Lucien

by James Moloney

  There was more, but I didn’t listen. When he was finished, he moved down the line to say it all again, and I heard murmuring that made me wonder whether my companions had not been much impressed, either.

  ‘Glory! Is that all we’re fighting for? All so Norbett can live in a palace and spend the taxes of the men who fought for him. He’s no different from Chatiny.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking!’ said a voice I knew better than the others — my own father’s. ‘What use is glory? You can’t feed your family with it and it doesn’t keep you warm on a winter’s night.’

  By the time the complaining had petered out, we had reached the field of battle. The sight stunned me, not because it had already taken on the pall of death, but because I had been here before. This field was only miles from Haywode and, when I was a little girl of six or seven, Ossin and Birdie had brought me and my sisters here. It had been so green in the spring and we had played in the shallow water of a stream marking the field’s boundary away to the left. I’d splashed my sisters and they’d drenched me to the bone in return. Birdie had been furious with us, but we didn’t care. We’d chased each other in the knee-high grass until the sun dried our clothes. I wanted to cry at the memory.

  ‘Line up in three ranks,’ Tamlyn commanded. ‘Align yourself with the company to left and right.’

  I obeyed along with the rest, finding myself on the right-hand end of the back row. I stared at the field through the narrow slits in my helmet. Standing just as still and in rows identical to ours were the first ranks of the northern army. They were only two hundred paces away. Earlier, the sun had caught the shimmer of Norbett’s armour. Now, the white and golden glints reflecting into my eyes came from the polished blades that waited for us. It was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling.

  ‘They’re just like us,’ I murmured, so softly that not even the soldiers either side of me could hear my woman’s voice.

  My view of the enemy was obscured when Norbett ordered his cavalry into place in front of us. The horses stamped and snorted nervously, aware of what was to come, perhaps. Even so, I could make out the sound of other regiments taking their places, especially the archers to left and right. Each bowman carried a full quiver on his shoulder. As I watched, they pulled half a dozen arrows free and pushed the tips into the soft ground where they would be easy to grab for the next volley.

  And then … nothing. The speeches had been made, the troops were in place and, though every heart must have raced like mine, we were made to wait in the sun. It climbed higher in the sky, and became hotter. Inside the helmet, my head broiled like a hunk of meat in Birdie’s cooking pot. My hair was soaked with sweat, my fringe fell lank into my eyes. As if I wasn’t blind enough! But at least my hair kept the helmet’s metal from scorching my ears and forehead.

  Tamlyn moved along the lines, talking firmly of what each man must do yet with a gentleness in his voice that showed he understood the fear we all felt.

  ‘Take heart, it is only right that you shake like that. See, I’m shaking, too,’ he said to the man beside me.

  And then he was in front of me, offering the same reassurance. Would he notice my unmanly hips, the hint of breasts inside my shirt? Would my smell give me away a second time? He was staring at me strangely, and although he said only the same comforting words to me that he offered the rest, he lingered twice as long.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I could swear I’ve seen that helmet before somewhere.’

  His chance to ask any more was lost when the blast from a single horn set a hundred others to work. Echoing blasts answered from across the field and Tamlyn ran back to his post in the centre of the first row. In front of us, the horsemen stirred. Weapons were unsheathed, the lances’ deadly tips were pointed at the enemy. First one man began to shout and then others cheered along with him until every man had whipped himself into a frenzy. The horns sounded again, a different note this time, and with a furious battle cry the riders spurred their horses forward.

  I watched them gallop away, their hooves gouging great clods of turf into the air. The earth trembled beneath my feet, sending the rumble up my legs and making my helmet rattle. Overhead, arrows flew through the air like flocks of geese in the autumn. Soon after, the first cries of pain reached my ears.

  ‘Advance,’ Tamlyn cried.

