The Best Weapon

by David Pilling

  On the third night he was attacked. He had been naive enough to let his guard down, having seen little sign of life since leaving the encampment, and they came on him when he was in the depths of meditation. They would have got him, too, if an alien voice hadn't cried out:

  "Fulk, beware!"

  His eyes opened in time to see three shadows creeping towards him, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was very early in the morning, at that time when most men are at their lowest ebb, and the grey half-light revealed three thin pale faces under dark hoods, and three pairs of eyes glittering with menace and greed. The light also reflected from their weapons, a pair of throwing daggers and a curved sword. As Fulk woke up one of the brigands was drawing back his arm, ready to throw his dagger at Fulk's chest.

  Fulk rolled aside and the dagger flashed inches past him, so close its serrated edge tore the sleeve on his right arm and grazed his flesh. His would-be killer yelled a curse and reached for his sword, while his companions charged past him, roaring in an attempt to disorientate their prey.

  It was over quickly. Panicking, Fulk wrenched at his power, like any man in danger of his life would reach for the nearest available weapon, and struck out blindly. There was a crash and a blinding flash of light, followed by the burning stench of ozone and a chorus of screams.

  Fulk picked up his staff and held it like a weapon, waiting for the smoke to clear. In his desperation he had summoned a lightning bolt from the heavens. It had left him untouched, but set fire to the grass of the little clearing he had taken shelter in and reduced the nearest trees to charred wrecks.

  The brigands had fared little better. Two of them were dead, their corpses lying as twisted and blackened as the trees, with the melted remnants of their weapons smoking gently beside them. One man was still alive, just, though his clothes were burned away and he resembled a twitching, badly seared lump of pork.

  "Nicely done!" remarked the unfamiliar voice, "very nice indeed. I could not have done better myself. I especially like the way you made one of them suffer."

  Feeling sick to his stomach, Fulk tossed away his staff, lugged out his sword and hurried over to the dying man. A single clean thrust of his sword ended his suffering.

  "Right," growled Fulk, pulling his sword free, "I've had my fill of strange voices offering me advice. Show yourself, whoever you are. I have killed three times tonight, I may as well add a fourth!"

  The voice cackled. "Oh, I shouldn't like that. I shouldn't like that at all."

  A crow flapped out of nowhere and settled on the steaming carcase of the man furthest away from Fulk. It cocked its head and rolled a beady black eye at him, at the same time pecking carefully at the dead brigand's charred face.

  "It's you, isn't it?" Fulk demanded, and the crow seemed to grin at him.

  "Well spotted, No Man's Son," it replied. The bird's voice was scratchy and rasping, as irritating as a fingernail scraped down a blackboard.

  Fulk was well beyond the point where a talking crow could surprise him. "There's that foolish name again," he growled, "and if you wish to live to pick at any more carrion, you will not utter it again."

  The crow gave up pecking at the too-warm flesh and hopped onto the scorched earth. "And why should I not call you that?" it rasped. "Since that is what you are. No Man's Son at all, but mine."

  Fulk was quicker on the uptake since his blinding. "The Lord of Crows," he said, "one of the many guises of the Lords of Hell. So you are my father? I must admit, I imagined you would look different."

  The crow opened his beak wide and spread his wings. A shadow grew up around him, shapeless and black as ink, barely visible in the murky light of the pre-dawn.

  "At least you have avoided asking tedious questions," spoke the voice of the demon, much deeper now and with a gravely quality, "I have waited long years to speak to you. You must know that your life has been a lie so far. Everyone has tried to shape you against your nature. From now on, you must listen only to me."

  The shadow was constantly shifting, like smoke from a raging fire, and Fulk knew he dared not stare too closely into it. "The Oldest One did not lie to me," he said stubbornly.

  "That old fool, who has hid underground these past six thousand years? Do not be misled. It told you the truth up to a point, but only to serve its own ends. The Oldest One wishes to be the only power in the world, and so fears you and your brother. It knows that you could be lords of all creation, if you ever realised your true worth and allied with us, your creators."

  Fulk smiled at this clumsy temptation. "We do not all crave power, you poor ghost. Tell me about my mother."

  Angered by Fulk's contemptuous tone, the shadow deepened to a thunderous purple-black.

  "Your mother is of no importance!" he shrieked, "a widowed peasant-woman whose womb I filled with your essence. A stupid, dirty creature, and of no interest."

  "What became of her?"

  "She died giving birth to you. What human woman has ever survived the birth of a witch-child? You clawed your way out of her belly like a ravening wolf! Her pain was most satisfying."

  The realisation that his mother had not given him up for adoption after all, but that he had been the cause of her death, drove Fulk to lash out. The blade of his sword rippled with blue fire and he swung it deep into the shadow.

  He may as well have struck at fog. The sword passed through harmlessly and the clearing echoed with high-pitched laughter.

  "I will not fight you now," laughed the demon known as Screwfate, "but the time will come when you shall realise my strength. Only then shall you and your brother be allowed to rule this world under our guidance."

  "I have no wish to rule anything!" shouted Fulk, "and what of the predator that hunts you? What of the Devourer?"

