The woods were open. The rear of the long column was badly hampered by the marsh and bog around the old beaver ponds, but thousands of animals crashing through the woods make their own road, and it was not as hard at the back as at the front.
“Your people are already on the flanks?”
“Mostly to the west. I will go there. Send me a hundred knights when I wind my horn three times.” Ser Tapio smiled. “You have far more knights than I.”
“Done,” Ser Gabriel said, and they clasped hands. The Faery Knight waved one arm, and bells seemed to ring, and all his knights simply rode away. They were as fast as swallows changing directions—and then they were gone.
“Ser Bescanon—take thirty lances and hold them in reserve for Ser Tapio.” Ser Gabriel’s eyes registered his acceptance of the order and moved on.
The ridge to their front was full of horns. Around them their small army poured from column into line. The company troops did it well, despite the trees—they simply flowed into place. New men were slapped on the back or pushed. There were enough veterans—just—to get the line formed. Ser Milus’s white banda was almost half newcomers, and the red banda not much better. Only Gelfred’s green banda was all veterans.
Cully saw the captain still scribbling. There was fighting off to the left—well away to the left. Horns.
“I think we’ve found their whole force,” the captain said. “I’m sending Sauce for our reserves.”
He was smiling.
Cully hated that smile. “Reserves?” he asked.
The captain smiled that nasty smile. “Haven’t you wondered where my brother’s been, all this time?” he asked.
Cully began to cheer up.
They heard the hollow axe sounds all morning, from the west and south. Hartmut flinched every time the sound came clear. All he could imagine was a long line of forts running all the way across his path—
Before noon, the Dead Tree Qwethnethogs and the scouts of the Huran caught a band of axemen and destroyed them.
After that, there was no holding the army, and it flooded forward into the low hills, up each ridge on its steep face, and then a shallower descent. Hartmut didn’t know the country, but he knew the general lay of the land.
He was concerned at how quickly a few miles of wilderness swallowed their whole force. By how open the woods proved to be.
It was more alien than anything he’d seen.
But Thorn seemed content with their route, and they pressed forward. It was terrible walking for the men—the sailors and the brigans—but Hartmut put them deep in the column so that the great daemons, the stone trolls and the other forest folk could make a trail for them. At last they broke out of the lowlands and into the higher ground with bigger trees, and every step they climbed seemed to rid them of the clinging hobblebush and the terrible alders.
Cunxis, one of the warlords of the Dead Trees, appeared out of the light rain, his feather cloak making him almost invisible until he chose to be seen.
“Thorn—they are right here! A whole army!”
Cunxis was intolerably excited; his red crest stood up, engorged with blood, and his teeth all but glowed white.
“Where?” Thorn demanded. There was a very faint sound of horns—above them on the next ridge. Further north.
Ears of many shapes pricked.
Without any order being given, the whole host began to flood up the ridge, led by the daemons of the Dead Tree Clan, followed—and sometimes outrun—by a thousand Outwaller warriors. The column had only been moving on a path ten or so creatures wide, crushing the underbrush as they moved, and now it gathered speed—but there were bands and bands, stretching away down the last three ridges…
Hartmut spat. “Halt,” he roared at his own human auxiliaries. They halted—and creatures flowed around them.
The enemy—Outwallers and daemons—got to the top of the ridge first.
The captain swore—palpably.
“Don’t halt!” the captain roared, when the line faltered. Even in the rain, the feather cloaks and the slick skin—and sheer size—showed the fearsome enemy. Everyone had nightmares of the daemons at Lissen Carak.
The ground was actually becoming more broken as they climbed the ridge, and on the narrow front where the daemons emerged from the rain, there was naked rock and a steep slope.
“Household—dismount,” the captain called. Cursing—no knight likes to fight on foot—the veteran knights swung off their war horses and handed them back to pages—and in some cases lost only a few strides.
