'Right here.'
The voice came from behind him. Slowly the Libertarian sauntered into view, his sunglasses reflecting the glittering points of lamplight. He spun around the empty chair and sat astride it.
'I must have seen a lot of bad eighties movies,' Church said.
The manufactured flamboyance evaporated and for once the Libertarian stared at Church with cold contempt. 'I am not you.'
'That's not what you said in Beijing.'
'I'm better. Right now I'm what you could never dream of being. In the same way that I could never imagine being you.'
The Libertarian continued to stare. Church was puzzled by the barest hint of emotion in a voice that previously had been all role-playing, and he had the strangest impression, although he did not know why, that behind the Libertarian's sunglasses there were tears in his eyes.
'So you've brought me here to debate our different philosophies?'
The Libertarian laughed; the facade returned. 'Oh, what's the point in that! Any difference will be over very shortly.'
'Not going to happen.'
'Yet here I am. And if there was even the slightest chance of you continuing down the primrose path with your unrealistically idealised world-view, I would not be standing before you.' He waved a finger slowly at Church to emphasise his words. 'Thousands of threads over thousands of years are finally tying together. Oh, if you could only see the full extent of the tapestry you would marvel at the wonder of it all! The rich complexity! I have the luxury of standing on the mountaintop and seeing how a stitch here and another there can create the world we want, while you are mired in the swamp, swatting away insects and wondering when the rain will come.'
With as little obvious effort as possible, Church strained at his bonds.
The Libertarian smiled. 'I know what you're doing. I remember that quite clearly, as I remembered exactly where you would be this day when my agent brought down the darkness. I find I'm remembering more and more the closer we get to the point of transformation.' His lips quirked as if he was tasting something unpleasant. 'A small price to pay, I suppose, for being able to interact with you at these vital junctures.'
'But there are still a lot of variables, aren't there? Or you wouldn't be bothering with me. These x-factors… the little pushes and shoves I'm getting from the Oldest Things in the Land-'
'Forget about those deluded creatures,' the Libertarian snapped. 'Their days are numbered. As you are aware, we have already eradicated one of them. The rest will follow. You cannot understand the magnitude of what we have achieved. The Oldest Things in the Land! Playing their little games since your world was built out of shit and piss. Always a part of everything, always powerful, and now they are falling before us, one by one by one.' He stood up and bowed. 'Our brilliance, incarnate. I thank you!'
'What killed the part of you that cared?' Church asked, sickened.
'You think I am the villain of the piece. I am not. There are no villains in life, my young Jack Churchill. Nor any heroes. There are only people who want the things you want, and people who want the opposite. At the moment, you are caught up with your vision that people would be happier if they were completely free. That, in itself, is a trap. The choices, the striving… they only bring misery. No, better to be happy with your lot. To be content, and at peace. The Mundane Spell… the lack of meaning in everyday existence… surely that is a small price to pay for being content.'
'War, corruption, abuse, sickness-'
'All small prices when seen from the view of humanity as a whole. They do not affect everyone. Most people have steady lives.'
Church thought for a moment, then said, 'Don't you miss Sinatra?'
Pausing, the Libertarian appeared to be struggling to recall something just beyond his grasp. A shadow crossed his face.
' "Fly Me to the Moon"? How about your parents' faces, on a summer day, when you were a kid? Don't you miss Ruth?'
'No!' The Libertarian whirled, his features fixed with anger. 'I thought I had already strangled the life from her in Greece, that's how little I care!'
'Don't you miss the magic, Jack?' Church said quietly.
In a rage, the Libertarian threw the chair to one side with such force that it shattered into pieces. Hurling himself at Church murderously, he pushed his furious face so close that it filled Church's vision. When he spoke, each word had the stab of an assassin's knife. 'I know how much you love her. I know she is the prop that holds your fragile life together. And I know that she is the thing holding you back from reaching your destiny. Which is why I now have her.'
Church flinched as if he'd been hit.
