The Best Weapon

by David Pilling

  Total and utter control.

  He ran on, feeling the wind rush past his ears, and gradually the white wolf was lost behind him. As he ran he sensed the ground sloping downwards until the pungent scent of a pine forest filled his nostrils. Eventually he could see the stark, black spires of pine trees appear against the pallid evening sky.

  By the time he reached the forest the sun had disappeared, and as it got darker his senses felt increasingly heightened. He could smell deer and hear the rustle of tiny animals fleeing. The sway of the trees in the wind sounded in his ears like a million incoherent whispers.

  He plunged into the dark wood, leaping over fallen logs and ditches and swerving right and left to avoid trees. Each leap he made felt as though it had reached a greater height and cleared a greater distance. His joints tingled.

  The darkness enveloped him, so that he used every one of his enhanced senses to race silently through the dense vegetation. He became the darkness, the wind, the earth, everything and nothing.

  A clearing opened out before him and he was confronted with a figure. A man holding a spear high in his hand. He knew the smell instantly. It was Grizzal.

  In an instant, painful memories came rushing back into his mind and his rage took hold of him.

  Without breaking his stride Naiyar launched himself at the dark shape. The spear glanced harmlessly off his chest as though he was made of solid rock. In one movement he tore Grizzal's throat out and, as the lifeless corpse dropped to the ground, howled at the sky in his grief.

  He gazed at the stars, as though seeking something precious there which he had lost. The clearing was completely dark and silent. He looked around at the wall of trees, which surrounded him, and wondered where the white wolf had gone.

  The ecstasy he had felt as he had run began to ebb, and he felt a deep loneliness. He turned to look down on the dead body and flinched with shock. The body which lay at his feet was not Grizzal's.

  The face that stared up at the stars was his own.

  He cried out in fear and dismay.

  * * * *

  Kayla's soothing voice relaxed him as he felt a cool hand on his forehead. All his fear drained from him at her touch. "Hush, Naiyar, it was just a dream."

  He squinted up at her as her face slowly came into focus. Over her shoulder he could see Colken, one hand shading his eyes, gazing into the distance.

  "Nothing yet." Colken said as he watched the horizon.

  "They will be here soon. Keep watching." Kayla replied, still looking down into Naiyar's eyes. She handed him a water skin and lifted his head so he could drink.

  It was mid morning and the temperature was rising. Naiyar's recollection of events gradually formed in his mind. He was on the rock, where he had laid for ten days and nights, watched over by his fellow Djanki and unexpected ally, Colken.

  "How do you feel?" She asked him.

  Naiyar thought for a second. "I feel well."

  "Good," she replied, "there are some people you must meet."

  Naiyar rose slowly, stretching his stiff limbs. He instinctively rose facing east, where Colken focused his gaze so intently. The empty desert stretched away before him.

  Kayla took Naiyar's hand and turned him to the west. What he saw took his breath away. A sea of warriors filled the landscape.

  Five hundred paces in front of him stood a line of spearmen, dressed in kaftans. Glittering mail protruded from beneath the armour, which covered their torsos, and the ghutras on their bearded heads. At their waists were scimitars and an array of knives. Each had a spear in one hand and a round shield in the other.

  Row upon row of spearmen stretched away from him in neat formation. Behind them he could just about make out the cavalry. In the distance, standing tall and white against the dark carpet of men, he could see five tents, spaced evenly across the scene. He could tell there were more men beyond the tents, but they were too distant for his eyes to see clearly.

  As he stood there he became aware of a faint, repetitive beat. Drums.

  The Djanki horde was coming.

  PART IV: ENDGAME

  1.

  Fulk dreamed that he was nailed to the earth, naked and spread-eagled with his wrists and ankles impaled by steel rods. Above him was a vast purple sky, empty but for a single black dot wheeling far above. He supposed it to be a winged predator of some kind, waiting for its prey to expire before descending. In his mind's eye he envisaged a grotesque vulture-like beast, with an oversized curved beak that would stab deep into his helpless body and pluck out his liver.

