by Dan Davis
‘You murdered him,’ Archer said.
‘I didn’t want to die,’ Tom said.
‘That’s a shame,’ Archer said. He wanted to crush Tom. Wanted to drive him down into the mud.
‘Corporal Harry,’ Archer said over his shoulder. ‘Take him. Bind up his hands. We’ll take him back to the army. The punishment for murder is death, is that right, Corporal?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Harry said, coming up and standing over Tom. ‘Although I don’t reckon he’ll see out the battle.’ The Corporal nodded at the others, their powder-stained faces grim and full of rage. ‘Probably a stray shot will take him, right, sir?’ Tom whimpered.
Archer was about to agree but he never gave breath to it. Allowing the men to shoot Tom and call it an enemy shot would just be another murder. If he allowed his men to kill Tom then he might as well just shoot the man himself. Letting them do it for him was just cowardice.
‘No,’ Archer said, feeling sick as he said it. ‘He’ll go back for proper justice.’
Harry looked angry but then he shrugged. ‘Same result either way, I suppose. Men won’t like it, though.’
‘Doesn’t matter if they like it,’ Archer snapped, angry again. ‘That’s how it is. And hurry, we need to push on and find our horse companies.’
‘Yes, sir,’ his Corporal said, springing to attention for a moment. ‘Right, lads, let’s get this murderer tied up and get on with this battle.’
The ground shook and rumbled.
‘Is it Cavaliers?’ Archer asked. His men scrambled to the top of the bank and peered over. ‘Our own horse?’
‘Nothing close, sir.’
The shaking grew worse. The ground rumbling and thundering underfoot, throbbing like a powerful heartbeat.
‘Landship?’ Archer asked.
Corporal Harry shook his head. ‘They’ll be over in the centre of the battlefield, half a mile away or more.’ He looked afraid.
All the men were terrified. The shaking grew worse. The trees clattered and rattled, showering them with twigs and leaves.
The men shouted questions to each other.
‘What on earth is happening?’
‘We must have battlemages attacking.’
‘Must be. Must be alchemists. Got to be.’
Harry shouted. ‘Fall back, sir?’ The noise of the rumbling was getting louder and louder and they had to shout to hear each other.
Archer did not know what to do. ‘Which way is it even coming from? We might end up going towards it. Whatever it is’
‘Ware horse!’ one of his men shouted.
A group of horsemen rode across the field from the north, on Archer’s side of the hedge. They were careering this way and that in complete disarray.
Archer started to unleash his power before he recognised one of the horsemen as Captain Smith.
The horses were bucking and stepping wildly. Many did not stop but instead swerved by Archer’s men and charged off, scattering in different directions.
‘Smith!’ Archer bellowed, his voice like a cannon.
The Captain drew up, yanking on his reins.
‘Archer,’ Captain Smith shouted, struggling to control his horse, whose eyes were wide with terror. ‘It is Weaver. The stupid girl has gone mad. Stark raving mad. She is going to destroy us all.’
Captain Smith raked his heels down the flanks of his terrified horse and charged off toward the army camp.
‘Which way?’ Archer yelled after him. But the Captain just galloped off.
‘Bloody officers,’ Harry growled.
‘With me,’ Archer shouted at his men. ‘Get two men to grab Tom and bring him,’ he said to Harry. Tom was weeping freely. ‘We’ll come back for Jones’ body.’
Archer ran through the way that Captain Smith and his men had come from. The ground rumbled and shook. The earth itself thrummed like a great drum. The surface rose up and down under his feet, as if in long ribbons that surged one after the other toward him and out behind him. He ran through some spindly undergrowth that rattled, throwing twigs and bits everywhere.
Weaver was there. On her knees by the body of her horse, Artemis. The poor animal was on its side, laying still. Weaver’s hands and arms were into the earth to her elbows. She and the horse were in an island of calm, with the ground all around pulsing outward in concentric circles that grew and grew.
The noise was incredible.
