“Asaeld! Take the best men and go defend the main eastern artery! They mustn’t reach the golden gates, not for anything in the world!”
Asaeld nodded and raced out.
“FOLLOW DUNWICH’S ORDERS! HE’S IN CHARGE NOW! FOLLOW DUNWICH’S ORDERS!” the Lance shouted to all the men he met. Pity he had no time to savour that moment of glory, he mused. Now he must think about Cambria, and Cambria alone. The rebels had broken through and he had to come up with a way to stop them as swiftly as possible. The city was in the clutches of sheer panic.
Outside the palace, the tree-lined avenues bordered with colourful blooms were teeming with soldiers ready to set out. But not the merest shadow of the chanters.
‘Where have they got to?! Are they all on the wall-tops? Or barricaded up in their turrets?!’
The army accepted the sudden change of leadership without question. Asaeld’s re-emergence was welcomed with boundless joy. His men now felt they had some hope, just by seeing him in action. His most loyal Lances closed ranks and set off to scout the walls. Dunwich divided up the rest of the troops to cover every access route to the heart of the city, and they all left through the great golden gates, Cambria’s pride: railings as tall as a mighty wall, circling the city’s nerve centre. Protecting them were three towers, in the hands of the Arcane, looking out over a like number of main roads.
Dunwich could do little other than station himself at this spot. He closed the gates behind him, and waited. He’d coordinate everything from there.
Not one of Eldain’s men would ever pass that point. Even at the cost of personally blocking that gateway with a mountain of corpses.
***
“DUNWICH IS IN CHARGE OF THE CITY NOW! FOLLOW ONLY HIS ORDERS! DUNWICH IS IN CHARGE OF THE CITY!”
Mordraud heard the command pass from mouth to mouth among the soldiers striving to bar their route. His insides shuddered with the most ferocious hatred.
“Here we are, Dunwich. About to meet...” he muttered, with a savage grin.
“Mordraud!” Adraman called. “The road’s guarded! Down there!”
A platoon of Lances was waiting in the middle of the road, at a point with no junctions and no alleys for escape. They could turn round and go back, yet wherever they went they’d come up against the same energetic resistance. Adraman and Mordraud smiled together. They had to drive on, as they’d done since they’d taken that first step beyond the border.
There was no escape.
There was no surrender.
“Let’s go, my boy!”
The handful of rebels crashed into the compact wall of Lances. The blow was fearsome. The whole charge shattered against their raised shields, and their black and gold suits of armour.
“FOR ELDAIN! FOR ELDAIN!” bellowed Adraman, as he galloped in front of his men, Mordraud at his side.
“DEATH TO CAMBRIA!”
But, in doing so, they had not noticed the archers positioned on the rooftops.
The first hail of arrows flailed their unprotected sides. The Lances thrust and buffered their charge, giving them no escape. Mordraud found himself circled by the enemy, alone. Adraman was still trying to push ahead, waving Eldain’s sword before him. The arrows went on felling his men in the back ranks. It was a blind alley. A trap.
“ADRAMAN!”
Mordraud’s voice was lost in the bedlam of yelling. He saw his friend not far away, but too many Lances were blocking the path. Adraman was advancing alone. They were too near the gates to give in. The gold could almost be felt between their fingers.
“ADRAMAN! WAIT FOR ME!”
Adraman turned to look at him. He was laughing. His eyes were those of a man who was finally free, at the supreme zenith of his life.
“BE CAREFUL!”
Before his friend, a Lance stood tall above all the others. It was Asaeld. The terror-inspiring commander of the Imperial Lances.
Mordraud fought back the enemies attempting to smother him, and in the meantime looked at Adraman as he battled against Asaeld. Eldain’s sword sliced the air, colliding with the black shield. It was the duel of all duels. Commander against commander. Even the others had paused to watch. A surreal silence descended on the scrum.
“GO ON ADRAMAN! GO ON!”
Mordraud burst with euphoria when he saw Adraman gain ground, lashing Asaeld’s defences with deadly slashes. The Lance was caught in Adraman’s web of expertise. Mordraud felt a roar of joy swell in his throat.