“Stay open,” the captain ordered. He was on foot, and they were going up the slope—the steepest.
Heavy rocks came down on them. A daemon lobbed a rock as big as a man’s head, and Chris Foliak died, his head crushed.
His squire pushed forward into his space and they continued up. Lord Wimarc slammed his face-plate closed as a smaller stone broke his nose.
Stones were not their only weapons. The daemons had heavy axes. They had halted, and stood waiting near the crest—and Outwaller warriors started to leak around their edges.
The household went up the last few yards with their archers loosing at very close range—most of them already at or behind trees as big as the columns that supported a church roof.
The daemons stopped the captain’s household cold, and didn’t give a foot’s breadth. Nell fell there, cut almost in two by a daemon’s axe, and Toby saw the captain go down—struck in the chest by a rock—he rolled, and got to his feet before Toby could take any action. Then Toby missed his guard and caught most of a blow—his helmet did not fail, but his head moved too far, he screamed and fell, and the captain’s ghiavarina was everywhere for a few seconds. A daemon fell—another rolled forward, tripping on its own tangled guts.
“Back!” roared the captain.
Toby had never seen the company stopped. He could not, at first, believe it, and Cully, safe behind a tree at the base of the slope, had to pull the stunned boy out of the line of rocks now falling as the daemons taunted the beaten company.
The household retreated slowly, dragging their wounded. The rest of the company was not retreating—in some cases, like Ser Michael’s lance, they had won the race to the crest.
“Was that Nell?” the captain asked Toby.
“Yes,” Toby spat.
The archers continued, working through their livery arrows at a stunning rate. The thrown rocks were not enough answer, and their shafts began to tell. The daemons were suffering. One of their shamans tossed a working.
The captain unravelled it.
“Listen,” the captain said to Toby. “Listen to the horns.” He smiled.
Toby heard only the sound of desperate combat: horns, and horns, steel and shouting, and screams. Nell—Chris Foliak… He had never felt so tired. So beaten.
“Ready everyone?” the captain called. “Fast as you can to the top. Everyone kill one. This is it.”
Toby looked around. What did he hear? They were going again?
The captain stepped out from behind his great tree and a stone hit his left arm. He raised his right and blew a long call on his horn.
The beaten household got up, or came out from behind their trees.
The captain was already a third of the way up the slope. He was flying over the rocks like a faery horse. Toby decided to try not watching his footing and jumping—in full plate armour—from rock to rock.
It was insanely foolish.
He fell, and his breastplate took the force of his fall on a sharp rock—rose, and jumped.
He could no longer see the captain, but suddenly, above him, there was a great beaked face.
Sometimes, you have to go up the hill first.
The irony was that he was fairly certain that this part of the battle was already won. He could hear the red banda’s horns, and even Michael’s shouts—from the ridge crest. He’d guessed the enemy would be on a narrow frontage—at first.
That didn’t change the tactical reality that he had to hold the whole
ridge crest to win. It was bad luck that the enemy had led their force with their very best assault troops.
The logic was unassailable.
But he’d blown their first chance, and now he had to lead from in front, and very possibly die.
He thought—in no order, and all at once—of Harmodius, of Amicia, of Blanche, of his mother, and, of all people, of Ser Tapio.
Win or lose—he could die here, and that was fine.
He began to run.
He had a plan—he had a plan for everything, and if he hadn’t been labouring to breathe inside a pig-faced bascinet while climbing a cliff in armour, he might even have assayed a laugh, because he hadn’t made any plan at all for Blanche, and she was a new world of delight and happiness that he didn’t think he could ever grow used to.
Planning. Over-rated.
But he had planned not to use his powers until he met Thorn, and he found, here, on a naked rock slope with a hundred giant daemons ravening for his blood, that he really didn’t want to lose another friend.
He leapt to the left—landed well, on a big spike of glacial scree—and flicked with his left gauntlet, opening his first of seven sequenced attacks. He’d layered days’ worth of ops and stored the results in Pru’s ever-faithful mind. He didn’t have to enter his palace or speak a trigger.