  His eyes flickered open and he was back in the real world. There was little comfort for him there either.

  He was indeed stripped and spread-eagled on the ground, his wrists and ankles not impaled, but bound securely with strips of leather attached to stakes driven into the earth. Above him the sky was a deepening blue with black evening clouds gathering in the south. No vultures circled above, for which he was thankful, but a pair of fierce faces glared down at him.

  One belonged to a man in late middle age, squat and powerfully-built. His drooping moustaches and thinning hair were peppered with grey, and his craggy square face deeply lined. The man's eyes were deep-set and fiercely intelligent, but entirely lacking in compassion as they studied Fulk. His companion looked similar, but a couple of decades younger, and wore his dark lustrous hair scraped back into a long ponytail. Both men wore leather tunics, hauberks of scale mail, woollen leggings and soft knee-high leather boots.

  Fulk groaned softly. He had been captured by the Godless Ones. That meant he would be tortured to death, if the old accounts of their barbaric customs could be trusted. The only wonder was that they hadn't murdered him already.

  His first surprise came when the older man opened his mouth and began speaking in recognisable, if strangely-accented, Northspeech. "Good news, blue-eyes," he rumbled, nudging Fulk in the ribs with his boot, "you get to live."

  "For a while, anyway," said his companion. They glanced at each other and laughed, though Fulk detected a nervous edge to their mirth.

  He tried to imagine himself breaking free of his bonds, to draw on his strange resources snap the ropes binding him with sheer force of will. Try as he might, nothing happened. What use was a power that only came to him when he didn't need, or was unaware, of it?

  "By the Eye, he looks like he's straining for a shit," remarked the younger of the Godless Ones.

  "Take him up," commanded the elder, and previously unseen men, grim-faced troopers in full armour. with shields slung across their backs, bent to untie the ropes pinning Fulk to the earth. Fulk started to protest, but the words died in his throat as he noticed that one of the shields was black and bore the image of a silver griffon.

  The knight of the silver griffon, thought Fulk. He rode away to find the lands of his ancestors, but death found him first.

  Fulk gasped as the blood coursed back into his wrists and ankles. The side of his head throbbed where Etienne de Beaumont had clubbed him.

  Now he was upright he could study his surroundings. What he saw made him forget his own discomforts. Six other men were tied to the ground, naked and spread-eagled. All were dead, their lifeless eyes staring glassily into the void, and each had a slender yellow pole protruding vertically from their stomachs. The poles were slimy with blood and entrails and had sprouted from the ground through their bodies, impaling them like salmon on the end of gaffes.

  Fulk looked horrified, and the men holding him laughed. He recognised two of the victims as fellow Templars, and the others were also men of the Winter Realm. Prisoners, he surmised, probably taken during the ambush on the plain. Why had he been spared?

  "The banta root," chuckled the elder of the Godless Ones, grasping Fulk by the jaw and tipping his face up so they looked directly at each other, "it grows extremely fast. Sprinkle a little water on it, and up it shoots. The banta is extremely tough and can pierce most things that get in its way...as your companions discovered."

  Fulk res
isted the temptation to spit in his eye. "Barbarian," he growled.

  The Godless One's battered face creased in anger. "We had the best teachers in barbarism," he growled, "when your people came over the sea and tried to take back their lost lands with fire and sword, death by banta was one of their favourite instruments of torture. There were others. Many others."

  "We should not delay, Banner Chief," said the younger man in an anxious voice, "the Speaker was most insistent."

  "Yes, yes, I know." The one he addressed as Banner Chief released Fulk and wiped his hand on his tunic as though cleaning it of dirt.

  The men holding Fulk half-carried, half-shoved him along, while the two officers walked in front, leading the way.

  Fulk did his best to take in his surroundings. The mountains to the south seemed a little closer, looming menacingly over the grass plains like grey icebergs floating in a sea of mist. A few tents were pitched here and there, simple affairs of animal skins stretched over a skeleton of branches looped and lashed together, obviously temporary and meant to be uprooted and packed away at a moment's notice.

