Whitemantle

by Robert Carter

  ‘Quite so.’ The wizard paused, as if to leave time for his words to sink in. ‘And – let us not forget – the lorc.’

  Will shook his head. ‘But Maskull must have sent Chlu to kill me up there on Cullee Hill, mustn’t he? Yes, he must have been behind the attack, because Chlu delighted in the irony of it. He told me he had used the very same method that you had devised to send Maskull to the Baerberg. Chlu must have got that knowledge from Maskull, and Maskull must have got it from Isnar…’

  ‘…and Isnar from Lotan.’ Gwydion drew a careful breath, seeming to feel his way forward with care. ‘And Lotan from you. And you from – me.’

  Will looked up, suddenly rattled. ‘You never had any intention of using the Baerberg trap on him, did you?’

  ‘Of course not. You were quite right – it would never have worked against Maskull. But as a probe to discover who was talking to whom, it has worked wonderfully well. After all, Lotan told us all that he had been to the Baerberg, so what better peg to hang the plan upon?’

  ‘Oh, Master Gwydion,’ Will breathed. ‘Your magic may be abating, but not your cunning.’

  The wizard took the remark phlegmatically. ‘Tell me, was it the same this time as it was on the Spire?’

  ‘Yes. Stalemate.’

  ‘That is the precise word I hoped you would use. Chlu is committed to your destruction, but whatever he attempts against you does not succeed. And if Maskull did not recognize that before your combat, then he must have recognized it by now.’

  Will nodded, thinking that he must now tell the wizard what he had understood about himself. ‘I think there is a reason that neither of us wins or loses in single combat…’

  But Gwydion’s thoughts had already gone off along another path. He muttered to himself, ‘So far, Maskull has been able to control Chlu by manipulating his desire to save himself when the worlds collide, but now—’

  Will said, ‘You think Chlu may have come to realize that’s impossible?’

  ‘Impossible?’ the wizard said uneasily, alighting upon the word. ‘Why should you say that?’

  ‘Because it seems to me to be a fact.’ Will spoke quietly. ‘Have you not considered what must be? What always must be when the opposites of fae magic are brought together?’

  The wizard looked up as Will brought his hands together, reminding them both of the green talisman and the red that had become a leaping fish.

  Will looked away. ‘Chlu will not survive the collision. He cannot.’

  A shrug of acceptance. ‘That much is a matter of prophecy…’

  Will stared into the distance, feeling a fresh surge of disquiet. ‘And if it’s impossible for Chlu to survive the collision, that must mean it’s impossible for me, too. Isn’t that right, Master Gwydion? Is that something you know to be true? Do I have to die to bring about the end-time?’

  The wizard did not answer. Perhaps he thought it best to say nothing more. Perhaps he thought there was no need.

  They rode eastward all morning, pushing the horses as much as they dared. They met no carts coming westward, and Will knew the traffic had all been turned around. Sutlers and victuallers were riding ahead of Edward’s army, scouring the land to seek out stores of fodder and grain, including any goods already upon the road.

  Although the scouring showed Edward’s intentions, Gwydion was still at pains to ask all foot travellers whom he met what news there might be. The answers he received added to Will’s worries. Before they had reached Gloustre Bridge, his disquiet had grown out of all proportion, and as the bridge came into view he understood the reason. He could feel the ash lign. It came slashing across the land, roaring out of the south-west, echoing with memories of death, for Cordewan, or more exactly the College of Delamprey, had been sited on the ash lign.

  When Will closed his eyes he began to see monstrous sights. His thoughts darkened and his mind settled on the impossibility of saving the world from disaster. But then Willow rode up alongside to help him. She had been watching him, and had seen his increasing distress.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, offering him something in her closed hand. ‘I thought I’d take a leaf out of Gort’s book. It ought to help you across that lign.’

  He took the chip of stone and made a face that showed his respect for her forethought. In return she raised an eyebrow that said: well, why not?

  ‘It was a bit of a scramble pushing in among all those soldiers, but it was worth it.’

