Victories

by Mercedes Lackey

  Suddenly the temperature in the courtyard seemed to drop. In the shadows of the portico, Spirit saw movement.

  It was Mordred.

  He wasn’t pretending to be Oakhurst’s eccentric headmaster any longer. He wore a long black robe of some fabric that ate light. Symbols embroidered in dull silver thread covered the arms and the chest, gleaming sullenly as the sunlight struck them. On his head he wore a diadem of blackened silver set with rubies the size of hen’s eggs.

  And behind him the shadows filled as his army came to join him. None of them were Shadow Knights. None of them were even human. There were giants in ragged wolfskins, their bodies grey with dust. Tall gaunt pale creatures with glowing red eyes who stood cloaked in their own leathery wings. Creatures that looked like gigantic rats—they walked upright, and beneath their patchy fur, their skin was yellowed and sickly. Trolls with wide flat faces, their mouths gigantic and filled with gleaming shark-teeth. Things that looked like dead trees—if trees could walk, and had eyes. Among them slunk creatures that looked half like wolves, and half like weasels, with black beady eyes and long narrow snouts.

  They were all the nightmares anyone had ever had, all the creatures half-glimpsed in the paintings at Oakhurst’s last dance. They belonged in some Halloween night, not in the sunlight of an April morning.

  At Burke’s side, Cafall barked once, and was silent.

  “So, Arthur, we meet again,” Mordred said. He walked slowly down the steps. “Have you come to beg for your life? Perhaps I will spare your people if you do. Did you imagine, even when you lay dying, that we would meet again? Only this time, it is to celebrate my victory. Gaze upon your pitiful army and despair! You cannot hope to defeat me, for at last, after centuries, my triumph—”

  “No.”

  Spirit urged Passelande forward, past Burke, past Loch.

  “You aren’t fighting him,” she said. “You’re fighting me.”

  Gripping Excalibur in one hand and Passelande’s mane in the other, she slipped from the horse’s back and walked forward.

  “Your fight has always been with me.”

  For one moment, there was absolute silence. Mordred stared at her as if he had not understood the words that had come from her mouth. As if she had spoken a foreign tongue. Then, in an instant, the blank expression turned to apoplectic and absolute fury.

  “You puling nonentity!” Mordred shrieked. His face was scarlet, nearly purple, with disbelief and rage. “How dare you! You nothing—you wife—you girl!”

  Girls rule, boys drool, Muirin’s voice seemed to sing-song mockingly in Spirit’s mind. Spirit was too smart to say that aloud.

  And anyway, before she could have, Mordred attacked.

  NINE

  Black fire boiled out of Mordred’s hand. Automatically Spirit swung Excalibur up to parry. The fire turned red, then orange, as it sprayed off the blade. Didn’t know you’d be training your enemies when you made us take all that swordfighting, did you? she thought.

  Behind Mordred, his army of nightmare horrors raced down the steps to join the fight. She heard scattered screams from behind her as the others caught sight of what they were facing. You were right, Arthur. If I had not wakened the Grail Knights, this would have been over before it began. But with the Grail Knights among them, eager for battle, the magicians of Oakhurst not only stood their ground—they fought back.

  She saw one of the tree-things go up in a rush of flame. It howled as it burned, a low sound like timbers creaking. One of the bat things rose into the sky, only to be smashed to the ground by a blast of wind. Gareth—the Kitchen Knight, they’d once called him—had brought a backpack filled with all the cutlery he could find in the cafeteria—he flung knives, forks, spoons into the air, and Jaunted them with lethal accuracy at his targets.

  But she had little attention to spare from her own battle. Mordred was screaming in fury, lashing out at her with attacks she could see, and attacks she could only sense. Each time she deflected a spell with her blade she felt it ring, as if Excalibur, too, was challenging their great enemy.

  Burke fought at her right side, and Loch at her left. Burke’s fists—the Shield—glowed with a radiance matched only by Loch’s Spear. She saw Burke pound one of the attacking giants, and then fling it aside using a move she recognized from Systema. On the left, she saw Cafall spring up to savage one of the wolf-weasels, leaping away again as Loch finished it with the Spear. Each time one of the Hallows struck its target there was a blinding flash, and the monstrous creature vanished.

