by Caro King
Galig bent Jonas’s arms and flexed his fingers. And then he went to join the fight.
In the main hall, Hen and Hilary stared in openmouthed astonishment as Jonas strode past. He didn’t acknowledge them, or even glance their way. He looked like some kind of avenging angel, walking in a halo of light and clasping a sword rimmed with fire nearly as bright as the fire in his eyes.
‘Well,’ said Hilary, ‘somebody’s done a deal with old Celidon!’
She ran over to the cellar and looked in. Sure enough it was dark. The wrapped-up thing in the corner that nobody wanted to look at was gone.
Hen peered over her shoulder and smiled. ‘He had the guts to do what no one else dared to, eh. He always was a brave boy.’
‘What’s that?’ Hilary pointed.
The darkness wasn’t complete. Now the main source of light was gone, a glow, the colour of dying embers, shone faintly. It reminded Hilary of Jik’s eyes.
‘Jik?’
She climbed down carefully, picking her way by the light that came in from above. Groping under a table for the glow, she pulled out a square of cloth. It lay on her palm, its reds and golds melting together, flickering like the flames they came from.
‘Faeries used to make cloth of fancy from the essence of a Quick,’ whispered Senta’s spell thoughtfully in her head. ‘They spun out the Quick’s soul and left a shell that lived on for a short while till it died of emptiness. That is not Quick, but it’s more than just fire too. Brighter, more alive …’
Hilary glanced at Hen, who had followed her down. The old woman’s face was creased with concern. She understood magic as well as any Fabulous.
With Hilary holding up the cloth like a flag of light, they could just make out a lumpy, man-shaped patch of darkness. It looked like what it was. Dried old mud. They could see the empty holes of Jik’s eyes and the thin crack running at an angle across his chest, deeper and wider in the middle.
‘How do I make this right?’ Hilary whispered, kneeling beside him.
‘You have to get the fire back inside,’ said Hen firmly. ‘Magic will do the rest, it has its own way.’
Hilary thought for a moment. Then she folded the shimmering square over and over until it was a tight wedge and poked it into the crack in Jik’s chest where it was widest. The cloth went in like a dream, slipping from her fingers and soaking into the earthy body. There was a fiery glow that faded, disappearing inside.
It seemed like forever while they waited.
At last, a spark glimmered in Jik’s eyes. It brightened steadily. And then it wasn’t a spark any more, but a flame.
It wasn’t long before he was strong enough to follow Jonas into battle.
27
Battle
As they crested the rise, Strood’s army saw the enemy for the first time. Stanley shouted the order to stop. He wanted to make sure they were all together and ready for the charge. The horde came on, rank after rank gathering on the hill at his back, roaring and hissing with pent up bloodlust.
Thoughtfully, Stanley studied the opposition.
The townsfolk of Hilfian were assembled in the fields in front of and below Strood’s army. More than half of them were Quick, Stanley noted, but not much more. A lot of Grimm had made their way to Hilfian too. Goblin-Grimm, mainly, and goblin-Grimm were known for their toughness. They were doing a good job of looking menacing, shaking their weapons, some of them even roaring back, their deep growls rumbling over the tiger-men’s shrieking. And the two great, shaggy Grimm at the back of the townsfolk army, both of them the colour of old chestnuts, were probably half werebear. They’d be slow but horribly strong. And relentless too. Werebear-Grimm would fight to their last breath.
All the town’s Grimm clutched spiked balls on chains, short swords and axes, but the Quick were armed with the most unlikely bunch of weapons Stanley had ever seen. Pickaxes and kitchen knives bristled from every angle, scythes and long-tined forks stuck out at random.
From the top of Stanley’s helmet, Jibbit leaned down and pointed a stubby claw.
‘Ooo look, they got m-m-magic,’ he said, hooting nervously.
‘Get a grip,’ muttered Stanley, then sighed at the scraping of claws on his helmet as the gargoyle took him seriously. The creature was right though. Some of the Quick were clutching magical devices, mainly wands or staffs.