Which shattered when he heard the distinct snap of a cord, and the hiss of an arrow. A single archer had taken the initiative. Even at the risk of killing Asaeld. The honour of the duel had dissipated into coarse splinters, all merely to win – at any cost and with any means.
Adraman’s arm froze in mid-air. The arrow was poking out of his back, at the base of his neck. An accursed and sublimely accurate shot. Mordraud flung himself forwards, oblivious to the Lances surrounding him, but riddling them with blows from his half-blunt sword. Asaeld was on his feet, his arms raised in triumph.
“ADRAMAN! PLEASE, NO!”
Mordraud reached his friend. He lifted him off the ground, he shook him, but nothing could be done. He was already dead. Without saying goodbye, without a last breath. He’d died in the elation of victory, convinced someone was still waiting for him at home.
“Don’t leave me, I beg you... At least you, please don’t leave me alone...”
Asaeld was towering above him. Mordraud turned, and before the Lances could realise what was happening, he lunged with his sword, towards the unprotected throat. A lightning and lethal move – and entirely instinctive. Asaeld’s eyes widened in surprise, as he struggled to cover himself with his shield. The tip reached his neck, penetrated it, passed through bone and muscle, and jabbed out at the nape. Asaeld clasped at his throat with his hands, but blood was spurting out everywhere. He tried to scream, but the air came out of the slit, not his mouth. The Lances were stunned. Eldain’s men began pushing again, forcing the Lances to pull back.
“Please don’t leave me alone...” Mordraud mumbled, slumped over Adraman’s lifeless chest. “Deanna’s dead, my friend... Forgive me... Please forgive me...”
Mordraud took Eldain’s sword, squeezing it in his shaking hands.
“I promise, Adraman... I’ll keep it safe... Eldain’s sword will never fall,” he uttered in a voice broken by tears.
“Farewell...”
Around him, the Lances were battling furiously with his companions. But he was no longer interested. Only one task remained.
“I didn’t want this to happen...”
Mordraud started running, alone, towards the impressive golden gates, which hovered on the horizon at the end of the road.
“Dunwich.”
A figure was waiting for him. He wore no helmet, and his black hair was flowing in the wind. He hadn’t seen him for years, but he recognised the man instantly.
His blue eyes were unmistakeable. The same as his mother’s.
“Dunwich!”
Mordraud bellowed, and his voice rode over the desperate rattle of the city in its death throes.
“DUNWICH!”
***
A few soldiers attempted to hinder him. Mordraud wiped them away without even slowing his pace. Dunwich lifted his eyes and saw him storming towards him. He’d always known they would meet there, outside Cambria’s last stronghold. He didn’t know why, but he’d felt it, since his flight from the Rampart had begun. He was waiting for him. His brother had finally come.
Their swords crossed. Dunwich moved back, dodging Mordraud’s incensed onslaughts. He recognised him from the enraged expression in his green eyes. His brother hadn’t changed, in all those years. He tried fending off a few blows, but Mordraud’s strength was overpowering. The younger man’s bones shook, and seemed on the brink of cracking with every thump. Dunwich danced lightly, pulling back and thrusting into his guard, drawing on all his mastery, but Mordraud held out against the impact and battled on. His body was s
lashed all over, from head to toe, but he went on attacking. Dunwich’s blade caught him on a thigh, a shoulder, his side. The leather protections were reduced to shreds, the padding soaked in blood.
“Why did you kill our parents? Why?!” Dunwich yelled, letting out the question that had tormented him for so many years.
“You left... YOU DIDN’T PROTECT US!” Mordraud returned, gritting his teeth, at a palm’s width from the other’s face. “You deserted our mother... You deserted Gwern!”
“I didn’t desert you! You murdered them! Why did you do it, you louse?!”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU PROTECT US FROM OUR FATHER?!”
“Dad?! What did dad do?!”
“Ask Gwern!” growled Mordraud. “Ask mum! Ask them how often I had to protect them from him! BUT YOU WEREN’T THERE! YOU WERE IN CAMBRIA, WITH THE ENEMY!”
The enemy.
