Yulan rose, a little unsteady. He felt sick. His head ached. Wren was gone. Where she had stood, in the centre of the clearing, were only a few feathers. A few dead birds. An emptiness.
He found the rest of them searching through the copse. Confused, alarmed. Some of them carrying flaming sticks from the fire. Drann was kneeling beside Hamdan, trying to shake the archer awake.
“Leave him,” Yulan said. “He’ll come to his senses soon enough.”
Drann looked up at him. The youth’s bewilderment, perhaps fear, was plain even in the muted dancing light of a distant torch.
“What’s happening?”
“She’s gone to Kerig.”
“To rescue him? Can she do that?”
“That’s what you people forget,” Yulan said, with a bitterness that he knew Drann did not deserve. “Just because the School’s got all the Clevers on a leash, because there’s been no call for wonders or horrors in years, you think Clevers are workers of little magics. They’re not. They’re makers of miracles. Shapers of the world, if they’re willing to pay the price it requires.”
He walked back towards the campfire, almost bowed down by the oppressive weight he felt.
“A lot of people are going to die when Wren finds them,” he said as he went. “And maybe all of us, not long after. There’s the glory, and the honour, of riding with the Free for you, boy.”
25
The Castle At Haut Terpen
Wren was gone. Transformed. Subsumed. Her will drove the vast flock that she and the entelech had together become. Her anger swept it, seething, across the land. Her anger was it.
The birds, like the extended arm of a giant, clawed up through gathering clouds and plunged down again, trailing streamers of mist behind them. They rolled, in great spirals, southward in the night.
The host passed over villages and lone cottages and farms. Those who dreamed beneath its path dreamed of thunder and of tremors in the deep earth. Those still awake, beneath the sky, heard its roar and looked up. Some stood and stared. Some fled beneath roofs, behind walls. And all in their turn dreamed strange dreams, if they slept at all.
Southward, and then westward and east. Questing. Raging through the night sky. Searching, hour after hour, for one man. And finding him at last, the whisper of him, the familiar sound and scent and love of him, there beyond a high hill.
The castle at Haut Terpen was one of eight built at the command of Hugent, first of the Hommetics, to fortify his hold upon his newly subdued domain. Not much more than the foundations had been dug when he died. He was not granted the time to enjoy his spoils.
Amyllis, his wife, who ruled for their son until he came of age, saw the works to completion. Every one of those eight castles was built to the same pattern, with tall turreted walls encircling yard and keep, stables and workshops and barracks. One of them was burned and abandoned. Three were sold or gifted to lords or royal relations. Three remained, until the late rebellion, strongholds of the King’s Armsmen. One – Haut Terpen – was passed to the School, and became their Tower, to stand alongside their Home, their Keep, their Hall.
The castle was not built atop the humpbacked hill from which it took its name, but at the end of a long spur reaching out from that hill into the floodplain of the Munn River. The spur ended in low but disagreeable cliffs that guarded the castle on three sides. Only along the length of the spur could its gates be approached, and there its builders had cut a trench, deep and wide, over which the track ran on a stone bridge.
It would be a stern test for any attacker, but in all the fifty years or so of the castle’s life, none had come. It had stood, in peaceful slumber, watching over the wide wet fields of the Munn, and quietly aged without ever suffering assault or siege. The seventy or more Clade warriors who held it lived lives of modest tranquillity, in the main. The Clevers who visited found it a place of pleasant seclusion, conducive to study and training and reflection. Only on tithe days, when the farmers of the plain brought their tribute to the castle, did it ever become loud or crowded within those walls.
In the first hour after dawn, the birds came around the northern shoulder of Haut Terpen like a vast shadow, sweeping low over the slope. Streaming, in a seemingly endless flood, down towards the gate, and the turrets and the keep. They came without voice, without call or croak, but with a great roaring of their wings, as loud as a huge river in spate.
A spearman, on the walkway between two turrets, stopped atop the wall and watched the impossible, the unimaginable, plummeting down towards him. The sky darkened as the sun was obscured. A surging shadow swept across the whole castle.