  Godless Ones sat around in little groups, boiling some murky black liquid in little iron kettles and eating flat cakes made of oatmeal and water roasted over their camp fires. Others sat cross-legged on the grass, cleaning and checking their weapons. Fulk noticed that there were as many women as there were men. The camp was quiet, orderly and disciplined.

  Away to the east the flat monotony of the grass plains broke up into a series of rolling hills. On the highest of these crests, about two miles from the camp, was the crumbling shell of a sprawling fortress. He shivered at the sight of it, remembering the horrors he had encountered in Mont le Daron.

  His guards took him to a tent on the outskirts of the camp. Here a fire burned inside a rough circle of stones, and squatting beside it was an old woman in dirty white robes. Her long white hair, equally grubby and thick with grease, was scraped back into a single thick plait that wound about her thin waist, and her eyes were covered by a soiled bandage. Though apparently blind, she looked up from the fire as Fulk and his captors approached.

  "Banner Chief Kavsna, you are unforgivably late," she said in smooth melodic tones, not at all like the thin elderly voice that Fulk expected.

  Kavsna placed his hand flat on his breastplate and bowed. "Apologies, Reverend Speaker," he begged, "but our prisoners were a long time in dying."

  They were speaking in their own complex guttural language rather than Northspeech, but with a shock Fulk realised he could understand them. The withered old woman by the fire glanced at him and smiled pityingly.

  "What a hapless fool is this," she sneered, "who has such power at his command, and yet does not command it?"

  She snatched up a tall staff of blackened timber and struggled to her feet. Fulk winced at the crunch of her ancient joints as she moved.

  "Look at the bewilderment in his eyes," she said, hobbling over to peer up at him, "cold blue eyes, mark you, the mark of the pitiless Northern race he thinks he belongs to. Fulk the No-Man's Son, orphan, and Comrade Fulk, brother knight of the Temple of Occido. What else will he be?"

  Fulk couldn't stop himself. "How could you know all that?" he demanded, and the Speaker gaped with mirth and thumped her stick on the ground.

  "Wonderful!" she cried. "Now he speaks our tongue!"

  "Northerners have never bothered to learn it before," said Kavsna, taken aback, "they regard our language as an abomination."

  "He did not learn it. He has never spoken anything but Northspeech before in his life. Have you?"

  Fulk confined himself to shaking his head. The Speaker crooked a bony finger at the men holding Fulk.

  "Bring him along," she commanded, "he has an appointment to keep."

  His captors took him towards the fortress, marching him along a dirt track that began shortly after they left camp. The track was straight and wide enough for two horsemen to ride abreast, but a combination of neglect and the passage of time had worn away most of the square flagstones that once lay across it. Others had deteriorated into rubble and lay in scattered heaps in the long grass.

  "This path was once part of a great highway," explained the Speaker as she limped along in front of Fulk and his guards, "linking the cities of the south to this region. That was long ago. We know of your little adventure at Mont le Daron."

  Again Fulk refused to speak, and she gave an impatient shake of her head. "There you encountered our power," she went on, "and we sealed up sixteen of your comrades inside stone statues. They are still alive, you know. We keep them alive to savour their horror."

  The Speaker continued her history lesson as the group approached the castle, and described how the coasts of the Old Kingdom used to be guarded by mighty fleets of war-galleys driven by hundreds of oarsmen. She spoke of the former strength and magnificence of the great cities and castles, one of which they were approaching now, and how their shining walls used to echo to the sound of trumpets. Of the even greater settlements in the richer and more populous South, their gaudiness and splendour, high culture and decadence, how they represented the apex of human achievement.

  "They impressed even us, those people of old, and we are no great admirers of apes. But all things wither and die, as even we must in the end, and the strength of the Old Kingdom failed."