  There came no reply. The shadow dissipated and flowed back in on itself until there was nothing left but a humble crow. It ruffled its feathers, peering up at Fulk quizzically and with a distinct lack of intelligence. The spirit of the demon had gone.

  ***

  Count Flambard had always suspected he possessed great leadership qualities, and that he only needed to escape from the shadow of his brother for them to emerge. All his life he had chafed under the influence of the Archpriest, from the cradle to their early days at court and into middle age. When the Reconquest was announced he had thought it a great opportunity to demonstrate his true worth.

  That opportunity had finally come, and Flambard now had absolutely no doubt about the extent of his abilities.

  "Lord Baron, what do we do?" asked a knight standing next to him. The knight's face was torn and bloody. With horror Flambard saw that the end of his nose had been hacked through and dangled by a single narrow strip of flesh.

  Flambard had no idea what to do. His little army was in a desperate position. Three hundred starving, exhausted and dispirited men, trapped on a lonely hilltop and surrounded by an overwhelming number of Godless Ones. The Baron was responsible for leading them into this mess, and he knew it.

  Flambard wiped the sweat from his brow, for it was a seethingly hot day, and studied the enemy.

  There were thousands of them. Vicious devils on wiry little horses, armed with javelins and the evil curved short bows that had claimed the lives of so many of his men. In the weeks since Flambard had led his division away from the main army of the Reconquest, the horse archers had harried and attacked them mercilessly.

  The Godless Ones seemed to rise out of the earth, springing to ambush the hapless invaders time and again, day or night, pouring arrows into their ranks before wheeling away and vanishing. They left carnage behind them, scattered heaps of dead or dying, bodies bristling with red-tufted shafts.

  At last Flambard became sick of running and decided to make a stand on the hill. It was an unwise decision, since the hill was bare of cover and the sun beat down mercilessly. All the Godless Ones had to do was sit back and wait for their enemies to wilt from thirst, but the younger warriors insisted on having their fight. T
hree times the bravest of them had spurred up the hill to test their mettle, and three times been repelled.

  Flambard tested the edge of his axe with his thumb. He had killed a few of the bastards himself, and many more of their dead lay strewn about his position, but there seemed no end to them. His own men had suffered sad losses and barely had the strength left to stand, never mind fight.

  In short, it was the end. The Baron sighed and wiped his brow again.

  "Tear down the banners," he ordered, turning to his standard bearer, who gaped at him.

  "Tear down the banners," Flambard repeated impatiently, "and hand them to me."

  The man reluctantly hauled down the wolf's head of House Flambard and the swallow banner of the Winter Realm, and handed them to his master. Laying down his axe for a moment, Flambard took the lengths of hacked and bloody cloth and wrapped them around his middle.

  "See, lads!" he cried, picking up his axe and holding it high. "I will die rather than give up our colours!"

  His gesture was not lost on the Godless Ones, who cheered in approval at such heroic futility. Then their war-horns sounded again, the yell was raised, and their cavalry streamed back up the hill.

  From his vantage point on a nearby slope, Fulk watched impassively as Flambard and his men were engulfed. He did nothing to help, for none of the men on the hill were Templars and he had found them by following the trail of devastation they left behind. Sacked and burned villages, slaughtered farmers left to rot in the fields, crops burned, captured enemy warriors castrated and blinded and then turned loose to wander. One atrocity after another, each bloodier than the last.

  He watched, motionless, as the fighting on the hill ebbed and flowed. Then the Godless Ones had nothing left to fight, and renewed cheers broke out as one horseman waved something on the end of his lance.

  Baron Flambard's severed head.

  The Godless Ones looted the battlefield with swift efficiency, finishing off enemy wounded and stripping the fallen of anything valuable. When they had gone Fulk descended the slope and crossed over to the stricken field.

  He presented a very different appearance to the young Templar knight who had arrived on the shores of the Old Kingdom almost two months before. Where once his black hair was cut brutally short, it now hung thick and greasy to his shoulders. His beard had grown and he wore the same loose robes and breeches that he had looted from the encampment, while the ruin of his eyes remained hidden by the bandage he had taken from the Speaker.

  He carefully stepped between the fallen horses and men, wrinkling his nose at the stench of blood and excrement. More than one man had voided his bowels in terror before being killed. Fulk knew that, had he wanted to, he could have stopped to study every corpse on the field and watched their lives pass before his eyes. He resisted the temptation and hurriedly strode past the dead, determined not to give in to such ghoulish fascinations. From reading the Grand Master's book, which he still carried, he knew that some witches had deserved their terrifying reputations. Their powers had driven them quite mad.

  He reached the part of the field where the fighting had been thickest. Here the bodies were piled in heaps. The headless trunk of Baron Flambard was still wrapped in the banners he had died defending.

  Not far away lay the corpse of another man whom Fulk recognised. Etienne de Beaumont, his misshapen face now still and lifeless, and the blue eyes that had looked on Fulk with such arrogance during the Test (how long ago that seemed!) gazed vacantly at the sky. A lance in the throat had done for him. Fulk tried to work up some pity for the man, fool and traitor that he had been, but the finer emotion was beyond him.