At the last moment, when he finally believed that this tempest of birds was not going to turn aside, the spearman ducked down and pressed himself in against the parapet. The feathered storm poured over the wall, over his head, and went twisting and plunging into the yard. A limb of it spun down as it passed and snatched him from the wall, and tumbled him through the air, amidst the birds, tossing him to and fro, rending him. He flailed like a child-thrown rag doll, spat out from the maelstrom to crash against the wall of the keep, thirty feet up. He fell, limp and loose, into the yard, a shower of feathers and of his blood falling with him.
Men were running. There was no thought of fighting this, save a few arrows shot up in desperation that vanished into the mass of birds. The flock swept around the keep, coiling about it like some titanic snake born of nightmare. Battering at the walls, breaking the windows. Dead birds fell by the score.
A lashing tongue flailed its way in through a shattered window. Another reached out from the main body of the host to scour the roof of the keep, driving the two sentries there to their knees and then on to their backs. Smothering them, clawing them, tearing their flesh, battering them with the wind of a thousand unnaturally strong wings. Scraps of clothing and of skin and meat were torn away from them and sent spinning out over the battlements.
Birds plunged into the stables. Horses were thrown down, flung about like lambs. Planks were blown out from the roof and seething columns of birds burst up through the holes. Little corpses kept falling like rain. Across the wide expanse of the yard, the flock settled and spun, dragging down the few men who had not yet found shelter. The well at the centre stood like the eye of a spinning storm, and the birds turned around and around it.
Every window of the keep was broken now, and Wren’s fury drove into the building from every side at once. Impaled it. Shook it. From high and low, from every part of the castle, birds rushed inward, a great cloud closing on the keep and tearing into its innards. One room, one passageway after another was filled with the boiling flood. Wall hangings were torn down and shredded, tables and chairs overturned, rent into kindling. Doors were split and splintered and punctured; even the strongest of them, for there was more to this than mere birds, mere claw and beak.
Wren was – had been – an Autumnal Clever, but there was Aestival in this as well. Storm and rage, grief and strength, she had shaped it all into this maelstrom, and given herself over to its wielding. The stones of the keep groaned and trembled. Great cracks ran through its outer walls.
A Clade warrior fleeing down a passage was overtaken, overwhelmed, struck down to the flagstone floor. Fire leapt from the oil lamps lighting the way, crackling and springing from bird to bird, dancing through the flock like orange lightning. It stamped down on the fallen man, a pounding heel of flame, and seared him into the stone. The stench of burned feather and flesh swept through the keep. The fire raced to keep pace with that stink, surging through the flock, spilling blackened, charred corpses in its wake. It came to a great iron-banded door, howled upon its face and made ash of it, and plunged down a spiralling staircase into the bowels of the fortress. An inferno carried on wings. A hot gale blowing in its van, down into the deep places.
In his dark cell, Kerig trembled where he hung. He wept. Dust and webs were falling from the ceiling, shaken free. He could hear, in amongst the rumbling and the clattering, men scr
eaming. He could feel, leaking in around the edges of the thick door, the hot breath of the horror consuming the Clade’s castle. His wounds and weakness and pain would not allow him to lift his head, but there was nothing to see in that darkness in any case. And he did not need his eyes to know what was coming. The flowing of fierce entelech was like a lance through his chest.
The door to his prison burst open, tearing free of its hinges, smouldering as it fell. The corpse of one of the guards came with it, flopping like a string-cut puppet. A wash of fiery light spilled into the cell, tingling for a moment across Kerig’s naked body, and then retreated. To be replaced by the rustling of wings, the brush of them across his skin.
And the whisper in his ear: “Hold on, my love.”
A strength about him, taking his weight. Lifting him, and making him wail as the cords under his armpits were suddenly loosened. The fire that burned in his shoulders then was entirely of his body’s own making as the joints moved. Then the ropes from which he hung were cut and he was falling. Limp and helpless, he dropped into her arms. He tried to open his eyes, but could not see clearly. Only the paleness of her face, the outline of her hair. Hair made from feathers.
