Justice

by Ian Irvine

  “One bombast can take out a hundred men,” said Holm. “Thirty bombasts would kill half his army and maim the rest.”

  “Lyf’s front lines must be armed with grenadoes too,” said Jackery. “They’re loading slings and hand catapults.”

  Grandys raced ahead. Syrten and Rufuss slowed until they were a hundred yards behind. Lirriam and Yulia rocketed towards one another, then propped and skidded their horses to a stop, the Five Heroes now forming the five points of a pentagon. They thrust their staffs, sceptres and swords high. Grandys shook Maloch in the air, roared a word in an alien tongue and a ray of black light impaled the apex of the sky, drawing slender black rays to the same point from each of the other four Heroes.

  The Cythonians froze, then frantically loaded their slings and bombast catapults. The archers on either side drew back their bowstrings.

  The black rays separated from their sources and formed a steep five-sided pyramid which Grandys directed, with waving motions, over the centre of his army. He whipped Maloch out sideways. The black pyramid settled in silence.

  Then the Cythonians fired every alchymical projectile weapon at once: thirty barrel-sized bombasts, hundreds of grenadoes and massed volleys of shriek-arrows, fire-flitters and other missiles that Rix had not seen before.

  Months ago he had been at the head of an attacking force when a bombast had gone off in the ranks behind him, blowing at least a hundred soldiers to bits. Thirty bombasts bursting at once, in the middle of an army, was too awful to think about.

  “It’s going to be a massacre.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Grandys has lost his mind,” said General Hramm, rubbing his leathery fingers together with a noise like a wood rasp. “This is going to be your greatest victory of all, Lord King.”

  Lyf’s officers were laughing and cheering, and already congratulating one another. Lyf was grinning and shaking their hands when he happened to glance across to Moley Gryle. She was leaning out the side of their timber lookout, biting her lip.

  “What is it, Moley?” said Lyf.

  “It’s too easy. Something’s wrong. Lord King, I think you should prepare to order a retreat.”

  “How dare you speak such defeatist talk!” he snapped. “In fifteen minutes it’ll all be over.”

  “But Lord King—”

  “Not another word. Get out of my sight!”

  She stood her ground, trembling, then the words tumbled out of her. “Lord King, Grandys’ army is about to be blasted to bits, yet he’s taking no notice of our alchymical weapons. Something is very wrong.”

  Lyf looked south. Grandys, now mounted as were the other Heroes, thrust his sword high and the Five Heroes converged. His army charged Lyf’s First Formation, the enchanted black pyramid moving at the same pace to stay above them.

  “If that’s supposed to be some kind of shield, it’s not working,” said Lyf. “Our bombasts are falling straight through it and they’re going to go off any second. Grandys’ colossal arrogance has undone him this time.” He leaned forward, lips parted. “I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

  Bombasts and grenadoes plummeted down; shriek-arrows fell in a howling rain and fire-flitters sizzled through the air. Several of the enemy went down, crushed under falling bombasts, but the rest kept moving as though there was no threat at all. Lyf waited, his fists clenched involuntarily.

  And waited.

  “Our bombasts aren’t exploding,” yelled Hramm. “What’s going on?”

  “Neither are the grenadoes,” Moley Gryle whispered. “And our fire-flitters are extinguished as soon as they touch the black pyramid. It’s magery, Lyf—foul, stinking magery.” In her distress, she did not realise that she had called her king by his proper name.

  “Hramm, signal my First Formation!” rapped Lyf. “Order it to pull into its tightest phalanx. It has to hold.”

  What was he thinking? Of course it would hold. This army had never been beaten on the field of battle.

  “Order the Third Formation in from the east,” he added, “and the Fifth from the west. Surround Grandys’ army and cut it to pieces.”

  The horns were sounded; the signallers signalled furiously. The Five Heroes were riding full bore at the front lines of Lyf’s First Formation, leading a seemingly suicidal attack. He shivered.

  “Our troops aren’t moving into position fast enough,” he said. “What’s the matter with them?”

  “I’ll ride over and sort them out,” growled Hramm. He leapt down from the platform and lumbered towards his horse.

