Here, at the source of their power and existence, the demonic brothers should have been safe from anything. But their pursuer was not so easily shaken off.
"Put aside your fears," hissed Lockjaw, who was made of sterner stuff than his sibling, "and concentrate on the board. It is our only chance of escape."
He referred to their gaming board, which the brothers had carried with them. Currently there were only three pieces in play. One, carved in the shape of a knight in armour, was placed in the square over the city of Hope in the Winter Realm. The other, a more primitive figure in animal skins and a head-dress, was in the middle of the tropical jungle belt south of the Girdle Sea.
"Our sons have survived so far," said Lockjaw, placing his finger against the piece that represented Naiyar and pushing it slightly to the right. "Their strength is encouraging."
"Your boy is rather more perceptive than mine," replied Screwfate, frowning down at the likeness of Fulk.
"Fulk has little awareness of his power. He lacks the tools to understand his dreams. But understanding will come, in time. And the idea I sowed in the mind of the little Archpriest will ensure he goes where we need him."
Screwfate nodded. "South," he muttered. He studied the third piece, a tall figure of a Templar knight carved in gleaming ebony. "This one's notion of capturing Temple Rock was good for us. Temple Rock is the heart of the world and a fitting place for our sons to meet. Did you place that idea in his mind?"
Lockjaw shook his ghastly head. "No. A happy coincidence. I did place my Mark on the Archpriest, though. Soon he will start to rot."
They were interrupted by distant screaming and a roll of thunder, causing the brothers to cower like frightened rats. The noises gradually died away and silence filled the deep cave.
* * * *
The Church of High Gods was the most magnificent building in the Winter Realm. It was built at the same time as the Founders' Palace, but with far more care and attention to detail. The palace was a thing of stark functionalism, of squat towers and crudely-hewn battlements. In contrast, the Church appeared to be the work of a far more advanced race. The Founders had been in a hurry to establish their new realm, and only here had they taken the time to recreate a fragment of their lost civilization.
It was in the shape of a five-pointed star, which was the symbol of Altus, the Highest God of All. Each point of the star ended in a slim tower of gleaming whitewashed stone, at the top of which was a platform. Every day, at dawn and dusk, five priests climbed the spiral stairs and mounted the platforms. From these dizzying heights, open to the elements, they chanted thanksgivings to the gods and summoned the faithful to prayer.
At the centre of the star was the Chamber of Prayer itself, a hexagon-shaped building made of the same whitewashed stone as the towers. The high dome of the roof was made of sheets of beaten copper painted gold, and beneath this sparkling canopy was a vast cathedral-like space capable of housing a thousand worshippers at once. Each wall of the hexagon contained a gigantic stained glass window depicting scenes from the Legends of the Founders. The largest of these windows faced south, towards the Old Empire, and was painted with an image of Jean de la Coeur laying the foundation stone of Hope.
The windows of the Chamber of Prayer were constructed in such a way that even the feeblest rays filtering through their tinted glass succeeded in dappling the interior with vivid patterns of colour. The golden dome was supported by marching rows of slender white pillars, while stone gargoyles and murals on the walls depicted images of the many High Gods in their various incarnations.
Five gods were more prominent than the rest. Altus, Highest of All and Ruler of the Celestial Sphere, was shown as a tall elderly man with a white beard and in flowing white robes. He was the embodiment of justice. Then there was Kayla, Goddess of Mercy, a young woman with a kind face dispensing good grain from a sack, and Hera, Goddess of Love, an even younger woman in diaphanous robes. Tolero, God of Fortitude, a ragged young man with a determined expression and one clenched fist held up in defiance, was another popular god in a land often ravaged by famine and disease.
And then there was Occido, the God of War and Warriors, worshipped by the knights of the Temple, who thought of him as a massive knight clad in iron plate armour covered in runes of death and slaughter, eyes glowing red behind his visor. Occido was a deity apart from the others, neither a member of the Celestial Sphere or an associate of the Lords of Hell. He was the manifestation of the base desire of man to slaughter his fellow man, and yet not wholly evil, for war could inspire humans to acts of great courage and leadership.
