A Bright and Terrible Sword

by Anna Kendall

  ‘We don’t know,’ Nell said.

  ‘There is no reason to take him to Hygryll. I have been there. It is nothing like Galtryf, it is merely a collection of huts burrowed into the ground, primitive and—’

  I stopped. There was only one thing that made Hygryll different from any other small village. My mother, Rawley’s first wife and Katharine’s mother, had died there. And there, too, my sister had been born.

  ‘We don’t know why Rawley takes Harbinger to Hygryll,’ Nell repeated impatiently. ‘But here is the important point: the hisafs must not kill him. Do you hear me, Roger Kilbourne? So far we have strained the web of being but not torn it irreparably, and only because power has been kept in precarious balance. If Rawley kills Harbinger, a tremendous, monstrous amount of stolen power will be set loose with nowhere to go. The web will tear and …’ She sobbed.

  I stared. I had not thought Nell, who appeared so hard, capable of sobs.

  In a moment she again had herself in control. ‘Do you understand me, Roger? You must persuade Rawley not to kill Harbinger!’

  ‘I do not have influence with my father. I have met him only once in my entire life.’ And that meeting not a happy one. He had knocked me down. He had sent me on a dangerous journey with Tarek, the Young Chieftain. He had promised a rescue that never came.

  ‘Nonetheless,’ Nell said, ‘you must do this! Harbinger must not die! The risk to the web is enormous! You must ensure that your father does not kill Harbinger!’

  My father, who saw the war with Soulvine as a simple breach in fortifications, a gap in the barrier between the living and the Dead. He did not believe in the web of being. Did I? I didn’t know what I believed.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said to Nell. ‘My father will not listen to me, of all people. How can I—’

  ‘Hush!’

  ‘I heard voices,’ a man said. ‘Are you alone, young Kilbourne?’ One of Lord Robert’s guards. I could see his head framed in the tent opening. Nell had vanished.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I … I cried out in a dream.’

  The soldier’s head disappeared from view. His tone had been as harsh as Nell’s, and as fearful, although not from the same cause. Perhaps he remembered me from the battle at the palace three years ago; perhaps not.

  Nell did not return. If she had become a mouse or a snake or a spider disappearing through a crack in the wagon bed, I never knew it. I was alone in ways the angry and fearful captain could not imagine. There was only Maggie, asleep a few yards away on the wagon bed. And although she could not help me with all that Nell had said, I stretched out my good hand until I could grab a fistful of her skirt. Maggie did not stir. Sleepless, I clutched the handful of cloth as if hanging on to a raft on a vast and violent and uncharted sea.

  Before dawn the camp roused. Men shouted, horses neighed, dogs barked. Maggie woke and crept sleepily across the cramped wagon. ‘Roger! You’re dressed!’

  ‘I feel much better.’

  She kissed me carefully, as if I were very ill or very old, and I kissed her back as if she were neither. She felt so good in my arms! The kiss grew deeper yet, but Maggie, laughing breathlessly, freed herself. ‘No, we can’t, it’s too soon for you, I’ll get your breakfast!’

  ‘No more selcane root in my food, Maggie.’

  She stopped, turned, looked at me.

  ‘I have slept enough. I wasn’t ill, just weak, and the weakness has passed.’ To prove this I got to my feet. Immediately I fell over.

  ‘Roger!’

  ‘Oh, don’t fuss so! I’m fine.’

  ‘If you were fine, you could stand up,’ she said tartly, and already we were back to our old ways: her ordering and scolding, me resisting. I did not mind. She was Maggie; I was Roger; we were together. I got back to my feet, more slowly this time, and climbed down from the wagon into the first fresh air I had breathed in nearly a fortnight. Maggie followed me.

  Soulvine Moor stretched the same towards all horizons: springy peat ground dotted with boulders, clumps of gorse and heather, shallow treacherous bog pools covered with sedges, and the occasional rocky tor. The morning was cool and fair. A pale pearly glow suffused the east, but the sliver of moon still rode high and the brightest of the summer stars were still visible.

