Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  Macha was holding out her fat white arms, and the ground was cracking and shivering and a great chasm was opening up, cutting off the charging armies. The horses baulked and showed the whites of their eyes, and Flynn stood up in the saddle to urge them on.

  “Onwards! Over the ravine!” he shouted. “Before it opens any more! ONWARDS!”

  Cormac and Joanna were riding hard at the chasm, spurring on their mounts, but the others were struggling to hold their horses and everywhere people were being thrown to the ground, as the earth continued to shudder and as the ravine widened. Flynn saw Gormgall tumble and go spinning across the undulating earth, and Muldooney fell off his horse and went helter skelter down the hillside, landing headfirst in a muddy ditch. A quiver of amusement touched Flynn’s mind, and he thought: Muldooney going arse over breakfasttime down the hill! But he bit the amusement down, as he saw Muldooney extricate himself from the ditch, and brush himself down, and go plunging off to capture his horse again.

  The Cruithin contingent were rallying, Gormgall running to remount, and through the confusion, Flynn thought he saw Domnall and Ullgall re-forming the others.

  The chasm was twenty feet across now, a great gaping abyss, and it was so deep that it might very well have been bottomless.

  Cormac, bringing his horse alongside Joanna, reached out and took her hand. “Use the cloak!” he cried. “Joanna, use the Nightcloak!”

  Joanna cried, “But what is it? What is she doing?”

  “She is summoning her monsters from the abyss,” said Cormac, his eyes never leaving the squat, repulsive figure of Macha, who was grinning at them. “And when she has done that, she will call up the Erl-King’s Army of Corpses.”

  “But the Erl-King is dead!” cried Joanna.

  “His Army will still walk,” said Cormac. “They will walk for Macha and Scald-Crow, for those two have a little of the necromancers’ powers. They can summon the Army of Corpses.”

  Joanna shuddered, and Cormac turned to look at her. “Use the Nightcloak!” he said again, his tone peremptory, his eyes flashing.

  “No!” said Joanna, and met his eyes squarely and fearlessly and at once, anger flared in Cormac’s eyes.

  “Do it!”

  “No,” said Joanna again, more quietly. “For if I use it now, then I cannot use it later in the battle.” And then, in anguish, “And there may be a greater need.”

  “But if you think that, you may never use it! Joanna, do it!”

  “No!” said Joanna, and now it was Dierdriu’s tone and Dierdriu’s imperious voice. “You cannot command me!” said Joanna, and through the smoke and the noise, saw Cormac’s face soften suddenly.

  “I never could,” he said gently, and turned again to where Flynn was galloping hard along the ravine, trying to gauge its depth, trying to find a chink in Macha’s dark enchantment.

  Clouds of smoke and heat were belching out from the chasm now, but Cormac’s armies had rallied. The unmounted Cruithin, with the people of Cormacston, had already gathered at the brink of the chasm, arrows on the strings of their bows, ready aimed at whatever might arise from the depths; farther along, the Wolves were tense, ready to pounce. Their eyes were showing red, and their expressions were hungry, and Joanna thought: yes, they are hungry for whatever is going to come out of that ravine. They are hungry for the blood of their Master’s enemies …

  And then from out of the black abyss, pouring outwards, pouring upwards, spewed forth the ancient malevolence that Cormac’s ancestors had striven to keep out of Tara, and that Bricriu had tried to invite back. The Dark Ireland. The evil underside of the land: twisted and stunted and corrupt, greedy and unwholesome and soulless.

  The hags and the banshees and the crones; the harpies with their female heads and greedy taloned bird-bodies; the wraiths who crawled up out of the slime of graveyards to feast on fresh corpses; the giants and the ogres and with them the dread Cyclops, each with a single red eye in the centre of its forehead — the misshapen beings who were the results of forbidden conjoining, half human and half beast, but so dreadfully blended that they were travesties made up out of skin and pelts and claws and teeth and eyes.

  Morrigan’s goblin men were there as well, bony-fingered and sharp-featured and red-eyed, swarming across the Plain, dancing and jeering and gesturing obscenely to where Cormac’s armies stood helpless.

  And then, “Look there!” cried Cormac. “The Dark Bloodline!” And a shudder of horror went through the watchers.