Other pillars depicted scenes of war and conquest from the Old Empire's distant past, forgotten emperors crowned with oak leaves leading phalanxes of legionaries in antiquated armour to endless victories. There were also pictures of cities and temples, grand places of silver and gold peopled by sophisticates in robes, a far cry from the crude dwellings and rough garb of the Winter Realm. The entire history of the Old Empire could be surmised from the pillars, or at least that part of it the Founders chose to remember.
The Chamber of Prayer was crammed with eager recruits for the Twelfth Reconquest. Keen to put his plans into action, the Archpriest had dispatched messengers to spread news of the campaign all across the realm. The summons had proved wildly popular and men and women from all walks of life had heeded the Archpriest's summons, drawn by patriotism, greed and wanderlust.
* * * *
Fulk and his fellow Templars found themselves obliged to rub shoulders with sell-swords and adventurers, peasants and freemen, hedge-knights, militant priests, apprentices, tradesmen, smiths, farmers, labourers, wise men, charlatans and fools. The Chamber was filled with the smoke and stench of incense as priests moved slowly through the jostling, overexcited crowd, chanting as they blessed the recruits. Each person knelt to receive the blessing, and as they knelt the priest sewed the symbol of the Reconquest, a five-pointed star woven in gold thread, onto their clothing.
Fulk was silent as he waited patiently to receive the blessing and the star. Determined to put his recent experiences out of his mind, he had spent the past few weeks praying ceaselessly to Occido for guidance. The warrior god sent no answer—he never did, except to truly exceptional knights—but Fulk felt better for it.
I am myself again, he thought as he knelt before an advancing priest, clear-headed and devout, hungry for glory and advancement. I am all that I should be.
The priest, who had been blessing and stitching since the crack of dawn, stifled a yawn as he muttered a blessing over Fulk. When the blessing was done, he produced a needle and thread and began to sew the little yellow star onto his white cloak.
Fulk was now sworn to the quest.
* * * *
The fighting was savage and bitter. Everywhere was the clash of steel, the hot gush and spray of blood, waving banners, blows given and taken, screams, war-shouts and acts of stupendously foolish heroism.
Thanks to the Grand Master, who had stubbornly refused to listen to Comrade Malet's advice, the Templars had ridden straight into an ambush. Thousands of Godless Ones had appeared out of nowhere, their frightful war-horns echoing through the narrow valley even as their warriors poured down the slopes.
Trapped and surrounded, with no space for a charge, the Templars dismounted and formed into a ring of shields. At a word from the Grand Master, trumpets blew a strident note of command and the knights released their war-horses.
Panicked by the din of the horns and trumpets, the horses galloped in all directions and plunged wildly into the mass of charging savages. Scores of Godless Ones were ridden down, trampled and crushed beneath flailing hoofs, while others cast down their weapons and scrambled to get out of the way.
The enemy charge faltered. In vain did the chiefs rail and bellow at their terrified warriors.
"Now!" Comrade Malet shouted at the Grand Master. "We must break ranks and attack. It's our only chance."
Predictably, the senile old fool did not
hing but gape, paralysed by indecision. Only Malet's deep-grained sense of respect and deference prevented him from assuming command.
It was too late to do anything, for the horns sounded again and the Godless Ones rallied. They parted ranks to let the fleeing horses through, or else worked up the courage to spear and hack them down. Then they charged again.
The shield ring broke under their impetus and ferocity. Discipline and order were forgotten as the sea of howling barbarians swept over and through the Templar ranks, and the battle dissolved into a chaotic brawl.
The Grand Master died early in the fighting, speared in the throat by a grinning savage. One by one, the Lesser Masters followed him into death, until only Comrade Malet was left.
He was deluged by waves of shrieking, painted, yellow-eyed savages, dressed in foul leathers and rusting mail. They hacked and jabbed at him with their crude spears and stone axes, but he slaughtered them with contemptuous ease. Every blow from his broadsword slashed limbs and throats and sent legs, arms and heads flying about the field.
