by John Lenahan
It was too late for my uncle to mount another attack. Since he knew he had the upper hand and we had little chance for reinforcements by tomorrow, they simply backed out of archery range and made camp.
‘Well, it looks like we won round one,’ I said to Spideog.
‘War is scored with the dead, Conor,’ the old warrior said. ‘This battle has yet to begin.’
I continued with my morale-man job, dispensing pep talks as deemed necessary for a while, and then went to headquarters to check if I was needed or maybe get a little nap in. I caught my Aunt Nieve by surprise and she quickly turned away and wiped her eyes.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
She tried to put on a brave face but at the last second she told the truth. Her voice wobbled as she said, ‘No,’ and sat down.
That was an answer I wasn’t ready for. Of all people Nieve was the last person I would have expected to crack under pressure. I sat on the arm of her chair and put my hand on her shoulder.
‘How did he die?’ she asked, not looking at me.
That question hit me like a slap. How should I answer that? How did Brendan die? If I was truthful I would have told her that one of her spells made him powerless to move while he was burned alive, but instead I said, ‘It was instant, and painless, he wouldn’t have even known what hit him.’
That seemed to do the job. She wiped her face, stood up and said, ‘Right, we have a battle to prepare for, yes?’
‘Actually I was hoping to have a kip. Do you think that’s OK?’
‘Of course,’ she said as we gave each other a proper hug. ‘You may be our Prince but you’re still just a Faerie.’
I nodded and left for my tent. I understood what she meant but it still didn’t sound right.
I willed myself to not dream but that didn’t work. Once again in dreamland I zoomed to my father’s side. I have to admit that even though I would never abandon my comrades, I’d be lying if at that moment flying away to Castle Dudersn’t what I truly wished I could do.
It was well after midnight when I awoke. I walked to the battlements and found Spideog with a very short Imp sorceress. The sorceress mumbled over an arrow and then handed it to the old archer, who notched it into the biggest bow I had ever seen. He let it fly and I lost it in the night sky. I started to look away but Spideog said, ‘Keep watching.’
As the lost arrow began to descend, it started to glow then it exploded on top of a tent, showering it in flames. Screaming and cursing could be heard wafting up from the enemy camp.
‘You havin’ fun?’ I asked.
‘We are not sleeping tonight,’ Spideog said. ‘There is no reason why they should.’
We spent the rest of the night lobbing arrows into Cialtie’s camp. By morning Essa, Yogi, Dahy and Nieve had all joined us and we giggled like schoolchildren every time Spideog let an arrow fly. Some of Spideog’s archery students tried their hand with the big bow but none of them was as good as the Master. It was amazing how many tents he hit even though he couldn’t see them until they went up in flames.
With the troops assembled at the ramparts, Dahy asked me if I wanted to address them again. I told him I had already done my bit and maybe he should do it. He didn’t disagree.
‘Today will be different from yesterday,’ Dahy said, raising his gruff voice. ‘Today, we use swords – today, there will be blood. But the first victim of your sword should not be your enemy, it should be the little voice inside you that is saying that this battle is already lost. You must find that voice and kill it – because all is not lost. I would not have us here if it was. I have trained you and I know what you can do – and this – together – we can do. Today there will be swords – today there will be blood – let us make sure that the blood that runs is not ours. Let us make sure that those who would take away who we are will pay for their arrogance. Today there will be blood and today we shall endure.’
The crowd went wild. I patted my old master on the back and said, ‘Awesome, dude.’
Spideog turned to Dahy and said, ‘I thought it was a bit flowery,’ then he smiled and the two old rivals shook each other’s hand.
‘Are you ready to go into battle with me again – old friend?’ Dahy said.
‘Who are you calling old,’ Spideog replied. ‘By the by, remind me that I have to tell you something when this is all over.’
Dahy was just about to ask what, when someone cried, ‘Incoming!’ and the battle began.
