The Others ran straight into it, as if oblivious to their peril, and they went to the final death in their hundreds once more. The stench was almost overpowering, and a thick pall of greasy smoke hung over the moor for a hundred yards around.
And still they came, marching, almost running, through the corrosive rain, burning and melting even as their lower limbs dissolved into the muck and gore beneath them.
“’Tis folly, I tell you,” Fitz said. “He will soon have no army left.”
“Either that, or we will run out of garlic and silver,” Martin said grimly. “Harold…see if that smart brother of yours has an answer.”
The boy left at a run across the defensive circle, but even as Martin turned back to look at the advancing army he could see that there were fewer blue flames rising from the Others. The garlic was still doing its work, but it seemed they were almost out of silver.
“Look sharp, troopers!” Martin called. “It looks like this might turn into a fight fit for men of the Watch after all.”
More Others were making it through the wall of water, their flesh sloughing off them. Several even made it to within five yards of their defenses before Martin ordered a volley of fire to send them to the ground.
“I never thought I’d pity an Other,” Fitz said, “but if we have to fight them like this, we are little better than they are.”
Martin was watching the press of Others keenly.
“Better man our own bellows, Fitz,” he said. “It seems Master Hillman’s cannon is running short of ammunition.”
And still the Others came on.
They pressed forward over the melted and molten bodies of their fallen, those that made it through the curtain of water already leaving sloughed patched of flesh behind them. But closer to the defenders, where the ground was less sodden, they were beginning to make faster progress…so much so that Martin and Fitz were forced to man the bellows.
Once more the stench became overpowering, and soon both Fitz and Martin began to tire at the strain, both physical and mental. Martin called for troopers to take their place as they stepped down.
Megan was at their side immediately, thrusting a flagon of ale at each of them.
“Well, darling,” Fitz said. “I’ll never let you say again that I never take you anywhere.”
She planted a wet kiss on Fitz’s head.
“Just let us get out of this alive,” she said. “And I’ll never leave the inn again.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” both Fitz and Martin said in unison, and they both laughed, but soon stifled the sound as Harold Hillman arrived at a run.
“Edward had less than two minutes left of the garlic,” he said. “And the silver is all gone.”
“Then we had better get back to our posts,” Fitz said, draining the beer in one smooth motion.
“Aye,” Martin said grimly. “And start praying that Cumberland does not tarry on his way.”
The three highland guardsmen had just reached the top of the stairs when Sean caught the last trailing Other by the neck and twisted, hard. The noise the neck made as it broke was loud in the sudden quiet.
The twice-dead body fell at Sean’s feet, but killing it had given the remaining two a chance to prepare. The pair of them stood at the top of the stairs, their swords raised. Behind them Sean saw Mary Campbell. She stood perfectly still, her eyes still seeing somewhere else, somewhere long ago and far away.
The Others were perfectly silent as they pressed their attack. Sean was better prepared this time. He swung himself to the left, leaving one opponent’s slash to cleave nothing more than thin air.
The Other swung high, and, instinctively, against all his Watch training, Sean caught the sword in his hand, grabbing it tight as he punched his own weapon into the Other’s exposed heart.
The Other fell aside, and Sean dropped its weapon, just in time to parry a blow that would have taken his head off had it connected.
His opponent pressed him, hard, in a flurry of steel clashes that kept Sean on the back foot. Over his opponent’s shoulder he saw the bloated Other Falkirk come up the steps and take Mary Campbell’s hand, leading her away.
“No. Not again!” Sean shouted, and stepped into the attack. Their swords flashed, sending white sparks flying. Sean left himself open to an attack, and took the Other’s sword deep into his side. He leaned over and pulled the Other’s weight with him, heaving it off balance. A backhand chop from his own weapon nearly severed the Other’s head from its shoulders, and a second finished the job.
Barely pausing, Sean pulled the sword from his side and leapt down the staircase. He caught the bloated Other full in the back, punching his sword completely through the body. The Other fell away, turning, and Sean saw that he had hit the heart. Blood poured from the Other in furious gouts, flowing down the staircase in a river of steaming gore.
“An unfair blow,” Falkirk said in a whisper, “I had thought better of you.”
Sean was about to reply, then found it was too late…the Other was full dead.
Sean was alone on the staircase with Mary Campbell, and he realized he did not know what he should do next.
The Boy-King spoke in his head once more.
Guard her well, the voice said. I will come for her soon.
Harold Hillman had been right. The garlic for Edward’s water cannon ran out little more than two minutes later, and Martin saw with dismay that he and Fitz only had two barrels left for their own weapon.
“Pick your targets carefully!” Martin shouted, “And keep your discipline. Cumberland is coming, and this night cannot last forever.”
“No,” Fitz muttered so that only Martin would hear. “It will just feel like it.”
“Just remember, old man,” Martin said, “there is an inn waiting for you in Milecastle.”
“Aye,” Fitz said with a grim smile. “And ’tis a price worth fighting for.” He turned towards Harold Hillman. “Come, young sir. Your brother played his part. Now it is your turn…the men need a fighting song. Have you one at hand?”
