The Best Weapon

by David Pilling

  Fulk stretched and rubbed his eyes while Tomas staggered over with his gear. It was a bright cool day, with a watery but welcome sun rising slowly into the washed-out blue sky.

  The harsh landscape that the army had first encountered was softening, bleak windswept plains and salt marshes giving way to fertile green valleys, untamed stretches of forest and gently rolling hills. Mountains rose far to the south, but for now the men of the Winter Realm were passing through an increasingly pleasant and warm landscape.

  "If you could just raise your arms, master," Tomas said politely, as he did every morning, and Fulk obediently raised his arms to allow the hauberk to be slipped over his head. The comforting weight of mail made him feel that all was right with the world.

  Tomas handed him his sword belt, and Fulk permitted himself another smile as he buckled it on. He may not have been a god, but being a knight was something.

  * * * *

  The four hundred mounted knights of the vanguard, half of them Templars, stirred up a great cloud of dust as they rode south at a steady canter. In front of them and on their flanks rode groups of outriders, lightly armed men with orders to keep a sharp eye out for any danger or opportunity for glory. To a knight, especially a knight of the Temple, danger and glory were supposed to be one and the same.

  Nothing in the way of either materialised, and at noon they halted to water their horses. They had ridden through miles of flat grassland gradually sloping down into a broad valley with a sluggish river meandering through its centre.

  The valley was peaceful, with butterflies shimmering among the flowers growing by the riverbed and a soft breeze bending the tips of the lush grass. Fulk gratefully slid down from his horse's saddle and led her to the river. While she bent her head to drink Fulk removed his helmet and knelt, using it as a cup to scoop up water.

  "This is a land fit for angels. Have you ever seen anything like it¸ even in dreams?"

  The voice belonged to a young knight with a silver griffon on his black jupon. He was bearded and fair-haired, and Fulk noted the premature lines of suffering etched into his narrow face.

  The stranger wasn't looking at Fulk, but staring wistfully towards the horizon. "I've studied the maps, you know," he said, half-talking to himself, "and I'm certain that my family once held lands west of here, just a few miles away. My grandfather used to tell me stories. We owned a fine manor-house of white stone surrounded by fields of ripe yellow corn, with plenty of healthy uncomplaining serfs to harvest them."

  Fulk followed his gaze west, to where the gentle slopes of the valley rose to meet the grasslands. "That was centuries ago," he said frankly, "nothing would remain of your house now except a few stones."

  "Maybe, but I should like to see what we once had, all the same. And claim it as mine, why not? I have a right to my ancestral property."

  "We're not here to win back your old lands."

  The knight's face grew stubborn. "Who says, Templar? I didn't come all this way just to help your lot re-occupy some decaying fortress."

  He seemed eager for an argument, but Fulk was in no mood for one. "You have lands back home, in the Winter Realm," he said, trying to be placatory.

  "And what lands!" the knight cried, "one measly little manor on some of the worst soil in the entire country, with but three miserable serfs to plough it. A few stringy cattle, a damp and decaying manor-house, and as for my wife..."

  He hesitated, clearly reluctant to delve into the subject of his wife. "No," he said quietly, shaking his head, "it won't do. It won't do at all."

  His horse stood nearby, and without another word he swung nimbly into the saddle and drove his spurs into her flanks. Fulk dodged out of the way and narrowly avoiding being trampled as horse and rider plunged into the river.

  Fulk grasped Thunder's reins, unsure if he should pursue the fugitive or not. He looked around and saw little sign of anyone keen to join him in the chase. The knights closest to him, Templars and non-Templars both, watched the man ride away with expressions ranging from surprise to amusement, but none made any move to go after him.

  Comrade Sturling came running up, puffing at the exercise. He looked old and overweight, grey-haired and paunchy, and there was a worrying lack of intelligence in his placid brown eyes.

  "Where the hell's he going?" he gasped, pointing at the fleeing knight, who by now was urging his horse up the far bank of the river.

  "Home, apparently," replied Fulk, "he told me that his family once held lands some miles west of here, and then off he went to find them."

