by Tad Williams
“To prevent the destruction of two races. To put off the finality of the Great Defeat a little longer, even if it cannot forever be averted.” The one named Gil nodded slowly, as if he only now understood his own words. For the first time, he smiled—a thin, ghostly thing. “Is that not enough?”
“I have no idea what you mean, what these things are you speak about.” Chert wanted badly to turn around and walk, even run, until stone was above him once more. Clouds hung overhead, night clouds so thick that he couldn’t see the moon or stars, but it was still nothing like being in his own place, among his own people and his own homely things.
“Neither do I,” said Gil. “But I am given to understand a little, and that little is this—you must give me the mirror. Then your work is done.”
Chert almost clutched at the mirror again, even though neither the strange man nor the girl looked like much of a threat to take it away from him. Still, they were twice his height . . . Just let them try, he thought. Just let them try to get the thing my son almost died for . . . And then he realized for the first time what he had been thinking in a wordless way for some time; the mirror was the answer. The mirror was what had taken Flint down into the depths of the Mysteries, and what had almost killed him. “No, I will not give you the mirror—if I even had such a thing.”
“You have it,” Gil said mildly. “I can feel it. And it is not yours to keep.”
“It is my son’s!”
Gil shook his head. “I think not, although that is somewhat dark to me. But it doesn’t matter. You have it now. If you give it to me, you may go home and never think of it again.”
“I will not give it to you.”
“Then you must come with me,” the strange man said. “The hour is almost upon us. The mirror must be carried to her. It will not prevent Old Night and the destruction of all, but it may gain a little time.”
“What does this mean? What are you talking about? Carried to her? Who in the name of the Earth Elders is ‘her’?”
“She is called Yasammez,” the stranger told him. “She is one of the oldest. She is death, and she has been loosed on your kind at last.”
The afternoon sun was beginning to settle behind the hills. From where they sat on a rocky hilltop prominence, looking southeast toward the castle, although it was still too far away to see, the grass was a damp, rich green and the sky was marbled with sunlight and cloud. In all ways it would have seemed a crisp, cool day at the turning of winter had it not been for the clot of fog rolling across the land below them, obscuring all but the highest slopes of the downs as it reached toward Southmarch.
“It must be them,” said Tyne Aldritch, and spat. “You said that it came down from the Shadowline, Vansen, a fog like that. You said they traveled under it like a cloak.”
The captain of the guard stirred. His face was pinched, worried. “That is what the merchant’s nephew told us, the one whose caravan was attacked. When my men and I stumbled across the boundary, there was no fog. But, yes, I think it’s likely our enemies are in that murk.”
Barrick was finding it hard to do anything at this moment except stay upright in his saddle. They had driven the army far and fast already today, and even though he was mounted, he was astonishingly weary and his bad arm ached as though someone had pushed a dagger between the bones of his wrist. Not for the first time today he wished he had kept his mouth closed and stayed at home.
But if we don’t stop them, it will only be a different sort of death for those who remained behind in Southmarch. All during the day today the memory of the pale faces of the shadow-things, the dead but still terrifying eyes, had troubled him. He had not eaten. He could not imagine putting anything in his stomach except water.
“Are our scouts fast enough to beat them to the city?” asked Lord Fiddicks. “If we can get Brone’s garrison out, we can catch them as between hammer and anvil.”
“Our scouts might, but I think we should not trust to them alone,” said Earl Tyne. “Ah, but we have pigeons, don’t we? We will send messages that way. A bird will go faster than any man, especially if that man is riding a tired horse.”
Ferras Vansen cleared his throat. Oddly, he looked at Barrick for permission to speak. Despite his weariness and misery, Barrick was amused that the world of title and privilege should still exist after the morning’s debacle, but he nodded.
“It is just . . .” Vansen began. “My lords, it seems to me that we cannot wait.”
Tyne growled in irritation. “You would make the gods weep, man, you take so long to speak your mind. What do you mean?”
“If we go at this pace, we will not overtake them. They are mostly on foot, as are we, but their troops seem to move swiftly. If they can march at night, they will reach the mainland city by morning.”