‘Not many though,’ he said. ‘Too few to make a real difference.’
His eye was caught by Taggit standing alongside a couple of other true goblins, all glaring hideously up at Stanley and his hordes, their yellow eyes narrowing as they picked out a target worthy of their attention. Next, Stanley spotted a slim fellow with skin like black velvet and yellow-green eyes who just had to be a werecat. The mudman was nowhere to be seen and neither was Bogeyman Skerridge. Stanley gazed along the stretch of the hill to the east, where the slopes were steeper and higher. There in the distance, beyond the furthest reaches of his milling army, he could make out a flaming tree and a long burnt scar in the green of the hilltop. Looked like Lord Greyghast was already at work keeping the bogeyman busy. A werewolf was easily a match for a bogeyman in strength and speed. Skerridge’s main advantage would be his firebreath, if he could stand still long enough to use it. Greyghast’s would be his endurance, his talons and his sheer savagery. It would be a fair fight and Stanley just had to hope the werewolf came out on top.
Turning back to the horde, Stanley inspected the banked-up flood of fangs and needle claws, of eerie purple eyes that glowed scarlet with hunger for the kill. They covered this stretch of hill, surging restlessly against the mini-mountain that was Hathor, the giant-Grimm. Everywhere their lithe, steel-strong bodies flexed and flowed around the fixed rocks of the armourclad Grimm guards and the two huge, granite-faced Fabulous goblins.
Next, Stanley looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon and even if by some miracle the townsfolk army lived to see sundown they wouldn’t see it rise again the next day. Come nightfall, Strood’s bogeymen would be along to burn whatever was left to the ground.
The CO allowed his insides to unknot a little. The battle wasn’t going to be quite the pushover he had hoped for, but in the end victory was sure to be theirs on numbers alone.
‘Now!’ Dunvice hissed in his ear, making him jump.
Clearing his throat, Stanley raised an arm. Seeing the move, the tiger-men stopped surging and tensed, ready to run. Eyes gleamed. Muscles coiled like gathered springs.
Watching them from the bottom of the hill, Taggit muttered, ‘All right everyone, ‘ere it comes. You know the plan.’
With a shout, Stanley gave the signal to charge and a cry went up from both sides, rumbling into the air like thunder. The ground shook as the horde took off, pouring down the hillside in a torrent of shadow-and-gold, with hungry eyes and unsheathed claws.
And then, too late, alarm bells went off in Stanley’s head. Something wasn’t right. Why were the bigger, heavier townsfolk at the back and not in the front line? His brain clicked into action. The smaller ones were at the front because they were faster, which meant they were all going to …
The townsfolk turned and ran like the blazes.
Stanley screamed, ‘PULL BACK NOW!’ at the top of his lungs, but the tiger-men’s charge was speeding up and their roars drowned his voice.
Dunvice heard him though and dropped to all fours, leaping just as she reached a suspiciously neat spread of heather and grass. Seeing her spring, many of the tiger-men copied. Not so the Grimm guards.
Three of them, either too stupid to realise or going too fast to pull back, plunged into the pit that opened up under their thundering feet. The first wave of tiger-men went with them.
Stanley seethed with fury. He had lost most of his first line, though it could have been far worse.
Jibbit clung on to Stanley’s helmet as the CO charged to the left, spotting a narrow wall between two pits where he could cross. As he went by, he looked down. Most of the victims were dead, thanks to the spikes at
the bottom. Those that weren’t soon would be. Hopefully for them.
Dunvice howled a war cry, rallying the tiger-men to her. She led the way, charging over the last stretch of ground towards the clover fields on the edge of Hilfian where the townsfolk had stopped running and regrouped. Where they stood now, their weapons ready, watching a tide of death pour towards them.
Watching the tide of death pour down the hill, Taggit, leading the townsfolk army, tried not to let fear take hold. He knew about Strood’s army of tiger-like warriors from Skerridge, and had even passed it at a distance on his way to Hilfian, but knowing about it in his head, and seeing it hurtling towards him in all its golden-coated, deadly-eyed glory were two very different things.
