I am the Balance, he repeated in his mind. It brought him some calm, but it couldn’t remove the taste in his mouth.
At least I had the sense to unload the saddlebags, he thought ruefully. He knew he would have to follow the horse and catch it, but for now he needed ale…several mouthfuls of ale to wash away the foul taste in his mouth.
Only after he had gargled and spat three times was he able to taste beer rather than blood, and he took a last long swig of ale before shouldering the saddle-bags and heading down the hill, following his horses panicked trail.
He didn’t have far to look. The beast had stopped at the small stream and was drinking, its head down. It let Sean mount as if nothing had happened, even though Sean could see the twin punctures at its neck.
Almost as if I were a different man, he thought.
And maybe that is not so far from the truth.
He turned the horse around till they faced north and once more put himself on the trail. He knew that resisting the Boy-King would be hard, but now he held Mary Campbell’s face in his mind, from the night he slept beside her and her eyes filled with tears as she stared blindly at the stars.
Martin led his troop north for three days. They had long since lost sight of any trace of the Others, nor had they had any sign of Sean’s passing, save a solitary pile of horse-droppings…and that had been nearly two days ago.
He was feeling progressively stronger...in body at least. Fitz’s ale and Megan’s pies were beginning to knit his battered body back to its fighting condition. But his mind was another matter altogether.
At night Martin dreamed, fiery fantasies of mayhem and bloodletting. And in the dreams he was not human…he was a wolf…a huge, gray, terrible wolf.
He had told no one, but Fitz and Megan knew something was wrong. One or the other of them was by his side at all times, and in truth he was glad of their company. Their tales of warm sultry days in the Carib seas did much to dispel both Martin’s mood and the biting cold through which they traveled.
But even the pair of them couldn’t sustain his mood forever, and more and more Martin’s daylight thoughts turned to his incarceration in the castle, and his humiliation before the Boy-King.
I nearly killed Sean, he thought. I cannot allow it to happen again.
When those thoughts struck him he got Harold Hillman to sing the Woodsman’s air once more. By the end of the third day he guessed that both Harold and the rest of the troopers were heartily sick of the tune. But it was the only thing standing between him and madness.
Just let me stand before the Other one last time, he thought. I will not be cowed so easily again.
The end of the third day found them in a narrow clearance in the midst of a forest. They had been traveling along an ancient cobbled track, old enough to have been there when Hadrian oversaw the building of the wall.
Martin organized the sentry duty then joined Fitz and Megan by the newly kindled fire. “The men are restless,” Fitz said as he bit into a pie. “They say there is no purpose to this.”
“No purpose!” Martin stood and began to shout. “No purpose? Have you forgotten Carlisle and Derby…and Milecastle? Those men did not all die in vain. We will harry the bastards until Cumberland catches up. Then we’ll put the Boy-King to the final death.”
Martin’s blood was up, and at first he didn’t realize there was laughter all around him.
“See...I told you that would wake him up,” Megan said.
“Aye. You had the right…as usual,” Fitz replied. The quartermaster passed Martin an ale.
“Welcome back, Sire,” he said. “We feared the black mood had taken hold too deep.”
“Deep enough,” Martin admitted. “But not so deep that it can’t be cured by ale and good company. Young Hillman!” he shouted, and for the first time in many days there was a smile on his face. “Give us a song…a different song. Just as long as it’s not ‘The Lay of the Thane.’”
Before long the clearing echoed with loud voices raised in song, and for a while Martin forgot his cares and lost himself in the pleasures of ale and friendship.
But all too soon the troops fell into sleep and there was only the fire for company. And then it was difficult to keep the wolf at bay. Even when he dosed himself with nigh on a gallon of ale, the dreams still came, and in the morning he had a hangover to go with the return of his black mood.
He saw the look of concern pass between Fitz and Megan, and he heard the troopers groan as he called for Harold Hillman. But when the lad struck up the tune, at least he was able to mount his horse and lead out the men.
He’d been worried he might not even get that far.
Sean finally found he was on the right track on the fifth day.
Night was close when he came upon the old keep. He was dog-tired, but the smell of blood immediately woke him, all senses tingling, as once more the Boy-King’s voice filled his mind.
“I found you something that might be more to your liking,” the Other said.
The keep’s door was open, and Sean knew that the source of the blood-smell was there, and it was close. Part of him wanted to get closer to that smell…much closer.
I am the Balance, he told himself again, and he almost believed it…but his legs didn’t. They took him up towards the door so that he could look into the darkness beyond.
There was a body on the floor inside, and Sean’s heart leapt, for at first he thought it might be Mary Campbell. His legs had taken him even closer to the door, so close that he was able to push it further open.
A young girl lay on the stone slabs. From the look of her she was no more than fifteen. She was naked and her heartbeat pounded loud in his ears. He felt saliva pool in his mouth, and spat it out in disgust.
I am the Balance, he whispered, and all compulsion left him.
“I will not be Other,” he said out loud.
The voice of the Boy-King replied in his head, “What makes you think you have a choice?”
The girl’s eyes flashed open…blue to start with but slowly filling from the bottom up with a deep blood red.
