Kayan turned around, wiping her lips on the back of her hand and smiled.
‘So, are we going to see Tarinhelm, or what?’
The coal-fire braziers flickered as Kayan was marched into the throne room like a dog on the end of a restraint, her neck tightly grasped by the two metal pincers on the iron pole. Kayan noted with satisfaction that the guards escorting her kept their distance.
The throne room was cold, and for once, it was nothing to do with her. Pigeons roosted in the rafters of its high roof and the moth-eaten pelts of wolves and white bears hung on its walls. Wrought-iron candelabra sat at the bottom of the dais that led up to the elaborate wooden chair that served as Lord Tarinhelm’s throne.
Sitting in his chair with his head propped up on one hand, the lord drummed the fingers of the other on the arm of the throne as Kayan was brought before him. The chieftains gathered around him balked as she approached, backing away in case she slipped her restraint.
The guards corralling Kayan stopped as she reached the bottom of the stone steps and pushed down on the pole holding her until she dropped to her knees.
‘Thank you for gracing us with your presence, Kayan,’ Lord Tarinhelm said in mock gratitude. ‘Any problems, Lundar?’
Lundar gulped.
‘We lost Oleg, My Lord.’
Lord Tarinhelm got to his feet and walked languidly down the steps towards the girl.
Kayan pulled back her lips and bared her teeth.
‘Charming,’ Tarinhelm exclaimed. Reaching the bottom of the steps, he walked around Kayan, inspecting her from every angle, watched by the chieftains.
Kayan remained kneeling on the cold stone tiles, sullen and silent, resisting the urge to ask why she had been brought before him as she listened to his footsteps pacing around her.
‘How are you, Kayan? I keep meaning to come down to your quarters and visit you, but I am afraid I would freeze to death,’ he said, turning to his chieftains and laughing.
‘My quarters? You mean my cell?’
‘Oh, come now, don’t be so dramatic,’ Lord Tarinhelm retorted. ‘You see, this is what I get for my generous hospitality,’ he said to his chieftains. ‘I give this young lady free room and board, supply her with everything she needs, including safety from those who would seek to harm her, and this is the thanks I get.’
He wagged his finger in her face.
‘You should be a little more appreciative, young lady,’ the lord said with a menacing smile. ‘It is a dangerous world out there. Anything could happen to a young, defenceless girl like you.’ His words dripped with unspoken threat.
Kayan felt helpless. For all her courage, for all her bravado, the facts were that she was kneeling, surrounded by armed men who had her restrained by the neck.
‘What do you want?’ The words stuck in her throat.
‘Kayan, I thought you would never ask,’ Tarinhelm said, with a grin that let her know that, once again, he had the upper hand.
‘Lord Trogothal Kon has returned from exile. He marches from the North with an army of almost ten thousand warriors and outnumbers us five-to-one. He means to take this fortress and use it as a staging post for attacks throughout the realm. I know Kon, and he will not stop until all of Frigöris is under his control.’
‘And what do you expect me to do about it?’
‘I expect you to stop him, as you stopped Asvuktör and his barbarian horde.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Do you know who the Shadow Watchers are?’
Kayan narrowed her eyes and looked up at him between her long strands of hair.
When she didn’t reply, he continued, ‘They are hunters. Butchers, who pursue their quarry across every realm in the land, tracking them down and committing unspeakable acts upon them. Then they execute them. Do you know who they hunt?’
Kayan didn’t reply.
Lord Tarinhelm crouched down so that he was level with her. He leaned forward, close, but still safe, and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘People without shadows.’
Still no reaction.
‘Now, my sweet little Kayan, you are going to help me repel this attack, or by the gods I will hand you over to these blue-cloaked cut-throats and let them rip you apart, limb from limb. Do you understand?’
‘I understand,’ Kayan stated calmly. ‘But now I’m going to tell you something. One day very soon, I’m going to be standing over your frozen remains. You, and every other bastard in this room. That I promise you.’
Lord Tarinhelm stood up and turned his back on her, slowing climbing the steps back to his throne.
‘We march at dawn. Take her to the tower,’ he snarled.
Kayan sat on the floor of her new cell. The tower was cold, but not as cold as the dungeon. Even though the fortress was in the Far North and the room was void of heating, she still felt warm. She hated the heat; it weakened her. Her cell, deep in the dungeons, was the perfect temperature. She did not have to do anything special to try and cool it, her very presence created the frost and ice.
What this cell did have was a view. She pulled herself up using the bars across the high window, and peered out at the snow-covered land. Grey clouds hung over it like thick, dirty blankets.
Looking down, she saw the crumbling, ramshackle buildings of the outer keep.
Guards and soldiers were in the courtyard, taking their time loading horses and carts with weapons and armour.
They look very relaxed, she thought. They probably know that it’s me that will be taking the risks.
Pausing for a second, she wondered what lay ahead. If the battle against Asvuktör was anything to go by, she would be marched to the front of the battlefield and then released. She felt nauseous at the thought.