  From Tara’s northern boundaries, from out of the shadow of Tara itself far below them, Bricriu came riding, leading the Dark Bloodline. The vermin and the parasites and the beasts of prey, ugly and warped and greedy, but with a thin trickle of human blood and with the enchanted ancestry bestowed on the beasts by Dierdriu’s sorcerers.

  The people of the Weasels and the Giant Rats came; the Spider clan — created by a malevolent necromancer in the days of Niall of the Nine Hostages — tiny and venomous and possessing a sly human cunning; the Vultures and the Jackals and the scaly-skinned Lizard people.

  From his commanding position at the head of the chasm, Cormac felt his blood chill. He stood, eyes narrowed, watching the dreadful beings that Bricriu was leading out of Tara, and he thought: so these are the terrible creatures who are the other side of the Ancient Bloodline. These are the creatures who make up the dark underside of my land. And he remembered again the old belief that for every enchantment ever spun, there must always be an opposite.

  Bricriu led the creatures of the Dark Bloodline across the Plain to the West Gate where the Chariot Horses and the Deer were still attacking the gates of the Bright Palace. As they neared the massive West Gate, Oscar’s forces seemed to rear and shy away, and Joanna, watching, thought that the Deer and the Chariot Horses were very much afraid.

  “But they will fight, nonetheless,” said Cormac softly.

  “Will they?”

  “Look now,” said Cormac, nodding to the scene below them.

  The Deer had recovered and were charging forward, heads lowered, and the Chariot Horses were bunching together for a single concerted onslaught.

  “And they cannot be beaten for speed,” said Cormac.

  As they watched, a solitary figure detached itself from Bricriu’s armies, and went riding hard across the terrain, crouched low over its mount. Joanna felt Cormac tense, and from within the Cruithin ranks, a low angry murmur reached them.

  “Mab.”

  As Joanna shaded her eyes to see, the cloaked figure went at full gallop across the Plain, hair whipped into dark smoke by the wind, the turf flying.

  “Escaping,” said someone from the Cruithin army — Joanna thought it was Domnall — and then another voice said, “Do we train our archers on her, Sire?”

  Cormac turned a look of such black fury on to the speaker, that the owner of the voice trembled and shook in his boots, and began to think he might have done better to have thrown himself into Macha’s ravine.

  Cormac said frostily, “It is not in keeping with a High King’s honour to fire at a defenceless woman. It is certainly not for the Ancient Nobility of Ireland to fire arrows on one another. Let her be.”

  Gormgall, who never was intimidated by the King, said, “But Sire, she may escape.”

  Cormac said, “She will not.” And Gormgall remarked to Muldooney, who happened to be next to him, that say what you liked, Cormac was sometimes foolishly chivalrous. Muldooney nodded sagely, and said that this was very true indeed, and wouldn’t Gormgall look at the likes of those creatures being brought up below them.

  “Nasty,” said Gormgall. “I hope we don’t have to join battle with those!”

  Muldooney hoped so as well.

  Flynn had ridden farther down to where the ravine wound its way into the forest, and he was encouraging Conaire and the twins, who were stationed a little way off. Joanna thought that the air was thick with the Samhailt now. Once or twice, she almost fancied she could actually see it; shafts of pure white light, spli
tting the air.

  Conaire and the twins were responding to Flynn; they were sending the Eagles and the Swans swooping on to the Vultures and the small long-tailed Lizard people, to tear and maim. The Eagles caught up the Lizard people in their talons, and carried them into the centre of the chasm, dropping them into its gaping mouth. The Swans flew at the Cyclops, pecking at the angry red eyes, sending the Cyclops blinded and screaming into chaos, driving them backwards over the edge of the ravine, so that they tottered on the brink, and then hurtled below, their screams piercing the air as they fell.

  And then Flynn turned to look to where Cormac waited, and for a moment Joanna actually saw the Samhailt flash between the two of them; a dazzling spear of the purest brilliance she had ever seen, so that for a moment she was completely blinded.

  And then she watched Cormac nod, and turn his horse about, and go galloping along the side of the chasm to where the Panthers waited, half crouched; couchant cats, their tails lashing furiously, their eyes slitted and as green and as hard as bits of glass. Joanna held her breath for surely Cormac could not control them …?