'Do I miss Ruth? I'll show you. First I'm going to torture her till the pain blooms in her face and she can see no good in life. And then I'm going to murder her, slowly and agonisingly, and I'm going to dump her body somewhere you will never find it. No chance for mourning. No closure. Your ravens will peck away at her flesh, and then her bones will yellow, and crumble, and she will be gone, as if she never existed.'
Tears stung Church's eyes. 'I'm going to kill you.'
The Libertarian smiled. 'That's the spirit.'
6
When night fell across the Great Plain before the Court of the Soaring Spirit, the Enemy began its advance. Lost to the gloom, the first sign that Decebalus had of their movement was mounting vibrations in the ground, growing stronger, like the first tremors of an earthquake. The weather had worsened — something to do with the abilities of the remaining Riot-Beast, he guessed — and now torrential rain lashed their ranks and turned the ground around them to a sea of mud.
'They will try to overwhelm us by sheer numbers,' he said as he peered into the dark. 'I am surprised they did not try it before.'
'Perhaps they wisely fear your ultimate deterrent,' Lugh responded. Behind him the silent, unmoving ranks of Tuatha De Danaan warriors glowed a dull gold.
Decebalus eyed him askance. 'You know of that?'
'I am a master tactician, after all. It is what I would have done.'
'But would you have been prepared to use it?'
'Thankfully, I will never have to find out. That is now your burden, Brother of Dragons.'
As a low, mournful call rolled out across the great plain from somewhere in the vicinity of the city walls, Lugh started and looked around hopefully. 'My brother, one of the most powerful of the Tuatha De Danaan. Missing for so long. Is he joining the fray?' When he saw Decebalus's puzzled look, he added, 'In the time of the tribes, he was known as Cernunnos, but your kind have a great many names for him, as befits his status. The Green Man. Jack o' the Green. He walks in the beating heart of nature, and pulses with the lifeblood of Existence.'
'Of course I have heard of him,' Decebalus said. 'He has helped the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons many times. Though, I must say, he has never seemed quite like you Golden Ones.'
'My brother is like us, and is also greater than us. His influence straddles many Great Dominions, as befits one of the Oldest Things in the Land.'
'He is one of those strange creatures, and also one of you?'
'The Oldest Things in the Land are a higher force, and they draw to them those who can help shepherd the ways of Existence.'
'A force for good, then.'
'A force for a plan that transcends the concepts of good and evil that Fragile Creatures love to clutch to their breasts for comfort. The universe is not simple, Brother of Dragons, and its pattern is lost to all of us.'
The mournful howl rolled out again, but was subsumed by the rising tramp of thousands of feet and the pounding of the downpour.
Rain sluicing from his head, Decebalus said, 'Nearly here now.' Flickering lights could now be made out in the dark — the torches of the enemy — stretching as far as Decebalus could see in a horseshoe formation from foothill to foothill around the city. 'Closing in. Nowhere to run.'
'You are a strange being. You sound as if you are almost enjoying this desperate situation,' Lugh said.
&nbs
p; 'We only truly find out what it means to be Fragile Creatures when we are closest to death. Your men are ready for the assault?'
'Of course. This will be as glorious as the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh, when I slew the great Fomorii god, Balor.'
'Then it is time to engage the Enemy.' Pulling his sodden cloak around him, Decebalus strode back to his own ranks where a bonfire hissed and crackled, and pitch-soaked torches struggled to stay alight in the storm. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons sheltered patiently in the tents, looking out of the huge unfurled doors towards the Enemy. As Decebalus moved past them, nodding to the leader of each unit, he saw how alike their expressions were, all of them laced with fear, all trying to hide it, preparing themselves mentally for the battle, knowing that death was likely. Through it all, the Pendragon Spirit blazed in their eyes.
Next to the fire, where everyone could see him, he announced loudly, 'The time has come! We go now to meet the Enemy. Our job is to harry down the middle. We strike fast, retreat, regroup, strike again. We have speed and skill on our side. On your left flank will be the Tuatha De Danaan, well-drilled, relentless. They will find their line and hold it until they or the Enemy are gone. On your right flank will be the brute force we need to blow the Enemy asunder. The Asgardians have more power than sense-' a laugh ran through the group '-and we will use that, along with a few surprises to keep the Enemy on their toes.'