The sky blackened with arrows. We all ducked behind the battlements and watched in horror as soldiers who were caught out in the open scrambled for cover. Then I saw a conch shell hit the ground about twenty-five feet behind me. This one, unlike the ones yesterday, wasn’t smoking. I peeped over the battlements and seeing that there were no arrows on the way, I dashed over intending to throw it back. I was no more than an arm’s length away when I heard an ear-piercing sound and was instantly doubled up in pain. All around me men dropped to the ground pulling their knees yest to their chest. I’m sure that like me they were howling in pain but nothing could be heard other than the screaming sound that was coming from the shell. I knew we had to get rid of it but every time I tried to straighten my legs, the pain, which was already unbearable, doubled. I had started dragging myself forward with my fingers in the dirt when I saw Essa, obviously in pain but on her feet, stagger over to the shell and then smash it with her banta stick. The sound and pain went as suddenly as they had come. Essa poked through the rubble of the shell and picked up a small gold amulet that was buzzing with a tinny sound. Then using her teeth and fingers she bit and twisted it until it stopped.
Dahy, who I am embarrassed to say was on his feet much faster than me, walked over and took the amulet from Essa. ‘It’s a gleem,’ he said.
Gleem, where had I heard that before? That was the thing that Cialtie had used on Dad to win the boat race. It inflicted the pain of childbirth.
‘Well, that settles it,’ I said. ‘I’m not ever getting pregnant.’
Someone shouted, ‘INCOMING!’ and we ran back to the ramparts for cover. Spideog kept his nose over the wall and then popped up to shoot a second shell out of the air like a Kentucky skeet shooter.
Essa ducked next to me. ‘Didn’t that gleem thing hurt?’ I asked her.
‘Of course it hurt but it was nothing I couldn’t take.’ She rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘Men.’
Cialtie’s first attack was small – designed to force us to show our strengths and weaknesses – it was also designed to fail. On strictly a tactical standpoint I guess it was sensible but using any other yardstick, especially a moral one, it was despicable. It was a suicide mission – that is if the attackers in the first wave volunteered. If they were ordered to go, then it was a death sentence and we were the executioners. About seventy Brownies dashed directly at the ramparts. The first thing they discovered was that Dahy and the Leprechauns had, for months, been hammering every flat rock or piece of shale that they could find into the ground in front of the stone defences. Running on it at any speed was almost impossible – it was a minefield for ankle twisting.
Many Brownies tripped and many more were mowed down by Spideog and his archers. Only four Brownies reached the wall and when they did they seemed not to know what to do. Several of their attacking comrades had been carrying siege ladders but they had been stopped by arrows. As our archers bore down on the four, Dahy ordered them not to fire.
‘Brownies,’ Dahy called down to them, ‘you have fought bravely but you have no chance to scale these walls. I offer you safe passage if you go back now.’
As I watched, I prayed that they would take his offer. They looked like lost cold orphans shivering in a big city alley. If they defiantly started to climb we would have no choice but to kill them. I can’t tell you how quickly I was getting tired of this war stuff. They huddled up and then accepted. With their heads held high, they marched back over the ankle-twisting stone field. About halfway across, a huge volley of arrows from C
ialtie’s camp dropped all of them as one. It was my uncle’s way of showing the rest of his army how he felt about surrender.
Dahy made no comment, nor showed any emotion in regards to the slaughter, he just nodded like this was business as usual. ‘Cialtie and Turlow have learned all that they need to know,’ the general said. ‘The next attack will be all of them.’
I stepped off my post in hopes of getting to the wash tent so I could splash some water on my face and maybe wash away some of the horror that I had just seen – some of the horror that I had just been part of. I used a shortcut that brought me around the back of the tent and there I found Spideog sitting with his back to a low ruined wall, his knees up and his face in his hands. I hesitated before I disturbed him. I hoped that when he removed his hands that his eyes were not awash with tears. If Spideog broke under this pressure, what chance had the rest of us for surviving unscathed? But surviving unscathed was probably impossible anyway.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, crouching down to his level.