  As one, we set one foot in front of the other. I felt, rather than saw, the men on either side of me. My sword had somehow found its way from my belt into my right hand. The ground was muddy in places, especially after the horses had churned their way through it, and some in our lines had to check their pace while others rushed to keep up. Here was my chance. I turned in towards the centre and, when a gap appeared in the rank ahead, I hurried to fill it. Before me, I could see a blue tunic. If I quickened my pace, I could almost touch it.

  I wasn’t here for the comfort of Tamlyn’s touch, though. My father’s warning rang in my ears: the most dangerous fighting was in a melee, when a fatal blow might come from any direction. I was at Tamlyn’s back now. To surprise him from behind, an enemy soldier would have to fight me first.

  Ahead of us, the horsemen were already hacking at one another. We moved up behind them slowly, leaving too much time to see what lay in store. The angry battle cries continued, but the closer we came, the more these were drowned out by the desperate calls of the wounded. Or were they cries of terror?

  Riderless horses cantered back towards us, until the sight of our pikes and swords and shields told them there was no refuge there. Escape lay towards the woods to my right. More than one confused animal ended up to its haunches in the water I’d played in years before.

  My eyes returned to the fighting ahead. Neither side had gained any advantage out of the cavalry charge. The battle had become a series of man-on-man contests with sword and axe. A well-aimed blow threw one of our men to the ground. He sprang to his feet quickly, then died as his opponent brought his sword down to where head met shoulder, slicing deeply and bringing a spurt of blood.

  I saw that the cavalrymen were thinning their own numbers and leaving gaps in the line.

  ‘This way — with me!’ Tamlyn cried, and he turned a little, making the rest of us swing to the right.

  It was a bold move that would take us through the line and into attack, forcing the enemy onto the back foot. The ground ahead wasn’t as clear as it had seemed, though. Weapons dropped in the fray lay waiting to trip us up, and, worse, the bodies of the dead. However, I soon discovered that the corpses weren’t the ones to fear.

  ‘Help me,’ begged a man, raising a blood-soaked arm in supplication.

  Others could only groan, the agony of terrible wounds plain in their faces. This would be the fate of any soldier cut down in the fighting, I thought. No one would stop, even to offer a cup of water; there would be no aid or mercy until the battle was over. By then, as I knew from the work of my mother, most would have bled to death.

  I had kept the images from the mosaics out of my mind. Now, as we stepped around and over the wounded, they were too powerful. ‘Rivers of blood,’ I whispered, recalling the countless red stones. I was witnessing the first flow of what the seers had predicted centuries before; and, more than likely, my blood would leak into that vast river, too.

  ‘Arrows!’ came a shout from close by.

  The warning cry tore me from my miserable thoughts, but all the same I was slow to act, a hesitation that almost cost my life.

  ‘Get down, you fool,’ someone hissed.

  I looked around and found every man crouched behind his shield. Of course! I dropped like a stone and dragged my own shield into place, angling it over my head and shoulders as they were doing. It suddenly seemed far too small, despite what I’d thought earlier, and no sooner had I set it in place than an arrow thudded into it, dead centre. The tip broke through and would have punctured my helmet if the stubborn metal hadn’t grabbed hold with the tip protruding.

  I heard more than saw the other arr
ows fall. No more struck my shield, but plenty landed around me. A strangled cry came from three places along the line and, turning my head to get a view through the visor of my helmet, I saw an arrow lodged in a man’s thigh. Despite the pain, he didn’t dare break from his tight crouch. Behind my own shield, I shrank into an even tighter ball and hoped that not so much as an inch of me was left exposed.

  The barrage stopped as suddenly as it had begun, although none of us was eager to come out from behind our shields.

  ‘Thank the gods,’ said the man beside me.

  ‘If they’ve stopped, it’s for a reason,’ said a voice that made me listen closely. It was my father, who knew more about warfare than most.

  ‘What sort of reason?’ someone asked.

  ‘To be sure they don’t kill their own men, for one,’ Ossin answered.

  We were standing up by now, tentatively and with eyes searching the sky.

  ‘Re-form your ranks,’ Tamlyn cried. ‘Hurry now. Ossin’s right. We must be ready.’