  “Our soldiers are used to chymical weapons doing the hard work for them,” said Moley Gryle. “They’ve forgotten how to fight conventional warfare. Lord King, I beg you, order the retreat before it’s too late.”

  “My army is the greatest fighting force in the land,” said Lyf, “and it outnumbers Grandys’ five to one. We’re going to tear him apart…”

  The First Formation was still hurling bombasts and grenadoes and, by the time they realised that their chymical weaponry was never going to work, the mounted, heavily armoured Heroes and their cavalry struck the front lines with shattering force.

  Lyf heard the impact from half a mile away. His guts knotted; he could only imagine what it must be like over there—the smashed bones and pulverised flesh as his soldiers were ridden down; the shocking mutilations they must be suffering; the agony as they fell into the mud and knew that, alive or dead, it was all over, that no one would be able to do anything for them…

  He tore his thoughts away, and focused. The rest of Grandys’ army poured through the breach and shortly his whole force was fighting inside Lyf’s hollowed-out First Formation.

  “It’s being annihilated,” whispered Moley Gryle.

  It was a high price, but Lyf was prepared to pay it because Grandys was trapped. He was now surrounded by Lyf’s five other formations, each almost the size of Grandys’ entire army.

  Lyf let out his breath in a rush. “We’ve got him now.” He gave the order to attack Grandys from all sides. “He’s lost at least a thousand men, the rest of his troops must be exhausted and he’s got nowhere to retreat.”

  “Grandys never retreats,” Moley Gryle said absently.

  His soldiers did not look exhausted, either. They kept driving forward, in sickening slaughter, shielded by the outer ranks of Lyf’s First Formation, until they exploded out through the rear towards the Second Formation.

  And all the while the black pyramid kept drifting to remain above Grandys’ army. In vain Lyf’s troops fired more bombasts, hurled more grenadoes and used every other alchymical weapon they had. None went off.

  “He’s destroyed our First Formation,” whispered Moley Gryle. She made a series of marks on a paper clipped to a copper tablet and added them up. “Out of eight thousand soldiers, a bare two thousand are still standing—and they were our strongest and most experienced force. Lord King, if they couldn’t hold him, how can the others?”

  “Enough defeatist talk!” snapped Lyf. “They’ll hold. They’ve got to…”

  He gnawed a knuckle, then abruptly thrust his hand into a coat pocket. He must not show the smallest trace of doubt. But on the inside, a caitsthe was gnawing on his liver. The mongrel was doing it to him again.

  Grandys’ force formed a five-sided phalanx and drove through the Second Formation’s front lines, then hollowed it out from within as he had done before. It should not have been possible but he made it look easy. The Five Heroes were fighting like demons and so were their troops—Lyf’s soldiers, experienced though they were, had no answer to their ferocity or their tactics. They were fighting as though they were already defeated.

  Grandys’ army burst out the western side of the Second Formation, again leaving thousands of dead and injured, and without stopping for breath attacked Lyf’s Fifth Formation.

  “Our counterattack will stop him,” said Lyf, forcing a confidence he now struggled to feel. “We’ve got the numbers, and numbers don’t lie. Grandys must ha
ve lost two thousand dead, and many injured. He can’t keep it up.”

  Moley Gryle had bitten her lower lip so badly that it was bleeding. She gave him a doubtful glance but said no more. Now his Third and Fourth Formations were moving to support the Fifth, attempting for the second time to surround Grandys.

  “He doesn’t realise we’ve set a trap,” said Lyf. “He’s just driving onwards, as before.”

  “He realises,” said Moley Gryle, “but he doesn’t care.”

  In an instant the battlefield changed again. Grandys’ disciplined force burst out of the north side of the Fifth Formation, wheeled around and charged at the narrow gap between the Third and Fourth Formations, tearing through and leaving countless more of Lyf’s finest troops dead and dying behind him.

  Now Grandys’ troops separated into two armies, one attacking the Third Formation and the other the Fourth. After five minutes of furious fighting the Third Formation broke and ran, with Grandys’ first army in pursuit, cutting them down from the rear. Lyf’s Fourth Formation fought on for another minute, then broke as well.