  “It’s all right, Your Majesty,” said Dubhgall to her from where he was seated quietly nearby.

  “Will he control them?”

  “Yes,” said Dubhgall. “Watch …”

  Cormac had ridden straight into the centre of the Panthers, and at once Cait Fian’s creatures began moving, swift and sleek and sure. Joanna could not quite see what they were doing, but she thought that some kind of rope bridge had been fashioned.

  “They are going to bridge the chasm,” said Dubhgall, and now Joanna saw that this was exactly what they were doing.

  Two of the Panthers had leapt across the chasm at its narrowest point, in a single fluid movement, the ends of the rope bridge held in their mouths. Several more followed them, their sleek bodies pouring across effortlessly. The first two secured the rough but serviceable rope bridge by means of winding it round and round a tree trunk, while the others fell upon the Weasels and the Jackals.

  The Plain begin to ring with the screams of the victims, and blood and gore spattered the ground, and still the Panthers kept on, savaging and tearing and clawing.

  Scald-Crow changed shape so fast it was impossible to identify most of the things she became. She was a giant club that bludgeoned Cormac’s creatures to death, and she was a sharp bright sword that hacked limbs and heads. She was a whirling scimitar from the East, and a two-headed axe, and an iron-tipped nine-tailed whip. Everywhere was the fighting of creatures who were neither quite human nor wholly animal, and who used both animal and human methods of attack. They used claws and teeth and talons, but they used fists and swords and clubs as well.

  Joanna, knowing that very soon now she must use the Nightcloak, saw a scaly Lizard-man, who walked upright but possessed a lizard’s head and reptile eyes and a long slithery tail, smash a Panther’s head to splinters, chuckling as he did so. And at once, the goblin men were there, singing the song of Muileann, slitting the panther’s fur and skinning it, until there was only a wet, near-formless mass of red raw flesh, and stringy muscle and bone and grinning white skull.

  “Skins for the floors, boys, skins for the floors. That’s the way. And into the fire with the meat, boys. Over the edge.” They rolled and pulled and dragged the skinned Panther, until they toppled it into the abyss, and Joanna saw a tongue of flame belch upwards, and smelled the odour of roasting meat.

  “Burning up nicely,” said the goblin men, rubbing their hands together. “Frizzling away. Where’s another one?”

  They lined up close to the rope bridge and stood waiting, grinning and beckoning. “Over you come, my dears, over you come! That’s the way. And down you’ll go, my dears, down you’ll go! Skin them and burn them and there’ll be rugs for the floors, boys, and flesh for the fire. But what do we do with the hides? There’s nothing so fine as a human skin beneath your feet of a cold winter’s night. Over you come, my dears, and we’ll have your hides!”

  Flynn at once stopped the Panthers in their headlong flight, for although the Panthers were snarling and lashing their tails, and although they would certainly have leapt at the throats of the goblins, there were far too many of the goblins and other creatures for them to have had much effect. The Dark Armies were infinitely more powerful, and there were too many of them …

  He stood looking at Macha and Scald-Crow and the hunchback and the goblin men, and he remembered all the things that Joanna had told him about Morrigan, and the things she had suffered. A tremendous anger surged up inside him, and he leapt from his horse, and began to run straight at the rope bridge. He would stalk these miserable, wicked, jeering creatures and smash them to pulp. He would tear their hearts from their bodies and fling them into the ravine. He bound on to the rope bridge, holding his sword aloft, and stood midway along, suspended across the chasm, the bridge swaying a little beneath him, his eyes brilliant, and his hair whipped into disarray.

  “Well?” cried Flynn, brandishing his sword. “Well, my little men? Shall not a one of you try his strength against me? Which of you will fight me?” He moved closer now. “Come now, for there are so many of you and only one of me! A challenge!” He began to walk across the rope bridge, deliberately and slowly, and the goblin men hesitated, and glanced at one another from the corners of their slanting red eyes.