  The gap we’d been aiming for still lay ahead, even wider now, since the arrows had taken a toll on the cavalrymen.

  ‘They’re coming at us,’ Tamlyn shouted, his arm pointing out the attack.

  An enemy troop was charging into the gap, eager to beat us back before we could gain the advantage.

  ‘Forward! Meet them on the run,’ Tamlyn ordered, and immediately he showed the way.

  Men on either side went with him and I came after, as I was determined to do. All the while, the enemy rushed towards us. The sides met in a sickening collision of swords and shields that threw many on our side back a step, and just as many of those from the other side.

  There, in the thick of battle, my helmet became more of a nuisance than ever. According to my father, it wouldn’t save me from a blade aimed at my head, so why wear it at all, I wondered. Yet the clash of steel in front of me banished any thought of taking it off. If only I could see!

  The cries and grunts seemed to resound inside my helmet. I was jostled first one way, then the next. I used what little vision I had to stay close to Tamlyn. If not for his blue tunic, I would have lost him in the confusion.

  I looked for threats, first on one side, then the other. So far he was safe. He was so strong, so skilful with his sword, his broad shoulders heaving with the effort. There were no Wyrdborn now. Courage and stamina would settle this battle and, as I watched in awe from behind him, Tamlyn showed how true this was. A man went down in front of him, only for his place to be taken by another almost immediately. If he kept up like this, Tamlyn would soon be exhausted.

  A savage sweep of an axe caught one of our men on the shoulder and, with a shout of agony, he went down. I couldn’t see his face, but he was from my own village, someone I had grown up seeing every day in the lanes and fields. He was fortunate, though, because the crush of bodies closed over him and the axe that had felled him couldn’t take aim for a killing blow. If he wasn’t trampled by men pressing forward, he might survive.

  The incident distracted me. When I turned back, I found the fighting had changed in a deadly way. As men died and others tired, the line between one side and the other was harder to pick. Who was who? Did the man beside you need your help, or your sword in his ribs? I saw it then: the moment my father had warned of had arrived. We were in the midst of a melee. Death might come from anywhere.

  I stepped closer to Tamlyn than I had dared until now, so close that the backswing of his sword almost took my head off. I dodged out of the way, losing my footing a little. As I was steadying myself, I saw it, an axe sweeping towards his neck. My shield was too heavy to raise into its way. Moving faster than I’d ever known I could, I dropped the shield, joined my left hand to my right on the hilt of my too-small sword and shoved its blade into the path of the axe. The blow was too powerful to stop entirely, but I managed to deflect its force enough to make the deadly blade swing downwards, into the dirt. At least, that was where I thought it finished. I didn’t see, because the impact knocked me sideways and onto my knees.

  Get up, I told myself. You must get up in case the attacker takes another swing at Tamlyn.

  I dug the tip of my sword into the muddy turf as a lever to pull against and looked up to find the axeman had turned his eyes on me instead. His helmet covered only the top of his head, leaving his face exposed — a face enraged with bloodlust and contorted by the fear for his own life that drove every man on the battlefield to barbarity. In that face, I saw all the horror of the mosaics — not the blood and misery of the victims, but the theft of humanity from men like this who peopled those terrible scenes. I was staring into the visage of war and it was enough to snuff the life out of me before the axe had even begun its swing.

  I would have died in that moment — I should have died — and that I didn’t was because my executioner died first, struck down from behind. He fell towards me like a tree chopped through at the base.

  As soon as he thudded into the ground, his place was filled by the warrior who had saved me. I saw no face, because it was encased within a stout helmet, but there was something about that helmet and the armour beneath it. I had seen them both on the wall of a cave and in the intricate decoration of the Great Hall in Meraklion. I’d hoped they might exist only in the tormented visions of men who’d died five hundred years before, yet now that armour was close enough for me to touch and inside it was a boy struggling to know what kind of man he was.