Daemons died. Some simply lost their feet at the ankle. Their shaman revealed himself to cast—first a strong shield to prevent a repetition, and then a concussive hammer spell, very simple, very hard to shield.
Gabriel turned to working with the ghiavarina, and reached out through the dangerous terrain of the aethereal, found him, and took him. He subsumed the daemon even as the creature shrieked, begged mercy, and collapsed.
We are the monsters, Gabriel thought. At least, I am. Kill my page, you fucks?
Up he went, and the scythe of his thought reaped them.
In the aether, he roared.
Come, Thorn. Let’s be done with it. Come, Thorn, and die.
It was all death.
To Ash, all deaths were of equal value. It was, in fact, going much as he had envisioned, and he rode the success, smiling at the little stumbling blocks. The boglins died, storming the first wall—very satisfying. Men died, and cave trolls died, and the sweet, honey taste of the Golden Bears—they died.
The vanguard held for one assault and then melted under the onslaught of a truly talented mage, and even Ash registered dimly that he ought to be aware of this one, and then the thought slid off the hardened surface of his mind, and he was waiting, lurking, his empowerment and achievement nearing completion, the ant apotheosis he’d scryed as the key to his next victory—to a cascade of endless victory. A way around the others. The path, at least, to freedom, and perhaps even—victory.
Death. Another and another five and two more and ten.
He felt the limit pass, and he, for whom joy was beyond the void, felt a flash of something very close…
Thorn felt his dark lord’s rising elation and he rode it, even as he felt the cry for help from Cunxis and even as the flanks of his still-moving force began to lose the crest line and fall back. Almost none of his vast army was yet engaged. They poured up the third ridge like water running uphill, their once narrow front broadening organically as every creature strove with every other to reach the front.
But Ash was already there, like a lover on the edge of climax and demanding completion, his ravings pouring undiminished into the wilderness Thorn had created around the egg in his mind.
Come, Thorn, came the voice of the Dark Sun.
It was now, or never.
I come, he said. He translated—he let go the thing he’d held so long, changed his innermost process, abandoned the armoured body he’d created for the one of will and essence he preferred—there was a burst of black light…
Toby slammed his war hammer on the thing’s taloned foot. There was nothing else to do, and he had to trust to luck and good armour.
His hammer struck, and the daemon, hampered by fear of whatever was killing his mates, missed, and Toby was up—he swung again and missed wildly, and the daemon was down on one great saurian knee and flicked his axe one-handed. The blow caught Toby at the edge of a cover, and turned him—now he was bleeding under his arm.
Both cut, almost together.
Toby’s steel hammer, now powered by two hands, cut the more vertical line, covering his own head and delivering a powerful blow to his adversary—just as the captain taught. The blow struck, almost untouched—the daemon took it over the left eye.
And fell.
Toby paused for too long, incredulous. But above him on the slope, the great wardens were turning their backs and fleeing. To Toby’s left there were new movements, but they flashed in the watery sunlight—men in armour, already at the crest—some on horses.
Ser Michael had taken the crest.
Toby saw the captain, then. He stood in a guard, facing empty air. He was just a few yards short of the crest, his great spear held low.
He was alone.
And then, he was not.
Thunder cracked—everywhere, as if a thousand bolts of lightning had struck simultaneously. And a tower of black smoke, as tall as the spire of a village church and lit from within by a dark red fire that also spread like angel’s wings on either side, and rose to form a crown, or a halo.
Thorn towered over the Red Knight.
His staff came down, a direct blow in the real, and the Red Knight parried, a rising cover with the haft of the ghiavarina even as he stepped hard to the right.
To Toby’s eyes, the heads of the two weapons, entangled in the interaction, burst into white-hot flame.