  Four broad-backed, deep-chested horses were being hitched to four wagons, two tented and two piled high with supplies. These four horses and two ponies were the only livestock; Sir Robert was marching his army home on foot. The soldiers had – thanks to me – arrived in Galtryf with nothing but their armour and weapons, so everything else had been looted from the castle. It wasn’t all that much. The men had slept, blanketless, on the bare ground, and they shared bowls and waterbags for their breakfast.

  Jee appeared beside me in his soundless way. Over his tunic he wore a scarred leather breastplate that had been cut down to his size, the edges still raw. ‘Ye be better, Roger?’

  ‘I be better, yes.’ I gazed at the eleven-year-old who had, through the child queen’s attachment to him, brought an army to Galtryf to rescue Maggie. Jee had grown but little since I’d seen him last. Small, slight, his dark eyes as secretive as ever, he had changed the course of war. Under that borrowed armour beat the most loyal heart I’d ever known. Certainly more loyal than mine.

  ‘Maggie,’ I said, as she smoothed down Jee’s unruly hair, ‘I am hungry after all. Is there any breakfast to be had? Not gruel – something fit for a man.’

  ‘I’ll find you something,’ she said, efficient as always, and bustled away.

  ‘Jee, tell me why we are going to Hygryll. Nell didn’t know – do you?’

  ‘Nay,’ he said in his slow way, in his unchanged country accent. ‘But something happened at Galtryf. I saw it. Nell did not, nor many others.’ He looked around. Two soldiers, perhaps camp guards, watched us and their expressions were not pleasant. Nor were the glances shot at me by soldiers loading the wagons. So it was starting again, the old suspicion and fear against Roger the Witch. That fear was dangerous to me. I hoped Lord Robert had his men in as good discipline as he seemed to.

  I said, ‘I’m going back into the wagon. Go away, and come back when you can do so unseen.’

  I climbed aboard, relieved that although my muscles were weak from disuse, I felt no illness. Jee was already there. He had walked away, slipped back around the wagon, and climbed in over the wheel to slide between the tent ties. Nell herself, as rat or spider or whatever she became, could not have been more stealthy.

  ‘What did you see in Galtryf, Jee? Tell me all.’

  ‘It happed soon as we come. The soldiers ran from yer room. I saw ye were alive and with Maggie. Rawnie tried to leave. The guards seized her.’

  I remembered Rawnie kicking and screaming in the stone chamber, and two men trying to subdue her without hurting her.

  ‘They be busy with her and I got past them,’ Jee said, ‘to follow Lord Robert. Naught maun happen to him – Her Grace needs him. The soldiers went different places in the keep and I followed Lord Robert and his cadre. At the top of the keep a group guarded a room. Hisafs, some, and some Soulvine warriors. They fought hard but our soldiers killed them all. Lord Robert went into the chamber and I followed. The old man was there. My lord would not have killed such an elder, except that when he approached, the old man brought up a knife and wounded Lord Robert in the side. Not very bad. But the lieutenant rushed forward with his sword. And the sword went right through the old man without harm.’

  My breath stopped in my lungs.

  ‘I saw it. I did. It was as with the Blue army that ye brought back from the Country of the Dead. The old man cannot be killed. He maun already be dead. But the Blue army … Roger, a fortnight lacks yet several days.’

  I knew what Jee meant, and what Lord Robert must be thinking. But both of them were wrong. I knew what they did not, knowledge that froze my blood.

  The Blue soldiers that I had brought back from the Country of the Dead could not be injured or killed here. Swords
ran through them, fire did not consume them, they were exempt from death because they were already dead. But the Blues had vanished, one by one, after a fortnight in the land of the living, as had Cecilia and Fia. Their flesh had melted grotesquely, their bones had crumbled, their hearts and livers and lungs had rotted away in an instant. And their souls had vanished from existence on both sides of the grave. Death could not be cheated for long, and the length of that cheat was a fortnight.

  But the old man had been in Galtryf longer than that. He had the invulnerability of the Dead, but he lived here, in the land of the living, and did not melt or crumble or rot.

  ‘Harbinger’ Nell had called him.

  Soulvine Moor had succeeded. For at least this one person, the first person, they had succeeded. The old man could not be killed. He would live for ever.