  ‘Lucien,’ I cried. ‘It’s you, I know it’s you. Ryall sent you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Did you think he wouldn’t tell me what you were up to?’ He took my wrist. ‘Quickly. You must get off this battlefield.’

  ‘No!’ I tried to wrench my wrist away.

  Who was I fooling? His grip was stronger than the manacles I’d worn in Erebis Felan. He shoved two men aside and tugged me after him.

  ‘No! I’m not leaving until Tamlyn is safe,’ I shouted.

  He wasn’t listening, and already we’d moved away from where Tamlyn was fighting.

  ‘Please, Lucien! If you love me —’

  He turned to face me, his hand still locked around my wrist. ‘I do, Silvermay. That’s why I’ve come for you, so you’ll believe —’

  His desperate plea stopped abruptly. What had he seen?

  I turned, and the jostle and shove of battle parted long enough for me to glimpse blue. I saw the danger, just as Lucien had done. Not one but two of the enemy had worked their way behind Tamlyn, as though his blue tunic deserved a double death.

  My mouth opened, but it wasn’t Tamlyn’s name that escaped.

  ‘Lucien!’ I cried, flinging myself round to face him.

  He knew what I was demanding. For an instant, he stood frozen, staring at Tamlyn, his hand still clamped around my wrist. There wasn’t time for words, only for the working of the human heart, but there was time for Lucien to dream of possibilities. If Tamlyn was dead, then …

  Suddenly, my arm was almost pulled from my shoulder as Lucien plunged back into the melee, dragging me behind him. It was all I could do to stay on my feet.

  ‘Tamlyn, behind you!’ I screamed.

  It was too late for that. There wasn’t even time for a weapon. Lucien released me and launched himself at Tamlyn, covering the blue tunic with his body just as the enemy blades rained down.

  31

  The Queen of Athlane

  Lucien took the impact of the swords as though those wielding them were just children playing a game. Then, springing deftly to his feet, he punched one of the attackers hard in the chest, denting his breastplate a full six inches and sending him like a battering ram into his comrades. The other, he simply grasped by the throat. A strangled cry rose briefly over the clang and clatter of the fighting, then died, along with the man who’d made it.

  ‘Lucien, what you did …’ I began.

  Lucien pulled Tamlyn to his feet. ‘With me,’ he cried. ‘I’ll cut a way out for both of you.’

  Tamlyn must have recognised
the armour, just as I had. ‘No, Lucien, I won’t abandon my men,’ he shouted. ‘Take Silvermay, get her to safety.’

  I wasn’t leaving either. Somewhere in this melee was my father and every man I knew from a lifetime lived in Haywode.

  I took Lucien’s free arm and drew him closer. ‘You are the last Wyrdborn. It’s time that curse was used to save lives instead of ruining them. Stop this battle, Lucien, before any more are killed.’

  ‘How? There are thousands, all fighting hand to hand,’ he shouted through his helmet.

  ‘Drive them apart. Start here — push them back with your hands if you have to.’

  Yet this seemed too slow, and I could see Tamlyn put his soldier’s mind to work. His solution, when it came, seemed anything but soldierly.

  ‘A broom. We need a giant broom.’

  I had no idea what Tamlyn was talking about, but he was pointing to the woods that marked the eastern edge of the battlefield. I doubted Lucien knew, either, but things had changed between the two men. Jealousy and wariness had been replaced by trust. Did Lucien know how much he had changed by saving Tamlyn? I would have to wait to find out, because the melee’s deadly danger could turn on us at any moment.

  ‘This time you must follow me,’ cried Lucien and, without looking back, he charged into the battle, using his shoulder to clear a path for us.

  Tamlyn and I stayed close, slipping between the startled figures before they came together again to renew the fighting. We were soon free of the worst, and in another fifty paces reached the first tree.

  ‘Not that one,’ said Tamlyn, as though he was choosing an apple to bite into.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘The perfect pine tree. It must be large with lots of healthy branches.’

  None the wiser, I peered into the woods. ‘Would that one do?’