Heirs of the Demon King: Uprising

by Sarah Cawkwell

  Under other circumstances, the setting would have been idyllic. There was humidity in the air; the late summer heat that had been held at bay since Tudor’s magi had brought the storm had finally returned. Water vapour steamed gently from the leaves of the trees and the air was thick with the scent of turned earth and the lazy buzz of insects.

  Even the spirit of Nature seemed to be aware that a crossroads in history was being reached.

  ‘Why stop the rain now?’ Norfolk had barely slept. His tent was cramped and uncomfortable, and his anxieties had kept him awake into the small hours. He had taken the time to pray and to hope, but he was not optimistic. His mood was sour as he emerged into the damp August morning. ‘What new devilry has Tudor planned?’

  There was a buzz of activity in the King’s camp. Battle smiths worked furiously, effecting last minute weapon and armour repairs. War horses stamped impatiently in anticipation, their harnesses and barding clattering. The infantry and archers were already lining up, mustering for the battle under the guidance of the King’s most loyal men.

  ‘Where is the King?’ Northumberland had had just as appalling a night’s sleep, and stretched aching limbs with a sour expression on his face as he joined Norfolk. ‘He is not in the command pavilion.’

  There was a ripple of activity on the far side of the camp, and Norfolk caught sight of a running figure pushing its way through the massed armies of King Richard. Another of the young message bearers; Norfolk recognised his nephew.

  ‘Uncle!’ The youth’s face was pink with exertion. He had clearly been running for some time.

  ‘What’s the matter, William?’ Norfolk grabbed hold of the boy as soon as he came into range and dragged him forward. ‘Speak!’

  ‘Tudor’s army is in chaos, uncle. Three of his supporters have withdrawn from the field, taking their soldiers with them.’

  Norfolk narrowed his eyes at his nephew. ‘Are you certain of this, boy?’ he said. ‘Tudor is no fool, could they not simply be attempting to flank us?’

  ‘I am sure, Uncle.’ William nodded vigorously. ‘The Earl of Oxford has been seen this very morning retreating south, his troops with him. He is most certainly abandoning Tudor. Two more are said to be leaving, but they have not yet broken camp.’

  ‘Take scouts. Go and confirm these rumours, but do not spread word to the men just yet. False hope can break a man’s back.’ The boy nodded and bowed his head. Seeing the light of dawn beginning to creep above the eastern horizon, Norfolk found himself daring to hope. ‘And William,’ he added as the youth made to leave, ‘find the King. We must find Richard.’

  ‘Can this be true?’ Northumberland moved a few steps towards Norfolk, keeping his voice as low as possible. ‘If Oxford has truly gone ...’

  ‘We can but hope, my friend.’ Norfolk felt a strange tingling in the pit of his stomach. He did not recognise the sensation, but had he been pushed to put a name to it, he would have called it relief mingled with hope, as if fate had stepped aside and offered another choice. ‘Perhaps Tudor may now be open to negotiations, although I do not believe the King will settle for words. Not after Tudor’s betrayal. But before we can consider any course of action... we must find Richard.’

  THEY FOUND HIM wandering to the south of Ambion Hill, in a state of what seemed to be drunken confusion. But there was no taint of alcohol on his breath. His skin was grey and clammy, and the flesh of his forearms and chest was laced with shallow lacerations. A physic was sent for, but Richard waved him away.

  ‘To arms,’ he said, vaguely. ‘I must ready myself to meet Tudor.’ ‘Sire, listen to me. There is word from the camp of the enemy.’ As succinctly as he could, Norfolk relayed the news William had brought, and watched for the King’s reaction.

  There was none save a brief flare of triumph in the King’s dull eyes. He nodded his head.

  ‘The day will be ours,’ he said, his energy slowly returning to him. ‘We must be ready to attack within the hour.’

  ‘Sire, I thought... perhaps you might wish to negotiate with Tudor? Perhaps there may still be room for an allia...’

