Chains of Gaia

by James Fahy

He seemed to be right. They had finally reached the low hills which Hawthorn had pointed out to them earlier and, as the two great lions dipped between them, the high coarse grass whipping and whispering against their sides, the centaurs broke off.

  They were in fact veering to the left, banking like a great flock of birds, slowly disappearing behind the hills.

  Robin shouted this information to Hawthorn, who looked back also, his face grim and serious.

  “Are they giving up?” Robin asked, hardly daring to believe it.

  “Centaurs don’t ‘give up’,” Jackalope said, his eyes skimming the high hills now rising up on either side of them.

  “It’s unlikely,” Hawthorn agreed. They had lost sight of the centaurs altogether now. Nothing stretched away behind them but miles and miles of empty hills. “This could be extremely bad.”

  The lions emerged from between the two hills, and Robin saw that the land on this side of them was far more broken than the great savannah they had just navigated. Here, great jagged cliffs and outcroppings rose out of the scrubland. On the far horizon, the world was dominated by a steep rise, the hills sloping up and up into true highland, and all along the edge of it was a solid golden line, fuzzy and hazy in the light.

  “That is the Elderhart forest,” Hawthorn announced, pointing forward at the very distant wall of autumnal vegetation. “Miles to go yet before we reach its borders. But look! At last!”

  It was clear what had caught Hawthorn’s attention. A short way off, maybe four broken dips and rises of crumbled, grassy hillock, the land rose in a great solitary hill. One side of the hill seemed missing, as though a giant had taken a great bite out of the earth. Atop this uneven spur, there appeared to be a town. Robin could see the shapes of rooftops and towers, black and indistinct from here, silhouetted like a crown set atop the unbalanced rise. It looked like old Viking settlements he had seen in books, fortified, walled and remote.

  “Briar Hill,” Woad grinned. “We’re almost there!” He patted the side of the lion with affection. “Good kitty! I’d give you some catnip, but I think you’ve already got a bit growing in your mane here.” Clumps of dry soil and twigs came away in his hand, blown away by the passing wind, and Robin looked in concern. He had been noticing deterioration in both of their strange steeds for a while now. Clumps of the grass which formed the creature's mane had started coming away in his hands. The tightly packed stones under the skin of soil before him seemed looser and less smooth.

  “I think … these things are falling apart,” he shouted to the others.

  Hawthorn nodded. “Not far to go! Once we reach the hill, we will be fine! We can …”

  He trailed off, making Robin look up in question, and his heart froze.

  In front of them, flowing out from between two rocky hills, spreading from the left to block their path, were the centaurs. They appeared like a nightmarish wall, dead ahead of them.

  “That’s not good,” Woad observed quietly, his fingers digging into Robin’s shoulders.

  “Where did they come from?” Jackalope cried. “They must have doubled around. Known a faster way between the hills.”

  The cantrip lions made no attempt to stop, they barrelled forwards relentlessly, delivering their cargo directly to the centaurs ahead.

  “What do we do?” Robin asked urgently.

  “We go through!” Hawthorn answered, his mouth set in a thin line. He had lowered his head, close to the lion, his spiralling horns aimed forward.

  “Through?” Robin stared at the centaurs, now rushing up to meet them. There were more than thirty. Their ranks tight. Their pallid horse bodies were sheened in sweat and covered with dark splattered dirt and mud from the long chase. He could hear their roars as they shook their spears in fury and triumph. Hot gushes of breath escaping their long nightmarish triangular masks in clouds.

  “The lions will not last,” Hawthorn said firmly. “The Boulderdash is falling apart, you must have noticed. No time to change course. Nowhere else to go. Heads down and everything you can to clear a path. No matter what happens, get … to … the … hill!”

  Robin nodded, swallowing the hard lump that seemed to have risen and lodged in his throat. It felt like charging into battle. But the numbers were decidedly uneven. He wondered briefly what he’d be doing right now, if Gran had not died. If he’d never come to Erlking. Sometimes a normal life seemed so preferable, and decidedly less deadly.