“Are boys more to your liking, then?” the Boy-King’s voice said from her mouth. Like a cat the mind-slave came up off the floor and leapt for Sean’s throat.
His training and instinct took over. He had a stake in his hand in less than a second, and in another second the twice-dead body was falling away from him.
“What a waste,” the Boy-King’s voice said, and a smile played on the girl’s lips, even as the life went out of her eyes…blue again. Blue and cold.
Sean fell on the body, staring deep into the already glazing eyes.
“Where are you, you bastard?” he screamed.
And a connection was made.
It is as if Sean has caught the tail feathers of an eagle. He flies over a winter landscape with a dizzying speed, northwards and eastwards, over hill, forest and river until he is looking down on barren moorland. Even as he looks down, pale hands are beginning to push up through the dank ground, a forest of hands, an army of Others rising for one more night.
Jesu help us. There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them.
“Now do you see?” the Boy-King’s voice said. “We have not even begun.”
“I killed your Baphomet once,” Sean replied. “And I will do it again.”
The Boy-King laughed, but this time Sean caught something else in his tone…the first hint of fear.
Sean was still looking down on the moor below.
“Where are you, you bastard!” he screamed, and focused his mind on that of the Boy-King.
Once, when just a boy, Sean had fallen into the cesspit in Milecastle. Looking into the Other’s mind felt just the same. He sensed the Other trying to push Sean out, but he pushed further.
His mind filled with fragmented visions…a pale Other sitting on a tall throne…Mary Campbell in the throes of childbirth…a black fleet of tall ships speeding north against the wind under a night sky…and a horde gathering on that barr
en moor.
“A name. Give me a name!” he screamed. Blackness began to seep into his mind, shutting off the visions, but still he pushed. It felt like his head was trapped in a vise, but, just as the link with the Other finally broke, Sean got the place name. Just one word, but it was enough.
He staggered out of the keep and back into sunlight. His head pounded, worse than a porter hangover, and he had to hold down a bout of nausea in his stomach. But he was elated. He had beaten the Boy-King. And he knew where the Other’s army would be gathering.
He took half an hour to leave a message at the keep…but thought he might have a quicker way of contacting Martin.
An hour later Martin awoke from a deep sleep. At first he didn’t know where or who he was…it had seemed in his dreams that he was Sean Grant, traveling under a starry sky. And in his dream he had talked to himself, of the Boy-King, and the gathering of a great army.
When he awoke he could only remember one word clearly:
CULLODEN!
Chapter 7
NOVEMBER 27, 1745, THE PASS OF GLENSHEE
It was two days later before Martin led his men to the keep to find Sean’s message, but by that time couriers were already well on their way back to the Duke.
“How did you know?” Edward Hillman asked, standing in disbelief at the crude sign nailed to the keep’s door.
CULLODEN. TELL CUMBERLAND HURRY.
“I just knew,” Martin said.
Several of the men made the sign of the evil eye, but Fitz clapped Martin across the shoulder.
“A soldier who doesn’t trust his hunches is no soldier at all,” he said loudly. “And where now, sir?” he continued. “Do we wait for the Duke?”
“No,” Martin said. “The Protector wants us to harry the Boy-King. And harry we shall. My Captain of the Watch is north of us, and it is time we were reacquainted.”
“North it is, then,” Fitz said. “Although I don’t suppose there’ll be any inns in the godforsaken country.”
“’Tis just as well we brought enough ale with us to fuel an army, then!” Megan shouted.
Martin’s mood had been lifting ever since he had received the dream, and now he felt filled with a new purpose.
“Keep the ale ready, milady,” he said. “For we will be riding hard, and will be in need of it at journey’s end.”
For the first time since leaving Stirling he didn’t need the Woodsman’s song…not as sung by Hillman, anyway. The air played in his head, and, to his wonder, he found he could call it up at will when he remembered Sean’s words.
I am the Balance, he told himself. And for once he believed he might be able to keep the wolf at bay.
“Lead them out, Fitz. And no slacking. Let us see if we can pass my Captain on the road.”
Sean traveled north as fast as he was able through the thick snowdrifts, but still there were no signs of any Others.
He passed several keeps that showed signs of recent habitation, but all were now quiet and empty. Not so quiet that he wished to spend a night in any of them, though. He slept in the woods, with the practiced air of a watchman…always alert, even when both eyes were closed.
There had been no more voices…no more attempts by the Boy-King to seduce him.
Mayhap I have given him a fright, he thought, and snorted with amusement. His horse snorted back at him, making him laugh aloud. It sounded out of place in the stillness of the clearing where he’d spent the night.
He felt like he’d been alone forever, in a world bounded only by trees and snow. He had no idea whether Martin had received his message, and at times he thought his mental encounters with the Boy-King were no more than figments of his imagination.
Alchemists and serpents, woodsmen and severed heads that talk…I am living in one of Campbell’s stories, he thought.
But that thought always brought him back to his quest. He knew one thing, at least…he had little option but to stay on his path north. Mary Campbell was in the hands of a great evil and he had promised to save her.