  He felt his spirits soar. ‘Oh, that was kindly done!’

  ‘We all do what we can for you, you know. All of us.’

  By the end of the second day, they had climbed over the Wolds. They heard fearful rumours on the road. It was said that the soldiers of Queen Mag’s avenging army had been promised as much plunder as they could gather. South of the River Trennet, all towns where the ravaging horde had passed had been declared fair game. They had been ransacked and the land laid waste upon a front seven leagues wide. The queen’s descent upon Trinovant had been relentless, but it had been slow.

  ‘He should have shut her up,’ Gwydion said with satisfaction. ‘Rash promises lose wars. How often have we seen it?’

  ‘You mean Maskull should have shut the queen up?’ Will asked, only half understanding.

  ‘Of course! He should have foreseen what would happen when his looters had got as much as their stolen horses could carry!’

  ‘They’d turn for home,’ Willow said.

  ‘Exactly. And wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t steal other folk’s belongings in the first place.’

  ‘Ha! I know that, my dear. But these men have fought hard battles on nothing more than promises. They think what they’ve stolen is theirs by right of conquest. And now they are going away home to enjoy it.’

  ‘How many have deserted?’ Will asked.

  ‘It may be an exaggeration, but some say as much as half the queen’s strength is gone.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand? That’s still enough to take Trinovant by storm,’ Gort said. ‘If those lolloping creatures are still with the army. Wall-bestriders, they are.’

  ‘Aye,’ Willow said. ‘If.’

  ‘That’s not likely,’ Will told her.

  Gwydion looked at him. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because if the world is changing into one that doesn’t have unicorns or yales or giants, then maybe the ogres will be melting away too.’

  ‘Or shrinking down into ugly little men,’ Willow said.

  ‘More than likely,’ Will muttered. ‘And no longer big enough to climb over a city wall.’

  As the third day dawned, the weather was cold and bright and the frosty woods rang with the song of robins. But Will felt other changes in the land. They had been crossing the Earldom of Ockhamsforth, and their path ran along the yew and rowan ligns. For sanity’s sake they kept always a league or two south of the nearest, which was the yew, yet it was the rowan that Will could feel more easily.

  Gwydion was angered when Will spoke up about it. ‘But surely it is the yew lign that passes through Baronet Hadlea!’ he said. ‘The yew, not the rowan!’

  ‘I’m only telling you what I can feel.’

  ‘But what you can feel makes no sense!’

  ‘That’s where the flow is! Do you want me to apologize for finding it? Well, do you, Soothsayer?’

  The wizard scowled. ‘You mock me at your peril, lad!’

  ‘Oh, threats…’ Will said slightingly. ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘It must mean the next battlestone is on the rowan lign,’ Gort piped up, breaking in on the dispute. ‘Don’t you think so, friends? Seems that way to me.’

  Will grunted. ‘Yes it does, Wortmaster. That’s what Master Gwydion can’t accept. He’s looking for a far neater answer – a great battle to end all battles, one prompted by the greatest doomstone of them all, and one that’s won by a shining hero. But it’s not going to be like that!’

  The wizard said no more, only urged his horse on and rod
e ahead.

  ‘He deserves more respect,’ Willow muttered. ‘You shouldn’t speak to him like that.’

  ‘Well…he asks for it sometimes.’

  She let it go and reached up to an overhanging bough, saying with false brightness, ‘Oh, look at the buds, Will. The trees know that spring’s coming soon. They can feel the days are getting longer. I do like the spring!’

  And he thought, but did not say, it’s a spring I’ll never see.

  Gwydion dropped back to speak privately with Willow, and Will could see from their circumspection that they were talking about him.

  ‘I know what you’re saying!’ he burst out at last. ‘I’m not stupid, you know!’

  But Gwydion’s smile was genuine enough, and his touch on Will’s arm was meant to reassure. ‘I was just telling Willow about what we found down in the valley yonder.’

  ‘Valley? Where?’

  The wizard directed his gaze towards a hill and the dip beyond, in which a hamlet crouched. ‘That’s Fossewyke upon the Eyne Brook. And over there once stood Little Slaughter.’