  Lord Robert did not realize this. He must have been badly shaken when the sword passed through Harbinger but he had seen that happen before, in the battle at the palace. He expected that in a fortnight, the old man would vanish. And meanwhile, what was there to fear? An old man, witched but feeble, no threat to robust soldiers as long as the old man was unarmed. So let the women deal with him.

  Did Nell or my father know what Harbinger was? I didn’t think so. Nell still believed that Rawley could kill the old man, and perhaps Rawley seemed to believe it, too.

  To live for ever. Undying, unkillable. Safe. But why was Hygryll our destination? Nell wished me to find out, and so far I had not even laid eyes on my father since—

  ‘Roger!’ Maggie cried, climbing back into the wagon, ‘Get down! An attack!’

  Jee was quicker. He tackled me and I fell onto the nest of blankets just as a volley of arrows pierced the tent above.

  23

  None of us was hit. I grabbed Maggie and thrust her beneath me. I tried for Jee, too, but he was too quick. He crawled to the tent opening and raised his head above the wagon box to look out.

  ‘There be many. Very many. They—Get out!’ Another volley of arrows hit the tent, and these were tipped with fire.

  Immediately the dry canvas caught fire. The wagon bed would be next. Maggie and I scrambled for the wagon box, on it, over it, down. Crouching behind the burning wagon, trying to shield Maggie – who was trying to shield me – I peered out at the moor, which in the rising light had become complete chaos. And yet not complete. The attackers knew what they were doing.

  They were stationed behind and on top of a low, irregular tor that rose close by to the east. At that distance the archers had precision in their arrows and in the guns that now splintered the morning. But there must be a great many Soulviners out there because both arrows and bullets kept coming. The arrows were no longer afire, and only my wagon burned. So they knew where the drugged old man slept, and would not harm that wagon.

  How had the Soulviners gotten so close without being seen by the guards? All at once, with a sickening lurch of the stomach, I knew. There were hisafs of the Brotherhood with them, and the hisafs had used my own stratagem. They had brought the Soulvine warriors here by carrying them through the Country of the Dead.

  Lord Robert’s army had been caught without armour or shelter. But they were trained and disciplined, and in less time than I would have believed possible they wore helmets and breastplates, carried shields, and formed a tight phalanx between the camp and the attackers. More soldiers ran to guard our rear. More guns fired – crack!

  Crouching, I pulled Maggie towards the other tented wagon, a feat that took most of my strength. Jee followed. We had to clamber over the bodies of two soldiers killed in the first volley. I grabbed his shield and held it over Maggie’s head. We dived under the wagon.

  Jee cried, ‘No!’ but apparently not to me. The next minute he darted from under the wagon. Maggie clutched at him but got only air. His thin light figure ran over the ground to Lord Robert and shouted something in his face. Lord Robert batted him away, stopped, listened, and yelled orders I could not hear.

  It was too late. His men had started forward towards the tor under cover of their closely aligned shields, like one giant tortoise. The rising sun flashed fire from the polished metal. Then the first few soldiers faltered, stumbled, and dropped their shields. The rest, responding to Lord Robert’s shouts, retreated, still in formation. I had a clear view of the five who had stumbled.

  In the gathering light the brighter green of the ground around the soldiers was becoming visible. It was a mire, a treacherous bog pool of mud and decayed plants covered by the sedges and mosses that nourished themselves at the top. The soldiers sank into the mud, and the more they struggled, the deeper they sank. Their fellows could not risk dropping their own shields to throw them ropes.

  One man, at the far edge of the mire, managed to crawl out, only to be hit by a bullet. Three others died from bullets or arrows while they sank into the mire. The last soldier, trapped near the centre of the bog pool, sank rapidly. The mud reached his chest, then his neck. Maggie cried out in horror but there was no help for him. His mouth disappeared beneath the mire, cutting off his screams. Then the top of his helmet disappeared and he was gone.

  Lord Robert continued his orders, but I knew his army was losing. The soldiers of the Purple had no way to reach the enemy behind and atop the tor. The army fired, and I did see a few Soulviners fall, who had no armour and who had injudiciously exposed themselves in order to shoot. The noise was tremendous; my ears rang with the sound of the guns.