  ‘When I want your advice, Norfolk, I will ask for it.’ Richard’s interruption came in a harsh tone that belied his sickly appearance. ‘The time for negotiation has passed. Henry Tudor made his claim on my throne, and I...’ There was a pause—less than a heartbeat— and the King corrected his own words. ‘Henry Tudor made his claim on my throne and we will refute it with everything that we have. But try not to cut him down in the field. He doesn’t deserve anything so honourable.’

  A wild gleam came into Richard’s eyes, enough to send a shiver of dread down the necks of the lords surrounding him. ‘He will answer for his actions. The whole country will be made to understand the price of treachery and the danger of consorting with witches.’

  The irony burned on his tongue and he fell into sullen silence.

  THE HEAT OF the early morning gave way to a scorching August day. By the time the troops were fully mustered, the soggy grass was visibly steaming, days of endless rain evaporating into thin mist. Sure enough, within the hour, there had been the expected petition brought to the camp of Richard from the camp of Tudor. A plea for discussion. A chance at peace.

  ‘“Lives could be spared if you will only meet with me,”’ Richard read aloud, scorn in his voice as the anxious messenger waited for his response. ‘“Do not throw away this chance to save the lives of our countrymen.”’

  ‘Your answer, my lord?’ Norfolk sat on his horse beside the King, now fully armoured and holding himself rigid in the saddle. The certainty and sense of confidence he radiated was completely infectious and the previously demoralised armies of the English King were now ready and willing to do battle.

  ‘We will deliver our answer to Tudor personally,’ said Richard, crumpling the hastily penned note. ‘Let him hear it from the blades of our swords and the points of our arrows.’ He glanced mockingly down at the runner. ‘You have the time it takes to return to your master’s side and warn him. We will be right behind you.’

  The boy scampered down Ambion Hill, heading for the furrow between the two armies. To the side, Richard spied the forces of Lord Stanley and sneered. The fool still had not decided where his loyalties lay. The time had come to demonstrate to the doubting lord exactly who held power in England. ‘Execute Lord Stanley’s son immediately,’ Richard growled. One of his officers looked as though he was about to object, but a warning glance from the King silenced any protest before it could begin.

  ‘Loose arrows,’ he said, levelling a finger at the fleeing messenger. ‘Tudor will have our reply.’

  A thousand arrows rose into the morning air, briefly darkening the sun and casting a grim shadow across the boy as he scrambled towards the camp of his master. He looked up, his expression filled with dread as the first of many arrows punched into his face. He screamed briefly, the shrill sound dissolving into a gurgle as his mouth filled with blood. Dozens more shafts sliced into his body, pinning him to the damp earth and hammering into the shields and men of Lord Stanley’s force. Henry Tudor had his answer.

  With a rallying cry, the troops of King Richard the Third began their assault.

  WHEN DID I lose control?

  Henry stood at the head of discomfited men, who had once formed perfect ranks of valiant warriors but who now clustered together as though they could somehow find safety in one another’s proximity. Henry’s closest advisor and master of his magi stood with his head bowed. Communing, no doubt, with the powers that had fled in the night.

  The man’s name was Hywel. He had promised victory through the application of magic both subtle and powerful, and Tudor did not doubt his ability. He had witnessed a taste of Hywel’s phenomenal gift when he had conjured a creature from what the mage evasively called ‘beyond.’ It had worn the face of a woman and was full of whispered promises, but Tudor had not been fooled. He had asked only for magic to fuel his mages’ spells and had given his little finger in tribute to s
eal the pact. With mastery over the weather and Richard’s dread of the arcane he was confident it would be enough to ensure victory.

  For three days a handful of Tudor’s magi had ensured the rains fell. For three days and nights, working in shifts, they had murmured their eerie, arcane words and the skies had answered with rain and thunder. The plan had been to mire Richard’s great army and fill them with the same fear as their King. And it had been working. Then, shortly after midnight on the eve of battle, the rain stopped.

  ‘My lord. The spell will not answer us.’ Hywel stood just outside his tent, deferential in his plain robes. His gentle accent was filled with an uncertainty that Tudor had never once associated with him. Hywel usually carried himself with the ease of a man who knew he could not be directly challenged, a man who knew that his power would protect him. Now his face, with its silvery-grey beard, was troubled.

