the urge to bring the white wind down and defend his men from the shots by pushing the musketballs away. But he knew he had to wait. The battle had only just begun and he did not want to exhaust himself when there could be hours of fighting before the day’s end.
The men hunkered down pretty well. Nobody was wounded yet, as far as he could tell.
The Cavaliers could not get through the thick hedges so his company couldn’t be ridden down. The horsemen wheeled away and turned to charge again.
‘Keep firing!’ Archer bellowed at them. ‘Stay in cover, get your heads down but watch the flanks.’ His men knew what to do anyway, they were good. But he knew he had to show that he, too, knew what he was doing. That he had been paying attention and could lead them. ‘Watch the flanks, don’t let them get round us.’
‘Where’s our own horse companies, Captain?’ Corporal Harry asked.
‘They’ll be about somewhere,’ Archer said. He hoped he was right because more Cavaliers were charging. More carbines banged and Archer ducked down low in the ditch as the shots shredded the branches where he had been standing.
To Archer’s left, Poxy Tom had his feet down in the ditch and he was leaning against the bank so the top of it was higher than his head.
‘On your feet, Tom,’ Jones shouted at him, his eye glaring. ‘You don’t get to choose when to fight.’
‘Put me in the stockade, then,’ Poxy Tom said and spat into the ditch. ‘I ain’t dying for that flaming Cromwell.’
‘On your feet, I said,’ Sergeant Jones strode over to the man, cocked his pistol and pointed it at Tom. ‘
‘Captain,’ Corporal Harry shouted. ‘They’re charging!’
Archer had been staring at Sergeant Jones and Tom, wondering what to do. He spun about. Harry was pointing through the blackthorn. The Cavaliers were charging the hedge.
This time they were not stopping.
It was obvious. It was a full charge. They were going to jump up the bank, force their heavy animals through the undergrowth and run Archer’s company to the ground.
A few Cavaliers fired their pistols at them and shot cracked through the bushes. The Cavaliers drew their swords and shouted.
‘For the King! For the King!’
Archer, furious at himself, used his power to bring down the wind. He had to do it quickly. It was easier now than it had ever been. The door inside his heart swung open. The magic surged through him and into the world.
He reached out and up and up and gathered a vast weight of air down and out to blast the men and horses away with the force of the hurricane. Men shouted in mindless terror at the unexpected attack. Branches, leaves and plants ripped off, uprooted, and flew into the tumbling mass of men and swords that rolled away and down.
Those that still could wheeled their horses and galloped away in a blind panic.
His men cheered and jeered at the retreating Cavaliers, relieved to have cheated death.
‘Not used to having magic used against them, Captain,’ one of Archer’s men said.
‘Glad to have you, lad, sir,’ another said.
The roar of the battle continued in the distance. Cannon booming repeatedly. Explosions. Constant ripple of musket fire and the roaring of thousands of men. The stench of gun smoke and oily coal smoke drifted in ever-denser clouds.
‘Right,’ Archer said, calming the storm within himself. ‘We better find our horse companies.’
‘Sir,’ Corporal Harry said, pointing behind them.
Sergeant Jones was hit.
‘Jones,’ Archer ran to where he lay but it was too late. There was blood all over his coat and Jones’ skin was white as bone. His one eye stared into the middle distance. ‘Sergeant?’
‘He’s dead, sir,’ Corporal Harry said.
Archer look
ed at Poxy Tom. The man lay back against the bank next to the body of the Sergeant. Tom’s feet were in the bottom of the ditch. He gripped his rifle to his chest. Wisps of smoke curled from the barrel.
Archer walked toward him.
‘Who did you fire your rifle at, Tom?’ Archer said, stalking through the mud. His men stared, unmoving. ‘You’re too low down there to have shot at the enemy. While we were doing our job, you were cowering down here.’
‘What you going do?’ Poxy Tom said, sneering. ‘You ain’t going to do nothing, little boy.’
Archer stood over the man, who was white and trembling. ‘Who did you shoot, Tom? Tell us?’
‘You can’t do nothing,’ Tom wailed.
Archer wanted to blast the snivelling, murdering coward into a thousand pieces. He wanted to smash him into the ground. He wanted to fling him into the air clear across the battlefield to be smashed amongst the enemy.
The white wind stirred inside his chest.
‘Don’t hurt me,’ Tom said, dropping his rifle in the ditch. ‘Help me, lads,’ Tom cried out, scurrying away on his back.
Archer knew that his grey eyes were glowing with an inner light. It frightened people. Archer wanted Tom to be frightened. He wanted Tom to be more afraid than he ever had been.
‘Please,’ Tom was on his knees in the stinking green mud in the ditch. Archer sank to his ankles and stood over Tom.
‘Help me,’ Tom wailed to the others. Archer sensed that none of them moved a muscle.
‘Jones was a good man,’ Archer said, his voice sounding strange; rich and full of power.
Tom just sobbed.