  For the first time Lyf was forced to consider that Grandys might do the impossible… and what would happen if he did defeat Lyf’s entire army. As Moley had predicted, he would come for Lyf himself, to seize his two ebony pearls… and if he succeeded Grandys would publicly execute Lyf as barbarically and spectacularly as possible.

  Grandys called his two armies into one, wheeled it and drove towards the centre of Lyf’s battered force, the Second and Sixth Formations, with undiminished fury. He was a machine, both tireless and irresistible.

  “He knows you’re here, Lord King,” said Moley Gryle. “He’s heading this way. He means to take you…”

  “And kill me,” said Lyf quietly. “I know.”

  In ten bloody minutes against the Third and Fourth Formations Grandys had turned the tide of battle. He was still greatly outnumbered but the morale of the Cythonian troops was broken, and Lyf did not see how he could pull it together again in time to wrest victory from defeat.

  “Dare I try?” he mused. “Or would it be better to retreat and fight another day?”

  “If you try,” said Moley, “and he breaks the Fifth and Sixth Formations the way he’s broken the others, there won’t be another day.”

  She was right. Lyf had to give the most painful order of his life.

  “Sound the retreat! Order all our Formations to pull into one army and march south to Mulclast, between the three Vomits.”

  The trumpets sounded. The signallers waved their flags, then Lyf turned to Moley Gryle, whose face was as white as a boiled egg. “Moley, call the King’s Guard around me and bring my mount. Order the treasury wagons south with us.”

  She sprang down, landed awkwardly, twisting an ankle, and hobbled off. Lyf remained on the platform for another minute, his shin stumps throbbing as he watched the carnage. If there had been a more bitter day since Grandys hacked his feet off and walled him up to die, Lyf could not remember it.

  He shook his head, trying to wipe away the slaughterhouse images; the butchery done to countless thousands of Cythonian youths, the flower of the nation. There would be no honourable burial for today’s casualties—the dead and the wounded would lie together on the battlefield until the cold finished them off and the scavengers reduced them to cracked, bleaching bones.

  He turned away, feeling every day of his long, long life and every ounce of his own disastrous failure.

  “Our uncanny devices used to do the hard work for us,” he said to the nearest guard. “We became complacent. We forgot how to fight without them.”

  “Yes, Lord King,” said the guard, uncomfortably.

  “We’ve got to learn the art of war all over again, and we don’t have long to master it. Let this be the day when the tide turns for us.”

  Moley Gryle raced up on her small white mare, leading Lyf’s bay stallion.

  “He’s only minutes away, Lord King,” she said hoarsely.

  Lyf scrambled off the platform into the saddle. The King’s Guard, two hundred of his toughest and most loyal troops, surrounded him and they headed south.

  At once Grandys called the other four Heroes, and a detachment of his own troops, away from harrying Lyf’s army. They galloped between the King’s Guard and the rest of his army, isolating Lyf.

  Grandys turned and rode straight at Lyf.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Grandys is breaking through the King’s Guard!” cried Moley Gryle. “That cursed sword is protecting him from every blow. Lord King, you’ve got to run now.”

  “It’s happening just as you said it would,” said Lyf. He did not move, for he had been neatly cut off and there was nowhere to go.

  The Five Heroes were driving, in an arrowhead formation with Grandys at the point and several hundred of his troops forming the shaft, through the ring of Lyf’s two hundred King’s Guard. Several score of the Guard were dead and the rest were fighting desperately, spending their lives in defence of their king.

  But they were fighting in vain; the Five Heroes were almost through the ring. Once they broke the inner line they would come straight for Lyf, leaving Grandys’ men to hold the surviving Guard back. If he reached Lyf, and Lyf’s last defence failed, he did not see how anything could save him.

  “Lord King, please,” wept Moley Gryle.

  “I listened to your advice the other day, Moley. I’ve prepared myself a defence—of sorts.”

  “But Maloch is impervious—”

  “I’m not attacking Maloch—or Grandys.”

  Lyf touched his two master pearls to his brow, then to each of the barbed arrows in his belt—first the lighter arrow, followed by the heavy one. He put the pearls back in their case and picked up the bow, already strung, that he had hooked over his shoulder. He nocked the lighter arrow to the string, and waited.

