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The Best Weapon

Page 22

by David Pilling


  That left his third wish. If Flambard still possessed an army then he might have crushed the Northerners, but too many fighting men had gone overseas with the Reconquest. None of the Houses, great or small, were willing to send troops to fight on his behalf.

  Every noble in the land hates me and wants me gone, so they might be free to pursue their own selfish ends.

  He had thought of exhorting the citizens of Hope to defend the walls of their city, but dismissed the idea. There was hardly a family among them that hadn't lost a member in the recent massacre Flambard had contrived. No, they would open the gates and greet Clifford and his troops as saviours.

  All that remained to him was Captain Trajan and the Palace Guard. Two thousand well-armed and trained soldiers, in theory, but their morale was at rock-bottom. The only thing preventing the majority from deserting was their exorbitant wages, for Flambard had emptied his treasury to maintain the loyalty of the only fighting men left under his command.

  He heard the door open and Trajan's cautious step as he entered the room.

  "Ah, captain," said Flambard, his voice barely more than a whisper, "I need to speak to you about the defence of our city."

  * * * *

  Baron Clifford stood up in his stirrups and shaded his eyes with his hand, squinting to get a better look at the enemy troops holding the bridge to the south.

  King's Crossing. His growing army had marched that far, almost one hundred and fifty miles from Clifford's Mount, without meeting any opposition until now. As the Archpriest's 'faithful Pig' had described in his letter, Clifford had been welcomed like a hero by every town and village in his path.

  The few remaining Royal officials in the North, who might otherwise have attempted to drum up local militia to block the Baron's progress, had either melted away or thrown in their lot with him. The news of Queen Heloise's murder had spread like a summer fire across the land, extinguishing any lingering traces of loyalty to Archpriest Flambard and his regime.

  Given the complete lack of opposition so far, Clifford had half-expected the bridge at King's Crossing to be deserted, allowing him and his men to cross unopposed. Instead he and his personal guard had ridden ahead of the army to discover the landward side was guarded by a wedge of pikemen, supported by lines of archers on the opposite bank.

  Sir Jean Deyville and Sir William Burun were just behind him, and at first sight of the enemy they spurred their horses down the slope.

  "Belay your eagerness, you two," Clifford ordered, "we'll wait here until the rest of the army comes up."

  "See their banners?" said Deyville, jabbing his finger in the direction of the bridge. "A white wolf's head on a black field. That's the symbol of House Flambard. Someone to fight, at last! It's been a damned dull campaign so far."

  Sir William Burun had tears in his eyes. "This is where The Queen's Own were slaughtered," he said in a low voice, "this is where I abandoned them to die."

  The evidence of that massacre was still scattered about the marsh before him. Men in the uniform of the Queen's Own and the Palace Guard lay where they had fallen weeks ago, rotting bodies half-submerged in wet mud. The corpses were surrounded by broken weapons, shields, dinted helmets and fallen banners, all being slowly reclaimed by the earth.

  "Dry your tears, Burun, you'll get your chance for vengeance soon enough," said the Baron, looking anxiously over his shoulder. He saw with relief that his banners were advancing over a ridge about a quarter of a mile to the north.

  * * * *

  On the other side of the bridge, Captain Trajan watched with a fluttering heart and the most confident expression he could muster as the Northerners marched into view.

  There were a lot of them. He tried counting their numbers in groups of ten, and gave up when he got to a thousand. That was already twice the size of his own force, made up of all the Guards he could find who were still willing to follow orders. Not one citizen in Hope had joined up, even when Trajan, with Flambard's permission, had issued a proclamation offering three times the average labourer’s monthly wages to anyone willing to fight. His heralds had met with sullen silence, or in a few cases, a hail of stones and rotten vegetables.

  He looked around at his men. Discipline was fraying badly and they freely talked among themselves, ignoring the angry shouts of those officers who still bothered to try and keep their troops in line.

  "Be silent!" Trajan bawled, shaking his baton of office at the soldiers in front of him, and immediately felt like a world-class idiot as they ignored him.