“Good,” said Rorick. He had sustained only a few small cuts in the fighting—Barrick had noticed that he had not been one of the first into the thick of things—but wore his bandages with a prideful flair. “Then we will trap them against the bay. Fairies do not like water, everyone knows. When Brone comes out against them, we will tear them to pieces.”
Vansen shook his head. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but I fear that idea. I think we must try to stop them on the downs, in the farmlands outside the city.”
The other nobles made mocking noises—some even quietly called Vansen a fool, although he ignored their words. Even Tyne Aldritch seemed annoyed and turned to send his squire for wine. Barrick saw foot soldiers stealing the chance to sit or even lie down while the nobles argued on the hilltop; he realized that the men had been walking all day with armor and weapons, and were at least as aching and dispirited as he was, but perhaps twice as tired.
“Yes, tell us what you mean, Captain Vansen,” Barrick said out loud. “Why shouldn’t we wait and catch them between our two forces?”
Vansen nodded at him like a tutor pleased by his pupil, which made Barrick regret taking the man’s side. “Because there are too many unknowns,” the guard captain said. “What if we cannot get a message through to the lord constable?”
“Then he will come out when he sees the fighting,” said Rorick. “Really, that is a foolish fear. This is a waste of time. What is this man doing here?”
“He is here because until today, he was the only one of us who had met the enemy,” said Tyne; his irritation was obviously not confined to Vansen alone. “And while not all of us can say the same, he acquitted himself bravely this morning as well.”
Rorick flushed, covering it by sending his own squire for wine.
“Just say what you are thinking, Captain.” Barrick wondered how he had suddenly become Vansen’s protector.
“First, as we have seen, strange things happen around the Twilight People. Can a pigeon find its way through or around that murk? Possibly. Will Brone be able to see what happens as the fog comes down and covers the coast and the city—will he know we are fighting for our lives just a half mile away? It seems obvious, but believe me, things in those shadows are not always what they seem, as I learned to my regret. You’ve seen a little of that now, too, all of you.
“More importantly, what happens when our enemy reaches the city along the shore? Will they stand and fight us on open ground? Or will they disappear instead into the streets and alleyways, into the sewers and cellars and deserted buildings? How will we fight them then? We will be muddled, confused—you all remember that wood on the hilltop, fighting against a tenth of the numbers of this force. Would you give them a thousand more places to hide? It will be as though their army had grown tenfold again.”
“But the city is largely empty,” said one of the other nobles, puzzled. “The people have been taken inside the castle walls or have fled south.”
“What of it?” asked Vansen.
“If they move into the city,” Rorick said scornfully, “then we will put fire to it. We will burn them out. What better way to deal with unnatural creatures?”
“Forgive me, my lord,” said Vansen
, although he didn’t look as if he wanted or expected forgiveness, “but that is spoken as only a man who owns several castles can speak. Thousands of people make their homes there! And the city and its farms keeps Southmarch Castle alive.”
“I have had enough of this peasant’s insults,” Rorick said, pawing at the hilt of his sword. “He must be punished.”
“You have the right to challenge him, Longarren,” Tyne pointed out, “but I will not punish a man for speaking as Vansen has spoken.”
Rorick looked from Tyne Aldritch to Vansen. He appeared notably reluctant to pull his sword from its sheath. At last he tugged on his horse’s reins and turned and rode down the hill. His squire, who had just returned with his saddle-cup, hurried after him.
“Continue, Captain,” said Tyne.
“Thank you, my lords.” Vansen turned to Barrick, his face grim. “Leaving aside what my liege lord Earl Rorick thinks, Highness, do not forget that they seem to be at least as many as we are. And even if we would sacrifice many men in close fighting and then put the torch to the greatest city in the March Kingdoms, what makes us think that we could burn that city without hindrance? Having met this enemy twice, I think it is madness to suppose them such children. They plan! They are patient! And we do not know the half yet of what they can do.”