The big knight had leisure to pause for a moment, wipe the blood and brains from his face, and look about the battlefield.
Things were not going well. His knights were being overwhelmed, with barely room to swing their weapons in the close-packed hell of the melee. Some of them fought back-to-back with their comrades, fighting with teeth and fists when their weapons were clawed from their grasp.
A lone voice shouted "The gods aid us! The gods aid the Temple! Die hard, knights of Occido!"
The gods aid the Temple. An ancient battle-cry, dating from the time of the early Reconquests, and it filled Malet with cold determination. The Temple would not die by inches in this bleak valley, thousands of miles from home. He would not allow it.
Malet spotted a cluster of enemy banners fluttering on a ridge at the head of the valley. They were made of flayed skin, dyed red and tied to crude flagpoles decorated with human skulls. One of the banners was much larger than the others and beneath it stood a huge man, obviously an important chief, surrounded by his bodyguards.
The chief was an impressive brute, a giant in black furs with a greasy red beard flowing to his waist. His thick hairy fingers clasped a broad-bladed axe taller than he was, and his little eyes studied the ebb and flow of battle.
To save the Temple, Malet knew that he had to kill this man. He raised his sword and roared a challenge that rose above the din of slaughter.
The chief looked down and his eyes met Malet's. He raised his axe in response to the challenge, and gestured at his bodyguards to stand back.
Comrade Malet hefted his sword and strode to glory.
* * * *
Fulk woke up. There was no bloody sword in his hand, no desperate battlefield, no bearded brute of an enemy chief to be slain. Instead he was lying on a hard narrow bed in a gently lurching room full of other men lying on similar beds. Instead of a bloody battlefield, he was staring at a knot-hole in a rough wooden deck barely six inches above his head.
He remembered where he was. Aboard the Queen Heloise, one of over a hundred ships sailing down the Life towards the open sea. The Twelfth Reconquest was underway.
And he remembered Comrade Malet. In his dream it was though he had been inside the man's head, looking out through his eyes at the battle in the valley.
Slowly, the idea began to form in Fulk's head that he might be gifted with some form of prescience. But he had been raised as a fighter, not a thinker, and found introspection difficult. He needed some practical evidence.
Fulk frowned as he lay and stared at the knot-hole. He could think of only one way to find out.
* * * *
Comrade Malet stood on the quarterdeck of the Queen Heloise and stared moodily over the rail. The Heloise was the spearhead of the fleet, with over a hundred vessels of varying size following in her wake. She was a graceful three-masted carrack, a gift from Archpriest Flambard, who had spared no expense in having her careened and fitted out.
The weather was foul, with strong winds beating up from the west, but the Heloise made light of the conditions and set an impressive pace as she cut through the water. Captain Dephix, a capable red-faced old salt from the Fringe Isles, was obliged to reduce sail to prevent her racing ahead of the rest of the fleet.
She is graceful as a swan, thought Malet, turning his head to watch the sailors, agile as monkeys, swarm up the rigging, egged on by their captain's hoarse shouts.
If the Heloise could be likened to a swan, then many of the ships behind her were tortoises, wallowing as they struggled to keep up. Every kind of seaworthy vessel had been pressed into service for the Reconquest: cogs, longboats and fat-bottomed merchant ships. Even a few ancient warships had been taken out of dry dock and hurriedly patched up. There was no official fleet in the Winter Realm, so this one had been scraped together from what was readily available.
The current stretch of the Life was a quarter of a mile wide, and at no point on its course from the city of Hope all the way south to the sea was it much narrower. Malet spent much of his time above deck leaning on the rail and watching the landscape of the Winter Realm go past.
Some might have said that the view was bleak and monotonous, an endless vista of flat snow-scattered fields dotted with labouring serfs, distant mountains, vast stretches of untamed forest and the occasional crude timber fortress or rough stone keep perched on a hill. Malet found it endlessly beautiful, strange and fascinating, a stark land for a stark people. His heart swelled with patriotic pride with each passing mile, which in turn fuelled his dreams of military glory.