Gazing out over the fortress walls, Kayan watched farmers breaking up bales of hay for their cattle, and crows flying between the hedgerows looking for food. She smiled, thinking how graceful they looked, skimming low to the ground before flying up and disappearing into the trees. Then she glanced back at her surroundings and her heart filled with sorrow. Dropping back down, she sat on the floor and stared at the far wall.
Underground, Kayan had lost all concept of time. Her cell had no window to tell her that the sun or moon was in the sky and she had no contact with anyone or anything; save for the raw, rotting meat that was pushed through on a pole when she was so weak from hunger she could hardly stand.
Kayan struggled to remember a time when she was not a prisoner in the fortress. All she knew was that Lord Tarinhelm was young when she was first brought there, now he looked like a man of fifty, and yet she seemed barely to have aged.
Driven to despair by her solitary confinement, Kayan had often wished she were dead. But a deep, ingrained desire for vengeance kept her going. When the time came, a heavy price would have to be paid by those who had imprisoned her.
As the winter light faded and darkness crept into her cell, Kayan curled into a ball, trying not to think about the dangers of the impending battle.
Dark clouds hung over the land and lightning flashed in the distance. Crisp snow lay on the ground and the flurries that had peppered the landscape for the last few hours, were beginning to clear to the east.
Lord Trogothal Kon sat on a hillock on his white charger and looked out over the land. Silently he surveyed everything that lay before him, making mental notes.
The ground dips to the right, so the snow will be deepest there, he thought. That will slow down my men. The hill on the left has thick scrub that should mask the approach of the cavalry units. With a bit of luck they should be able to take advantage of the high ground, roll over the top and slam into Tarinhelm’s flank. He smiled at the image forming in his mind.
‘Scouts have spotted the enemy, Lord Kon.’
Adjusting the arm greaves on his dragon-scale armour, Trogothal tightened the overlapping
plates and gave the field of battle one last glance before turning his steed. He was confronted by his second-in-command mounted on a heavy war-horse.
‘How many and how long, Krimond?’ he growled, his voice reverberating in the partially enclosed skull helm.
‘There’s hardly even two thousand, they’ll be here by nightfall,’ Krimond replied.
‘Hardly two thousand,’ Kon repeated slowly.
His mind mulled over the facts and troop-numbers. Something did not sit well with him.
The two men shook the reins of their horses and began the journey back to where their army was camped.
‘It’ll be a slaughter, Lord Kon,’ Krimond declared.
‘Will it indeed? Answer me this: why would you march two thousand men, most of whom stand guard on a wall every day, against a battle-hardened army five times your size and face them on an open plain?’
‘Maybe he’s gone mad?’
‘Maybe we are the ones who are mad for thinking this will be a slaughter,’ Lord Kon said, firing his general a look of scorn.
‘Apologies, My Lord.’
‘I know Tarinhelm, he’s no master tactician. This is a bold move he makes, and a very uncharacteristic one.’
‘You think he’s hiding something?’
‘I know he’s hiding something, but what? If it were me, I would stay in the fortress and wait for the siege. We have ten thousand men and only two weeks of food. He’s bound to know by now that we don’t have any siege artillery. If he chooses to hole up behind his walls then he gives us a problem that we don’t have the solution to. No, something has brought Tarinhelm out of his lair, and whatever it is, it’s made him supremely confident of victory.’
Crows circled high in the morning sky as the two armies took to the field. Lord Trogothal Kon had been there at dawn, having personally gone round every unit in his army to deliver his orders.
His men were on edge. Despite outnumbering their enemy five to one, they could sense hesitancy in their leader. They had fought under his command many times, but had never seen a deployment quite like this. The youngest, the fastest runners and the soldiers with the lightest armour were sent to the front. The archers were split into two groups and stationed at the flanks, and the cavalry was kept in reserve. It was like Lord Kon was expecting to be defeated.
Lord Tarinhelm’s army, in contrast, was full of confidence. Without archers or cavalry, his men were gathered in one large cluster at the centre of their side of the battlefield, closely packed and heavily armoured. They stood with their wall-shields at the ready. Their commander sat atop his horse at their head, dressed in ceremonial gilded armour.
A low bellow came from the other side of the battlefield as Lord Kon’s horn blowers gave the signal for his army to ready itself.
Lord Tarinhelm responded by holding up his hand then pointing to the enemy.
His men locked their shields in unison, the front rank holding them at chest-height, the ranks further back carrying them aloft as protection from arrow-fire. Like a giant, sluggish beast with an armoured carapace, the army began to trundle forward.
Lord Kon studied his adversary’s army intently from his vantage point on the hillside. He had commanded forces throughout the Northern Realms for decades, and experience told him that something was not right. A seasoned veteran of several bitter and bloody campaigns, it had taken the combined forces of four realms to drive him into exile. With old scores to settle, his return was years in the planning, and he was determined not to stumble at the first hurdle.
Still he sat on his horse, watching, waiting. The clouds were gathering; there was a storm coming. Snow started to fall as Lord Tarinhelm’s single, lumbering unit came marching across the field. Signalling to his generals, Lord Kon committed four battalions, around two thousand men, to the fray.
Matching Lord Tarinhelm’s army man for man, he stared at the opposing force, fascinated to see why his adversary had deployed his men in the way he did.