  “Flesh for the fire?” said Flynn tauntingly, and took several steps nearer. And now the goblin men did back away, there was no doubt about it. Joanna stood very still, because at any minute they might spring, and at any minute one of the lizard creatures might easily leap on Flynn and hurl him into the depths of the chasm. And then the dreadful thick oily smoke would billow out and the flames would shoot upwards, and Flynn would be flesh for the fire and skin for the floor, and if that should happen, there would be nothing ever again anywhere …

  “Joanna, the Nightcloak!” cried Cormac, but still Joanna hesitated. And yet — what could be more precious than Flynn? cried her mind in silent anguish. What could be more needful than to save Flynn?

  And at once the answer: to save Ireland!

  I cannot do it for Flynn alone! thought Joanna in agony. It must be to the good of all of us! But she grasped a fold of the cloak and felt its response at once, and felt a distant comfort.

  Flynn was barely conscious of danger. He was filled with energy and strength; he thought he could have fought the Dark Armies single-handed and won, and he saw with exultation, the goblin men’s retreat.

  “Flesh for the fire!” cried Flynn, advancing on them. “Come now, who is to prove that! Who is to stop me from taking Tara back for the rightful High King!”

  “We shall,” said a soft, throaty, chuckling voice close by, and Flynn turned to see Macha, and Scald-Crow close behind her, grinning horribly and assuming the form of a great bloated worm with soft pulsating skin and blind white stalks for eyes.

  “I shall spit you like so much roasting meat, madam,” said Flynn, and Scald-Crow laughed and turned at once into the semblance of a half-cooked side of meat, one side succulent and pink, the other rotten, a mass of weaving maggots.

  “We shall stop you,” said Macha again, and as she spoke, the hunchback came scuttling out of the smoke and Flynn stopped dead in his tracks, for shambling in the hunchback’s wake were beings more terrible even than those he had yet seen.

  Rotting skeletons; decaying corpses with flesh still clinging to their bones; eyeless skulls with grinning lipless mouths and tattered blackened skin; flesh oozing with corruption and swollen with graveyard gasses: the Erl-King’s Army of Corpses.

  Flynn made to lunge forward, but the corpses were moving against him, and the stench rose up to meet him, filling his nostrils, so that nausea threatened to overpower him, and for a moment he put up his hand to shield his senses from the sight and the stench.

  Macha said, “Yes, Flynn. The Erl-King’s Army of Corpses. Waiting to be called. Waiting to devour those who killed their Master.” She moved nearer. �
��Did you really think your puny Wolfking and his lady could slay the Erl-King and our beloved sister, and live?”

  “Wait until you have felt the embrace of the corpses,” said Scald-Crow, grinning. “Wait until they have clasped you to their rotting bodies, and wait until the filth of them has oozed and run out over your skin.”

  “Wait until they are swarming all over you,” said Macha. The hunchback was grinning and plying his whip, and Flynn saw, with a kind of pitying horror, the skeletons cringe and put up their fleshless hands to protect themselves. He thought that he had never seen anything so truly dreadful and so pitiable. “I could not look away,” he was to say afterwards. “I was horrified and sickened and repulsed beyond anything I had ever known. But I could not look away.”

  The corpses were closing in — In another minute they will have reached me, thought Flynn. I shall have to retreat … Surely to stand in the face of these creatures is more than any one can endure …

  But behind him were the High King’s armies, and behind him was Joanna. If I once submit to them, they will be over the ravine and on to Cormac’s armies, he thought. They will fasten on to the bodies of our people. Disgust filled him, but, I will not let them do it, he thought. I will stand and fight them, one by one, and they will have to defeat me. If I retreat now, thought Flynn, I shall have let in the Dark Armies, and then we are all lost and Ireland is lost and Tara is forever beyond our reach.

  He took a firmer grip on his sword, and stood on the precariously swaying rope bridge watching the terrible Army of Corpses driven nearer by the hunchback. He saw that Macha and Scald-Crow were advancing. To go forward would be suicide, and to go back … To go back is defeat, thought Flynn. To go back is to betray Cormac.

  He stood firm, and saw Macha throw back her head, laugh and stretch out a hand, and at once the heat began to glow again from the abyss. Heat rises, thought Flynn wildly. Heat rises, and when the heat reaches the rope bridge it will burn.

  Within minutes, he might be cast into the abyss, and when that happened, the Dark Ireland would swarm and fall upon Cormac’s armies, and the true Ireland would be once and forever lost.