Worse, he could feel the townsfolk around him beginning to doubt their ability to stand against a force this great. He didn’t want them to lose courage, they would need every ounce if they had any hope of surviving.
‘Hold yer ground,’ yelled Taggit, determined to ignore the growing panic pressing in around him as the townsfolk stared into the savage teeth of the approaching enemy. ‘Let them come to us …’
As if anybody was likely to charge!
There was movement at the rear and the wedge of townsfolk opened, heads turning as someone strode through them towards the front line.
‘Jonas?’
The boy just kept on walking. It had to be Jonas, it looked like Jonas, and yet … He seemed taller, older and stronger and even his old black coat had taken on the look of dark iron. You could almost hear it clank like armour. And no Quick ever burned with power like that. It came off him in a wave of light that swept over the band of Quick.
‘Galig’s teeth!’ muttered Taggit, standing aside. ‘What’s come over ‘im?’
Jonas raised his arms, both hands folded around a great sword rimmed with white fire. Behind him, the townsfolk raised their own weapons. The light broke into glimmers that settled over the villagers, sinking into them. Changing them. Suddenly, the Quick looked less like Quick and more like Grimm. The Grimm looked … terrifying. Galig had brought the spirit of his army with him and that spirit was giving them strength.
Taggit felt exhilaration sweep through him. This was real magic. Sorcerer magic, forged in the old world of Celidon where Fabulous walked the Land and the sorcerers were the greatest of the Fabulous. And it was on their side.
Jonas didn’t stop, he just kept on going, holding the sword aloft as his pace increased until he was running, charging to meet Strood’s army as it hurtled towards them across the grass.
A massive roar rose from the throats of the townsfolk as they fell in behind the shade of Galig, stampeding towards the enemy.
Although Jonas had no control over anything his body did, he could see the misty shades of the past warriors as they settled over the townsfolk, giving them strength and skill beyond anything they had prayed for. And more. As his vision adjusted and he saw more clearly through Galig’s eyes, it was soon the townsfolk who were shadows.
He could see now how Galig’s army must have looked in the past, when his warriors were alive and at their peak, and stared in astonishment at row upon row of long-dead Fabulous he would never see in real life.
There were ranked hordes of roaring, chain-mail-clad goblins and werewolves that streamed over the ground in a flood of shadow. There were steel-clad sorcerers, and elves too, tall and willowy with shining skins. There were things that Jonas could not name but that made him shudder, things with beaks and talons and eyes like night, and things that ran in a spiderish way that made him want to look elsewhere fast.
Jonas thought that, if Galig was using him as a bridge to channel all this Fabulous strength into the present, it was going to be a very short battle.
Until he saw the opposition.
Strood’s goblins loomed from the charging horde like solid, spiked-ball-on-a-chain-waving, metal mountains. His armoured Grimm bristled with gleaming weapons. But it was the tiger-men that made Jonas’s heart clench with fear. Their gold and dark mass covered every inch of ground, they were so many. The flood was so vast that even though the front of the army was almost at the foot of the hill, there were others still cresting the rise, pouring over it with no end in sight.
The horde was close enough now for him to see the bared needle teeth and unsheathed claws. In that last second before the two armies met and clashed together, the heat of breath and burning energy from the tiger-men hit Jonas like a wave. All he could see was their purple eyes, on fire with excitement at the thought of killing.
As strong as Galig’s Fabulous army had been in the past, it was still only a ghost army in the present, fighting through the bodies of living Quick and Grimm. Jonas could only hope that it brought enough of its old glory with it to help them survive.
The tiger-men sprang with easy grace, their muscles like steel under the silken coats, their fangs bared in a roaring scream of eagerness for the fight. Then, as the armies finally came together, everything became a blur of action around him, full of savage tiger faces and glinting metal, the sound of shouts and snarls and clashing steel. He saw Taggit whirling a great axe, his skin shining with sweat as he faced a goblin as massive as himself; and Jik battling with another, a female. Jik was doing a good job of keeping his enemy confused, jumping over her and diving into the earth, then springing out like a leaping fish right under her nose. She had already wounded herself badly by getting tangled up in her own spiked ball-and-chain.