  ‘Hywel, you are not filling me with confidence.’ Henry tried to inject some calm into his voice, to counter the panic he sensed lying just beneath the surface. Tudor was a personable young man, and people had flocked gladly to his banner. He had little experience in war, however, and had gladly deferred leadership of the army to Lord Oxford. It was a decision he was beginning to regret. With the failure of the magi and the greater numbers Richard had brought to the field, Oxford was in full retreat.

  ‘The ritual was undisturbed and the words spoken, but the spell does nothing. The rains will not answer us.’ Hywel looked deeply unsettled as he spoke, and it was clear that this was completely outside his experience.

  ‘Then try again,’ Tudor insisted.

  ‘My lord,’ the mage replied, ‘we have tried again, and again. The spell no longer works, and I am at a loss to explain it.’

  Further explanation was cut off by a scream from the hillside, as the hapless messenger was cut down by a storm of arrows. A huge wedge of knights bearing the King’s own colours thundered from the crest of the hill toward the forces of Lord Stanley, followed by marching blocks of spearmen. The King had obviously decided to force the indecisive lord’s hand or grind him into the mud.

  One way or another, it would not be long before those knights and spearmen were bearing down on what remained of Tudor’s army.

  ‘To arms!’ Henry roared as the first sounds of combat echoed across the field. Welsh and French soldiers hurried into formation, shields to the fore followed by a bristling forest of spears. Tudor returned his attention to Hywel. ‘It would seem the time for subtlety is past. Use different spells, Hywel. Pull lightning from the heavens or fire from the winds and scour Richard’s army from the hillside. I will win this battle, but I need your magi to do it.’

  Hywel bobbed his head in assent and turned to his brothers. Together they made their way into the front ranks and began to call upon their magic, while Henry mounted up beside his personal guard. The scrum of fighting around Stanley’s position was embarrassingly brief, and it was only a matter of minutes before Stanley’s colours fell in beside those of King Richard.

  ‘Hywel!’ Tudor snapped at the mage. The drone of arcane words filled the air as the magi summoned their power and prepared to unleash the fury of the elements on the approaching army.

  There was a pause, like an intake of breath, and then one of the magi exploded. Meat, blood and splintered bone painted the horrified warriors on the front line, who began pushing and shoving to get away from the grisly sight. Another mage burst into flames, rainbow-hued fire burning his robes to ash and immolating his flesh like a human candle. He howled in agony and staggered back into the ranks, scattering soldiers as he went. Tudor could only look on in horror as awful, unnatural fates consumed more of the magi, and his army dissolved into chaos.

  The order to retreat was drowned out by the roar of King Richard’s army and the growing thunder of hooves.

  A Treatise on the Kings of England and the

  Rise of Magic:

  Bosworth and the Aftermath

  by Brother Edmund of the

  Order of St. Aidan, Royal Archivist

  from his greater text A History of the

  Demon Kings, second edition (1694)

  THE HISTORY BOOKS would record the events of that day as the ‘Bosworth Massacre,’ and for good reason. The forces of King Richard destroyed those of Henry Tudor with no remorse and no mercy. The would-be usurper’s men were slaughtered where they stood and Richard’s army put them to rout.

  The order was given for Henry Tudor to be taken alive, but it was not to be so. Neither was his death ever confirmed. The victory was complete less than three hours after King Richard’s archers had loosed their first arrows on the enemy and despite the best efforts, Tudor’s body could not be found amongst the dead.

  Tudor had not been seen fleeing the field of battle, and his banner was found trampled and bloody among the bodies of his retainers. Scouts and huntsmen failed to find any trace of him in the lands beyond. It was decided, amidst much celebration, that Henry Tudor, usurper and traitor, had come to an unnatural end, and Richard’s heart lifted with the joy and knowledge that came from his victory.

