Fallowblade

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  ‘Ought we to go the rescue of the farmhands, sir?’ his lieutenant asked.

  ‘’Twould be a waste of manpower. Either those churls are wondrous fools to wander so close to armed and twitchy troops, or they are spies. In both cases they deserve the doom they have brought upon themselves.’

  The peasants disappeared from view, the Marauders hot on their heels, and the officers pondered no more on the matter.

  As darkness drew in and day gave way to evening, five eyes appeared above the surface of a muddy pool behind a stone fence at the eastern borders of the Eldroth Fields.

  ‘Disguise ourselves as peasants, he sez! Be safe from both sides, he sez! Pity ya didn’t tell that to Krorb and Ruurt,’ a shrill voice bubbled from beneath the cluster of three eyes.

  ‘Ya’ve got to admit, this is a good hoiding spot.’ The other two eyes belonged to Grak, who flicked a tadpole out of his ear and scanned his surroundings for something to distract Scroop from his recriminations. ‘Look!’ he said, raising a dripping claw out of the slime and pointing to a pair of small humps that appeared to be the rounded backs of semiaquatic rodents floating in the water pool. ‘Water rats! A tasty supper.’

  Scroop’s three eyes blinked, then narrowed to a trio of squints as he took a sighting in readiness to pounce on the prey. Beneath the water the two made ready to spring, but even as they lunged forwards Grak screamed. In midair they both managed to twist sideways and fling themselves towards the banks of the pool. They vaulted out of the water, jumped over the fence and took to their heels. Two bleak sockets, punched into the velvety skull that had risen from the pool, regarded their escape unblinkingly. In their depths a remote flame coldly flickered. Waterweed trailed from the wicked muzzle. Presently the flesh-eating fuath submerged itself once more, slowly and silently, engendering scarcely a ripple. The last portions of the head to disappear were two bony swellings on the crown. The two bedraggled Marauders had made another narrow escape.

  By day the mellow sunshine of early Summer warmed the landscape, gleaming off spear and helm, while birds sang. By night thousands of campfires sprang up on either side of the Eldroth Fields, red chrysanthemums floating in a dark abyss. The stalemate between Uabhar and Chohrab came to an end on the evening of the second of Juyn, when the desert king unexpectedly developed a fever and took to the featherbed installed in his gigantic, ornate pavilion. Claiming that he had been poisoned, he complained of palpitations of the heart, falling sickness, shortness of breath and toothache. Chohrab left his troops under the command of his generals, who soon found themselves answering to Uabhar. Just before dawn on the third of Juyn, under cover of darkness, Ashqalêth’s foot soldiers attempted to encircle the northern troops with the intent of taking them by surprise. Warwick’s patrols discovered the plan, and fighting broke out on all flanks. Uabhar employed these distractions to his advantage. While attention was directed at the skirmishing, Slievmordhu launched an assault.

  Narngalis, however, was ready.

  The front ranks of foot soldiers rushed together in two colliding waves, each breaking upon the other. As the infantry engaged, the light cavalry of both armies waited in serried ranks behind them. Clad in knee-length hauberks and helms plumed with long tassels of horsehair, the mounted soldiers were armed with longbows. At a signal from their captains the riders charged, shooting to right and left as they drove through the seething masses of the enemy. The heavy cavalry followed; knights on armoured steeds, hurling lances, smiting and hacking with swords. Churned by the hooves of horses and the boots of men, blood and mire mingled with crushed wild-flowers on the Eldroth Fields.

  The battle rampaged, hour after hour. Princes William and Walter of Narngalis donned battle harness and took their places in the fray, but were summoned back behind the lines to their father’s side towards noon, during something of a lull in the fighting.

  Located at a prudent distance from the battlefield, high on a ridge where the watchmen could scan the surroundings without difficulty, the Narngalish encampment embellished the verdant slopes like a garden of ivory and indigo blossoms. The tents of linen canvas were round or oval in shape, with vertical walls and domed tops, or tall, conical roofs, gently flared. Some were supported by a single shaft; others were double-peaked. Deeply scalloped valances depended from the lower edge of each roof, like the eaves of a house. Banners fluttered above the spike-and-ball shaped finials that topped the central poles. In the centre of this flowerbed stood the royal pavilion, simple and elegant in design, with many apartments, and tracery decoration in gold.

