by Dan Davis
‘Our only hope was in reaching my tower before the soldiers did,’ Bede said again, staring off. ‘The stones create certain resonances that greatly enhance my protection spells. Even if I were inside, thanks to you I have lost the source of power needed to create and maintain them. That damned dragon.’
‘The dragon?’ she was confused. ‘You mean Burp?’
‘Burp?’ Bede looked at her then. ‘You call that creature Burp?’
‘Keeper calls him that so that’s what we call him, too. So why should we not...’ she started.
‘You are fools,’ Bede cried. ‘And I am the greatest fool of all for allowing you to escape with that evil creature. Now that imp Hopkins has it, which means soon Cromwell will have it and then it will be sent to the Tower of London where that maniac Dee will fumble with it and probably destroy the entire world.’
‘Destroy the world?’ Writer said. ‘Our Burp? But he’s just a little...’
‘It is the most dangerous creature that ever walked the earth,’ Bede said, staring at his tower. ‘But I can do nothing to get it back.’
‘So you cannot save the Vale?’ Writer asked, shaking with frustration.
‘I cannot save the Vale, no,’ Bede said, turning to stare at her. ‘But you can.’
The Battle of the Vale
‘That’s where Burp is,’ Keeper said, pointing through the trees at a covered wagon in the centre of the soldier’s camp. The three of them were crouched in a ditch at the edge of a copse of trees close to the Tower, which loomed over them upon its great rock plinth.
Archer leaned his shoulder on the ash trunk he was crouched behind and looked out. The soldiers were camped in the fields at the base of the plinth in the shadow of the tower. They had dug an earth rampart around their camp with a ditch in front of it in a big square shape. The land this close to the river was mostly flat but the copse they were hiding in was slightly higher than the surrounding land and they could see over the low defences and into the camp. It was full of men’s voices and banging noises and it smelled of unwashed people and horse manure. There were dozens of canvas tents and horses and men everywhere inside. Keeper was certain that Burp was where the wagons were collected together, which made sense.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Archer asked Keeper.
Another cannon boomed from the landship in the centre of the camp. A cloud of purest white shot out. The cannonball crashed into the tower wall. It did not seem to do any damage.
‘You don’t have to help me.’ Keeper said.
Archer turned to Weaver. ‘You don’t have to do this either.’ Archer knew she did not like Keeper much, she thought he was stupid and weak and she had been wary of Burp was so it would be strange if she were willing to risk her life for the two of them.
‘I’m going,’ Weaver said, staring at the soldiers. She said no more.
Archer wished he had his bow in his hand but it was lying smashed to bits in a Morningtree alley. It would have been useless in a fight against hundreds of soldiers and a metal landship but the familiar feel of the wood beneath his palm would have helped calm him. He slapped the ash trunk and stood.
‘Come on,’ Archer said. ‘No point waiting.’
Keeper and Weaver stood too.
‘Archer,’ said Weaver, and then paused.
‘What?’ Archer asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, looking down.
Archer led them out from the trees and down the slight hill in the shadow of a hedgerow toward the camp. Soldiers dotted the field but Archer hoped the hedge would hide them for as long as possible. Every unseen step forward was a moment shorter that he’d have to maintain the white wind that he hoped would save their lives.
One of the soldiers standing watch saw them. He was looking back at the tower and the landship and they were only a few paces away, so close that Archer was starting to hope that they would walk right by without him noticing but then he snapped bolt upright, eyes popping in surprise.
‘Oit!’ the soldier shouted. ‘Hold up there.’
‘Ignore him,’ Archer said to the others and he kept up his pace, aiming to swerve around on the far side of him. As they drew closer, Archer saw that the skinny soldier did not seem to be very much older than they were. He had spots on his face and fluff on his top lip and he pulled his musket awkwardly to his shoulder.
‘Stop there. You... you can’t come this way, you... you ignorant peasants.’ The boy-soldier’s voice was breaking.