  That gave Will pause for thought. He drew in upon himself and felt the perilous closeness of the yew lign. He now saw that they must be approaching the ancient stone circle called the Giant’s Ring, passing by the Vale, the place he had been accustomed all his life to call home.

  This final journey has great significance for Chlu and me, he thought. If he’s following us, then we’re both coming by way of our childhood haunts. We’re being forced, each in our own different ways, to say goodbye to all that we’ve ever known.

  He could feel his sensitivity to the lorc increasing by the hour. Eburos, the yew, dragged at him. Caorthan, the rowan, suffocated. Together they made him feel ill and old and tired to the point of exhaustion. He was losing his spark in a war of increasing frenzy, a world whirling faster and faster towards the moment of its own doom. So what possible hope was there that he could be the Arthur of prophecy? Like a stark revelation, he felt the inescapable unity of his own being and the very idea of the violation of it filled him with terror.

  When he closed his eyes all he saw in his mind was a spinning disc. Was it a bronze coin or a golden button? It whirled with increasing speed, falling ever faster under its own weight, yet skating on its rim and resisting the fall. The rising, ringing sound that it made filled his head, made him want to cry out – but then dead silence.

  Doomsday.

  Will awoke to utter comfort. Like an earache that vanishes in the night the flow in the lorc had left behind it a kind of blessed relief, a yawning stillness, a hole filled with unutterable wellbeing. Though they were no more than half a league off the Eburos lign he could not taste more than the slightest hint of it on the air, and the taint of the Caorthan lign had gone away completely.

  Will did not mention the change at first, fearing that it was something in him, some complication in his faculties, that had caused him to lose the scent. As they readied themselves to press on Willow, eagle-eyed as ever, asked why he had not taken any powder from the stone chip she had given him.

  He handed her the remains of it. ‘I don’t think I’d better have any.’

  ‘Will,’ she said, brooking no nonsense, ‘you know what’ll happen if you don’t! You’ll start bleeding and foaming at the mouth like a mad dog.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I’m not having it today because the flow’s stopped.’

  She whispered her astonishment. ‘Wha-?’

  He put his mouth close to her ear. ‘There’s nothing there. It’s gone.’

  ‘But – but that means that the stone must have emptied itself!’

  He stared back at her. ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’

  ‘We must tell Master Gwydion.’

  He nodded. ‘I suppose we must.’

  The day began bitingly cold, and there were flurries of snow as they passed through the Wychwoode. They saw with sorry hearts the deep cuts that had been made in the forest. Great tracts of wood had been cleared and sold to pay for war. Where once unicorns had run, now there were stumps and the smoking mounds of charcoal burners. They saw in the distance Lord Strange’s tower, the place where Will had been schooled in reading and writing. It was in ruin, its roofs broken and its moat dried up. Its erstwhile master had moved on to greater rewards.

  The closer they approached to Trinovant, the fewer people they saw on the roads, the worse the news they heard and the more frightened the voices. Gwydion led them through the village of Windover and they mounted up the scarp that carried the ancient path of the Ridge Way along its crest. There they saw a column of armed riders upon the road. These were neither sutlers nor scourers, but men of war, grim and beweaponed, wearing a red livery that Will recognized with a shrinking heart.

  Gwydion bade everyone stay hidden while he rode down alone to speak with the men. The wizard was recognized and he seemed to be accepted in friendship, but his words were brief before he beckoned Will and the others down.

  Will looked the riders over critically. There were two dozen of them, well-armoured, mud-spattered, wary and weary. Their leader was a nobleman of minor rank, and Will saw that he wore his gorget tight to his throat, and though his sallet visor was up he looked like a man ready at any moment to flee or fight for his life. He was a little way from the others, conversing in low tones with the wizard when Will joined them.

  ‘After the fray at Awakenfield, tidings were brought to my lord of Warrewyk, and he, then sole keeper of Trinovant and the king, mustered his soldiers and his friends.’

  ‘And the lords Northfolk and Falconburgh, were they come to the fight too?’