“So what would you suggest?” Barrick suddenly didn’t want to hear it. It seemed obvious it would not be anything comfortable, with a fire and a meal at the end of it, and sleep to help ease his aching arm. “Go ahead, Vansen, tell. And may the gods curse us all for fools for having got ourselves in this situation in the first place!”
Several of the nobles were startled by this into making the sign against evil.
“Do not speak so, Highness,” said the Earl of Blueshore, scowling. “Do not bring the anger of the gods down on us. I will tell that to even you. Take my head for it if you wish.”
“No, Tyne, I was wrong. I apologize.”
“It is not me who needs an apology, my prince.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not you the gods will punish either.” Barrick turned away from Tyne’s surprised look. “Speak, Captain. Tell us your plan.”
Vansen took a ragged breath; it was clear that he was as exhausted as everyone else. A cut on his jaw had reopened; a trickle of blood crawled down his neck like a tiny red snake. “We must ride, all of us. We must leave the men on foot to come as fast as they can. Otherwise, we will never catch the shadow folk. Who knows if even the water will stop them? Not me, and certainly not Earl Rorick, begging my lords’ pardon. Who knows if even the walls of the keep will keep them out? We must catch the shadow folk and force them to turn and fight us, try to hold them until the rest of our force catches up—there’ll be no shame in retreating once we first touch them and punish them, especially with full dark only a few hours ahead. But if we wait until tomorrow’s daylight, they will have already reached Southmarch. We mounted men must nip at them like a pack of dogs, then scamper away, then strike again so they can’t ignore us. We must stop them and turn them until the men on foot arrive.”
“But what about Brone and his troops?” asked Tyne. “This seems madness when we have a garrison that can come out to support us.”
“Let them, then!” said Vansen. “Send our messengers, those with wings and those without. But I cannot say this strongly enough, my lords—if we let them reach the city before us, I fear that we’ll regret it.”
Tyne looked a question at Barrick, who felt more than a little queasy in his stomach. He had known he would not like hearing what Vansen had to say, but it was too late now: he had heard it and he had recognized the dire truth in it. It was all he could do to nod his head.
Kettle stumbled in a rabbit hole and Barrick almost flew out of the saddle at full gallop, but he wrapped his hand in the horse’s mane and held on until he could get himself straightened up again. He was momentarily grateful that he was not carrying a lance as many of the other riders were, that his crippled arm didn’t permit it, since he would surely have lost it or, worse, let it slip down point-first as the horse fought for balance, likely knocking himself out of the saddle. Then he remembered that a man without a lance couldn’t keep an enemy any farther away than the tip of his falchion.
They would have let me stay behind. They all told me not to come. The words seemed to bounce in his head like loose stones in a bucket. The horses thundered down the slope, riders able to do nothing more at such speed than lean forward and hang on. The fog that only moments before had been sailing past in tendrils like individual flags was now growing thicker; great white billows of it flew up before Barrick, as if serving maids were shaking out the castle linens. He seemed to be moving through a world that was half green grass and dying winter sunlight, half gray emptiness where he was alone but for the distant sound of horses and armor and the occasional shout of his fellows, sun and fog turning the world alternately light and dark like a swinging door.
He reentered the world of light for a few brief moments, then plunged again into swirling mists. Men rode on either side of him, but he could not see their shields or crests well enough to recognize them. The one on his left suddenly stood in his stirrups. Something protruded from the joint of the rider’s chest and right shoulder like a long-stemmed black flower, then the man fell backward, spinning heels over head, and his horse veered away into the mist—mist that did not clear but seemed to grow ever thicker.
Vansen was wrong, was all Barrick had time to think, it is night already.
He turned to shout to the man on his other side, but as he looked for him something snapped past his face, so close he could feel it brush his nose. The pale man riding on his right had tipped his visor back; his black eyes were huge and had no whites. Even as Barrick stared, the man . . . the creature . . . whatever he was, nocked another arrow. Barrick knew he couldn’t outrun it or duck swiftly enough, so he yanked with his good hand on the reins and sent Kettle sideways into his attacker’s mount. There was a thump of contact as the bowstaff slapped against Barrick’s face. The arrow vanished harmlessly up into the air. Barrick still had not had a chance to draw his falchion, but he managed to pull Kettle away again just as his enemy lunged at him, leaving the manlike creature hanging, his hands wrapped around Barrick’s saddle strap, his feet still locked in his own stirrups as his horse galloped alongside Kettle. Despite the pulling and bumping of the horses, Barrick’s enemy was slapping at his leg for what looked like a knife sheathed there.