  King Warwick was holding a war council with his sons and several officers in one of the chambers of the royal pavilion, when they were interrupted by a commotion at the entrance. Vexed at the interruption, Crown Prince William strode to the portal and pushed aside the curtain of purple silk, saying sternly, ‘Who disturbs the king’s council?’

  On the grass outside the pavilion half-a-dozen pikemen saluted and stood to attention when they beheld the king’s son. In front of them a dirty, dishevelled horseman in the livery of Narngalis doffed his helm and threw himself to his knees at the prince’s feet. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘pray forgive me. I bear tidings of the gravest importance.’

  The brow of the prince darkened. ‘Enter and speak.’

  The rider took a few paces forward, onto the patterned carpet. At his back the silk curtain swished shut. After saluting his sovereign and the council members the newcomer declared, ‘Two messengers from the far north have come riding in haste. They arrived in King’s Winterbourne this very morning, bringing urgent news.’

  King Warwick was seated at a trestle table covered with maps, ink pots and quills. Above his head a bronze hoop-chandelier hung from the ridgepole, unlit. ‘From the far north, you say?’ he demanded, his eyebrows bristling and all his attention fixed on the man.

  ‘From the watch stationed at Silverton, my liege, and the other hamlets around the Harrowgate Fells. The sentries, the villagers—all are fleeing from the district, calling for the weathermasters. They are being pursued, pursued by . . .’ The messenger stammered, hesitated, took a deep breath and blurted, ‘Great numbers of eldritch beings are issuing from the Northern Ramparts, and it is reported they are mounted on nightmarish steeds. No one knows what species of wight they are, though it is certain they are of the same unseelie kind that has been haunting that region these past weeks. By night they travel, under starlight and moonlight, but it is said that on cloudy days when the sun’s light is weak they conjure eerie fogs to obscure it even further. In darkness, or surrounded by these mists they move swiftly. They are deadly. They mow down all who encounter them.’

  Warwick’s officers had been standing silently around the table. They stirred, muttering exclamations of astonishment. ‘What are these creatures that kill with such gruesome expertise?’ one of them wondered again. ‘It was bad enough when there were but a few of them striking down folk who travelled by night. Now they seem to have multiplied and found mounts for themselves! This threat could not have arisen at a more inopportune hour.’

  ‘Describe them!’ the king demanded of the messenger. ‘And tell us how many!’

  ‘None can tell what they look like, sire, nor estimate their numbers. It is impossible to discern them in the shadows and fog, and those who get close enough to do so never live long enough to pass on the knowledge. If people try to escape, they are ridden down. It is conjectured that these riders are mountain wights, the dreadful gwyllion, pouring out of the ranges in unprecedented numbers, as if they have been mustering in secret amidst the heights.’

  The officers interrogated the courier further. When they were content that he had told them all he could, he was dismissed, and the pavilion’s occupants subsided into silence, awaiting the king’s pronouncement.

  Sombre of countenance, Warwick said, ‘This news is surprising and most disturbing.’ He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘If what this messenger says is true, and not an exaggeration bor
n of panic, it would appear that we are now interposed between two active assailants. A calamitous coincidence indeed.’

  ‘The gwyllion are murderous,’ said Lord Hallingbury, ‘but they can be defeated.’

  Prince William said, ‘If they advance only by night or by dim day, that is a weakness we might exploit.’

  His father nodded approval at this suggestion before continuing, ‘There is more at risk here than heretofore guessed. Creatures of unseelie loathe humankind. Our destruction is their delight. If there is indeed a formidable eldritch menace surging southward, then it threatens the entire human population of Tir, not merely a single kingdom.’ Murmurs of concord greeted his words. ‘These reports must first be verified so that we can act wisely. Let fresh scouts be despatched!’