  ‘Lord Northfolk was there. And Lord Falconburgh marched out of Kennet with a great company of archers and bill-men, looking to revenge himself for the death of his brother, Lord Sarum. There were more men with them, mercenaries of Burgund and Callas. Very well appointed my lord of Warrewyk thought himself when he marched to Verlamion to intercept the queen. Yet in the end she had three men for every two that he commanded.’

  ‘Verlamion?’ the wizard repeated, and flashed a glance at Will. ‘Was that where the fight took place?’

  ‘My lord did as seemed best to him, yet he spread his forces too thin – a curtain a league wide and more he tried to draw across the queen’s path, from Verlamion and all along the Sand Ridge.’

  ‘The attack began in Verlamion,’ Will said faintly but with certainty. ‘Near to the chapter house.’

  The horseman turned, suddenly suspicious. ‘You are very well informed. Whence come you?’

  ‘It was…merely a guess.’

  Gwydion gestured like one disregarding a lunatic. ‘Pay him no heed, sir. He is one who often speaks without prior thought. He thinks himself a warrior and has fancies about such things. Now—’

  ‘But he is quite right. Lord Strange did set upon my lord’s left flank close by the great Verlamion chapter house. The Hogshead’s men were made to pay dearly by our archers, but in the end the last of them were hunted out and thrown down from the curfew tower…’

  They heard the story of how the queen’s forces had journeyed through the night to come hard upon Verlamion. To make some semblance of right authority over his actions in opposing the queen, Warrewyk had caused King Hal to be dragged out of his library under the palace of White Hall and had forced him to ride out at the head of Warrewyk’s own troops, the embodiment of legitimate authority.

  So, Will thought, I was right about the rowan lign. The Doomstone of Verlamion has indeed repaired itself. It’s had its way in the end.

  ‘They cut us off and overwhelmed us one by one,’ the rider said, glowering at the memory of it. ‘My men and I narrowly escaped by another way. But we have heard that my lord withdrew his people in good order to the number of five thousand. I ride westward now in hopes of finding them.’

  ‘Has Friend Warrewyk not fallen back upon Trinovant, then?’ Gwydion asked with alarm.

  ‘No, sir, he has not. For he seeks to join u
p first with the Earl of the Marches – I beg his pardon – with the new Duke of Ebor, who it’s said has delivered a powerful stroke of revenge in the west.’

  ‘But…the king? What of him?’

  ‘Alas, King Hal is no longer with us.’

  ‘The king is dead?’ Will said, unable to stop himself.

  ‘I did not say that. But we have had no word of the knights who stood guard upon him, and we fear for them.’

  ‘We must ride on to Verlamion then,’ Will said, looking to Gwydion.

  The knight grimaced and directed his answer to the wizard. ‘That you must not, Crowmaster. Not unless you wish to meet with the queen, for she is mistress of that town now – what little there may be left of it. Even the chapter house has been breached for the sake of its gold and many of the Fellowship lie dead round about its shrine.’

  ‘It was not gold that drew the queen’s soldiers into the chapter house,’ Will said, brushing off the wizard’s attempt to intervene again. ‘Tell me, does the Hogshead go helmetless into battle these days?’

  ‘Lord Strange is famous for riding into the fray bareheaded,’ the rider said, answering him shortly. ‘That is well known.’

  ‘But why is he called the Hogshead? Do you know that?’

  The rider looked perplexed by the fervent questions of this mad beggarman. ‘It is because his personal banner bears that device.’

  ‘Is it not then he has the head of a boar?’ The rider tried to turn away, but Will persisted. ‘And was there not rumour of a stone? A magic stone, such as those that have appeared after other battles?’

  The rider looked at Will with new eyes, then said to Gwydion, ‘Is your ragged friend a simpleton or a seer, Crowmaster? There has been talk among the captives of a victory stone, one that has fallen to the queen. But…I may not speak of it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Gwydion said.

  ‘Orders have been given that no man of my lord’s company may do so, lest loose words undermine the resolve of our army.’