  Sturling rubbed his perspiring jowls. "Well," he said, sounding more baffled than angry, "what a fool. He won't achieve anything on his own."

  "You don't want us to chase him?"

  "There's no point," Sturling shrugged, "if he was one of us I would have had him dragged back and flogged for desertion, maybe even hanged, but I have no authority over secular knights. Let him go, and be damned to him."

  This sounded like rank folly to Fulk. "Comrade Master, forgive my insolence, but if we let him go what's to stop other secular knights from deserting?"

  "Absolutely nothing."

  Fulk turned to watch the knight of the silver griffon ride away across the plain, until the dwindling figure was nothing more than a dot on the horizon, and then was gone.

  * * * *

  Once their horses were sufficiently rested and watered the knights of the vanguard mounted up and rode on. No one mentioned the deserter. To Fulk it seemed as if everyone had immediately put him out of their minds.

  The column rode out of the valley, thundering up a gentle incline onto a flat expanse of green. Only the distant outline of mountains looming far to the south suggested that there might be an end to the grasslands.

  Then the outriders returned. They appeared almost all at once, thrashing their ponies into a wild gallop as they sped back to the main column.

  Comrade Sturling saw them and reined in, signalling to his trumpeters to sound the order to halt. The brassy notes had hardly died away before the nearest outrider was within earshot, waving frantically and yelling his head off.

  "Turn back," he bawled, "my lords, you must turn back at once, back to the army, now!"

  Sturling frowned. "What's all this?" he demanded when the man was close enough, "are you trying to spread panic? Calm yourself."

  The rest of the outriders were closing in now, all shouting similar messages. "My lord, I mean no disrespect," panted the one Sturling had addressed, "but you must give the order to retreat. The enemy is coming, hundreds of riders, maybe thousands. They cover the plains, lord!"

  "I must do nothing of the sort,," sniffed Sturling, "I would not expect a commoner to understand, but we are here to engage and defeat the enemy, not avoid them."

  The outrider's jaw dropped. "My lord," he stammered, "you are sorely outnumbered. You cannot fight. You must not fight!"

  "Enough of your musts, you insolent ruffian! Get you gone, and leave the fighting to noblemen!"

  Sturling turned in his saddle. "Lance formation," he barked, and his trumpeters blasted out the order. The Templars fanned out into a triangle with Sturling and his officers at the apex. Meanwhile the secular knights trotted out singly or in small groups and arranged themselves into ragged lines either side of the Templar wedge. Torn between loyalty and a desire for self-preservation, the outriders took up a position well to the rear.

  Fulk gripped his lance and turned to wink at his squire Tomas, mounted on a pony just behind him and to his right. The boy smiled nervously back, his youthful face framed by a ridiculous-looking pot helmet. Fulk wracked his brains for some encouraging words to say, but was distracted by the sound of distant thunder.

  He had heard the sound before and knew at once that it was no storm. The men around him knew it too. There was a rustling of harness and a murmuring of prayers as the warriors of the Temple prepared their weapons and souls for the trial to come.

  One moment the surrounding plains were empty, the next th
ey were stuffed with long lines of horsemen. Hundreds and hundreds of them, just as the outriders had warned, crowding the horizon to north, east and west.

  The sight of vastly superior numbers of Godless Ones made Sturling boil over with excitement. He stood up in his stirrups, raised his lance and shouted in a voice like a war-horn:

  "Charge!"

  The chorus of trumpets screamed again and the heavy horses moved forward, slowly at first, snorting and tossing their heads as their riders thrashed at their flanks. The ground beneath the beasts trembled as they gradually picked up speed, plate-sized hoofs churning and trampling the soft earth into mulch.

  A charge of massive war-horses ridden by men wearing sixty pounds of steel is felt rather than seen. The world shakes at their coming. All other noise is drowned out by the drumming of hundreds of tons of horseflesh shifting into a full-blooded gallop. Nothing on earth can hope to stand against such an avalanche, and the Godless Ones didn't even try.

  Instead of waiting to be flattened or attempting a counter-charge, the mob of horsemen directly facing the charging knights suddenly turned and fled. They wore light armour and their horses were much smaller and faster than the bulky war-horses, more like the ponies that the outriders rode. As they fled they twisted skilfully in their saddles and notched arrows to the small curved bows they carried.