  His plan was to hold the southern end of the bridge with a wall of pikes while his archers fired over the heads of their comrades into the bunched ranks of the enemy. That was the only plan he could think of against the superior numbers of Northerners, providing he didn't get outflanked. That was most unlikely (he hoped) since King's Crossing was the only bridge across the wide span of the Life for miles.

  Trajan reckoned his plan was sound, so long as his pikemen held their ground. He would never admit to having any doubts about his brave boys, but considered it prudent to stay on the southern side of the bridge. And to make sure his horse was a fast one.

  The Northern cavalry, some six hundred knights and men-at-arms, had halted as soon as they came into view at the head of the slope. Trajan hoped they might attempt a suicidal charge that would founder in the marsh and on the ends of his pikes, but Baron Clifford had his men on a tight rein. Instead they waited impatiently while the infantry came up.

  The footmen marched into view, column after column, spears, helmets and mail glinting in the pale sunlight. They made a brave show, with the banners of the various Northern lords flying, pipes playing and drums pounding. Trajan knew that the best men, veterans of the endless Northern turf wars and blood feuds, would be towards the front, and imagined their grim scarred faces beneath the battered helmets.

  Their front ranks were now ankle-deep in the slime and clinging mud of the marsh, which slowed their march a little. Trajan waited a few moments longer, and then raised his baton.

  "Notch!" he shouted, and the long line of archers in front of him notched arrows to their bows.

  "Draw!"

  The archers raised their bows into the air and drew back the strings to their chests. Or at least some of them did. Others, far too many, glanced at each other and shook their heads. Trajan saw, but could do nothing about it.

  "Shoot!" he yelled in a despairing, cracked yell, and maybe a couple of dozen arrows sailed into the air, looped over the heads of the pikemen and dropped down onto the nearest column of Northerners approaching the bridge. A few found a mark, and here and there a man dropped, but the rest calmly raised their shields and didn't even break step.

  Those archers who had refused to fire cast down their bows and fled, ignoring the shouts and truncheons of the few mounted officers who tried to stop them. It was a seven-mile run back to Hope across icy waterlogged plains and salt marsh, and every man knew that he needed to make a head start before the enemy got across the bridge.

  Aware of the collapse behind them, but also that they dare not break and run with the enemy so close, the Guards on the opposite side of the bridge prepared to receive a charge. The front ranks knelt, pikes held horizontally, while the second and third ranks remained standing with their pikes thrusting over the heads of the men in front. Trumpets screamed, the war-yell was raised, and the first column of Northerners charged.

  What followed was a brutal shoving match. Trajan winced as he saw men spitted on the ten-foot long spears. His men were holding. They were holding!

  And he could do nothing to help them. The archers were gone, a scattered mob fleeing across the horizon, and he had no reserves. Distant trumpets blew, and Trajan saw a large detachment of Northern cavalry break away from the main body and canter west, following the river. He knew they were heading for the next bridge, some five miles away, where they could cross and ride back up on the opposite bank to take the pikemen in the rear.

  * * * *
/>   "Sir," said a junior officer, appearing by his elbow, "what do we do, sir? Do we stay?"

  Trajan turned to look at the young man, noting how white with fear his beardless face was beneath its oversized helmet.

  He took a deep breath. "You're too young to die, soldier," he said, "and so am I."

  Without another word Trajan turned his horse around and clapped in his spurs. His officers watched him go, and then, with a couple of noble but doomed exceptions, followed his example.

  4.

  For a while, he had no idea how long, Fulk lay and shivered as the unnatural cold wracked his body. Desperation and the very real fear that he might die gave him the impetus to draw upon his inner resource, and the cold started to thaw. His heart returned to something like a normal rhythm and he was able to stand up, though he felt as shaky as a new-born calf, and look around.

  The Godless Ones had carried him into the heart of the fortress, to a small inner ward surrounded by high walls, and left him there. There was one gate, made of rusting but still firm iron. He tried putting his shoulder to it but only succeeded in acquiring a few more bruises.