  The Battle of Eldroth Fields stormed on into the next day, and the day after. Overnight the conflict tended to ebb. This was not for reasons of courtesy, but because during the sunless hours, no matter how many bonfires were set aflame on the Fields, it was difficult to tell friend from foe. Warwick’s use of the fridean tunnels compensated, to a certain degree, for the fact that the Narngalish were vastly outnumbered. For a while it seemed that neither side was gaining the upper hand, and the northerners began to fan the flames of hope that they might hold out until Thorgild’s arrival. Their optimism took a beating, however, when on the morning of Juyn the sixth word came to the royal pavilion, relayed by carrier pigeon, semaphore and rider, confirming the dire accounts of the messengers from the north. It was, without doubt, a fact that unseelie hordes were pouring out of the Northern Ramparts and flooding down past Silverton into the Harrowgate Fells. Anyone who stood against them was destroyed. They were slaying all human beings in their path, and giving no quarter.

  Warwick convened an urgent conference. He and his sons gathered beneath the silken folds of the canopy in the council-of-state pavilion, with their senior advisors and those officers who could be spared from their stations in the battlefield. Most of the men were garbed in plate armour or chain mail, beneath murrey tabards embroidered with the emblem of an unsheathed broadsword. Weapons of Narngalish steel depended from their baldrics and belts. They were prepared to re-enter the fray at any moment, should they be called.

  ‘We find ourselves trapped between two adversaries,’ Warwick announced to the gathering, ‘one of whom evidently prosecutes wholesale genocide. Entire households are fleeing from their homes in the north of the realm, just as others are evacuating the villages further south. The dispossessed converge in the middle, assailed on every front.’

  Prince Walter muttered in his elder brother’s ear, ‘At this rate the entire population of Narngalis will end up in King’s Winterbourne.’ William nodded acknowledgement.

  Pausing briefly, his father surveyed the careworn visages of his audience. ‘Thus far,’ he went on, ‘the life of every man who has challenged these fell mountain-wights has been forfeit. Their uncanny mists accompany them, and out of that haze no living human being ever emerges. Dim fogs crawl across Silverton and the Harrowgate Fells, the lands taken by the gwyllion—if that is what species of wight they be.

  ‘Should these unseelie hordes be as numerous and as powerful as our patrols report, then it may be that even Thorgild’s reinforcements cannot save the day. I say again—it is not impossible that this new danger threatens all of humankind across the Four Kingdoms of Tir. We can only cling to the hope that we will find a way to stop them; that by engaging them in battle, somehow our troops can learn enough about these foes to discover their weaknesses. Combat, too, will delay the unseelie onslaught, giving us a little extra time to develop a strategy. The very least I can do is immediately despatch two regiments to the Harrowgate Fells. This will weaken our position here, but I cannot leave my northern lands undefended.’

  Nobody said aloud what all were thinking, Those regiments will march to certain death. Yet they could offer no alternative plan.

  One of the officers said, ‘My liege, as soon as Slievmordhu learns that our forces are diminished he will drive home the advantage.’

  ‘The information must be kept secret from him for as long as possible, of course,’ said Warwick.

  Prince William said, ‘If their numbers are even half as great as reported and their ferocity only half as bad, then, as you say, Father, these wights threaten to exterminate our entire race. Surely Ó Maoldúin can be made to understand that we must abandon this senseless conflict between kingdoms and amalgamate our forces. If we are to survive, humankind must stand united against this horde! More particularly, it is the weather-masters we need now. They would be our strongest shields against eldritch foes.’

  ‘Ó Maoldúin is like a side-blinkered horse,’ said Walter. ‘He can see only the prize he believes lies ahead of him and looks neither to right nor to left in his pursuit of it. ’Twill be nigh impossible to convince him there exists a peril great enough to necessitate abandoning his conqueror’s ambitions.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Warwick’s secretary of state. ‘The man is blind to all but his own dreams.’

  ‘Still,’ the king said, ‘we must try to wake him up.’ To a servant he added, ‘Fetch writing materials.’

  ‘What of Ashqalêth?’ asked another officer, addressing the assembly at large.

  ‘Shechem is naught but a pawn in the other’s game,’ the lord chancellor responded. ‘He no longer judges for himself, if he ever did.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Prince William persisted, ‘we must demand that Ó Maoldúin release the weathermasters forthwith. Although,’ he added, ‘even with the support of the mages a worldwide alliance might be our only chance of survival. We must try to persuade our foes to unite with us.’