His men were behind him, clinging to each other and to the bushes, rising and falling in the waves of earth.
‘Wait here,’ Archer shouted, struck by their bravery in following him.
He struggled towards her, falling to his knees repeatedly, the whole way.
She was unaware of his presence. Her eyes were glowing a deep green. Cheeks wet with tears.
A distant boom ripped through the air.
Archer looked out across the battlefield. Trees obscured most of the King’s Army but there was a fair view of Cromwell’s New Model Army.
The land was rising and falling across the hill. Only Cromwell’s horse regiments seemed unaffected. Those distant blocks of men and beast rode down the hill toward the enemy in rank after ordered rank of gleaming steel blades and helmets and brass bits and buttons.
The rest of the army was a different story.
Great, ragged lines of redcoats scattered away from the centre, streaming in all directions away from the enemy. Most headed roughly back toward the rear of the lines and the secure camp. Hundreds, maybe thousands of men running in terror from the shaking earth. The ordinance batteries were thrown over, dismounted from their carriages by the force pulsing from the ground.
In the centre of Cromwell’s army, the six mighty ironclad landships toppled into the liquid earth. They fell in together, crunching and grinding. The men inside poured out through the hatches in the armoured tops like ants streaming out of their nest. The weight of those great machines piling up on each other was too much for the armour to take and the sheets of riveted iron bent, screeching.
Archer knew that landships moved through huge internal boilers, fed by huge fires burning coal and making steam to turn the wheels. And inside was the ordinance, the cannons that shot huge balls of iron and shells of explosive black powder. The cannons were still firing across the battlefield at the King’s Army when they tumbled into the earth together.
A rolling black cloud erupted from one of the machines in the centre of the formation of six. A moment later, the sound blasted Archer’s ears. The blast wave of hot, stinking, oily air rushed out from the shattered landships and whipped through the grass and fleeing soldiers before it smashed into him and kept going beyond. Explosion after explosion slammed through the air as the other landships were destroyed in turn. The sound was painful, like being slapped in both ears at once by a giant. Archer cried out and ducked down with his hands over his head.
When he stood, the landships were sunken and smoking ruins. The soldiers were in full flight. On the other side of the battlefield in the centre of the King’s Army lines was another huge fire, with another plume of black smoke boiling up into the sky above the trees.
It seemed that the landships’ cannons had destroyed some part of the King’s Army before the machines had exploded.
Perhaps, then, all was not yet lost.
‘Weaver,’ Archer shouted at her as he staggered to her, past the body of Artemis and into the calm centre of Weaver’s power. He fell to his knees by her and grabbed her arm. ‘Weaver, it’s me.’
He threw his arms around her shoulders. He could feel the power flowing from her, out of her and into the ground. It was like his own powers but different.
‘Weaver, please stop. You’re wrecking our army.’
She did not seem to hear him.
‘The King’s Army will win,’ Archer shouted. ‘The Alchemists will win unless you stop.’
He thought he should thump her round the head but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
He shook her harder and shouted, in his b
est battlefield voice, right in her ear. ‘Weaver. Stop!’
The shaking outside grew worse. He looked out across the ribbons of rising earth flowing across the battlefield. The New Model Army’s left wing and centre was destroyed. The redcoats had almost all fled from the shaking earth. The landships were a smoking ruin. Cromwell’s horse on the far right looked to be pushing into the King’s left but, without support, they were doomed to death and defeat.
England would be lost. His friends would be captured. The Vale would be conquered. Anything could happen to his family.
Archer sighed, grabbed his rifle and lifted it above his head. He was afraid he would crack her skull. He was afraid he would not hit her hard enough and in her rage, she would kill him.
He did not know what else to do.
He swung the butt of his rifle down on the back of her head.
Weaver’s Rage
The earth around her shook and thundered and drummed. Waves of vibration flowed out from her belly, through her legs and arms and hands, rolling outward down through the earth. Down through the topsoil, down through the subsoil and clay underneath right down into the bedrock. The waves of her power flowed through the bedrock and out through the hill down into the valley and out across the other hill, fading into the distance. Up and out and up to the surface in wave after wave of power.