  But he wasn’t a normal boy, a small voice, quiet but insistent, said inside his head. It was the voice of the Puck. He knew it was really just himself, but it never sounded like he did. You are the Scion, it said. You are the son of the sidhe. Your father rode land dragons made from earth and root and rock, and you will not disgrace the line of Fellows by faltering in the face of monsters.

  Robin set his jaw. “Woad, hold on,” he shouted determinedly back to the faun. “I’m going to clear as many as I can. I need you to do what you do best.”

  He felt the faun's confusion. “You need me to whistle?”

  Robin sighed. “I need you to cause chaos!”

  The lions rushed across and pelted down the grassy slope as the centaurs reared up to meet them. The air hung thick with bestial smells. Robin felt his mana stone slapping against his chest like a fist with every swift stride of the steed.

  Wait, said the Puck in his head, not yet, just wait, closer…

  They were almost upon one another. Robin saw the centaurs raise their spears, levelling them at their prey, animal grunts and whinnies of delight erupting from them, bouncing against the rocky roars of the indignant lions. They were close enough that he could see the designs of the tattoos cut into their human-like torsos, the detailed scarification, tribal and geometric. He could see the red and bloodstained wildness of their eyes.

  Now! the Puck shouted in Robin's head. Holding on tightly to the loose and fraying mane with his left hand, Robin leaned out to the right as far as he dared, dangling off the side of the lion, his hand outstretched to brush the long grass which sped underneath them. His fingers whipped through the grass, immediately soaked with the rains that had fallen. With all his might, he concentrated and cast needlepoint into the grass, heaving himself back upright with a grunt and throwing his arm out in a wide arc.

  His mana pulsed, flashing through his body and into the spell, and a thousand icy darts flew up out of the grass all around them like arrows, shooting with whistling velocity towards the herd.

  Ice rained everywhere as the tiny javelins struck their marks left and right, piercing countless flanks, jabbing into torsos and arms, spearing and stabbing the centaurs in a horizontal rain. Many of the beasts cried out in guttural pain and shock, stung by a thousand magical wasps, barbs glittering all over their bodies. They reared up on their hind legs, bellowing, turning instinctively to shield themselves from the attack, barrelling into one another.

  Robin and Woad’s lion leapt into the air, crashing through the first ranks, knocking several of the disoriented creatures flying with its massive paws. They landed in the midst of their enemies, scattering them. Their steed roaring and pushing through the jumbled crowd of bumping flank and stamping hooves.

  “Now, Woad!” Robin yelled forcefully. He felt more than heard the faun's mana stone flash behind him, and from all around them, in the packed chaos of the herd, there were flashes of foxfire, wisplight and bangs of small flame, clattering amongst the creatures like devilish fireworks.

  More confusion and surprise bellowed from the centaurs, their animal minds confused and startled by the sudden lightshow. Through the press of bodies, Robin saw Hawthorn's lion some way off, also shouldering its way through the blinded stung creatures. He focussed his mana and sent flying several Galestrikes, aiming low at the enemies’ legs. Toppled and off balance, many of the centaurs fell or reared up amongst their fellows in panic, dragging others down with them.

  Several of those creatures closest to Robin made a swipe for him, long pale hands, barbed with steel, reaching o
ut hungrily to pull him from the lion, but their steed swiped at them with its great rocky claws, batting them away, leaping at them and knocking them to the ground. Bodies rolled underfoot as it plunged onwards relentlessly.

  Robin cast Featherbreath, a multiple point cantrip, sending it out randomly in every direction around them, not bothering to aim, not caring where the spell might find its marks. Where the cantrip hit, it lifted spears from the ground, wrenched them from centaur hands, and sent them all spinning away up into the air in a great multitude. He cut off the cantrip as they passed, and the weapons, no longer held aloft by his force, fell back to earth, deadly javelins, scattering the enemy even more as they strived to dodge the deadly rain of their own steel. Woad sent another flurry of foxfire into the fray. It was as though someone has lit a pack of joke shop bangers and cast it into a thick crowd. Harmless explosions, loud bangs and bright flashes, faun trickery at its best. But the centaurs were animals at heart, startled and panicked by the fire and the noise.