The lad started up “The Men of the Watch”, quietly at first, but his voice soon rising until it echoed across the battlefield. All around the circle the troopers joined in, bashing weapons, palms and feet against the carts in time to the music.
Martin raised his voice and joined the chorus as the Others began to pour through the curtain of water. Smoke rose from the feet of some, but none were slowed as they came on at a rush. For several minutes Martin and Fitz managed to keep them at bay with their bellows, but all too soon there was a dry sucking sound as the final barrel ran dry.
Fitz dropped his end of the bellows and took up the blunderbuss once more.
“We will share a beer or three when this is over, my Thane,” he said.
Martin nodded as he started to load a pistol.
“Aye. I believe I’ve got a thirst that would give old Menzies a run for his money.”
“Then I’d better work up one of my own,” Fitz said as he raised the huge gun to his shoulder. “For surely I cannot bear to see a man drinking alone.”
Then there was no more time for talk as the air filled with gunshot and smoke once more. The acrid stench of powder stung in Martin’s nostril and throat, and his wrist ached as the recoil from his pistol jarred, again and again.
On their arc of the circle the defenders were keeping the Others at bay, but on the far side the defense was less successful. Hand to hand fighting was already breaking out. Harold Hillman was standing behind the line with one of Edward’s water sacs over his shoulders, darting forward occasionally to squirt garlic water at any attackers in range. Martin saw that the troopers would not be able to hold on much longer.
“Every third man from me, fall back,” he called, and jumped down from the cart. He led six men to the defense of the weak spot and immediately found himself face to face with a drooling Other. Martin fired a pistol full of silver shot into its face and dropped the pistol as the creature fell away…it would be
no use in a close fight. He pulled a stake from the bandoleer of the man next to him and let the next Other throw itself forward. Martin used its own weight against it, and needed little force to push the stake all the way to its heart.
Two more Others replaced it immediately, and the men on either side of Martin fell at the same time, both badly bitten.
“Fall back!” Martin called. “Leave the carts, fall back to a square!” The men fell back quickly, but even then they lost another two troopers before the square was formed…six men on a side in three ranks each, one row kneeling and two standing staggered slightly beside each other.
The advancing Others had fallen on the horses the troopers had been forced to leave behind, and the squeals from the doomed animals were terrible to listen to.
Some of the troopers started shooting the horses to save them further misery, before Martin ordered them to stop.
“Save your shot,” he called. “We will have our revenge soon enough.”
Martin waited until the Others started to pour over the carts before he gave the order.
“Rapid fire in time,” he called.
The kneeling troopers fired first, followed at four-second intervals by the half of the rear row, then a further four seconds later by the other half. Then the kneeling men were ready again. In the small area in the center of the square Megan and the Hillman boys doled out shot and powder.
Martin saw with grim satisfaction that the shot was having the desired effect and the bodies of the Other’s were beginning to form a wall that the rest of the attackers were having to clamber over.
The noise was deafening, and the afterimage of the barrel-flashes left imprints that were visible for long seconds afterwards. Among the clambering Others the recently bitten horses were starting to rise, red-eyed, from the ground. Fitz blew the head off one with the blunderbuss and Martin put a patchwork of shot between the eyes of another. The defenders poured volley after volley into the ranks of the Others, and one after another they went to the final death.
It wasn’t long before Martin began to hear the words he’d been dreading.
“I’m out of shot,” a trooper to his right said.
Sean led a docile Mary Campbell down the stairs past the deflated body of the bloated Other, being careful not to tread in the pool of gore.
I have finally gotten her back, Sean thought. Now I don’t know how to save her.
He led her out of the tower. Far away to the east he heard a muffled rumbling. It might have been thunder, but Sean knew better.
He realized he was not even breathing heavily. He had bested four Others, five if you counted the bloated one, and he was not even sweating. What’s more, his wounds did not bleed. In fact, they were already healing.
Mary Campbell moaned, and something in her jerked, as if she was a marionette being made to dance. Her face contorted in pain, and she fell to the ground, her feet drumming on the soil. Sean had never felt so helpless. He leaned forward, unsure of what he meant to do, just as the woodsman’s song filled his head once more and a vision hit with such force that he staggered and almost fell.
He is on the rock altar back in the woodsman’s town, and his friend Lennan gives blood that Sean might live
…he is on the shores of the black loch and the serpent gives water that Sean might change
…he is in Alexander Seton’s cottage as the old man tells him about the Grand Arcanum …he sees the blood of Baphomet turned to ash in his hands
…he feels once again the sharp bite in the shoulder he sustained in the initial attack on Milecastle
…and finally he hears the water serpent’s words once more
…All is one and we are one and we are all together.
He knew what he had to do. He bent and took Mary Campbell in his arms.
Out on the moor Martin realized that the situation was getting desperate. Nearly half of the men were now out of ammunition, and the Others were no longer confined beyond the ring of carts. The advancing horde was less than ten yards away when Martin himself ran out of shot. He turned for more, but Harold Hillman showed him only open palms. Slowly the noise of musket fire lessened until all was quiet. The Others’ army surrounded the small square of defenders, and they had lost all the main weapons in their armory.