  They had shut him in. What for? In front of him a set of steps led down into a circular pit. The purpose of the pit was unclear, but a narrow entrance was carved into one wall.

  There was nowhere else for Fulk to go, unless he felt like trying to scale the sheer walls, which he didn't. Taking comfort in the fact that the Godless Ones had left him his sword, he started down the steps.

  The gaping entrance led into a tunnel, just wide enough for Fulk to pass through, that sloped down into pitch darkness. Unbidden knowledge of what lay under the castle, far below the living earth, started to filter into his brain from some unknown source.

  The tunnel he had entered was merely the first level of a vast underground complex dug out of the living rock. Below him, stretching for miles until they touched the very core of the earth, were a complex system of catacombs and ancient warrens.

  The inhabitants of this underground labyrinth were old, older than mankind, almost as old as the world itself. Not just old but virtually extinct. Their race had been driven from the surface and forced to take shelter in their underground caverns, where they fought each other for territory. His mind reeled at the thought of those ancient wars, vile slithering reptilian creatures slicing and gnawing at each other's slimy flesh in the gloomy dusk of their civilization.

  All his instincts, the instincts of a terrified mammal, howled at him to turn and run, to flee from what waited for him in the shadows. But Fulk was only half-human, though he didn't know it yet, and his demonic half did not bow to the primal fear of apes.

  The corridor began to widen until he could no longer touch the walls, even with his arms at full stretch. The darkness he moved through was black as the pits of Hell and thick as soup, the air dank and musty, like the stench of forgotten tombs.

  Fulk stopped. He raised his right hand, curling the fingers into a fist, and willed a light into being. At last, he was obeyed. A tiny flame appeared inside his flesh and rapidly expanded until he was bathed in a shining white radiance.

  He saw that he was in some vast underground cavern, so vast he could not see the end of it, and the ceiling towered above him like the roof of some monstrous cathedral. The floor was smooth and flat and covered in a chequerboard pattern that stretched away in all directions.

  Close examination of the black and white squares revealed them to be covered in grotesque etchings. His eyes revolted from looking too closely at the figures that cavorted on the squares, twisted imagery that no sane human mind could have produced.

  Feeling like the only piece on a universal chessboard, Fulk struck out. A few hundred steps further on and something metallic glinted ahead of him, its surface reflecting the blistering light that still shone from his closed fist.

  It was a helmet. Fulk tossed his light upwards, so that it floated above him like a miniature sun, and picked up his new find. Turning it over, he saw that the helmet was very old, of a Winter Realm design that had been in fashion just after the Founding.

  "Some brave man died here," he said aloud, more for the comfort of hearing a human voice than anything. His words died away instantly, smothered the moment they dropped from his lips.

  "Yes, he did," spoke a familiar voice, cultured and amused, neither male nor female, "and he did not die alone."

  The voice came from somewhere ahead of Fulk, though he could not see its owner. Dropping the helmet, Fulk drew his sword and willed the light above him to increase in size and intensity until he could make out who or what was speaking to him.

  The sun grew until it was the size of a man's head, a glowing light that filled the cavern with light and routed shadows that had ruled the place for millennia. It illuminated many more scattered bits of equipment, helmets, swords, shields, and the prone armoured forms of their long-dead owners. At least thirty corpses lay strewn about the chequerboard floor.

  Fulk paid no attention to the dead knights. All his attention was fixed on the thing in front of him. The suppressed glimpses of ancient reptilian figures in his mind, the hideous diagrams on the floor, had only hinted at this flesh and blood horror.

  His light had fallen on something dredged up from the gutters of a nightmare. A shapeless pulsing heap of black flesh, like the body of a giant slug covered in reptilian scales. The thing dragged itself along on a pair of huge powerful arms ending in bony-knuckled hands, something like a man's except they ended in curved talons. Each talon was the size of Fulk, like a set of giant sabres, and they were pitted and dented with the scars of many wars.