  A shout of triumph somewhere in the chaos drew Robin’s attention. He saw a flickering line of red lights, realising they were the inlaid mana stones that Hawthorn carried along his bow. The elder Fae was doing the same as they were, blasting his way through with confusion and cantrips. Robin saw Earth magic all around them, unfamiliar to him but effective, clearly Hawthorn's doing. Sink holes opening up, tripping the centaurs and sending them sprawling, parts of the hillside spontaneously erupting into landslide, or turning inexplicably to thick mud.

  We’re almost through, he thought. Much of the chaos was now behind him. A final line of centaurs, five in all, were holding fast, determined, their spears raised and their hooves dug firmly into the ground.

  “Get out of the way!” Robin shouted furiously at them. He could feel his stores of mana dwindling, but he was determined. These things just kept on coming, it was infuriating. He was aware that his heart was pounding and he was gritting his teeth, anger surging up inside him. “I said get out of my way!” he yelled, and with all of his force and the last of his mana, he cast Breezeblock at them. The wall of immovable air hit the centaurs like an invisible battering ram, scattering them like skittles, actually lifting their huge bodies from the floor, sending them crashing away to either side, as the two lions burst through this last defensive line together, finally free of the melee, with open ground ahead of them.

  Robin felt his head swim and dark spots blur in front of his vision. He had used too much mana. Only Woad’s steadying grip, hauling him upright on the lion's back, stopped him from falling altogether from his perch.

  “Inspired!” Hawthorn bellowed, suddenly at his side. Robin looked up blearily. The Fae was looking at him in wonder, eyes flashing as he rode alongside. “Like a knife through butter! Ha!”

  “We’re almost there!” Woad said with an outburst of relief and joy. It was true. They were at the foot of Briar Hill itself.

  “They’re following, regrouping!” Jackalope yelled, looking back from behind Hawthorn. Robin had time to note that Jack's blade, Phorbas, was wet and dark with ichor. Evidently, he had helped Hawthorn to hack through the crowds too.

  “It doesn’t matter now!” Woad said jubilantly, his voice a little shaky as the lions, slowed by the skirmish and the crowd, were loping along at a relatively slow speed, bouncing them up and down. “It doesn’t matter because–”

  The faun never got to finish his sentence. At that moment, with a great rumbling series of creaks and groans, the Boulderdash cantrip finally failed, and the rapidly deteriorating lions of earth, twig and stone, fell to pieces beneath them.

  *

  They came apart like broken toys, still running forward, flanks crumbling, roots snapping and rocks falling apart in a landslide of scree, sending Robin and the others tumbling to the ground, rolling over and over on the rough earth in a cloud of mud and dirt.

  Coughing and spluttering, Robin got waveringly to his feet, wiping soil from his face. The impact had winded him and he felt bruised everywhere. His backpack had been thrown from his shoulders and he saw it lying in a pile of rock and dirt a few paces off. Stumbling towards it, he called out to the others.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  “Fan-tastic,” Woad coughed sarcastically, digging himself out of a pile of roots and grime. “How about you, Jack? Didn’t hurt your pretty face on the ground, did you?”

  “Shut up, you jabbering blue idiot,” Jackalope complained gruffly, appearing out of a cloud of dust as Robin hauled his pack back onto his shoulders. He was stumbling a little and covered in dirt, but seemed otherwise unhurt. Hawthorn was beside him.

  “What now?” Jack said, spitting out soil onto the floor. “Our rides just crumbled. Last stand? Fight for it?” He was clutching Phorbas tightly, his knuckles white. His face was set in a firm and challenging scowl as he stared back at the approaching centaurs, but despite his brave front, the hand gripping the knife was shaking a little.

  “We are on the hill,” Hawthorn said with authority. “Up to the wall, all of you. Make for the gates. The centaurs will not pass that boundary. Last stands are for fools. Fly and fight another day.”

  He ushered the three of them on before him, sending them scrambling on foot up the steep slope of Briar Hill.

  Robin didn’t look back. With Woad on his left and Jackalope on his right they half-ran, half-stumbled up through the steep grass. The footing was maddeningly uneven, the ground growing in closely knit tussocks and clumps which seemed designed to trip and hinder them.