It had never been their war. And yet they were now face to face, one against the other.
Dunwich parried another blow, but he had to crouch down to deflect the force. He tried to chant, but he didn’t have the time. He could slither into the earth, but Mordraud’s words were crumbling his concentration.
“YOU HAVE TO DIE, YOU STINKING BASTARD!”
Dunwich hobbled backwards, squashed by Mordraud’s wrath. He wished to hear more, to understand more. But his brother was there to slay him. Not to talk things through once and for all.
He was there to end it for good.
He could read it clearly in his eyes: that unbridled craving for death. And suddenly, Dunwich understood it all, as if a revelation had settled on him, to guide him.
With death in his heart, Dunwich sidestepped Mordraud’s brutal lunge, placed his hand on his opponent’s arm, and drove the sword down, into his belly. He pushed until he felt the blade scraping through his bowels, along his bones, and out through his back.
“Was this what you wanted, brother?” he muttered, with tears in his eyes. Mordraud looked at the sword piercing his body, swallowing a long slow sigh of pain. He lifted his eyes, and met Dunwich’s.
“I’m sorry, my brother.”
The same green eyes of the child he’d seen at birth. The same light that stirred inside the speckled irises of Eglade, their mother. And now it was fading.
“I didn’t want to desert you all, I’m sorry...” Dunwich repeated, in the vain hope of shaking off that sense of guilt.
“I... didn’t... want... to... just... die...”
Mordraud’s words were drowned in a gurgle of blood.
Coming along the great avenue dominated by the golden gates were the last remaining men of Eldain’s army. There were Berg and Hammer. And Mercy too, and Benno. Giant was absent – he’d fallen while trying to open up the entrance to the city. With them were many other fellow fighters.
One. Single. Note.
Pure violence.
Mordraud whined in despair. A monstrous choral barrage shook the golden railings and levied a quivering dust cloud from the ground.
A flash darkened the sun and flooded the heavens with flames.
The last bastion of Cambria’s great chanters, the turret towering above the golden gates was origin to a dousing of fire as thick as magma. The explosion was frightening. The wave of heat reached his face, caressed it, and woke him from his stupor.
The wind carried the last shouts of hope from his comrades.
Then, silence.
A tumult of smoking corpses stretched out as far as the eye could see, engulfing gutted buildings and homes annihilated by the blast. None of his men had survived. All had been swept away by that terrifying harmony conjured up by the chanters in the towers.
It was all over.
The war, Eldain’s ideals. His men’s lives.
Adraman. Deanna. His son.
And now, him.
“I... didn’t... want... to... just... die...”
Mordraud seized his brother’s wrist and twisted it with all the force he could muster. Dunwich dropped his weapon and fell to his knees.
“You have to die too, with me!”
Mordraud raised Eldain’s sword, placed it against Dunwich’s chest, and pushed, clinging on to it. The tip slipped between the metal plates of the Lance’s armour, found flesh, and buried into his shoulder, between the bones. His eyes sprang wide and he screamed in unbearable pain.
“Now... everything... really... is... over...”
Dunwich slumped into his arms. Mordraud clutched him, sliding to the ground with him. They both closed their eyes together, blinded by those lights and that colourless silence.
Now he could stop suffering.
Deanna was waiting for him outside, in the villa’s courtyard. By her side, a handsome dark-haired boy was waving to him. Behind her, his hands on her hips, Adraman was staring at him with proud eyes. Mordraud stretched out his hand, as if to stroke that perfect picture, but before he could touch Deanna’s face for a last time, the blazing skies tumbled down on them. The fire devoured everything.
He was burning too, along with his family. And this filled him with joy.
Dunwich was astride a horse, riding behind Seneo. He was leaving home. He could almost feel the teacher’s rough cloak between his fingers, could smell the leather of the saddle.
“Dunwich, my little one!”
Eglade was calling him, tears in her eyes, hand in hand with his father. They seemed happy and yet sad. Dunwich lowered his gaze. Cradled in his arms was a newborn baby.
A child with eyes as deep as the sea.
I’ve found you again, brother of mine.
Mordraud, Book One Page 70