  Only four prisoners were taken from the field that day. Each was a mage, and all of them mad and raving about their magic betraying them. Richard decreed that each be tried publicly, their torture and executions to be held variously in York, Ipswich, Warwick and London: the four cornerstones of England. To a man—or in one case, to a woman—each of the magic users raved about a great evil abroad in the world and that it would wear the crown of England. Their tormented claims and screams of denial served only to confirm their guilt and further condemn them.

  King Richard’s reign continued unbroken. By 1495, ten years after the Bosworth Massacre, he had fathered several strong, robust sons and a number of daughters and restored the name Plantagenet. In order to commemorate the House of York, he retained the symbolic rose, but he stained it forever black. He added four crimson drops of blood to the flag—ad perpetuam memoriam, so it is said, to the victory over the magi whose works had threatened to undo his great deeds upon the battlefield.

  Richard remained hale and hearty, ruling a country that shrank back once more from the practice of magic and instead grew wise in the ways of strange, new sciences. A treaty of sorts was called with the French, and for five years, trade prospered between the two countries. It could not hope to last. Richard’s eldest son, Prince Edward, led the troops of England in a successful campaign, winning the hearts and support of the English people as he did so. When Richard died in 1500 and was buried amidst much pomp and ceremony as was a king’s due, his son was eagerly accepted as the nation’s new ruler.

  Edward was a force to be reckoned with; a warrior king who truly deserved the name. Like so many of the Plantagenets past, his soul burned with the desire to conquer, and he sought to make France fall under the yoke of British rule. His greed and ambition proved costly, and he died on the field of battle, murdered by a French magus, barely fifteen years after he took the throne.

  The mantle passed to his son and namesake, Edward the Seventh, but the family curse took hold once more. Never as healthy as might have been desired for a man destined to be king, Edward’s health failed within six months of his coronation. Despite the best efforts of the court healers and their alchemy, he died in his bed at the age of eighteen, giving rule of the country over to his younger brother, King Richard the Fourth.

  From the moment he took the throne, the sixteen-year-old Richard made it quite clear that he was neither a weakling like his dead brother, nor the warrior king his father had been. Instead, he brought cunning and wisdom to the throne; a need to impose order on a country still crippled by disease and civil war. He took control of the great halls of power and nobility, including the influence of the Church itself.

  Naturally, this drew the ire of Rome; the Pope demanded this upstart young king attend him immediately. Richard quite deliberately kept him waiting for five years. In 1530, following what are described best by other historians
as ‘extremely painful’ negotiations, he dissolved the Crown’s connections with the Roman Catholic Church. He stated that his people were free to worship however they wished, but as head of state, he ruled that no money would be granted to the Church from his coffers. Churches became poor, surviving on the charity of the faithful. The King decreed the cathedrals be stripped of their wealth, and the money used to fund the creation and development of the Royal Halls of Science.

  Some of the money, however, went to the creation of the King’s Inquisition. The men he recruited into its ranks were fervent enemies of magic in all its forms, and King Richard tasked them with rooting out those who dared to continue its vile practice. Farcical trials were held, which almost always ended in public executions not so different to the deaths of the Bosworth Four.

  The King’s Inquisition drew the cruellest, hardest-souled men in England. Latterly, women were also embraced into its ranks, despite widespread protest. By the time the King died at his own son’s hands, the practice of magic had been recognised as a crime of treason. Trials became routine and then irrelevant, the word of the Inquisition becoming the word of the King, although a handful of Inquisitors clung to the tradition.

  King Richard the Fifth ascended to his rightful place as heir to the throne of England in August of 1550, sixty-five years to the day after his ancestor slaughtered the armies of Henry Tudor.

  The reign of the demon kings continues.

  One

  April, 1565

  Horsham

  England

  EVERYONE AGREED AFTERWARDS that the execution had been one of the most entertaining in years. The perpetrator’s head had needed six powerful blows of the deliberately blunted axe before it parted from the body, and the King’s Own Executioner had played to the caterwauling, hungry crowd with every stroke. Each blow was more theatrical and exaggerated than the last, and the gathered townsfolk had howled and jeered in adulation.