‘There’s no problem,’ Archer shouted. ‘We’ve been asked come along to meet with Hopkins.’ He smiled as though he were totally confident. With any luck the bird-brained fool would lead them right into the camp.
They did not have any luck.
‘Oit, stop, stop!’ the boy-soldier shrieked.
‘Keep walking,’ Archer said to the others.
‘Stop or I’ll shoot you,’ the boy-soldier said, his voice shaking. He took his musket from his lap and held it in quivering hands.
‘He won’t shoot,’ Archer said to Weaver and Keeper. ‘Look how scared he is.’
‘You’re them, aren’t you,’ the soldier said. ‘They warned us about you. The Children of the Vale. The Alchemist’s Children, ain’t you. They said we was to shoot you on sight.’ The soldier pulled the hammer back on his musket.
‘He’s going to do it,’ Weaver said.
‘Halt, I said,’ the boy-soldier screamed and aimed his musket.
‘Archer!’ Weaver shouted.
He brought up the wind and blasted the soldier backwards and driving him to the ground.
The musket banged and coughed a cloud of smoke straight upwards.
Soldiers across the field pointed at them and shouted to each other and started running towards them.
‘That’s that, then.’ Weaver said.
‘We’ll run into the camp as far as we can before using our abilities.’ Archer said and they all ran forward towards the black earth bank across the field. ‘But if anyone’s going to shoot, tell me.’
A musket banged from across the field and Archer ducked, half expecting to get hit. Another banged above them from the earth bank, fired by a soldier kneeling atop the low rampart. Then a few more went off almost all together from further away along the same rampart. A whole line of men had fired at them and the musketballs slapped into the high twigs and branches of the dense hedgerow beside them. Men were shouting all around them.
‘Archer,’ Weaver said between breaths. ‘You’re supposed to protect us.’
‘I know,’ Archer said but still he wanted to wait as long as possible before using his ability. There was only so much he could do and he had to save it. Archer charged forward toward the narrow, shallow ditch at the bottom of the bank and leapt over it, landing on the bare earth of the rampart, his feet and hands sinking in to the crumbling clay. As he scrambled upwards he felt Weaver and Keeper land behind him. One of them shouted a warning and he looked up to see a row of soldiers at the top aiming their muskets down at them, the black circles of the barrels brought to bear. Someone was shouting Ready! Aim!
Archer cleared the men above from the wall with a blast, scattering their unfired muskets into the air like matchwood. He kept the wind blowing as he crawled up the short slope. At the top he looked down and across the army camp. Rows and rows of tents. Groups of skittish horses. Men running here and there shouting at each other with officers atop horses gesturing all over the place. Piles of weapons and equipment. The landship was way over the other side, firing yet another cannonball at the tower.
‘There,’ Keeper was yelling into his ear over the roaring of the wind and the banging muskets and shouts of angry soldiers. Archer followed Keeper’s outstretched finger to the area with many wagons parked together. ‘There’s Burp’s wagon. The one with the dark covering.’
‘You sure?’ Archer shouted back.
Keeper nodded.
Archer gathered his strength, checked his friends were with him and charged down the
far side of the rampart. There was no ditch on the camp side but there was a pile of groaning soldiers who had been blown backwards into a heap. Archer danced his way through, keeping the wind up and ready to push back anything that threatened them.
On they ran through the lines of tents. Anyone in the way got blasted aside. Few soldiers seemed ready for fighting or even defending themselves. Many were sitting around their camp fires, cleaning their soldier things or mending their clothes. Archer threw group after group out of the way and scattered their campfires everywhere in showers of sparks and embers.
They were almost at the wagon park when they burst out from the rows of tents into the main thoroughfare of the camp. The road was nothing more than a dirt track that had been churned into a morass of bootprints, hoofprints and landship tracks and the sticky mud squelched under foot as Archer skidded to a stop.
A double line of musketmen blocked the way down the road. They were away down the road lined up shoulder to shoulder in two rows; rear row standing and front row kneeling. A captain stood at one end of the line with his sword drawn and raised in the air. ‘First rank! Aim!’ He brought his sword slashing down through the air. ‘Fire!’