  So close, he thought furiously, dragging himself breathlessly upwards. It was like being in one of those nightmares where you’re being chased and can’t remember how to run. Behind him, he heard the flick and swish of a loosed arrow, and knew that Hawthorn was following them, sending bolt after bolt from his bow at the centaurs climbing the hill behind, trying his best to give the boys time to reach the abandoned town above.

  When they were almost at the top, and Robin could make out the broken wooden doors that once marked the entrance to the long-dead town, he shoved Woad and Jackalope on ahead.

  “Go! Get inside! Both of you!”

  Woad glared back at him wide-eyed. “You too, Pinky! Come on!”

  “In a second,” he replied, breathless. “I’m not leaving Hawthorn behind. The centaurs are on top of him. Just go will you! I can’t help him and worry about you at the same time.”

  Woad looked as though he was about to argue again, but Jackalope grabbed him roughly by the arm, nodding to Robin and dragging the faun up forcefully to the gates of the town, much to Robin's relief. He turned, looking back down the hill. In the sunlit glow of late afternoon, Hawthorn was picking his way up towards him, walking backwards and loosing arrow after arrow at the centaurs. They met their mark, jabbing into flank and leg, but more often his arrows were being batted out of the sky, glancing off spears.

  Several of the creatures were close enough to throw, and Hawthorn twice barely dodged a launched spear, landing inches from him, thudding into the dark soil hillside. He wasn’t going to make it. There were still too many of the enemy, and they were too close. They would reach him before he could reach the top and safety.

  Robin couldn’t let that happen. This man had been a friend of his father. He had risked everything bringing them here, had abandoned the safety of Erlking without a moment’s hesitation to lead Robin and the others into the Netherworlde. All to stop Eris gaining a rogue Shard, without a moment's thought for his own safety. Robin wasn’t going to let him die protecting a bunch of children on some remote hillside miles from help, miles from anywhere.

  He felt his mana stone. It was cold and dead. Utterly spent from the skirmish in the valley below.

  Not good enough, he shouted at himself internally. There’s more. Reach deeper. Are you the Scion or aren’t you?

  “Hawthorn!” he yelled. “Get up here, now!”

  The Fae glanced up, waving at Robin to get inside, to safety, but Robin ignored him. He glanced back at th
e town, at the high wall of roughly hewn stones now at his back. Each stone was as large as a man. What was it Hawthorn had said about the Tower of Earth? Will. Determination. The utter unshakable conviction that the magic would work. That the mana would flow. That the earth would obey.

  He thrust his arms in the direction of the wall, making his hands into tight fists in mid-air, and tugged.

  You will move for me.

  With a roar, a great section of the wall burst apart, exploding outwards in a shower of brick and mortar dust. Robin felt a flicker deep inside, a spark, and it ignited. Mana pouring through his body from deep within like liquid fuel set alight.

  With a grunt, he turned on his heel and threw his hands out in the direction of the centaurs. A high, keening buzz was in his head, and wetness on his upper lip told him his nose was bleeding. He let his fury at the creatures flow through him, embracing the anger and darkness rising in him, feeling it giving him strength, and the huge rocks which had been torn from the wall behind him rolled past him, down the hillside in a deadly avalanche. Several soared over his head, landing amongst the centaurs like bombs, exploding into the earth. More thundered, end over end, guided by his will, crashing into the creatures and sending them tumbling back down the hillside. Hawthorn stood stock still in the middle of the deadly landslide, watching the huge boulders fly past him, the landslide parting around him like a rock in a stream, leaving him utterly unharmed as it smashed and crashed into the screaming, bellowing enemy. Hawthorn was staring up at Robin, open mouthed, his eyes filled with disbelief at the force and scale of the Golem cantrip.

  Cacophony and destruction rained around Robin, watching his enemies fall before him, toppled by the deadly missiles, crushed or driven back under the unrelenting fury of his mana. It felt good. It felt righteous and powerful. The might of the Puck, merciless and unbowed.

  He saw Hawthorn making his way swiftly up the hillside towards him, not a single pebble touching the man in the ongoing storm of rock churning the hillside.

  “Robin,” he heard the old man call in something like wonder, breathless. “You have horns.”