  But Fulk was transfixed not by the claws, or the great leering maw full of broken yellow teeth, but the creature's single eye. Perfectly round, pink-rimmed and with a cat's-eye pupil, to look into that eye was to risk peering into the depths of madness.

  Overcome by horror, Fulk's mental grip slipped and his light blinked out of existence, mercifully plunging the vile slug-like creature into shadow.

  "What ails you, No Man's Son?" the awful voice sniggered, "don't you care for my beauty?"

  Fulk struck out blindly, a desperate mental blow that would have fried a human brain in its skull. The thing just laughed, a gentle murmur, and batted his attack aside.

  "You are learning to wield the powers you were born with," the voice observed, "but slowly, desperately slowly. Your brother has outstripped you, but he has someone to guide his steps. Know my true nature, No Man's Son, before I instruct you in yours. I am the last of a race that men in times past named the Oldest Ones, and we ruled this world when your ancestors were still debating whether to crawl out of the sea. When the world cooled, too cool for our liking, we retreated to our underground halls. There, through all the long dark years, I slaughtered and devoured my kin.

  Fate rules you, No Man's Son. Your arrival in the Old Kingdom was decided by your fathers, who are indeed no men at all but those beings your crude ape religions know as the Lords of Hell."

  Fulk made a colossal effort to break free of the force that had him its grip, but its pressure only increased. The voice continued, soft and relentless.

  "So much for ancient history," it said, "I tell you these things so you may understand that I am the oldest and most powerful being still alive on this earth. And I intend to remain alive until the stars freeze and die and the last ape has crawled to its death. This world was mine, and will be again. For that to happen, I must demean myself by helping you."

  "Help me do what?" Fulk demanded.

  "realise your true nature, thus enabling you to harness the power inside you. You are half-demon. Did you not snuff out the storm that threatened to sink your ship in the Founders' Channel? Have you not experienced myriad visions and created light with a mere effort of will?"

  Unable to resist any other way, Fulk shut his eyes and shook his head. None of this is happening, he told himself, none of this can possibly be real.

  And then he saw nothing but endless blackness
. For a moment he panicked but then the Oldest One's voice sounded in his ear.

  "Be calm," it said, "you are experiencing a vision, just as you have before. You are looking at what no ape has ever seen. I have transported your mind back to the beginnings of our universe."

  "There is nothing," he whispered.

  "No stars, no planets, no life as you would comprehend it. And yet, there is something here. Listen."

  Knowing he was in the grip of a greater power than himself, Fulk obediently listened. After a time he made out a steady, constant pulse, a faint heartbeat just on the cusp of hearing.

  "That is the heartbeat of a creature that existed before the universe as we knew it began," said the Oldest One, "a creature so vast, so all-encompassing, that the merest glimpse of its true form would burn you to cinders. It has no name, never having been worshipped by humans, so let us call it The Devourer. Think of it as a god, or the inversion of a god. It was here before the universe came into being, and hates the accident of creation that usurped the perfect peace it once enjoyed, forcing it to retreat into a dormant slumber in the farthest reaches of space. Now I shall take us forward a few million years."

  Fulk blinked again and a luminous membrane of light appeared in front of him, swirling alone in the void.

  "Life has begun. See the infant worlds spinning in the middle of that fragile web. Gradually the web will expand until the Devourer is forced back."

  The enormity of what the Oldest One described was too much for Fulk's mind to handle. "What has this to do with me?" he demanded.

  "The Devourer is the enemy of all existence except its own. Your fathers, thanks to their foolish delving into the secrets of the universe, have awoken it. It pursues them through time and space, enraged and determined to destroy them. You and your brother were created by the Lords of Hell as a means of escaping the horror they have awoken, by using you as portals into the living world."

  "The Lords must not be allowed to enter the world. To do so would be to break the Divine Covenant, whereby the gods swore to keep to their own planes of existence and never invade the living realms in person. And the Devourer would follow them. To imagine that predator loose in the world! In its blind rage and hatred for life, it would rub out our world, and not stop there. The universe itself would be threatened."

 

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