Raising his sword high, he shouted, 'We are Brothers and Sisters of Dragons! Though we die, we live on in the Pendragon Spirit. What we fight for can never be destroyed. This day… this battle… is the reason for our existence. Two thousand years of history leading to this point. Our Brothers and Sisters who are not here are counting on us to drive the Enemy back, to buy them time to save all Existence. We shall not fail. Do you hear me? We shall not fail!'
His voice became a roar that soared up to the heavens, and it was joined by all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, one voice of defiance carrying out across the plain. As he turned, they strode out from the tents behind him, those who had taken the role of cavalry to the horses, the others forming ranks for the ground battle. The fear was gone as if it had been washed away by the rain. There was only determination, come what may.
Decebalus summoned one of the Brothers of Dragons, Andy Cairns, a Scottish archer with black wavy hair and a sword scar on his right cheek. 'Andrew, prepare your archers.'
A moment later a hail of flaming arrows soared across the plain, igniting a liquid that Math had prepared in his tower and which Decebalus had spread in a huge defensive arc around their forces. A wall of fire rose up twenty feet into the air; Math had told him it would burn for at least an hour.
Within fifteen minutes the first lines of the Enemy attempted to break through the fire. Some continued aflame for several paces before they collapsed. Others fell in the midst of the inferno. But wave after wave followed, reminding Decebalus of the red ants he had seen in the forests of Dacia when he was boy; nothing would deter them. Soon the bodies had piled so high they covered the fire-liquid, and the ranks behind rolled over the top of them.
With a roar, Decebalus signalled the attack. To his left, the Tuatha De Danaan washed out in a golden wave, silent, focused, frightening in their intensity. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were only a step behind. At the heart of them, Decebalus swelled with pride, swinging his axe with abandon as he forced his way to the front.
Within moments they crashed against the rocks of the Enemy, and Decebalus was hurled into such a frenzy of flashing weapons and flailing bodies that it was impossible to see anything beyond a zone of a few square inches. Noise filled his world, the endless shriek of metal on metal, the grunts of exertion, battle cries and the screams of the wounded and dying. Tossed around by a heavy swell, he never rested for a second, swinging his axe into heads, shoulder-blades, arms. Bodies crushed tight on all sides. No thoughts came; there was only time for instinct.
The ranks of the Enemy in front of him comprised the Lament-Brood, dead beings from numerous races with swords, axes and spears rammed into their limbs so that they themselves became weapons that could not be killed, for whom wounds meant nothing; the only way to stop them was to dismember them.
Gradually, his thought process adjusted to the blistering pace of battle, a sublime state where everything slowed and he floated amidst the chaos, able to examine the rich detail, and reflect. Blood sprayed in beautiful arcs. Raindrops on armour glittered like diamonds. Blades caught the torchlight as they whirled, trailing gold. Underfoot, the ground churned, became liquid, a swamp of gore and mud sucking at his legs.
His axe removed the top of a skull, then spun and came down to split the face below. As the Lament-Brood warrior dropped to his knees another was already taking his place.
To his left, Decebalus saw a Sister of Dragons battling furiously, glistening black hair slick from the rain. As she was dragged away by the flow of battle, he tried to remember her name. An unusual name. It was important that everyone was remembered, and seen as individuals sacrificing all, not as a resource to be used up to win.
Demelza, he recalled. Monfries.
He nodded, happy that he had marked her place in his mind. To his right, three Lament-Brood warriors surrounded a Brother of Dragons, his ringletted hair and beard plastered with blood. He had no chance, but he kept fighting to the last.
Decebalus struggled to recall the name, cursing himself furiously until it came. 'Stephen,' he said aloud. 'Harding.'
And then Aula was at his side in the white and silver armour of one of the Tuatha De Danaan courts, her blond hair darkened by the rain.