He looked up. His eyes were clear but filled with a millennium’s worth of sadness. ‘May the gods damn your uncle.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘and they will have to get in line. There are a few of us around here who would like to damn him and do a bit more.’
‘Those Brownies…’ Spideog paused – on his face he wore the sorrow of a man searching through old, painful memories. ‘Those Brownies fought like the Fili. During that war, Maeve threw her Fili at us like they were toy soldiers that could later just be glued back together.’ He shook his head and looked down. ‘How do they do it? How do these madmen get their people to follow them with such suicidal abandon?’
‘I don’t know, Master,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we will ever know but isn’t that what makes us better than them?’
He looked up, smiled at me, then stood, instantly regaining his innate heroic stance. ‘You have your grandmother’s eyes, you know.’
‘You must tell me about her sometime.’
‘I will, when this is all over.’ He laughed to himself as he turned. ‘I might even do better than that.’
He jogged back to his post without giving me a chance to ask him what he meant.
Back on the battlements the sun rose to its zenith in a crystal-clear blue winter sky. The heat was welcome as it allowed us to believe that the sweat that was dripping down our backs was caused by the sun and not our jangling nerves.
In Cialtie’s camp there could be heard orders being barked and bugle-sounding things being played as the army of Banshees and Brownies readied for their main offensive. Essa dropped in next to me.
‘Dahy thinks that the attack will be soon,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Born ready,’ I said automatically. As I scanned the horizon I felt Essa reach down and entwine her fingers in mine. I looked at her, she was fierce and scared and oh so achingly beautiful – all at the same time. She leaned in and kissed me. I placed my hands gently on her shoulders and pushed her back.
‘We are not going to die,’ I said.
She turned away, looking out over the field and then I felt her tense up like the strings of a tennis racket. She pointed to the edge of the rise. I followed the line of her finger and saw hundreds of screaming soldiers charge into view.
‘Tell that to them,’ she said as she drew her sword.
Chapter Forty
The Isles
What must have been a thousand Brownies and Banshees swarmed onto the stone plain. They looked like those red army ants that you see in old Tarzan movies. I was half expecting the fallen to end up as stone-white skeletons.
As soon as they got into range, our arrows flew. The fallen were not even considered by their comrades – if the arrows didn’t kill them then the trampling surely must have. The same fate awaited those that tripped on the stone field. Just behind the first wave were a line of siege ladders carried by teams of three. The ladders had shields strapped to the front so as to protect the carriers from all but the sharpest archers who aimed for their heads and legs. Spideog assigned his best bowmen for that task and they had a reasonably high measure of success. Still, any ladder bearer that was hit was instantly replaced by another. The ladders clambered closer.
All the while volleys of arrows came at us from the back of the enemy’s advance. Dahy’s ramparts were designed well, giving cover as well as enough gaps for the archers to continue shooting even while arrows were flying in. One gleem arrived during the first part of the attack but was swiftly taken care of by the special gleem-team that Nieve had equipped with gold earplugs.
The enemy soldiers that reached the ramparts huddled together under their shields in an arrow-proof phalanx. The ones that did this too close to the walls had boulders thrown at them by teams of very brawny Leprechaun miners. The huge rocks smashed into the shields then the archers finished them off.
I’d like to be able to say that I was appalled by all of this bloodshed but as those ladders drew closer and with the realisation that this screaming horde was hell bent on killing me, it caused a bloodlust to explode in my brain. Some men never get over this experience and sell themselves as mercenaries for the rest of their lives in order to feel that savage passion again. As for me I have no want to repeat the experience but I would be lying if I said it was unpleasant. In fact it was damn exciting. Never have I felt so alive. It was kill or be killed and every fallen enemy soldier was one that I knew I wouldn’t have to face with my sword and I cheered with the rest of my comrades as each went down.