Even more than Fulk, Malet craved glory. Every night he dreamed of achieving it, of slaughtering hordes of vile barbarians and leading the Temple to victory on one blood-soaked battlefield after another. To his mind that was what the Reconquest should be, a glorious military adventure, but so far he had done nothing more glorious than oversee the business of keeping thousands of knights, squires, servants and animals fed and watered.
It didn't help that the Grand Master appeared to show little interest in the campaign and spent most of his time brooding in his cabin. Malet had little to do with the other Masters, who he regarded his fellow Lesser Masters as a pack of ageing lickspittles, forever jockeying for Sibrand's favour.
Footsteps sounded on the deck behind him and halted at a respectful distance. Annoyed at being disturbed, Comrade Malet said nothing and let whoever it was sweat for a few minutes.
"Well?" he snapped eventually, without looking around.
"Good morning, Comrade Master," said Fulk.
Malet turned smartly on his heel. "You," he said, looking at young knight with extreme dislike, "what do you want? I haven't forgotten how you disobeyed my orders."
Screwing up enough courage to face Malet had been difficult, but Fulk was surprised by how calm he felt in the drill-instructor's presence.
"I just wanted you to know, sir, that you won't be alone when you fight the red-bearded chieftain. I will be by your side, sword in hand."
"What?"
"The chieftain, sir," Fulk repeated. "The chieftain on the hill, standing beneath the red banners decorated with skulls."
"You are talking gibberish, boy. Why do you insist on disrespecting me like this? You should know, from the scars on your body, that I am not a patient or merciful man."
Feeling light-headed at his own courage, Fulk pressed on. "Forgive me, sir. I meant no disrespect. I merely wished to assure you that when the shield wall breaks under the enemy charge, I will hold my ground. Die hard, knights of Occido! The gods aid the Temple!"
Malet's only reaction was to raise his eyebrows.
"You are either mad, or have experienced some kind of vision," he said. "Perhaps you are some kind of witch. There have been no witches in the Winter Realm for hundreds of years. Do you know what we used to do to them, boy?"
Fulk swallowed. "We burned them, sir."
"Indeed. A hideous death, judging from the histories. The luckier ones c
hoked to death on the smoke. Others had to endure the agony of their living bodies being consumed by fire. Would you like to experience your living body being consumed by fire, Comrade?"
"No, sir." Fulk could think of nothing else to say.
"Quite. Then let us have no more nonsense from you. Dismissed."
Thoroughly baffled, Fulk beat a hasty retreat. Malet cracked his knuckles as he watched him go, and then turned his attention back to the sea.
His hands were shaking. Fulk's deadly accurate description of his dream had severely rattled Malet, and it had taken all his iron composure to hide the fact.
I could, if I pushed, have the boy tried for witchcraft. But what purpose would his death serve, other than ridding me of a potential enemy?
For the new few minutes Malet weighed up Fulk's life and the good of the Temple in the balance, and as he did so the Lords of Hell looked down and applied gentle pressure to the scales in his mind.
I will remain silent for the present, and allow him to live a while longer. The execution of a knight on the eve of a major campaign would only demoralise the rest of our young men.
Such was Comrade Malet's decision, an unusually merciful one, and the Lords of Hell could breathe again.
2.
Naiyar was stunned by the impact of the icy water, then buffeted and shaken like a helpless rat being shaken by an excited dog.
When his head finally burst through the surface of the water, he found he was being carried westward. He tried to take a breath, but was pulled under again so that his lungs filled with water. He clawed his way back to the surface, then coughed and spluttered.
He spewed water from his mouth, drew in a deep, rasping breath, and was pulled down again until he could kick his way back to the surface.
Don't fight the water, just relax and let it take you. Save your strength. Trust me, it is easier.
The Best Weapon Page 7