The depth of snow had been getting less for several miles when he realized he was coming down off a high plateau. He descended through thin cloud that slowly evaporated to reveal a rolling vista below.
To his north, some thirty miles distant, a vast loch stretched away into the mist, while over to the east the land fell away to a long open moor. Even as he gazed in that direction Sean knew…that was where the Boy-King was.
And if the Other is there, Mary Campbell will be close by.
He did not have a plan, but if he meant to try to pass for an Other again, he would have to travel on foot from here on. A flesh and blood horse would not let an Other ride on it, and it would give him away immediately.
He unsaddled the horse and slapped its flanks. At first it would not leave him and he had to hit it hard.
“Get off with you!” he shouted. “Or shall I give your neck another bite?”
Almost as if it understood, the horse finally bolted. Sean watched it as it fled…uphill and back along their trail. If Martin was indeed following him, he’d be one horse to the better. Leaving his saddle atop a large stone outcrop, Sean shouldered his saddlebags and headed down the hill.
Two horses met up with Martin’s band less than a day later. On the second was a messenger from Cumberland. The carrier was flushed, and looked almost exhausted, but Fitz pressed food and ale on him, and by the time Martin had read the letter he delivered, the lad looked almost human.
Martin folded the letter, and shouted, so that all his men could hear.
“The Protector means to finish with this Maid once and for all,” he said. “And we are to be the vanguard. He brings his whole strength north…and he wants us to make sure that the Others are held here until he arrives. What say you, men? Shall we ensure that the Maid is suitably prepared?”
His men roared and cheered, but there was tension in Martin’s face as he turned to face Fitz.
“Cumberland is near on a full day behind us,” he said. “And I have orders to press on to Culloden. If what I fear is true, we have just been ordered to hold back the whole dark army. One hundred men against how many thousand?”
“Let us wait until we see the lay of the land,” Fitz replied, clasping a meaty hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Besides, Master Hillman looks like he has a new way of killing them in mind.”
They had made camp beside a pool at the foot of a long, roaring cascade, and Martin was aware that Edward Hillman had been sitting, knee deep in water, for more than an hour now. He was holding a shoulder pack, one of those modified to hose the garlic mixture, under the cascade, and playing with a hose that served as an outlet. Martin noticed that he was managing to send a fine spray of droplets clear across the pond, without having to pump the shoulder bag.
The boy looked up excitedly.
“Let me guess, Master Hillman,” Martin said. “You have an idea?”
“Yes, Sire. If you can find us a running river, I believe I can provide you with a weapon that will fire constantly.”
“Aye, young master,” Fitz said. “But it is a lot of effort for such a small gain.” The look Edward Hillman gave Fitz was almost pitying.
“You don’t understand. If the river flows fast enough, we can power the big bellows to fire even further than a man can pump…and we won’t need to transport barrels…and…”
Martin stopped him. He could already see the weapon in his mind’s eye…and young Hillman did seem to have a truly remarkable knack for putting Others to the final death.
“Tell Fitz what you need, and make it so,” he said, bending to lift the lad from the water. “And get yourself dried off and warmed up. Megan will kill me if you catch the pneumonia.”
Martin left the pair to it, and went to call the troops to horse. He noticed as they broke camp that young Hillman was ensconced in the back of one of the carts, in earnest conversation with two older troopers who looked at him, first with amusement, then with wonderment and respect.
They had only traveled a mile or so when they came across Sean Grant’s horse traveling slowly towards them.
At first Sean kept his mind on heading east, towards the moor, but every time his attention wandered he found himself veering north, towards the large body of water, as if he was being drawn there.
Mary Campbell was to the east, of that he was certain…he could feel it. But something in what he had become was minded to go north, and kept turning him that way, like a compass needle.
I am the Balance, he said, but that only made it worse…he found himself walking north with no memory of having set himself in that direction.
He focused his mind on Mary Campbell, trying to remember every detail of her face, her hair, her eyes…but when he remembered to look at the trail, he found that he was once more heading north.
It looks like someone wants to speak to me.
Someone…or something.
Sean unsheathed his sword and allowed himself to be taken.
If it is a fight the Boy-King wants, then ’tis a fight he will get, he thought grimly.
But in truth, the compulsion he was under did not feel like the work of an Other. It had none of the blackness he associated with the Boy-King’s forays into his mind…none of the feeling of invasion. Instead it was like being a child led by the hand by a doting parent.
He was led in this manner for the better part of a day and a half and night was beginning to fall on the second day when he passed through a thick coppice of trees and found himself standing on the shore of a vast stretch of water.
Barely a ripple broke the still, black surface, as if a sheet of glass lay there, covered by the thinnest film of liquid.
As suddenly as it has come the compulsion disappeared, and Sean looked down to find himself ankle-deep in the shallows. A sudden quiet fell over him, as if all nature had just drawn a breath.
Out in the blackness the water rose in a gray swell…something huge was coming to the surface, then a long neck rose up and a huge head turned to look at Sean. Once more pictures filled his mind…pictures from his recent past.
The Watchers Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 59