Why would you commit every last man you have to the fight without holding any in reserve? he thought. A single mass of troops is inflexible and susceptible to cavalry attack, what are you concealing?
As the two armies approached one another, the front ranks of Lord Tarinhelm’s troops broke formation and a dozen men with shields locked in a semi-circular pattern shuffled forward. In front of the enemy, they parted and ran back to their front line, leaving a young girl hunched in the snow.
So you are the ace Tarinhelm was hiding up his sleeve, Lord Kon thought as he gripped the reins of his horse. Let’s see what you can do then.
The girl stood up and walked forward.
Lord Kon’s army stopped in their tracks, halting a few yards from her, but remained in formation. They had been told by their commander in person to expect the unexpected.
Lord Kon watched the events from the safety of the hill. He was not sure what to make of the girl, but he was eager to find out who or what this person was that filled Lord Tarinhelm with such confidence.
Kayan took a few more steps until she was just outside the reach of their weapons. She glared at the regiment of men.
The frustration of being kept prisoner, the hatred she had built up over her years of incarceration, bubbled to the surface. It did not matter that the men in front of her were not her captors, such was her resentment for all forms of authority that they would do, for now.
Certain that she was close enough, Kayan unleashed her wrath.
Stretching out her arms, her palms held skyward, she spread out her fingers. The breeze began to change direction and quicken, rotating around her. The snow that was falling gently upon her started to spin rapidly, gathering speed and pulling in material from the ground. In a few seconds, the breeze was a tornado.
Lord Kon’s frontmen tried to back off but were blocked by the men behind them. The younger, less experienced soldiers dropped their weapons and cowered behind their shields as the flying debris hit them.
‘Fire at that girl,’ Lord Kon shouted at his archers.
At once the two units levelled their bows and let fly a salvo of arrows.
The missiles converged on Kayan only to be ripped from their path by the gale and added to the whirlwind of earth and snow.
As panic spread throughout the army, Kayan released the full force of her power. Sparks of energy crackled from her fingertips and the hurricane surrounding her exploded, intensifying into a supernatural storm.
‘Give the order to fall back,’ Lord Kon shouted at Krimond, struggling to keep his panicking horse under control.
‘Are you sure, My Lord?’
‘Tell them to fall back now, while we still have an army,’ Lord Kon shouted over the deafening roar of the storm.
Krimond rode into a scene of utter devastation, screaming the order to fall back.
Shields and weapons were torn from arms and bodies were lifted off the ground by the strength of the whirling storm. The arrows that had been fired at Kayan were spinning out from the vortex, striking and killing men in all directions. Discipline and formation were abandoned as the army went into full retreat.
Still the storm around Kayan became more violent. Filled with bloodlust, she poured her hatred and rage into it, feeding it with her power. Men were thrown into the air and corpses were strewn about the battlefield like ragdolls.
Despite being aware that the men were fleeing for their lives, their tormentor was in no mood to be merciful. Kayan looked to the dark clouds that had gathered overhead and let out a terrifying scream. Lightning flashed from the sky into her body and shot from her hands, striking targets throughout the retreating army and killing men by the score – the lightning fusing armour to skin and incinerating men alive.
Lord Tarinhelm watched Kayan rip through the opposing army. He could barely contain his glee at seeing Lord Kon’s force being decimated.
&nb
sp; ‘Should we pursue them, My Lord?’ one of his high-ranking chieftains, Salkan, asked.
‘No. They have learned not to trifle with us. Have your men wait until Kayan’s storm dies down and then rush her. She will not be able to keep her power going for too much longer. You will need to subdue her quickly before she gathers the strength to start again.’
Finding the soldiers who had escorted her into the front line earlier, Salkan rode out to follow the orders. The broken bodies and weapons of Lord Kon’s men lay scattered on the battlefield. Although they stopped here and there to slit the throats of the mortally wounded, it was not long before they reached the other side of the battlefield.
Up until now, Kayan’s storm had enveloped her, cloaking her and protecting her from harm, but it was already beginning to lose its potency. The effort of keeping the storm from petering out was taking its toll. Blood was flowing from her nose and she was struggling to stay conscious.
When Salkan reached her, the wind encompassing Kayan was no more than a few yards in radius. Rock and arrows were falling spent to the ground around her and the sparks that had flowed through her body had dissipated. As the last of Lord Kon’s army fled from the battlefield, she was able to do no more and she fell to the ground, exhausted. Blood now flowed from her ears and mouth as well as her nose. Wrecked with pain, she lay there as her captors approached. Feeling the cold iron restraint tightening around her neck, she muttered a vow of vengeance before finally passing out.
When Kayan woke, it was night. It took a few minutes for her vision to adjust to the surroundings. She sighed when it dawned on her that she was in a cage. With a wooden roof and metal bars, it was so small that she couldn’t stand up and her legs were curled uncomfortably beneath her.
It was snowing and she could see flames from a fire around which sat half a dozen of Lord Tarinhelm’s soldiers, drinking, feasting and celebrating the victory over Lord Kon’s forces. She realised that her cage was on top of a cart parked on the edge of the army’s encampment.
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