“Let us see how many we can take with us!” Martin shouted. “And let us die as men of the Watch!”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” a voice said. The army of Others stopped moving forward and they moved aside as the Boy-King came forward, surrounded by a guard of twelve Highlanders in full battle dress.
“You fight well, my cub,” the Boy-King said, stepping forward. He looked no more than a pale youth, gaudily dressed more for dancing than for fighting, the tartan of his kilt too colorful, the frills of his shirt too feminine. Martin grinned as he saw the crusted blood at the Other’s eyes and ears.
“I am no longer a cub,” Martin said, stepping forward. Fitz put a hand on his shoulder, but Martin pulled it away.
“We will end this here, one way or another,” Martin said to the innkeeper. “If needs must, you will see that the boys at least stay full-dead?”
Fitz nodded and patted the barrel of the blunderbuss.
“I kept one load of shot, just for that purpose,” he said. “But it will not come to that. I feel it in my water. A change has come.”
“Not yet,” Martin said, taking a stake in his right hand. “But soon.”
He stepped forward to meet the Boy-King.
Sean Grant held Mary Campbell up, and offered her his neck. He didn’t feel any pain as her fangs pierced his skin and she began to feed.
The Boy-King laughed out loud.
“Ah, my bride is finally taking pleasure in her lover. When she is sated, she will be ready.” He turned to Martin. “You will have a new Prince, my cub.”
“I have told you before. I am no cub,” Martin said, and with the full force of his arm threw the stake straight at the Boy-King’s heart, then was dismayed to see one of the guards step in front of the missile.
The guard fell, full dead, and the Boy-King smiled broadly.
“One day you will do the same for me,” he said.
“A pet may turn on its master,” Martin replied.
“Not if it loves him,” the Boy-King said with a smile. “Come to me.”
The Other stretched out a hand, and Martin stepped forward to take it.
“No!” he heard Harold Hillman shout.
Sean Grant was getting weaker. His skin had taken on a gray pallor, and was beginning to flake and crumble, just like the eye of Baphomet had earlier.
I am the balance, he said, and, with the last of his strength sunk bloodless fangs into Mary Campbell’s neck and let their blood mingle.
Martin took the Boy-King’s hand, just as he saw a deep fear take hold in the Other’s eyes.
“No!” the Other shouted and started to pull away.
“Yes,” Martin replied.
I am the balance, he said, and tore his newly sprouted talons through the flesh of the Boy- King’s arm.
The Other pulled away, leaving a chunk of pale flesh behind, and turned, first walking, then running, his guard following several steps behind.
Martin was too shocked to speak, let alone move. He felt a cold breeze hit his face, then Harold Hillman shouted.
“Cumberland! Cumberland! The Duke has come.”
And on the breeze, the bugles and drums of the Protector’s advancing army marched onto the field of Culloden.
“Quartermaster,” Martin said as he strode back to where his cheering troopers waited. “I need a horse if I am to catch the Maid before he flees.”
“I’ll find us two,” Fitz said, and left at a run. All around them Others were fleeing the field, leaderless and in abject terror.
“You defeated him,” George Hillman said, and Martin had no doubt that a song was even now being born in the boy’s head.
“No. Not me. Something else,” Martin repl
ied. “But the night is not over yet. I intend to catch him, and send him down to his final death.
“I want you to stay with Megan,” he said to the boy. “I will find you when it is over.”
Just at that Fitz returned, riding a huge gray charger and leading four more horses behind.
“All I could find at such short notice, my Thane.”
Martin leapt up onto the nearest mount.
“I go after the Maid!” he shouted, and his troopers cheered. “The rest of you should find an officer in the protector’s army and report to him. Fitz. You have the command.”
“Not I, sir,” the innkeeper said. “I go with you.”
Martin noticed that Megan and the Hillman Boys had taken the other mounts.
“It seems the family rides together,” Megan said.
Martin signed, but his heart was glad as he urged his horse forward and set off in pursuit of the Boy-King, with Fitz leading the other three behind him.
Sean Grant dreamed, of a man and woman, sleeping contented in each other’s arms, a child sleeping between them. The child begins to rage and scream, a temper tantrum like no other, but together, the man and woman sing a lullaby. Slowly, gently, the child calms, until it too sleeps, and all three are rocked in velvet warmth.
The ride was like a journey through hell. Others were trying to flee the field, but Cumberland’s forces had then hemmed in on all sides. Martin could see huge carts carrying massive sets of bellows, the spray from them soaking the ground all over the moor, leaving the Others no escape as ranks of red-coated soldiers followed beneath the spray, each with his own sack of deadly fluid to send any survivors to their doom.
Light was just beginning to leech into the eastern sky. Dawn was coming.
“We have won the day!” Fitz shouted.
“Aye!” Martin called back, urging his mount faster, “But look, we are behind Cumberland’s main force.”
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