‘But our troops,’ I said. ‘What happens tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow Morn’s warriors will overrun us, Falcio.’ He looked down at the soldiers preparing for sleep. ‘Tomorrow we die. Every last one of us.’
*
It’s hard, deciding what to do with your last hours of life. I spent a little time with Valiana, mostly trying to convince her to leave the field. That didn’t go down well. Despite my promise to Ethalia, I tried to do the same with her, but she did me the kindness of clamping a hand over my mouth before I could speak.
‘It hardly seems a suitable end for the song Rhyleis has worked so hard on, that it should end with you sitting alone in a tent with a bloody nose, Falcio.’
I gently removed her hand. ‘You know, people are starting to wonder just how merciful the Saint of Mercy really is.’
‘I’ve told you many times, Falcio val Mond, it’s in my nature to be mysterious. I am a Sister of the Order of Mysterious Light, after all.’
‘I thought it was supposed to be Merciful Light.’
She kissed me then, and held the kiss for a long time before she said, ‘And here I thought you and I agreed that we could be more than just one thing.’
I expected that kiss to become something more, but then she took my hand and led me outside. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To where you would want to be, no matter how persuasive my charms.’
We walked hand in hand in the darkness, guided as much by the soft sound of Nehra’s guitar as the fire around which Kest, Brasti and Valiana were sitting. I thought she meant us all to share the remaining hours together, but instead, Nehra and Valiana got up, and they, along with Ethalia, left the fire to Kest, Brasti and me.
‘Well, Falcio,’ Brasti said, ‘I think you’re taking far too long to concoct a daring plan that saves us all from total annihilation.’
‘I suspect the odds are rather unfavourable for any of Falcio’s plans to work,’ Kest said.
I felt a sudden urge to shout at them both, to tell Brasti to stop making everything into a joke and Kest to stop finding new ways to tell me we were screwed. Ethalia had given us this time together and for once I just wanted to sit with my best friends and speak plainly, honestly, to stop playing the fools and instead admit that we loved each other without pretext or artifice. But that’s not who we were; it wasn’t how we had lived and it likely wouldn’t be how we died. The three of us had survived a thousand dangers and a million heartaches not just with our wits and weapons, but with the little jokes, the jibes, the small – perhaps even petty – defiances against a world that was determined to kill us.
‘It’s that damned cliff that bugs me,’ Brasti went on, ‘even more than the horde. It feels like the Avareans could send all that snow crashing down on us at any damn time they want.’
‘It’s too far away,’ Kest said. ‘The snow wouldn’t reach us here.’
Brasti shook his head. ‘You really are thick sometimes, you know that? I was being metaphysical.’
‘You mean metaphorical.’
‘Oh, really? My mistake.’
Kest suddenly looked at him. I mean really looked at him. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you? How long have you been pretending—?’
Brasti grinned. ‘Sometimes I like letting you feel superior.’
For a long while Kest just sat there, eyes narrowed as he tried to work out how many times Brasti’s incompetence with words had been genuine, and how many times he’d been poking fun at him. Finally he leaned back and laughed, loudly, uproariously. It was infectious, and soon Brasti and I were roaring with laughter too.
Who says being fools is such a bad thing?
When tiredness and the reality of our situation finally settled over us again, I stared out across the field and tried to guess which tent belonged to Morn. Was he feeling triumphant at the certainty of his eventual success, I wondered? Or enraged over the luck we’d had and whatever respect or rokhan that might have cost him among the Avareans?
I’d give just about anything to meet you out on the field, Morn.
‘He won’t,’ Kest said.
I looked up. I hadn’t realised I’d spoken aloud.
‘Maybe if you asked him very nicely,’ Brasti said, and set about changing the string on his bow, whistling all the while.
Kest looked annoyed. ‘Is there a reason why you insist on whistling that particular song over and over?’
‘It’s cheerful,’ Brasti replied. ‘I’m entitled to a bit of cheer on the night before my death, aren’t I?’
‘You do realise your cheery melody is an Avarean song?’
‘No, it’s not – I distinctly remember hearing it in a tavern ten years ago.’
‘You heard it ten weeks ago. In Avares.’
I stood up, leaving them to their debate, and peered up at the cliff where the horde was encamped so that they could look down on us like Gods. No, I reminded myself, not Gods. An audience. It felt important to remember that somehow. However many thousands of warriors there were they weren’t some grand pantheon of deities sitting in judgement of us, but an audience of spectators, sitting in the cheap seats and waiting for the final act to begin.
How many miles had they travelled just to be here? How much had it cost, how much time and labour wasted, for no better purpose than to watch Morn’s little stage play?
‘Are you really so captivated by all this?’ I shouted at them in futile frustration. ‘Or are you simply captives of your own stupid tales?’
‘Falcio?’ Brasti asked. He and Kest were staring at me. ‘Who are you yelling at?’
I shook my head. I was no better, was I? How much of my life had been shaped by the stories of Greatcoats from ages past? Were the Avareans any worse, that they lived and died by songs like the one Brasti had been whistling incessantly?