'Here?' he bellowed. 'You are no warrior!'
With her short sword, she hacked off the arm of one of the Lament-Brood as it attempted to drive a spear into Decebalus's chest. 'Answer enough?' she said.
'Not quite, but it will do, for now.'
'Even an uneducated barbarian like yourself deserves someone at your back.'
They exchanged a brief look that said more than they ever had, or ever would, and then the battle sucked them in once more.
For fifteen minutes of furious exchanges, it appeared as if the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons and the Tuatha De Danaan were making no headway against the constant stream of the Enemy; for every one that fell two more took their place. Decebalus saw Redcaps with their clothes of human skin, unrelenting machines of muscle, gristle and bone that exhibited tremendous power and endurance. There were the Baobhan Sith, shrieking spectral figures that shifted shape before attempting to tear out the throats of those nearby; and the Gehennis, shades flapping like sheets in the wind but with more devastating substance than they presented to the world. Towering giants swung clubs that reduced a man to a red mist, while other grotesqueries that he did not recognise ripped apart with claws and teeth.
The explosive bolt of lightning crashed into the Enemy ranks at the point he had planned, when overconfidence had taken the edge off their fighting skills. Body parts rained down from a blackened circle inside which everything had been incinerated. More bolts blasted down at random, bringing fear to the disrupted Enemy ranks.
Decebalus caught the briefest glimpse of Mjolnir smashing through bodies before returning to the hand of its owner, who brought down another lightning bolt before directing the storm towards the Enemy.
Decebalus grinned: the gods had arrived.
Laughing like a madman, his scarred, hairy body completely naked, Tyr waded through the ranks chopping down the Lament-Brood like saplings. Beside him, the Slavic god Perkunas wielded a throwing axe that sent heads flying in unison, while Ares, lost to his bloodlust, had to be continually redirected towards the Enemy so that he did not attack his own side. On a murderous rampage, the Aztecs' Huitzilopochtli tore out the hearts of the living Enemy by plunging his hands into their chests, and the Caribbean war god Ogoun concentrated on the Lament-Brood with his machete, reducing them to quivering chunks of decomposing flesh.
The gods were a whirlwind
of fury and righteous vengeance, and every time Decebalus thought he had seen the last descend into the fray another dropped from the skies or drove a wide, bloody path through the ground troops.
Hundreds of the Enemy were falling by the minute, and despite their numbers they were in disarray and being driven back step by step. Lugh was at the forefront of the Tuatha De Danaan, serious and dedicated, and though covered in gore he still glowed like the sun. Behind him, the Army of all the Courts fought on, shoulder to shoulder, for the first time since they had left their four fabled homes.
About a third of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had fallen, but the rest drove on with renewed energy, faces alight with the Pendragon Spirit.
For the next half-hour, as the Enemy was decimated, Decebalus finally began to believe that despite the odds they could win.
The first sign that events had begun to change was a sudden retreat by the Enemy that left aV of unoccupied ground. Decebalus signalled for the Army of Dragons to proceed with caution; it looked to him as if the Enemy was encouraging them to pursue with abandon, and he never did anything any enemy wanted.
Silence fell across the Enemy ranks, the only sound the beating of the rain on the sea of mud.
'What are they doing?' Aula asked.
'Waiting,' Decebalus replied.
After a moment, the Enemy ranks parted and a ten-foot-tall figure stepped through, his identity at first cloaked by the storm. As he neared, Decebalus recognised him from the description Church had given during one of the numerous briefings: brutish features, part pig, part ass, added an incongruous aspect to the elegant clothes of the ancient Egyptian ruling class. Seth, god of evil and the desert, raised a staff mounted with a single golden eye and a flurry of snow swirled around him.
'Fragile Creatures!' His booming voice sounded like a boulder dragged across gravel. 'My people were great and wondrous, shining stars in the vast firmament of Existence. Yet you destroyed them, and in your arrogance you thought you could do it with impunity.'
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