She could feel what was happening. The soldiers above on the surface sank up to their knees in the soft soil as they tried to flee. Horses picked their hooves up high in a useless attempt to get away from the rolling earth.
Artemis.
The memory of her was like a blow to the head. All at once she felt her power drain from her; sliding away into nothing.
She was on her face in the dirt. The cold wet soil was in her eyes and her mouth. Earth smelled of decay but it meant life. Every plant and tree and animal and person that ever lived or ever will live came from the earth. Grew out of it. Was made from it. She curled her fingers into it and squeezed it.
Artemis had died. Been shot.
Sergeant Gore had led her into an ambush and Artemis had been killed.
She was lying face down in the dirt. The back of her head throbbed. She didn’t want to get up but she supposed she had to, as someone was shaking her shoulder.
‘Weaver! Weaver!’
Someone rolled her over and she looked up at the sky. A pain lanced through the back of her skull.
‘Weaver,’ Archer was there, frowning like always. ‘Weaver, wake up!’
‘My name’s Isolda,’ she said, spitting out soil.
‘Oh no, you’ve lost your wits,’ she heard him mutter. ‘Your name’s Weaver. You’re from the Vale.’
She smiled and reached up a black hand and patted his pale cheek.
‘Ah, you’re a good lad, really,’ she mumbled.
Archer held her hand. Squeezed her fingers.
‘I’m getting you home,’ Archer said. ‘Enough of this.’ He bent to scoop her up, even though she was heavier than he was.
‘No.’ She sat up. Her head swam. The earth around her was soft and churned up, as if it had just been ploughed.
Artemis lay beside her. Her huge body still. Her beautiful silver coat stained with blood.
‘I have to bury her,’ Weaver said and Archer helped her to her feet and then held her upright as she swayed.
‘I’ll help you,’ Archer said.
Archer’s green sharpshooters, about twenty of them, lined up on the treeline, a way away. Her vision was blurred but they looked terrified and angry and she felt it was directed at her.
‘Spread out,’ Archer told them. ‘Watch to see if any Cavaliers decide to get brave and come back.’
They went off.
‘Your men hate me,’ Weaver said, remembering losing herself in grief.
‘Probably,’ Archer said. ‘But who cares what anyone else thinks?’
Weaver chuckled, squeezed his shoulder. ‘Even your men? You’re their captain.’
‘They like me well enough,’ Archer said quietly. ‘But it’s not as though I’m a real officer. I’m just a boy with powers to them.’
From what she had seen, Weaver wasn’t sure that was true but she was too tired to argue. Her head hurt.
‘Did I wreck our army?’ she said, peering about her. She remembered the feeling of people sinking and fleeing through the waves of power she sent out.
Smoke drifted through the trees. Thousands of voices drifted on the wind, as well as muskets firing and horses running. She could still feel the shocks of her power echoing back through the bedrock under the earth beneath her feet.
‘Looks like it,’ Archer said. He patted her back. ‘Not many people can say that, can they?’
She stood before Artemis.
Weaver fell on her dear horse’s neck. Only a little while ago it had been full to bursting with life and now it was growing cold.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered into an unheeding ear. ‘I didn’t know you for long but I loved you. I’ll never forget you.’
There was not much more to say. Archer was there behind her. He rested a hand on her shoulder.
Little of her power remained in her. She felt hollow. Like there was a great dark cave in her chest. Yet there was enough for her to make a large grave for Artemis, slipping the earth out from underneath so that Artemis’s body slid into the hole. The ring of earth about the hole she tumbled back in and pressed it down firmly on top so there was only a slight mound when she was done.
‘Bye, Artemis,’ she whispered.
One of Archer’s sharpshooters came over and coughed quietly. ‘Beg pardon, sir. Sorry, sir. Could your friend Weaver bury Sergeant Jones just like she did with that horse? He’d have liked that, I reckon.’