  If her army had not been outmatched a hundred to one, it would have been an easy victory. Her allies had spread into a ragged line. Some of her warriors were still mounted, but anyone who didn’t have one of the Air Gifts fought afoot, for their horses would not approach the enemy.

  On the walls above them, the Shadow Knights gathered once more.

  On the ground below, the Grail Knights and their allies fought.

  Mordred had conjured a sword out of nothingness. It was black from point to hilt, and its surface rippled and shimmered as if it were on fire. Each time Spirit’s blade clashed with his, there was a screeching sound loud enough to be heard over the roar of combat.

  And slowly, step by step, she gained ground.

  Mordred was not her true target.

  Excalibur breaks all magic, Guinevere whispered in her mind.

  It was the thing that might save them—and the world. All the Reincarnates, all the Mages, had magic. But Mordred was magic. He held his stolen body only by virtue of his sorcery. Destroy that—and he was nothing. He knew—he had to—that she’d tried twice to destroy the Gallows Oak. In his frenzy to defeat her, he thought she’d changed her target.

  But she hadn’t.

  Step by step she fought him back across the field. The ground beneath her feet was mud now, slippery and treacherous, sodden with water and ichor and blood. As she spun to block an attack from one of the trolls, she caught a glimpse of the black van. Its back doors were open, and Addie was dragging one of the Oakhurst students into it. Mobile Alchemy Sorcery Hospital, Spirit thought whimsically, then the moment was gone as she gathered herself against Mordred’s new onslaught.

  He should have defended the Tree, but she could see that instead he was slowly turning his forces to flank her fighters. He meant to reach the gates and bar them, trapping the Grail Knights and their allies inside his fortress walls so he could slaughter them at his leisure. He didn’t realize that every one of his attackers knew it didn’t matter whether they were locked in or not. They had to win. Here. Now.

  Another step, and another. Her arms ached with weariness. Her legs were leaden. This was worse than the most hellish Endurance Ride, the longest Systema class. She didn’t know how long she’d been fighting all out, but she was tiring.

  She heard Loch scream. One of the bat-things had dived on him from above. She saw its claws shred through the armor he wore as if it were tissue paper. Cafall leaped, jaws wide, tearing at the foe. There were trolls running toward Loch, but he couldn’t see them.

  “Burke!” she shouted, and Burke turned to attack them.

  And Mordred struck.

  The ground boiled beneath her feet as if an earthquake had hit, and suddenly, tearing loose from the mud came vines, each one covered with long needle-sharp thorns. She hacked at them desperately, knowing she was dead if any of them coiled around her. But she could not defend against the vines and Mordred’s blade at the same time.

  She saw the descending blow, and flung Excalibur up to block it, but she was too slow. It struck her shoulder as she desperately flinched away. The steel shoulder-guard she wore crumpled like a Coke can; she felt a burning coldness as the blade bit into flesh. Spirit stumbled aside, barely able to dodge the worst of it, and tripped, staggered, fell.

  Into the thorn-vines.

  For an instant they began to tighten around her.

  Then they shattered, grey with ice.

  She didn’t pause to bless her good
fortune, or to see whose spell had destroyed them. She scrabbled to her feet, using Excalibur as a crutch, and staggered forward. For a few precious seconds, no one was attacking her. Mordred had seen her fall and thought she was finished. He’d turned to Burke, wanting the battle he’d expected.

  Mordred against Arthur for the fate of the world.

  Her left arm was useless now. Her shoulder was numb where Mordred’s baneblade had struck her, and the cut on her arm was gushing blood. Clutching her sword in her right hand, Spirit staggered toward the Tree. Behind her, she heard Burke shout a warning. Mordred had seen her.

  She gritted her teeth against the pain, raised her sword in her free hand, and struck the Gallows Oak with all her strength. The blade bit into the wood, and Spirit felt the upwelling of her magic, everyone’s magic—the power of her knights, her friends, everyone here today who fought in the service of the Grail—roaring through her body and down the blade like a torrent from a fire hose.