  Fulk was hemmed in by the men around him and could do nothing to avoid the striped yellow and black shafts as they hissed into the wedge of galloping knights. They did little damage to the knights themselves, sticking harmlessly into their mail or rebounding off shields and helmets, but the leading horses screamed as arrowheads sliced into their flesh. Two of the wounded beasts stumbled and collapsed headlong, throwing their riders and causing chaos as the knights behind them tried to heave their horses aside to avoid ploughing straight into the fallen bodies.

  The charge faltered and disintegrated as some knights clattered to a halt and others galloped on regardless. Trumpets squealed the order to re-form, marred by a strangled note as one of the trumpeters took an arrow in his throat. More arrows fell like deadly hail among the milling crowd of knights, one thudding into Fulk's shield as he tried to guide his horse clear of the mess.

  He looked around and spotted the Templar banner fluttering above the dust. Comrade Sturling was beneath it, shouting incomprehensible orders and waving his sword. Fulk urged Thunder towards him.

  "Comrade Master, you must sound the retreat!" he yelled, grabbing hold of Sturling's reins. The Master turned and gaped furiously at him, looking on the verge of a seizure as sweat poured down his flabby face.

  "Another one who insists on telling me what I must do!" he cried indignantly, "let me tell you, young man, there will be no retreat with dishonour while I still draw breath. Trumpeters, damn you, where are you? Re-form, re-form!"

  His two remaining trumpeters raised their instruments uncertainly to their lips, but their call was drowned out by a fresh barrage of drumming hoofs. Suddenly the world was full of screaming horsemen, fierce dark-skinned faces under pointed helmets, curved sabres rising and falling. The Godless Ones had wheeled and closed in on the scattered knights, engulfing them from all sides.

  Fulk caught the flash of a blade in the corner of his eye and got his shield up just in time, wincing as the sabre dashed against it and sent shockwaves up his arm and shoulder. Thunder reacted as she was trained to, rearing up to bite and kick when her master was attacked, and her flailing hoofs thumped like hammers into the ribs of the Godless One's pony. The beast shrieked and toppled over, trapping her rider's leg under her as she hit the ground.

  Righting himself, Fulk looked around for Sturling and saw him a few yards away, exchanging sword-strokes with two Godless Ones. His standard bearer had been knocked from his horse and lay kneeling in the dust, clutching the bleeding stump of his right arm. The standard was being carried away by a triumphant Godless One, still with the bearer's severed hand clinging to the pole.

  Fulk hesitated, torn between helping his commander and trying to rescue the standard. In that moment's hesitation a third enemy came screaming up behind Sturling and hurled his javelin with lethal accuracy straight through the back of the Master's neck. The tip burst out of his throat, spraying blood down his white surcoat.

  Sturling swayed, his sword falling from nerveless fingers. One of the men he had been fighting slashed at his head and knocked him from the saddle.

  Almost as soon as he fell, the trumpets squealed over the din and chaos of battle. Retreat, retreat!

  Some knights turned tail and fled immediately, while others ignored the order and fought on, refusing to countenance defeat at the hands of men they had been raised to think of as vermin.

  Knowing that the game was up, Fulk saw little honour in hanging around to be slaughtered. He turned Thunder south and drove in his spurs, ducking low in the saddle to avoid any random sword cuts as he fled.

  "Master, help me, master, please!"

  Fulk's pounding heart skipped a beat as he recognised the piteous voice of his squire, Tomas, somewhere behind him. He leaned back in the saddle and wrenched so hard on Thunder's reins that her head snapped back and the iron of the bit almost tore her soft mouth.

  Wheeling the ponderous beast in a circle, Fulk stared frantically through the jumble of riders and unhorsed men hacking and bludgeoning at each other. A gap appeared and he glimpsed Tomas lying on his back next to his dead pony. He was disarmed and holding his hands over his face. A Godless One was standing over him with a raised sabre.

  The gap closed as a knot of fighting men spilled over it. Fulk howled in fury and Thunder suffered more torment from his lashing spurs, blood running down her flanks as she pounded into a gallop.