“I have you,” Wren whispered to him. “We’re going now.”
The sounds and the fury faded around him. His pain thinned, as he thinned. The storm of birds gathered him up and he went with his wife into its heart, and they became it, together.
The birds swept out through every wound in the fabric of the keep, as if it breathed out a hundred black-winged breaths. They towered above it, and knitted themselves back together into a single vast cloud. Churned there. Readying themselves, Wren’s will steeling itself and directing itself towards distant horizons for the long flight to come. Until a lone figure ran from the keep’s main doors, racing across the yard towards the gatehouse, sword in hand.
“Sullen,” the sky raged.
The School’s butcher looked up. The cloud of birds thickened, formed once more into a furious serpent that swept down, all its fury reignited. Redoubled, for it carried Kerig’s hate as well as Wren’s now.
“Sullen!’ The unvoiced cry shook the castle.
Sullen veered from his course, extended his stride. He flung his sword away as he ran for the well.
The column of birds arrowed in towards him, yearning for his flesh. Yearning to raise him up into the air and dismember him there, let his parts fall, let him be no more. It came down upon him faster than ever it had moved thus far, but still he reached the well and vaulted over its lip and fell, feet together, arms folded, straight down its dark gullet.
The birds followed, and conjured flame from their memories of the keep to bellow all the way down to the water. Where the flames could go no further, and died hissing, and the birds drowned in their dozens. And Sullen stayed deep and still and beyond the reach of all that fury.
The storm might have waited, longed to wait, for the man to resurface as he must. But the yearning to be gone and for Kerig to be safe overcame the blind, loathing anger and diminished it.
The flock ascended, left the castle at Haut Terpen. Carried its shadow scudding away across the land, around the great mass of the hill and back whence it had come.
26
A Still Greater Weapon
“What happened?”
Sullen regarded the Castellan of Haut Terpen with thinly veiled contempt.
“The Free happened,” he observed. “Kerig’s wife, I imagine.”
They stood together, beside the well from which Sullen had climbed. His clothes were sodden. Drops still fell from his sleeves, and from his beaded hair. The Castellan’s tunic was torn, his face a tapestry of fine bloody scratches. He had been caught upon the wild fringes of the flock, but survived.
“She’s killed at least ten of my men,” he murmured, clearly struggling to accommodate what he had seen. “Maybe more.”
The yard all around them was covered with dead birds. Hardly a stone could be seen beneath the layer of corpses. Here and there dead men lay. Horses were still screaming in the stables. One had come staggering out and died close by the well, its eyes gone, its hide hanging in tatters.
“Considerably more than ten, I should think,” Sullen said. “And half your horses. It appears that the School is at war with the Free.”
“We cannot defeat the Free,” the Castellan said quickly.
“Can we not?” Sullen asked, shaking water from his arms. He turned to face the Castellan. “Tell me why.”
“Well… the Clamour, of course.”
“Of course.” Sullen nodded. “The Clamour. But their advantages are much greater than that. Everyone’s so afraid of the Clamour, they’re half blinded by it. Can’t see how dangerous all the rest are. Look at what just one of them has done to your precious fortress, after all. And they have Yulan. But you need not concern yourself, Castellan. We can indeed defeat the Free. We have a still greater weapon to call upon in this war.”
“We do?”
“We do. Me.”
The Castellan frowned, but Sullen was not a man to be lightly contradicted. Everyone in the School, in the Clade most of all, knew that.
“Try not to worry,” Sullen said, smiling dispassionately. “It’s always been coming, after all. Past time to end the dance between School and Free. One or other of us was always going to have to yield. I don’t think it will be the School.”
The Castellan still did not look wholly convinced.
“Look to your men, Castellan. Mend those who can be mended. Ready them. And send out riders, in every direction. Any man of the Clade within a day’s ride is needed here. Kran Jurmon should be somewhere near Loom with close to a hundred; White Mar is up in the Munn headwaters with at least fifty. Orlotan has a company to the south-west, as well. We need them all. So too any Clever of the School.”