  The tree … exploded. Its golden wood turned grey and soft, rotting away before her eyes. Day turned to night. An icy wind rose up, wailing, turning the mud beneath her feet to ice. Silence spread like the ripples in a pond, as all across the battlefield, the fighting just … stopped. The trunk cracked, then split, its shards and splinters whipped away in the wintery gale, falling to pieces as if it had been struck by invisible lightning. At its heart she caught a glimpse of blackened bones wrapped in ancient chains, and a hideous stench, foul even in the icy wind, filled the air. As she stared, the bones began to crumble.

  Turn and fight, you fool! Mordred attacks!

  Spirit hauled her blade out of the trunk, and turned.

  The battlefield was silvery, as if it was midnight under a full moon. Mordred leaped toward her, his face distorted in a scream of elemental rage. As the skeleton chained in the Tree rotted away, she saw his body suddenly spurt blood from a dozen bullet holes. And suddenly, she heard Stephen Wolferman’s voice, as clearly as if he were here beside her.

  “The night of the big storm there was bad voodoo going down. We all knew it. The aliens had followed us. And one of them shot Roadhog, and that opened the gate, and Kenny said run, and there was blood everywhere and the shadows came out of the blood.…”

  The night the Hellriders accidentally freed Mordred from his prison, he’d possessed the body of Kenny Hawking. But Kenny had been shot that night. For all these years, Mordred had used his power to hold Death at bay.

  But now his power was failing.

  And Kenny Hawking was dying. At last.

  She saw Mordred fall to his knees, his face twisted with hatred and rage. With his last ounce of strength, he struck at her. She felt as if an icy spear had transfixed her, taking with it the last of her strength.

  And Spirit fell.

  * * *

  Addie wasn’t sorry not to be in the thick of the battle. She was busy enough. Their side, outnumbered as it was, was fighting with all of its strength and skill. Fires roared and flared, thunder cracked as storm winds were conjured out of nothingness, jets of water spurted up out of the ground to become spears of ice. The battlefield was a haze of spells. The Illusion Mages conjured up an entire army of armored knights to confuse the enemy, but illusions were only that: shadows, unable to strike. Their army was badly outnumbered.

  Cei was the first to fall. She saw him go down beneath the clubs of two of the Stone Giants, and almost before they turned away, she was running out onto the field. With strength she hadn’t known she possessed, Addie grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him toward safety.

  Toward the Cauldron.

  He was still alive, barely. His face was a mask of blood, and he had too many broken bones to count. He screamed, once, as she hauled him upright and shoved him into the back of the black van.

  Heal! she commanded.

  The uprush of Power from this, the most powerful of Britain’s Hallows, made her step back in surprise. But before it had done its work, she had turned back to the field, looking for more of the fallen.

  She did not see the battle itself. It was not her concern. It had moved toward the steps, leaving behind it the injured and the fallen, and they were what she saw, for she was the Lady of Avalon, in whose Gift lay all the healing arts, and mastery of the Cauldron. Again and again she made the painful journey across the field to gather up another body to place inside the Cauldron. There were so many. She could not save them all.

  “Let me help.”

  She looked up, startled. Veronica was there, with Brenda, with a dozen other kids whose names she didn’t know. There was no time to ask why Brenda and Veronica had come back, or why the others had come at all. “Bring them!” she said, and she and Veronica dragged Angelina Swanson back to the van.

  Each time she felt the golden tide of inexhaustible magic rise up, and each time it receded, another Grail Knight or Oakhurst Mage staggered out, alive and healed, to grab weapons and return to the fight. She didn’t know how long it went on. Once, it was Veronica Davenport they manhandled into the Cauldron. She’d been struck down as she dragged a fallen fighter from the field.

  Then the sun went black.

  * * *

  Mark stood on the battlements watching the battle below. It disturbed him that Mordred had not summoned the Shadow Knights to battle. The army he had chosen to lead against Arthur and his pitiful band of children was drawn from the legions of Otherrealm.

  It would have been madness to set the sprites and spirits of Otherrealm against the Grail Knights, were Mordred not able to call forth such overwhelming numbers. Again and again, Mark saw trolls, lamiae, Waldgeists, Stone Giants struck down by a single blow from one of the Hallows of Britain.