Archer threw out his arm and blasted them just as the muskets all banged together coughing out a series of bright white clouds and their deadly hail of lead musketballs.
The men were further away than his wind could reach but the musketballs hit the wall of wind and they were slowed and fell short into the mud.
‘Second rank!’ the captain was shouting. ‘Aim!’
‘Come on, Archer.’ Weaver dragged him into the protection of the parked wagons. The muskets banged, firing down the road behind them, musketballs ripping through the air where he had just been standing.
‘Come on, you idiot,’ Weaver said and shoved him forward. ‘Keeper’s that way.’ She pointed and Archer saw his friend darting between two parked wagons. They ran after him. There were shouts coming from all around now and Archer bumped into Weaver who crashed into Keeper who was tugging on a rope that was looped over a covered wagon.
‘This is it,’ Keeper shouted as Weaver helped Archer to his feet. ‘Burp is in here.’
There was a deep rumbling growl from inside the wagon and it banged, rattled and shook and rocked, the wooden frame creaking and heaving.
‘Are you sure that’s Burp?’ Archer. ‘Sounds... big.’
‘Hold on, Burp, it’s me,’ Keeper said. ‘We’re getting you out of here.’
‘Archer.’ Weaver spun him round by the shoulders to see three soldiers run from behind another wagon, kneel in a row and level their muskets. Archer took a deep breath and flung them back into the wagon behind them, knocking them senseless. One of the muskets banged as it was tossed away but it fired harmlessly into the muddy ground.
More soldiers charged in, from in front and behind them and Archer forced them back at the same time, sucking the wind in from right above him, channelling it down around him and his friends and blasting the soldiers back. But as they fell back, more came from other directions, weaving their way through the jumble of wagons so that Archer was channelling the wind outwards in all directions. In the calm centre there was him and Weaver and Keeper, and Archer was aware that they were busy with the wagon, trying to free Burp but it was all he could do to maintain the flow. The wind roared past them like a river, throwing back anyone who tried to close in on them.
It was too much. He could not maintain. The white wind was leaving him; he felt the cold fire in his heart fade slowly, slowly. The roar of the wind lessened and lowered in pitch from a scream to a flutter. He closed his eyes and held on.
‘Weaver,’ he cried, not knowing or seeing where she was. ‘Weaver, your turn now.’
He looked over his shoulder and pried one eye open. There was Burp on top of the wagon. He was huge. Since he’d last seen him mere days ago, the dragon had grown as big as a horse. Keeper and Weaver had somehow uncovered the wagon, opened Burp’s cage and were pulling the dragon down from inside. Pulling on his chains. Burp had an iron muzzle on his face that clamped his mouth shut and he had chains once again wrapped around his stunted wings. His feet, too, were chained together so that all he could do was writhe on his side. He was twisting himself off the end of the wagon and Weaver and Keeper were heaving on the leg chains. Keeper was even redder than usual. Weaver too was sweating with the effort, boots sliding in the mud underfoot but the dragon was almost there, halfway off the wagon and about to drop to the mud.
‘Weaver,’ Archer shouted as the wind faded and faded into nothing. ‘I don’t think I can—’
The wagon exploded.
The Sweetwater Rising
Writer, Cedd and Bede were halfway to the tower when the shooting started. They waded across the Sweetwater at the Tribute Ford, which was little more than a shallow part of the river that linked the north and south parts of the Vale within a mile of Bede’s Tower. The landship kept up the regular cannon fire but the soldiers roaming around the fields between the river and the tower did not approach them. There was an earthen bank either side of the road leading to the ford.
‘Stop here,’ Bede said. ‘I need to prepare our spells.’ He strode up the steep side of the bank and stood on top clutching his Wicungboc, looking at the camp. It was very close indeed, perhaps only half a mile to the defensive wall the soldiers had thrown up and the roaming soldiers were half as far and many seemed to be looking directly at the three of them.
‘Why are they not challenging us?’ Writer asked Cedd and Bede. ‘Those soldiers?’