In the background was a medley of battle-stained Quick and Grimm, their faces strained, but their eyes alight with the power that Galig had given them. And everywhere was the rippled flood of the tiger-men, drenched in blood and pouring against Jonas in waves, all claws and fangs and savage eyes. In Jonas, Galig sliced through them as if they were made of mist, the white-hot sword in his hands weaving a pattern of light against the darkness of pressing bodies and shedding drops of fire that cut like knives. The noise of screaming, of metal on metal and metal on flesh, and the heat, and the stink of burning and of blood like hot iron was overpowering.
And then, Galig stumbled on a rock and fell to one knee. The rock uncurled and looked at him.
‘Is magic,’ it mumbled nervously, glancing at the sword, then rolled aside, tucking its head back under its paws.
Galig bent, caught it up and threw it to a batteredlooking Floyd who had just lost his weapon.
‘Here friend, use that,’ cried Galig above the screaming and howling. ‘It might as well be good for something.’
And then, suddenly, a huge shape loomed, so close it seemed to fall on him, its bulbous face seamed on one side by a network of burns from the fire shed by Galig’s sword, its mouth open in a snarl of yellow teeth and its eyes hot with rage. Jonas heard the whistle as Hathor, Strood’s giant-Grimm, whirled a spiked ball at his head about to take him down. In that moment Jonas saw the weapon hurtling through the air towards him, dark iron slick with blood and traces of hair, but it was coming too fast for him to leap aside or parry the blow. A splitsecond before it cracked his skull, something shot out of the ground, something that looked like the Land come alive, made of earth and glinting with crystal.
‘Jik!’ he shouted as the mudman smashed into the giant-Grimm’s face and sent it reeling, dragging the spiked ball with it. Taggit leapt in, with Floyd at his side, and all their shapes were lost in the struggling crowd, leaving Jonas shocked at how near his body had come to death. Galig might be the shade of a sorcerer-king with a magic sword, but he was fighting in a Quick’s body.
They fought on, and soon Jonas began to lose track of everything but the sword he was holding and the relentless onslaught of the enemy. As Galig’s Fabulous spirit and magic sword cut through the tiger-men in droves, Jonas felt every blow and injury, until it was all one long blur of shape and sound and colour and pain.
At last, on the horizon behind the town of Hilfian, the sky turned to liquid gold as the sun began to drown in a sea of its own light, and Jonas felt the wrench as Gal
ig stepped away.
The sword became too heavy to hold up any more and he staggered, going on to one knee. Looking up, he saw the shade of the Sorcerer-King standing over him. The white-hot light was fading and the shape of Galig was just a silver outline on the air.
Jonas glanced around. The battle was still going strong and he felt cold fear as he realised it was far from done. Half the townsfolk Quick were dead, and many of the Grimm too. The Fabulous werecat was gone and only one of the goblins remained besides Taggit. Strood had lost many of his Grimm guards, and both Fabulous goblins. As he scanned the field, Jonas could see the half-werewolf Dunvice taking on a group of townsfolk, and the two goblin-Grimm, Stanley and Floyd, silently fighting each other. But the worst thing was the tiger-men. With Galig’s help they had killed so many, the creatures were piled high, but every townsfolk left alive was matched by at least two tiger-men. And they were tireless, still seething with the desire to kill, whereas the townsfolk were exhausted.
And now they were losing Galig’s power too. Jonas could see it, sparking out over the battlefield in flashes of dying light.
‘I wish I could stay,’ breathed Galig, his eyes dark holes in the silver shape, ‘but my part is over and I thank you for it. It felt good to be alive again for one last hour.’
‘And I thank you,’ gasped Jonas. ‘Without you we would have died for sure. There were so many!’
Galig’s last trace was fading now, nothing left but the eyes and the voice.
‘Great Merlin be with you,’ he said, and then the light went out, the shade of Galig was gone and the sword was just a useless lump of metal.
28