Shouting in disgust and fear, Barrick kicked at the unprotected face over and over. The helmet flew off, revealing streaming silvery hair. The creature, despite all this, continued to pull himself nearer until the two horses were only a yard apart. Barrick finally dragged his falchion out of its scabbard and shoved it artlessly at the man’s face, then hacked at the clawing white hands wrapped around his saddle strap until suddenly their grip dissolved in blood and the face with its staring black eyes fell away—a flash of his armor as he tumbled into the grass, then nothing. The riderless horse continued on for a few dozen paces, then turned and vanished through the fog.
Barrick reined up and sat for a long moment, gasping for breath, fearing that his jittering heart might crack like a newborn chick bursting its shell. Men screeched hoarsely somewhere in the fog to his right, and though he was terrified, Barrick realized it was better to be moving than to sit waiting for something to come down on him out of the roil of mist.
They would have left me behind. I could have stayed behind.
He spurred toward the shouting.
Tyne of Blueshore and a dozen other knights and nobles had found each other, and Barrick had found them. The enemy was thick around them, but not endless. There were moments between one spate of fighting and the next, sometimes long enough for Barrick to catch his breath and even drink from his waterskin. He was holding his own despite being forced to fight with only one hand, and he found himself embarrassingly grateful for his old nemesis, Shaso, who had worked him so mercilessly
all those years.
Once or twice the fog cleared so that he could see knots of combat all over the downs. Those instants when the mists rolled back and they could actually see something like a wholesome, natural twilight dragged a cheer from even the weariest of the fighters around Barrick, his own voice as loud as any. They had held their own against the first attack of the Twilight People. Barrick felt something almost like hope. If they could reach some of their fellows, they could begin to make an organized resistance, to make a real stand or, as Vansen had suggested—only hours ago, but it felt like years—then withdraw and try to lure the shadow folk after them.
The fairies didn’t seem to be as many as they had feared, but they were terrible foes. Their strangeness even more than their ferocity made them so. Most were man-sized and man-shaped, armored and carrying weapons of odd shapes and hues, but a few were twice the size of any mortal, massive things with patches of mangy fur and thick, sagging tortoise skin, powerful but slow. Barrick had already seen one of these monstrosities brought down by three mounted men with lances, and he had shouted with joy as the giant fell and lay shuddering in its own slow-oozing black blood. The fairy army contained swarms of small creatures with ruddy hair and faces almost as narrow as foxes’ muzzles, too, and others not much larger than apes who were covered all over with some dark, tangled fur so that they appeared faceless except for the staring gleam of their eyes. Some of the enemies seemed to carry their own blankets of mist, so that even in the moments of clear light they were dim and hard to see as a reflection in a muddy pond, and the thrusts of lances and swords never quite seemed to strike them straight. Wolves accompanied them, too, silently swift and horrible in their intelligence. They had already pulled down several of the horses by tearing at legs and unprotected bellies until the beasts stumbled and fell.
“That way!” Tyne shouted. The war leader’s helmet was battered and his sword was bloodied and notched, but his voice was still strong. Men moved to him without hesitation as he spurred his horse toward one of the clumps of fighting, a fog-shrouded mass of bodies and flashing metal—Mayne Calough and a company of Silverside nobles, perhaps three or four dozen mounted men all together, hard-pressed by at least that many foes. Tyne clearly planned to bring the two groups together with an eye toward mounting a coordinated defense, and Barrick was only too happy to follow. He had spent most of the last hour floating in a kind of singing silence, hearing but not recognizing the sounds of combat, terror, and pain all around him, lost in red-shot mists, but now the mists were beginning to clear—at least those in his head, even if the fogs that blew across the hillside showed no sign of doing the same.