  Maggie screamed in my ear, further deafening me, ‘That was a girl!’ She meant one of the fallen Soulviners. I did not try, even if I could have made myself heard over the din, to explain that the warriors of Soulvine Moor included both men and women. Instead I gathered her into my one good arm and looked around for Jee, preparing to cross over with both of them into the Country of the Dead, away from the battle.

  ‘No,’ said a voice behind me, loud enough to penetrate the torrent of sound. ‘Stay! They will have hisafs waiting for you there, Roger.’

  I jerked my head to look over my shoulder. My father was crouching behind me under the wagon.

  We stared at each other, backed by the nightmare around us. Maggie, who must have seen him many times since Galtryf, cried, ‘Rawnie? Charlotte?’

  ‘Inside this wagon. But—’

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to, I knew what he did not say. But we are losing.

  What would the Brotherhood, and Soulvine Moor, do to us if they recaptured us? The rescue was for the old man, but we would be rich prizes as well. Roger Kilbourne, who had killed their centre of power, his mad half-sister. Rawley Kilbourne, a leader of the hisafs fighting the Brotherhood.

  My father put his ear next to mine, so that even Maggie could not hear. I felt something hard and cold put into my good hand.

  ‘If it comes to that, kill Maggie first, as cleanly as you can, and then yourself. Do it, Roger. They have vowed to torture her while you are forced to watch. I will do Charlotte and Rawnie.’ And he was gone, crawling from beneath the wagon and vaulting onto the box above.

  My mind reeled. Torture Maggie and Charlotte and Rawnie while we were forced to watch … I had not imagined that much cruelty and revenge. The dagger felt twisting and poisonous in my hand, as if it were something alive. I thought, I cannot do it.

  Nor could I bear the alternative. So I lay there, frozen, and watched the battle, concentrating everything in me on what was happening out there, to avoid what was happening within me.

  I cannot do it.

  I must.

  I cannot.

  Maggie said something and although I was aware of her voice buzzing in my ear, the words were meaningless. I may even have pushed her slightly away. Nor did I look for Jee. I concentrated on the battle as if I were fighting in it.

  And so I saw when it happened.

  More of Lord Robert’s men had fallen. One, an arrow in his back, had tipped forward and lay half in, half out of the mire, which was slowly sucking him down. Some of the Soulviners
, too, had fallen, but nowhere near enough. Hidden by the tor with its boulders, they had the advantage of position, despite their lack of armour. Lord Robert turned to shout an order to the rearguard, and I saw the despair on his handsome face.

  Then, all at once, the enemy guns ceased.

  The enemy arrows did not fly.

  And an image appeared in my mind, so hard and clear and shocking that I may have called out. Or not – I don’t know. I do know that Maggie cried out as did, somewhere behind me, Jee.

  The first Soulviner tumbled from behind the top of the tor.

  Her body seemed to fall slowly, bouncing off rocks in a tumble that must have broken bones, except that she was already dead. Another warrior, a young man, followed her down. Two more slumped from behind a boulder. They were immediately fired upon by Lord Robert’s men, but there was no need. They, too, were dead.

  Even Lord Robert’s disciplined soldiers fell utterly silent, looking at each other in wild fear.

  The Soulvine warriors cried out and began to scramble away from their hiding places. Lord Robert’s soldiers rushed to attack – then paused, utterly bewildered. One by one the enemy fell to the rocky ground, tumbling off the tor, thudding into the gorse, falling to the very edge of the mire. All cries ceased.

  Silence stretched for an entire minute. Two, three. The image left my mind as abruptly as it had appeared. But I knew what was out there, and that in just a moment the first of them would appear. They waited for me. Or possibly for Jee.

  Both of us raced up to the dumbfounded Lord Robert, me puffing with the exertion, Jee’s face tense as lute strings. ‘Ye maun not kill them!’ Jee shouted, at the same time that I gave my one and only order to a Lord Commander of The Queendom: ‘Hold your fire!’

  ‘Upon who?’ Lord Robert blurted, just as the first of the web women staggered from behind the closest boulder, fell to her knees, and fainted.

  ‘They were snakes,’ I said, inadequately. Lord Robert looked at me as if I were crazed.