“Ah. Clevers? Most of them are still sequestered in our holdings, waiting out the troubles. I don’t think the Clade can command —”
“Don’t concern yourself with such things,” Sullen snapped.
The fragility of his patience sang loud and clear between the two men. A darkening passed across the Clade commander’s face.
“Do as I instruct, and I will ensure we have the proper authority. I will inform Morue of what’s happened, and what’s required. You find me my men, Castellan. That is all.”
Sullen strode away, towards the keep. As he walked, he kicked aside dead birds. Dark drifts of corpses flowed around his feet. Partway across the yard, he found his sword, half buried. He bent down, pushed away dead rooks and hawks and owls, lifted the blade and returned it to its scabbard. He cast an appraising glance upwards, measuring the extent of the cracks that seamed the keep’s skin. Satisfied that it was unlikely to collapse in the next few minutes, he entered.
Sestimon Trune was cowering beneath a bed in his chambers. The mattress and pillows had been torn apart, their meadow-grass filling strewn all around. The Clever gave a tiny cry of alarm when Sullen lifted the bed, one-handed, away from him.
“Come out from there. The School requires your services.”
Together they went – Sullen firm and purposeful, Sestimon nervous, unsteady – to find the only other Clever in Haut Terpen. The Weaponsmith.
Who was in a cellar where casks of ale and sacks of grain and cheese wrapped in cloth were stored. He was looking worn. The echoes of fright and alarm still fluttered across his face. They eased somewhat when Sullen entered, carrying a flaming torch to send the shadows fleeing.
“Come with me,” was all Sullen said, and led the two Clevers up, up the winding stair scattered with dead birds, and one or two dead men. Up and up until they emerged on to the roof of the keep, beneath a sky now richly blue and a fresh breeze that stirred the feathers of the corpses strewn there as well.
Both Sestimon and the Weaponsmith stared uneasily at the two dead Clade warriors lying there. The corpses were more disfigured, more dismantled, than most. Sullen paid them no heed.
He looked out for a moment, across the flat farmlands to the wide, winding Munn River. He lifted his face and closed his eyes, breathing in that breeze. Then he turned to Sestimon Trune.
“The School requires your service, as I said,” he began. “You must send word to our Mistress. At once. The kind of word that can leap across the miles and whisper in her ear today.”
Sestimon shook his head. It was evidently an instinctive, unconsidered response, which he regretted, for he at once held up placatory hands.
“My exertions these last few days… the shock of what happened here…”
His voice was thin and reedy, as if the cutting of his throat had somehow robbed him of a part of it.
“Nonsense,” Sullen said flatly. “Our need makes it nonsense. You’ll do as you must, because Morue must know what has happened. That seems clear to me. Doesn’t it to you?”
“It does,” Sestimon muttered, dropping his gaze to his feet. To the dead hawk lying there.
“Good. The message isn’t long. Inform the Mistress that the Free have today attacked the School’s Tower and slain many men of the Clade, and that I will therefore be bringing them to justice. She must prepare the rebels – the Council, I suppose – for that. Ensure they don’t interfere. And tell her I may require the aid of the School’s Clevers, and will call upon those within my reach. That is all.”
Sestimon frowned, tapped his nose with one finger as if testing the solidity, or perhaps the wisdom, of a thought.
“What about Kerig? Should I not —”
“Don’t mention Kerig. The briefer the message, the less you’ll be harmed by its sending. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“It is,” the Clever conceded.
“Be about it, then. Now.”
Sestimon swung a foot from side to side, pushing away dead birds to make a space for himself. He could sweep the bodies aside, but not all of the feathers, or all of the blood. Nor all the fragments of beak or claw. So he knelt in them. He cleared his throat, nervously touched the half-circle scar that adorned his neck. Then cupped his hands together at his mouth.
The Free Page 25