When the ladders reached the ramparts I finally got to use my sword. It was a good blade but heavier and nowhere near as finely balanced as the Sword of Duir. I missed the Lawnmower. I had a fleeting image of the last time I saw it, sticking out of the underbelly of Dragon Red. A ladder hit below my gap in the wall. I tried to reach down and push it but it was just out of reach. Leprechaun boulder tossers were engaged elsewhere so I waited for the first of the Brownies to climb the ladder. He reached the top in no time and we engaged in a pointless just out-of-reach sword-fight where we clinked sword tips but were too far away from each other to make serious contact. My father’s sword-fighting instructions sprang into my head. ‘When an attack ceases to make sense,’ he once said to me, right before he tripped me over a low wire he had earlier set up in the garden, ‘look around – something else might be happening.’ I continued to swing but looked under the ladder and saw another Brownie with a crossbow taking aim at my nose. I ducked back just in time to avoid a bolt in the brain.
A gleem came over the wall far to my right. The gleem-team got to it quickly but not in time to prevent a couple of Banshees from clearing the ramparts. They fought and another five were allowed to reach the top before they were thrown back over. Ladders had now reached almost every part of the rampart wall. All of the ladders seemed to me to be too low. It made them difficult for us to repel by pushing them over but it also made it extremely difficult for the enemy to breach the top of the walls. It didn’t make sense. I used my father’s advice again and scanned the length of the battlements. That’s when I noticed that under every ladder was a team of two soldiers crouched down fiddling with something at the base of the wall.
I shouted to Dahy, ‘SOMETHING IS HAPPENING UNDER THE LADDERS.’
As he looked, a horn was blown and all the attackers dropped from their ladders and ran away from the wall.
‘RETREAT!’ Dahy shouted. ‘EVERYONE OFF THE BATTLEMENTS!’
Having been a student of the Master I didn’t have to hear a Dahy order twice. I flew off my post and into the midst of the Hall of Knowledge. A few of my comrades were not so lucky. The explosions blew a dozen holes in our defences. The Leprechauns and Imps who were on the wall were thrown twenty feet in the air.
‘BACK TO THE AISLES,’ Dahy ordered. ‘BACK TO THE AISLES.’
Our secondary defence was what Dahy had called ‘The Aisles’. We had knocked down some of what was left of the Hall’s walls and reinforced others. T
he idea was to force any advancing army into narrow channels – aisles, allowing us to battle one or two abreast as opposed to a huge wave of marauders. Archers were positioned so as to shoot anyone that tried to come over the top.
The air hadn’t even cleared when the Banshees, covered with the white dust of the explosions, came screaming out of the smoke. Dahy had said that there would be blood; well, this was the time he was talking about. I don’t know how many I killed. All I know is that they weren’t very well trained. They had strength and the energy that adrenalin brings but they all swung madly and allowed me to parry their wild swings to the outside and stab them in the chest, or the shoulder if they were wearing a breast protector. May the gods forgive me but what else could I do?
Even though I was killing many, I gave ground with almost every clash and I was getting tired. An Imp finally grabbed me from behind, pulled me back into the Hall and took my place at the front of the aisle.
I found Dahy barking orders outside of the library. On my left a bunch of Banshees broke through and Yogi, as a bear, roared into them, throwing two into the air and shing the others into a retreat, while Dahy ordered swordsmen back into that aisle. This battle was not going well and it was just about to get a whole lot worse.
A troop of Banshees had snuck around to the site of the first attack. They guessed that if they each carried a bough of a tree that the gold strips might not register the branches as weapons and would let them through. They guessed right. Because of our small numbers we had only defended the hill with a handful of soldiers. The Banshees attacked with the branches and at the same time catapulted a bag of swords over a wall from the side. The Banshees quickly overpowered the guards on the hill and armed themselves. Our defences were dangerously thinned as soldiers were ordered to defend the Tree of Knowledge on two fronts.
I think at this point Dahy would have surrendered but no one was offering. This was it – it was a fight to the death and the realisation hit me that the death would be ours.