  "And my people came sweeping down from the East, to rob and destroy them," added Kavsna. "The people here became soft and forgot how to fight. That was our opportunity."

  He spoke proudly, and his remarks met with approving growls from his troopers. The Speaker did not share their enthusiasm.

  "Yes," she said, and now her voice sounded weary, "that has always been the way of the ape. You have not changed much from the days when you lived in caves and fought each other with bones ripped from the carcases of your prey. We were there, we saw it all."

  She fell silent, and did not speak again until they arrived at the castle, leaving Fulk to wonder why she spoke of herself as 'we' rather than 'I'.

  Seen up close, the fortress was gigantic, and dwarfed any castle in the Winter Realm that Fulk had ever seen. Even the Founders' Palace was a shed by comparison. The graceful towers, putting him in mind of slender fingers reaching for the sky, were reminiscent of those at Mont le Daron, and in an equally sad state of repair. Great chunks of masonry had broken away from the sagging walls and spilled down the side of the hill, and the tiled roofs of the gatehouse had caved in, as though some god had reached down from the sky and driven his fist through them.

  A strange silence hung over the place, the kind of deadening absence of sound that Fulk had only encountered before in the small private cemetery in the depths of the Temple, where past Masters were interred.

  The chill that he had encountered before began to steal back over his limbs, like the first symptoms of a returning sickness. Fear clutched at him and he tried to pull away from the men holding him.

  "I won't go in there," he muttered, shaking his head, "you cannot make me. I will not go."

  Kavsna had been itching for an opportunity to strike his prisoner. "Shut your mouth, cur," he snarled, and raised his armoured hand to cuff Fulk across the face.

  There was a crack as the blow landed, but it was Kavsna who grunted in pain and staggered backwards. An ugly red weal had appeared on his cheek, and blood trickled from his nose.

  The Banner Chief wiped his face and looked in shock at the blood on his fingers. His men swore in amazement, while the Speaker merely looked knowing.

  "Turning a blow is a nice trick, No Man's Son," she said approvingly, "but you did it instinctively. When will you learn to think before acting?"

  Fulk had no awareness of what he had done, only that the cold was still pouring into his flesh and he was desperate to escape. He kicked and struggled, bellowing incoherently, and managed to tear free from his guards.

  He turned to run, and moved not a step further. Some force had him in its grip, immobilizing his limbs, his joints, p
aralysing his entire body.

  "Foolish, foolish," said the Speaker, slightly irritably, "you are in our power now. Let us demonstrate."

  The cold flared into an unbearable freezing sensation, starting from deep inside his chest and threatening to stop his heart. All Fulk could do was cry out. Once he had screamed to the Speaker's satisfaction she released him and he flopped to the ground like a gutted fish.

  "Now," she said, "pick this poor idiot up and carry him inside."

  2.

  Naiyar turned back to the east. He and Colken stood in silence, listening to the distant beat of the Djanki drums. Dust started to drift up from the horizon. Colken turned to Kayla.

  "They are here."

  Kayla turned and waved to a boy standing in front of the long lines of desert spearmen. The boy turned and ran back through the lines towards Husan al Din's tent.

  After several minutes a thin black line appeared beneath the rising cloud of dust, slowly thickening and edging forward through the desert like water soaking into a cloth. The ominous throb and pulse of the drums steadily grew in volume.

  As the Djanki horde drew nearer, Colken and Naiyar turned to view the army behind them, weighing up the numbers. They had both been raised to believe that the Djanki were the most fearsome warriors in the world. Now they had to fight those same warriors.

  Colken studied the armies of the desert assembled before him. He had a doubtful look on his face. Not a look of fear, but the look of someone who was about to watch a duel rather than take part, and wondering whether one of the contenders was fit enough.

  Naiyar felt a change had taken place within himself. He now felt confident that whatever happened, he would be able to deal with it.

  Husan al Din had ordered three huge mounds of timber and brushwood to be piled up just behind the cavalry. His soldiers had soaked the mounds in oil and were now thrusting burning torches into them.