  Grandys was swinging Maloch in all directions, cutting down another of Lyf’s King’s Guard with almost every stroke. Lyf fought back tears as his loyal men died, one by one. They had served him faithfully for many months now and he knew every man almost as well as he knew Adjutant Gryle.

  Grandys broke the inner circle, decapitating Captain Lipits with a furious slash, then plunging Maloch through the chest of the man next to him, Sergeant Boyl, and forcing through into the open. Syrten and Rufuss followed, then Yulia and Lirriam. The King’s Guard tried to attack the Five Heroes from behind but a band of Grandys’ troops formed a barrier between them.

  “Lord King?” said Moley Gryle.

  She was only armed with a knife, and Lyf knew Grandys would end her life without a second’s thought. “Run, Moley,” he said gently.

  She raised her small, pointed chin. “If my king is to die, I will die beside him.”

  “He isn’t going to die just yet. Get going, Adjutant Gryle. That’s an order.”

  She choked back a sob and stumbled away.

  The Five Heroes were in their arrowhead formation again: Grandys at the point, Rufuss to his right, then Lirriam, and Syrten and Yulia to Grandys’ left. They weren’t running now; they were walking steadily towards him, though Lyf knew the four would play no part in the confrontation, save as witnesses.

  Grandys wanted this victory all to himself.

  And you’re not having it, Lyf thought. But which of the Heroes should he target?

  Not Grandys—Maloch would protect him. Nor Syrten, whose thick opal armour would be impervious to any arrow Lyf could fire. Nor the despised Rufuss, he decided. The other Heroes would not rush to his aid, and Lyf needed them to do just that. For his plan to have any hope, he had to separate Grandys from the other Heroes.

  He focused on Lirriam and Yulia. Lirriam was the more difficult target; from this angle she was partly concealed by Rufuss. It had to be Yulia, and with luck…

  She was fifty yards away. Lyf wasn’t the greatest shot, but from that distance he could hardly miss, especially with the aid he planned to use. He raised the bow and aimed.

  The
Heroes did not flinch. Thousands—no, hundreds of thousands of arrows had been fired at them over the years, and thousands of spears thrown. Occasionally a projectile had penetrated the shield of magery that surrounded the Five, though none of the Heroes had ever taken more than a flesh wound. Could Lyf do better?

  They came on. Now! He drew back the arrow, which was surrounded by the faintest green glimmer of his shield-breaking enchantment. He could barely make it out; from head-on it would be invisible to the Heroes.

  He aimed carefully at Yulia’s middle, tightened his aim with the magery of both pearls, locked it on target, and fired. The arrow shot away.

  “Look out!” roared Grandys and swung Maloch out to his left, as if to shelter Yulia.

  How had he known the arrow was driven by magery? He was incredibly fast, but not fast enough. The arrow took Yulia in the belly, lower than Lyf had aimed. She gasped and doubled over, clutching at her middle, then toppled and lay on her side. Blood poured out.

  “Yulia!” Syrten’s cry was a deafening roar.

  He sprang to her side and thudded down to his knees, looking about wildly. He rose, his massive fists clenched, took a step towards Lyf, then let out another howl and stumbled back to Yulia.

  Grandys inspected the wound, clearly shocked that she had been struck such a dangerous blow. He turned to Lyf and every muscle was taut with outrage.

  “Syrten,” said Grandys, “carry Yulia to safety and stand by her. Lirriam, do everything in your power to heal her. Rufuss, guard them and kill anyone who comes within a hundred yards. I’ll deal with Lyf. Go, go!”

  Syrten picked up Yulia. She was tall for a woman, yet in his massive arms she looked like a small, broken doll, and her blood was dripping off his arms and running down his right leg. He carried her away through the broken ring of the King’s Guard and Lyf lost sight of them.

  He checked around him. More than half of his Guard were dead, and the rest were fighting desperately, trying to get to him. All were mighty warriors with years of training and they had inflicted massive casualties on Grandys’ troops, but they could not break through to defend Lyf. Grandys’ men, clearly, had been ordered to keep the Guard away from Lyf at any cost.