‘There,’ he said suddenly.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He stood and came closer, staring at me. ‘You’ve got something.’
‘No, I don’t.’
He pointed at my face. ‘Yes, you do. I can see it in that stupid expression of yours.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ I said, realising he’d confused my bitter laughter for something else. ‘I’m just—’
‘No, I’d recognise that look anywhere.’
‘Leave him be,’ Kest said, coming to stand with us.
‘I will not. I know that face. Falcio’s got something.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I think I’d know if I had a plan.’
‘Maybe not. You’re brilliant, but not always very bright.’
‘That’s literally—’ Kest began.
‘I know, damn it, but I’m telling you, Falcio’s got something.’
‘What’s happening?’ Valiana asked, running towards us with Ethalia and Nehra close behind. ‘We heard shouting.’
‘Falcio’s got a plan,’ Brasti said.
I started to deny it again, but there was something tickling at the back of my mind, and I turned back to look up at the cliff-top again, then down at Morn’s troops encamped below. There was something there: something I could use. What was I missing?
Brasti started whistling again, even as he kept watching me.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I was whistling when you thought of your ingenious plan,’ he replied, then went back to his tune.
‘You’ll let me know when you want me to hit him?’ Kest asked.
Now would be an excellent time, I was about to say, only at that moment the pieces finally fell into place and I reached out and grabbed Brasti by the shoulders. ‘You know, for a very dim man you’re really rather bright.’
‘See?’ he said to Kest.
‘Those two things are literally the opposite of one another.’
I ignored the
m and turned to Nehra. ‘Your Bardatti – how quickly can you teach them a different song?’
Nehra snorted, making it clear what she thought of my intellect. ‘I won’t have to. They wouldn’t be Bardatti if they didn’t already know all the important Tristian songs.’
I smiled. ‘Who said anything about a Tristian song?’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
The Final Gambit
Considering just how terrible my plan was, I encountered surprisingly little resistance, perhaps because in the end the worst that could happen would be that seven people would end up dying looking rather stupid. The real argument was over who would be going.
‘Enough!’ I said when the sun peeked out over the horizon and I’d had my limit of listening to the others argue. ‘I’ve made my decision.’
Darriana looked up at me quizzically. ‘Where did you get the idea that any of us were letting you decide?’
‘It’s . . . well, technically it’s my plan,’ I said defensively.
She reached up and patted me on the head. ‘That’s nice. It’s a nice plan.’
In the end, it was agreed that Kest, Brasti and I were the most skilled and experienced at fighting together. Valiana would go because – as she so succinctly put it – whether she was Realm’s Protector or Duchess of Rijou, she outranked the rest of us. Darriana said we could choose whomever we wanted, but that she would kill one of us at random to take our spot rather than let Valiana go without her. When Ethalia arrived bearing a pair of two-foot lengths of wood, Darriana barked out a laugh and asked what good she hoped to do with those. Less than three seconds later, Darri was staring up at her from the ground, a look of total and incredulous confusion on her face.
‘I spent my life among an Order whose vocation was to bring joy and pleasure to the worst and most violent of men in the hope of changing their paths. Did you think we never trained to deal with those who instead sought to inflict their violence upon us?’ She reached down a hand and helped Darriana up. ‘Still keen to meet me in the circle one day?’
Darri grinned. ‘More than ever, Sister.’
‘Well, that’s six,’ Brasti said, ‘assuming these two don’t kill each other before we even start.’
‘Seven,’ Chalmers said, walking unsteadily towards us. Despite the injuries she’d sustained during the Scorn, she’d insisted on trying to fight on the second day of the battle. Ignoring my orders, she’d planned to ride out, but Arsehole clearly sensed something was wrong and promptly dumped her on her arse every time she’d tried to mount him.
‘Chalmers . . .’ I was determined to refuse her, but I found I couldn’t. Her courage had taken away any right I had to deny her the chance to fight for her country.
‘I’m going,’ she said, her voice strident – then her eyes fluttered closed and she dropped to the ground. Behind her was Quillata. She quickly stoppered the tiny vial in her hand before taking in a breath.
‘Grey Slumber?’ Kest asked, covering his own nose in case any of the fumes could still reach him.
Quil nodded. ‘I’ve had it since the old days – wasn’t sure it would still work.’ She looked down at Chalmers. ‘You’ve already shown yourself a hero, little one. Time to give the rest of us a chance.’
I turned to Nehra. ‘Your people are ready?’
For once she skipped over the part where she tells me I’m an idiot for asking. ‘It will be a performance not soon forgotten, First Cantor.’
I looked at Kest and Brasti, Darri and Valiana, at Ethalia, part of me wishing she’d stay behind, but the larger part of me grateful she’d be with me at the end, and finally at Quillata.
She stared back at me with a wry smile. ‘I knew you’d end up dragging me into your heroic nonsense one of these days.’