‘We’re just two old men and a girl,’ Cedd replied. ‘Why bother?’
‘I do not understand how I am supposed to stop all those soldiers. There are hundreds.’ Writer felt a rising panic. She did not want this level of responsibility.
‘Come up and join me,’ Bede said from the top of the earth bank. She and Cedd strode up the wet grass to stand beside him. He was extremely tall and towered over her. From that elevated position they could see into the camp. There were tents and horses and men everywhere. The cannon boomed again and she saw the cloud of smoke.
‘Those infernal machines,’ Bede said, nodding at the landship. ‘The armour on that monster means very little that I can throw at it will have effect. It has two weaknesses. The first is it those iron wheels. They are very wide stops them sinking into the earth. The Alchemists’ Guild designed her very cleverly but the machines struggle on truly sodden ground.’ He cackled nastily.
‘The second weakness is the manner of the propulsion,’ Cedd said. ‘You see the smoke coming from the tubular chimney near to the rear? That is where the fumes escape from the steam engine. A fire inside heats water which escapes as steam, turning a mechanism that drives the wheels. I confess I do not readily understand the concept. I’m sure Bede has a better understanding.’
‘Pah,’ Bede spat. ‘Making a ship sail on land by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.’
One of the cannons on the landship fired at the tower, to no obvious effect.
‘The point is that if we can pour water into that chimney then it would put the fires out,’ Cedd said. ‘Or if the difficulty of getting the water into the chimney is too much then perhaps you could simply soak the earth beneath its wheels and sink the blasted thing.’ Cedd said to her with a tap on his nose.
‘I cannot do such a thing,’ Writer said.
‘You have the greatest natural ability of anyone I have ever seen,’ said Bede, angrily. ‘I have been breeding your family for generations just to create you. I gave you my own carefully altered version of the sacred Elixir while I kept you freorig to preserve your life. And I trained you. You must be the one. In time I shall teach you about the art of magic and you shall be the most powerful magician the world has ever seen. But you have this elemental control woven into the fibre of your being. It is raw emotion and the polar opposite of the art of spellcraft but it is in you. I know you can do this.’
/> ‘No, you don’t,’ Writer said. ‘It is simply too far away.’
‘Too far?’ Bede scoffed. ‘Do not be absurd. Distance does not change the strength of your power.’
‘Yes it does,’ Writer said. She turned to Cedd. ‘When we were in your boat I could only smooth the wave right in front of us. I could not reach further, it as though there is a wall, beyond which my ability fails. I cannot sense the water beyond that distance. I cannot control it.’
Cedd was looking at Bede. ‘Did you not expect this?’
Bede was scowling. ‘The texts made some obscure references to limitations of the ability but it was never clear what they meant.’
‘Well, now you know,’ said Cedd.
The cannon boomed again. Still the soldiers ignored them.
‘What texts?’ Writer asked.
Bede was reluctant to speak to her, as if she had done something wrong and he was offended but after hesitating he answered. ‘Ancient texts. Babylonian. Egyptian. Thousands of years old, copied into Greek and Arabic. Just fragments. References to people who controlled the elements. Particularly those who could control the floods of the Nile and the Tigris and the Euphrates. The great rivers of the East. These people were revered by the common folk for they could bring life-giving water to the fields and they could hold back the flood waters. There is reference to them destroying invading enemy armies with a wave of their hands. They made these people into their Priest-Kings and were worshipped like gods.’
‘Ancient Egyptians?’ Writer asked, looking at the soldiers in their camp. ‘And I am descended from these people?’ The cannon boomed and the smoke poured out before drifting over the landship and dissipated.
‘Who knows? When I was yet young I happened upon a young man who demonstrated a similar though somewhat middling talent but enough to know these folk existed in much reduced form. Over the years I gathered more of them to the Vale. Some were your ancestors. I concentrated these abilities by mixing the strongest of each generation, bringing in outsiders where necessary. Some could move pebbles or blow out candles but it seemed as though I would never find anyone with any true power.’