  Fulk lashed out wildly with his sword at the bodies and faces that rose and fell before him. The melee parted again and he saw Tomas writhing with the sabre in his gut, like an insect pierced on the end of a needle.

  His killer didn't even have time to pull his blade free before Thunder's shadow fell across him. Fulk unleashed the most venomous blow he had ever struck and his sword split the Godless One's head from the tip of his helmet to his breastbone. The force of it almost dragged him from the saddle, but he was saved as the blade snapped and left two-thirds of its length embedded in the dead man's body.

  Seized by a kind of madness and the red rage that always fell over him in times of danger, Fulk threw away the useless remnant and dismounted, even though he knew Thunder was his only chance of escape.

  "You can live, at least," he cried, slapping his horse's neck. She tossed her head as if in a last farewell and galloped away through the press. Fulk knelt down beside Tomas and lifted his head, willing there to be a flicker of life remaining in the squire's body. But there was none, and his heart's blood was pooling on the ground.

  Fulk rolled aside just as a blade whipped through the air where he had been kneeling. Snarling like a dog at bay, he grasped the hilt of the sabre that had impaled Tomas, pulled it free with both hands and turned to face his attacker.

  This new foe was about Tomas's age, with pale fuzz on his upper lip where he had tried to mimic the flowing moustaches of his elders. His green eyes were full of fear, and he hesitated instead of trying another cut.

  Tomas's body lay between them, which only made Fulk angrier. He lashed out at full stretch, the sabre feeling like a toothpick in hands that were more used to a broadsword. The Godless One parried well enough and responded with a tentative thrust at Fulk's face. Snarling, Fulk caught the blade in his mailed hand and yanked it out of his shocked opponent's grip.

  "Bad move, fool," he rasped, spinning the blade until he held it by the hilt. The young man grabbed for the knife at his hip and failed to notice a huge knight bursting out of the press behind him. A heavy mace rose and fell and crumpled the Godless One's head like paper. He fell next to Tomas, spattering the earth with blood and brains.

  Feeling cheated, Fulk raised his sword in grudging thanks to the knight, who charged s
traight at him, raising his bloody mace for another strike.

  In his astonishment Fulk was slow to dive out of the way. The knight's horse thundered past and the mace hit him a glancing blow on the side of his helmet, knocking him to the ground.

  He landed hard and rolled groggily onto his back. His would-be murderer snarled down at him, and to Fulk's labouring vision his face seemed curiously misshapen and deformed. The red and yellow colours of his House, emblazoned on his shield, swam in front of Fulk's eyes.

  Red and yellow, red and yellow...red and yellow were the colours of House Beaumont. The colours of the young knight, Etienne, whose good looks Fulk had ruined forever with his bare fists.

  Fulk tried to speak, to stand up, but he was slowly falling backwards, backwards into oblivion. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was Etienne de Beaumont sneering down at him in triumph.

  7.

  Husan al Din, Caliph of the Fifth Army of the Southern Sands, lay in his tent with a damp cloth covering his face. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't felt tired and hot. And as for his head, it had ached for the past month—ever since he had been visited by a strange and powerful woman.

  She had appeared in a blaze of light one night while he slept, frightened the living shit out of him and then told him a story.

  The woman told him her name was Kayla. She said she had come from the realm of the High Gods, to guide a prophet who would soon journey from the jungle to the east. The prophet's existence could bring about an apocalypse. Demons would run wild in the physical world, humanity would be destroyed and their souls enslaved for eternity. This same prophet would save the world. All he needed was a vast army. An army, for instance, about the size of the Five Armies of the Southern Sands.

  Husan al Din was a gods-fearing man and so immediately sent messengers to the four other tribes, which were spread the length and breadth of the southern desert—from the plains in the East to the Morsel on the western tip, and from the shores of the Girdle Sea in the North to the storm-tossed Southern coasts. He had spent the last month in talks with their Caliphs, using all his diplomatic skills and charisma to smooth over petty but ancient feuds and disputes over land, heritage, honour and just about everything else it is possible for humans to squabble over.