I set off down the hill, the others following, as murmurs spread throughout the army, soldiers wondering aloud what we were doing now. We’d told only our General; Feltock needed to know so that he could keep them from chasing after us. We couldn’t take a chance that word of what we planned might reach the other side. For this to work, it had to come out of the blue, leaving no chance for Morn to devise any counter-move.
The first inkling either side had that something had changed, that today wouldn’t simply begin with two armies charging at each other once again, was when Nehra brought forward one of her Bardatti singers. The girl looked barely thirteen, but she wore her troubadour’s colours proudly. She stood up on the hill and opened her mouth to sing the first notes of a song no Tristian had ever sung. Well, except for Brasti, sort of. It was called ‘Seven for a Thousand’, and as first our soldiers and then the Avareans across the field looked up in wonder, the people I loved best in the world joined me in a final act of reckless daring to fulfil not the heroic tales of our own people, but those of our enemy..
‘Any final commands, First Cantor?’ Brasti asked, his bow in hand and an arrow at the ready.
‘Just one,’ I replied, as the seven of us set off at a run straight for the four thousand warriors across the field. ‘Don’t die.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
The War of Seven
It took the Avareans a few seconds to understand what was happening, but when they did, it was as if the very ground beneath our feet was coming apart, cracked open by the strange, almost obscene mix of rage and joy we’d aroused in them. As the Bardatti musicians took up the song, the pipes and horns on the melody, the drummers pounding the fierce beat and the guitarists strumming so loud I could hear them echoing across the field, the horde watching from the cliff-top above cheered so loudly I thought the entire mountain would fall beneath them.
Soon the rest of Nehra’s war singers had joined in, stacking harmony upon harmony, their voices rising above the instruments, intermingling and stirring all of us as if we too were strings to be plucked by their nimble hands. However many centuries the song had been sung in Avares, surely it had never been performed like this.
Soon even Morn’s warriors were shaking their fists and raising their weapons, their faces taking on fierce, proud grins even as a thousand of them came for us.
We had shown them the kind of respect that they had never anticipated from us, but one they understood, and they were going to return it in kind.
Now we just needed to survive – not for long, just long enough.
The first problem, of course, was the difference in terrain. ‘Seven for a Thousand’ told the tale of the small, half-starved band of Avareans who’d held a mountain pass near the Western Sea against the thousand soldiers who’d come from across the water intending to raid their lands. The pass in question was narrow – barely six feet across – with seventy-foot cliffs on either side, which meant no more than twenty of the enemy could attack them at one time. Since the field upon which we fought was rather barren, save for the few outcroppings of rock we’d already marked, Kest, Brasti, Valiana, Ethalia, Darriana, Quil and I had to pretend there were cliff walls on either side of us, and hope the Avareans would do the same.
Come on, you bastards, I thought, as the seven of us stood there while the enemy charged at us. Show me how much you hold to your songs and legends. Show the horde above your rokhan.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Quil said in awe. ‘I think they’re—’
Her words were cut off when an Avarean axe came spinning in the air towards her, but Kest’s shield went up and the axe blade bit into it and got no further. But she was right.
Suddenly the Avareans were upon us, and there was no more time for words, no more time for anything except this one last fight, this final act of defiance the seven of us performed in the name of a King long dead, of his daughter taken too soon, and of the dream that had been the Greatcoats.
‘Nuria,’ Brasti said, firing an arrow in the name of the daughter of a woman who’d died in the infirmary last night. ‘Lida. Iphissa.’ I couldn’t tell how he knew whic
h names were carved into each arrow he nocked and fired at the enemy, but perhaps he’d simply memorised them all and called each out in turn, regardless of which arrow was in his hand at that moment.
Quillata fought in a heavy-handed style, swinging her longsword to help keep as many of the Avareans at bay at one time as she could while Darriana and I used our lighter weapons to deliver thrusts and lunges that sent warriors falling to the ground until they were stacked like cordwood and their fellow Avareans were forced to push them aside to get to us. Ethalia fought beside me, using her sticks with surprising grace and speed. Her blows never killed – that wasn’t her way – but they broke noses and sent blood into men’s eyes, blinding them and making them as much a danger to their own fellows as to us.
‘Falcio . . .’ Kest warned, ‘it needs to happen soon.’
‘It will,’ I promised. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d be able to say I told you so if I turned out to be wrong.
We were relying heavily on Kest’s speed and skill with his shield, blocking the arrows and spears that came hurtling our way. The Avareans were going half-mad with joy and bloodthirst, and those with bows were shooting more of their arrows into their own men than at us. Some got through, though; Quil was the first to take an arrow, when the bone plates in her coat failed to block the narrow point; it stuck in her left shoulder, rendering that arm useless. Of course she continued to fight with the longsword in her right hand.
It wouldn’t be long now, but we needed more time. ‘Valiana,’ I said, ‘it has to be now.’
Even as she batted away a spear coming for her, she glanced at me uncertainly. ‘Falcio, I don’t know if—’
‘Do it,’ Kest said. He was the only one who had some sense of what we were asking of her. ‘I will watch over you. Let the red flow.’
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