‘It’s up to Weaver, Harry,’ Archer replied. ‘But I hope she says yes.’
In no time, four men carried over the man she recognised as Sergeant Jones and lay him at her feet. She shrugged.
There was another man in a sharpshooters’ green coat laying at the edge of the undergrowth. He had his hands bound but he was dead as a doorknob. ‘What about that one?’ Weaver asked because everyone was ignoring him.
‘He can lay there for the crows,’ the sharpshooter called Harry said, looking somewhat sheepish but pleased with himself. ‘Looks like he caught one of them stray shots after all, sir.’
‘Fine,’ Archer said. Weaver knew Archer well enough to know he wanted to get away.
Weaver made a deep grave for Sergeant Jones, lowered him in and covered it over. Archer was quite upset.
All Archer’s sharpshooters lined up together by the grave, aimed their rifles in the air. Archer bellowed an order and they fired as one. The shots cracked and smoke billowed.
‘Did I lose the battle for us?’ Weaver asked Archer.
One look at his face told her the answer.
‘Let’s go find Keeper and Burp and go and get Writer,’ Archer said. ‘The King’s Army was probably knocked about just as much as ours was, or near enough. So they won’t be coming for us right away. That should give us the chance to get in and save Writer. If we move quick, we can take them by surprise. I still have some strength left to use my power. Saving Writer’s what we should have been doing this whole time. Not mucking about with these idiots.’
‘Thanks, Captain,’ Old Wicks said and a few chuckled. But mostly the men were sad.
‘We’ll come with you and rescue your friend,’ the one called Harry said. ‘Got nothing better to do, anyway. Now the rest of the army scarpered.’ The men seemed to agree.
Archer shook his blonde head. ‘You idiots have to come back to the army with me,’ Archer said to them. ‘Otherwise you’ll be deserters.’
The sharpshooters grumbled but Weaver knew they were relieved, really.
‘Here’s your sword,’ Archer said. ‘Found it over there and I recognised it.’
‘Don’t want it any more,’ Weaver said.
‘I know,’ Archer said. ‘But take it any
way. Just in case.’
Weaver took the fine weapon and remembered how Keeper had made it, especially for her. Keeper was someone who made things. He created things where Weaver was a person who destroyed. She slid it back into its scabbard.
‘I just have to do one more thing before we go get Keeper,’ Weaver said. She walked back to the farmhouse that Sergeant Gore and half her horse company had set fire to. It was not too far away.
Archer spread his men out in the trees to watch for the Cavaliers and he promised them they would retreat in just a moment. There were dozens and even hundreds of redcoats trudging through the trees nearby, covered in mud and dirt. Many had lost their muskets or horses and they looked shocked and were mostly silent.
Weaver was unsurprised to find that the people who had lost their farmhouse were gone. The flames that Gore had started had died down to a pile of smoking embers. The small timbers were consumed and the beams were smouldering, in a jumble that once had been a family’s home. All the big billowing black smoke had turned thin and wispy but the house was still so hot she could feel it from the trampled kitchen garden. All the other outbuildings had been shaken to rubble. That was Weaver’s fault, alone.
Captain Smith told her before that Cromwell’s forces were not supposed to do this sort of thing but either he had been lying to her or he was an idiot. She suspected that it was both. She wished she could undo the damage but she could only destroy.
Although, there had only ever been one thing she was properly good at.
Weaver replanted the seedlings into the neat rows that had been there before her company had trampled them into bits. The plants were broken, trampled flat and destroyed. She restored everything in the garden as best she could.
Archer fretted about the enemy soldiers finding them and he wanted to get after his precious Writer. Instead, she made him stand up a fence that had been rode down. Archer was used to doing that sort of thing so he just got on with it, worrying as usual.
It had been such a long time since she worked the earth properly, as she had when she was little. She enjoyed replanting the surviving plants.
The shouts of the retreating soldiers intruded but she ignored them as best she could.