In Gabriel’s consciousness, Thorn only threw the physical blow to cover his hermetical assault. It was not contemptuous, this time, and there were no theatrics. Six nested workings collapsed like an avalanche of brilliantly woven ops on his armoured form.
He played them all. In one virtuoso employment of every tool, he stood with Prudentia and unloosed every protection, amulet, and prepared defence save one, and they unrolled—sword of light to parry a bolt of darkness, the timing perfect, the counter already flowing—the net, burned, the assault on will undermined, the flood almost damned, the envelopment counter-enveloped and a second counter initiated, and the pure, white fog of ops batted away—mostly—
Absorbed.
He was hit in three places—not every counter had been perfect, but armour and runes kept it from being mortal, and he was on his feet, the spear still in his hand.
There was no thought. He cut with the spear—
Thorn covered with his staff, took a hit from the slightly delayed counter to the bolt of darkness working, and staggered, wounded.
He drew something from his waist as Gabriel’s elemental counter-envelopment engorged itself on Thorn’s first working and blew back into him. The sorcerer lost the thread of his casting and—
The Red Knight’s first formed working in the aethereal was just too slow—everything, every defence, had been pre-deployed, and now he was on his own. He was too slow—Thorn, twice wounded, managed to cast again and Gabriel’s elation was punctured as he was staggered by Thorn’s brilliant eclipse working—something gave in his side—
Thorn’s staff slammed into his arm. Armour crumpled like tin, and the bones of his forearm snapped—
Prudentia continued to spin, rolling the next working into completion awaiting only the trigger.
Pain rose like the roar of the rain and the rolling drums of thunder in the Red Knight’s side and arm, but he was above it.
In a moment—Blanche, her hand, the darkness—he abandoned his plan.
His right hand twirled the spear in a long feint, reversing his grip.
“Fiat Lux,” he cried, unleashing the working that had taken too long—
Thorn turned his massive working with a healthy respect and a massive shield—
But this time, the working had been the feint. The spear completed
its turn, the grip reversed, and the Red Knight cast—with all his might—the Wyrm’s spear into Thorn’s unprotected groin.
On the other side of the ridge, Hartmut saw the intense strobes of light through the rain. To the right and behind him, the whole of Thorn’s horde was rolling, flowing, in one continuous carpet up the slope of the last ridge.
The battle—if it was indeed a battle—was less than fifteen minutes old. Even his knights flinched from the massive detonations that marked the centre point of the conflict, and the steady flow of wounded daemons did nothing to encourage him.
“Thorn!” Hartmut bellowed.
He had no answer but rain, and a triple detonation of lightning—three fast flashes that imprinted on Hartmut forever the hideous ripple that was the rising beat of a single, impossibly large wing. And around the wing—the wing as big as the centre of an army—were bones. Bones stripped in one single instant of sorcerous domination of their flesh. Daemons and Outwallers, men and beasts, knights and horses—stripped to bones in one heartbeat.
And from it rose—
One wing. It was long, and a deep blue-black, shot with veins of softly glowing purple black, and it moved.
It moved with an elegant lethality.
Ser Hartmut was still having trouble with the scale, and doubted his eyes.
The rising wing’s passage knocked him and his horse to the ground.
Mag rose to her feet.
“Here he comes,” she said aloud. Which was interesting, as she was alone. There was not another soul—damned, blessed, or otherwise—in the first line of forts.
Just as she had arranged. Lord Wayland and the Grand Squire and their troops had withstood two assaults from an almost unimaginable horde of unsupported boglins. The northern Brogat levy had fought—with her hermetical support—until they had filled the marsh to the front and all the ditches with dead monsters.
Now the enemy was massing on the far side of the marsh—readying another assault. And Lord Wayland’s men were delighted to obey the order to march for the rear, the higher, safer ground.
Mag stayed. Mag had her own plan.
“Here I come, John,” she said, as if her love were right there, with her.
The Dread Wyrm Page 74