  But for each creature slain, there were a dozen to take its place.

  “Come on!” Tristan tugged at his sleeve. “We’re going to miss all the fun!”

  “The slaughter, you mean.” Mark of Cornwall had spent most of his previous life fighting—like any other knight, he thought of warfare as not only his duty, but as his pleasure. But war had rules. Half of Arthur’s force was nothing more than children.

  “War, slaughter, who cares as long as we win?” Tristan said impatiently.

  “When my liege summons me to battle, then I will go,” Mark said imperturbably. He turned to face Tristan. “And you’d better not stick your nose in where you aren’t invited either. The last time we overstepped Prince Mordred’s orders, the results were … unpleasant.”

  Even Tristan winced at that. Mordred had struck dead the messenger who came to tell him Mark was hunting the escaped Oakhurst students.

  “But how could he object to our loyalty?” Morgause purred, twining her arm through Mark’s. “We are his sworn vassals. What greater joy could there be than to support him on the field of battle?”

  Even Mark had to admit Morgause was lovely. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and her eyes sparkled. She was a woman any man would prize …

  … if only he could trust her not to knife him as he slept.

  “‘Greater joy?’” he asked. “Surviving his anger would be high on my list.” He turned away, gazing out at the carnage below. He heard the screams of children, the shouts of the Grail Knights—and the inhuman baying of the monsters Mordred had set upon them.

  When he next looked away from the battle, Tristan and Morgause were gone. They weren’t the only ones, either.

  Sudden alarm filled him. It wasn’t like either of those two to leave the scene of a battle. If they couldn’t fight themselves, the next best thing was to watch.

  And better than either is the chance to betray an ally—and to indulge themselves at the same time.

  He knew Morgause blamed Spirit White and the others for the death of Morgaine. She’d been so sure Muirin Shae would join them. She’d lavished favors and privileges on the girl—not out of love, Mark knew perfectly well, but from arrogance. Morgause enjoyed wielding power—and what greater power could she have over her Reincarnate sister than to be the one w
ho had been responsible for bringing her into the Shadow Knights?

  But Morgause had been cheated of that victory, and now she thought she was going to be cheated of the chance to kill those responsible with her own hands.

  But if she took the field and claimed it was by his orders, Morgause would have the sweets of self-indulgence—and it would be Mark who would face the bitter punishment.

  Snarling, he ran for the stairs.

  * * *

  Mark caught up to her just as Morgause was leaving her rooms. She’d taken time to armor herself and put on her sword.

  “Stop,” he said. “I have not given you leave to join the battle.”

  She pushed up her visor and smiled. “Dear Mark. Always the soul of chivalry when it’s most inconvenient. Do you think I give a damn what you permit and what you don’t?”

  Before she’d finished speaking, she lashed out at him with her sword. Mark dodged back out of reach. His Gift, like his brother’s, was from the School of Fire. It wasn’t terribly useful against a sword.

  But a gun was.

  He drew it as Morgause came for him again. She laughed as she saw the pistol, and raised her sword.

  She didn’t laugh as he fired. The bullets in the clip were Black Talon armor-piercing rounds. They could penetrate modern tactical armor as if it were a feather pillow. Armored in chain mail, Morgause had no chance.

  She fell to the floor, dying. He kicked the sword away from her hand. She was trying to draw the dagger at her belt, but she was too badly wounded.

  “You always placed too much trust in the Middle Ages, Morgause,” he said.

  “Tristan … will avenge.…” she whispered as she died.

  And that raises the interesting question of where Tristan is, if not with you, my late treacherous lady. He knew Tristan wasn’t already on the field. Mark had moved too fast for that.

  I have to find him.

  Fire was not a School that lent itself to spells of seeking and finding, but Mark and Tristan shared one thing that few of the Oakhurst alumni could claim: they really were brothers. It was one of the few times that two children in a family had both been born with magic—and so Mordred had spared both of them when he slew their parents. The ties of blood kinship would let Mark find Tristan no matter where he was. He stepped back from the spreading pool of blood on the floor, closed his eyes and concentrated. A moment later, he could see through Tristan’s eyes.