  At last he heard what he had hoped for: the groan of a dying man, begging for water. Somehow the Godless Ones had missed him during their throat-cutting after the battle.

  Fulk knelt next to the man, a commoner judging by his battered leather jack and the crude maul he carried as a weapon. His life was pouring through a lance thrust in his side, and his bloody hand clutched feebly at the water skin that Fulk dangled over him.

  "You can have the whole skin," said Fulk, "but not before you answer a few questions."

  He kept the questions brief and simple, since the man obviously didn't have much time left. When Fulk was done, he left him the skin, as he had promised, and strode away from the battlefield.

  At least he had got some answers. The leaders of the army had quarrelled, and Baron Flambard had taken command of those men who saw the Twelfth Reconquest as a mere profit-making exercise. Flambard had promised to lead them to riches, but instead had brought them here, to death and dishonour.

  That had been two weeks ago. Two weeks of plundering and bloody skirmishing with the Godless Ones for Flambard's band of thieves and marauders. To find the place where they had parted company with the rest of the army, all Fulk had to do was follow the trail of bodies and burned-out villages.

  So far as the dying man had known, the remainder of the army had carried on south towards Temple Rock. They wouldn't be difficult to track, Fulk reckoned, but it would take weeks for him to catch up with them on foot.

  Then fortune smiled on him. A few of Flambard's men had tried to break out of the final melee and ride for their lives. They hadn't got very far, and one of the would-be fugitives lay dead on the slope with several javelins in his back. His right foot dangled limply from his stirrup, which was still attached to his horse. The great beast herself stood patiently by her former master, occasionally nuzzling his body to encourage him to get up.

  "You have a new master now," said Fulk, and went to claim her.

  9.

  A heaven-shattering bang was followed by a blinding light and a wave of power which swept over the camp, flattening every tent, every horse, camel or man.

  A single tent remained erect; the only damage a charred and smoking whole in the roof. Inside, Naiyar cried out as though waking from a nightmare.

  The light penetrated Naiyar's skin, his bones, and filled his head. Incalculable energy raced through him, forcing his voice out of his mouth, like wind howling through a tunnel.

  His cry gradually died as the energy was released and the light dimmed until all he could see was the gentle, hazy glow of a sphere in front of his face. As that glow faded enough for his eyes to focus, he realised it was Kayla, emanating a soft light.

  He felt instantly calm, swallowed by her unblinking eyes, which seemed to peer at his very core as though she could see as much looking in as he could looking out. Her apparent fascination made him feel drawn to her in the same way. He felt now as he had when he first saw her, and for the first time since then he thought of her as a woman.

  Without any further thought he lifted his head and kissed her on the lips. Instantly he felt a bond, as though he could no more pull away from her than turn back time. His skin tingled and his heart beat rapidly so that he could feel it through his whole body. Lights flashed in his head and he felt so light he thought he might be evaporating. To his surprise, she did not pull back.

  Finally they parted, and he looked into her face. He saw something there which he had not seen before; surprise and innocence. As though she had just done something for the first time, or discovered something new and unexpected.

  They stared into each other, and held their breath.

  "Naiyar! Kayla! Fallah's army of souls! What was that?" Husan al Din's incredulous countenance appeared at the entrance to the tent.

  Kayla blinked and breathed in as though she had been hypnotized for sometime and had just regained her senses.

  "Nothing," she said dismissively, "just a dream."

  "A dream?" Husan al Din looked amazed.

  Naiyar scratched his head, still frowning into Kayla's eyes as though his answer was there to be read out. "I'm sorry if my cries woke you. I had a nightmare. I think."

  "A nightmare? I'm the one with the fucking nightmare! You've just flattened my army! Literally! Twenty thousand men, prostrate, holding their ears. All my tents, all my...fucking...I ju
st saw a camel fall over! My camel!"

  With that Husan al Din's shaking face disappeared and he could be heard barking orders outside the tent.

  Kayla suddenly seemed to remember something. She looked down, a disheartened, almost shamed expression on her face, and would not meet Naiyar's gaze.

  "What is wrong?" He asked her.

  "You should not have done that." She said.

  She turned away from him, hiding her face.

  "What? Why?"

  "I am here for a purpose. I must not—I must not allow myself to be turned from it!"

  "I'm sorry. I do not know what I did wrong." Naiyar was confused and exhausted, unable to think straight. And what she said now only confused him more.

  "It must not happen again," she said, her voice faltering. She got up quickly, looking up at the whole in the roof of the tent. "I will put a skin over that hole. We must sleep."

  She went to her side of the tent, picked up the largest skin, took it outside and covered the hole. Then she went back to her bed and left Naiyar alone, too tired to ask all the questions in his head.

  * * * *

  When Naiyar awoke the next morning, Kayla was not in her bed. He sat up and rubbed his eyes as the memories of the previous night revolved in his mind.

  The first thing he remembered was kissing Kayla, the memory made his heart jump and his skin tingled as though it had its own personal recollection of her touch. Then, as if to spoil his reverie, he remembered her sudden change of mood and his heart sank again, leaving him feeling empty and confused. He wanted to talk to her, but he had no idea what he would say.