  ‘Even so. We will offer parley,’ his father responded. ‘But any emissaries of mine who approach Ó Maoldúin must be volunteers. Their lives will be in jeopardy. I have little faith that Ó Maoldúin, unprincipled traitor that he is, will honour the white flag.’

  Later that day as the sun was melting above the distant peaks of the Mountain Ring in the west, and the south wind was blowing harder, the two armies broke apart as if by mutual consent and another pause ensued in the conflict. King Warwick seized his opportunity. It was then that two riders picked their way slowly, alone, across the wide band of mud and corpses that lay between the rivals. The young men wore neither plate nor mail, but shirts of bleached linen and breeches of woollen weave, and their heads were bare, their hair streaming behind them on the breeze. No arms did they bear, but in their hands they carried tall staffs, from which white standards were fluttering against the crimson banners of the sky. The flags were unadorned, for they signified a request for talks of mediation. By the rules of combat, flags of parley protected the bearers. No man sought to block their way, no spear was flung; neither blade nor axe nor bow was raised against them.

  ‘We seek the kings of Slievmordhu and Ashqalêth,’ said they when they came amongst the front lines of their enemies. The captains of the south came to ride alongside them, as guides.

  ‘These are brave knights,’ the officers said to each other.

  To the pavilion of Uabhar went Warwick’s two emissaries, seeking conference, as beyond the mountains the last flares of the sun dissolved into evening mist. Darkness closed in.

  Concealed behind earthworks close to the northern battle front, Warwick waited in suspense with his sons and commanders. Ever their eyes turned in the direction of enemy lines, and their mood was grave, their spirits straitened.

  ‘I would fain be there with them,’ William murmured vehemently.

  The battle lull lengthened. Night drew out the hours like thread from a distaff.

  Towards midnight a shout was heard from the Narngalish sentries. Two horses were returning across no-man’s-land, but they were riderless. Troopers led the steeds swiftly to the king. From each saddle hung a lidded basket which, when opened, revealed Uabhar’s reply to the request for parley.

  When Warwick witnessed the baskets’ contents, hi
s countenance became that of a dead man. Walter gave a cry of horror, and William hoarsely uttered a curse.

  Slievmordhu had sent back the severed heads of the two young knights.

  Tidings of Uabhar’s crime passed rapidly though the northern ranks and a shout of anger went up from the men of Narngalis. As for the two princes, they drew their swords and, upon the naked blades, vowed to avenge the deaths of the brave envoys.

  Lord Hallingbury grimly declared, ‘The situation is clear. Except for the men of the west-kingdom, who are too far away, we are without friends. Only the weathermasters can save Tir now. Let us hope the Storm Lord’s bold rescue expedition will swiftly release them from Uabhar’s dungeons!’

  King Warwick made no reply, but a shadow and a bleak coldness lay upon him, as of premature Winter.

  William said into the silence, ‘Let a billet be despatched to King’s Winterbourne!’

  Day and night, post riders went galloping back and forth along the Mountain Road between the battlefield and King’s Winterbourne, where Warwick’s daughters abided at Wyverstone Castle. The couriers’ task was chiefly to back up and augment the semaphore network. Across the Four Kingdoms of Tir the wooden arms of the semaphore towers clacked and rotated almost incessantly. While men fought and died on the Eldroth Fields, messages were being relayed between the chains of semaphore stations that crisscrossed the countryside, as in peacetime. The difference now was that the signals had been re-encrypted to prevent the enemy from intercepting important information. Asrăthiel herself had delivered the new codes along the King’s Winterbourne-Trøndelheim chain, as she flew her sky-balloon to join the marching columns of Grïmnørsland. When Thorgild’s travelling columns passed within view of any station the signalmen would send word of their progress to King’s Winterbourne, from whence the news was relayed by courier to King Warwick’s encampment. As she journeyed with the army Asrăthiel took it upon herself to ferry tidings and reports between Thorgild and the nearby stations, for her aerostat was swifter and surer than any post rider.