Torrodil

by Luke Geraghty

  The Second Civil War rippled across the land, everyone was thrown in and the Golden Age was thrown out. Helen made a weak military leader and was as unpopular with her own Blue Helms as she was with the enemy. Support and forces dwindling, she and her loyalists were pushed back to none other than Danduin, now little more than its keep, where she fought in vain for the crown until a sword ensured that she would never wear a hat again.

  Looking over the ramparts to the moss floor forest, the tale was turning in Katharine’s mind. Dragonflies were beating through the air, seemingly bidding their wings to carry them away. She could but wonder whether the lichen growing in cracked stone wished that it too had the faculty to fly from this disturbed house of royal blood.

  Crumbling walls were being forced to stand. Musketmen were testing their range, longbowmen and Milbourne archers fruitlessly trying to match it. There was a discussion on battered fish raging between Frozen Isle buccaneers and Shelsley fishermen, to which Katharine would have added her two pennies were she not having to assume a dignified position.

  Enclosed as they were by Tarnwood Forest, the keep door facing the western path that snaked round to the southern ramparts, she was not deeply worried for her own fortunes, though she had a connection with her head that she would like to maintain.

  Instead, it was the lives of the three thousand-odd soldiers that troubled her. The majority lay in wait, hidden behind and amongst the trees at either side of the western path. They have families unlike her. If they fall today on this ground there will be no state funeral; no song to sound down the eras or coin to bear their image for all to see. There will be a cry, drowned out by the din, muffled by moss. They might writhe. Issue a splutter or two. They may see more with failing sight than she can ever hope to. But they will sink there, amidst the wastes of war, into an ignoble death from which there can be no rise. When their children have grown, there will be no call in the night. When their children’s children have grown, there will be no prolonged thought. And there shall come a time when none remember the little victories of their life, the joys and regrets, the half-hearted promises and memories wrapped up in clover, because there will be no cenotaph, no song, and no coin.

  ‘You seem out of sorts, Your Majesty.’

  Lord Sutton’s voice did not startle Katharine, nor did she make any attempt to provide an excuse, asking instead about the repairs.

  ‘The engineers have sealed up what they can.’

  ‘And the inner gate?’

  ‘The iron is spent. I advised Drummel to erect a wooden barricade.’

  ‘I dare say you know more about this than he does, Sutton.’

  ‘I have had practice, Katharine.’

  She peered at him searchingly, trying to break through the veneer. Diverting her attention to the horizon, Katharine saw that the long summer had begun to wane and leaves drifted down onto the path in no particular hurry. There was a black mark, she observed, marring the setting sun. Not satisfied to be a distant speck, it poked up from the russet and the green, getting bigger, garnering bulk, shape, a face. The first of ten thousand.

  ‘Everybody in!’ cries the Queen, soldiers underneath the battlements following her line of sight, seeing the now swarming throng and scattering like young birds, bumping into one another, frantically trying to cram back into the nest. Katharine runs inside a tower for her sword. A hand limits her reach.

  ‘You cannot fight them in the front line. Think of what would happen if you fell. What it would do to morale.’ Sutton adds lightly, ‘To this country.’

  ‘If there is strength in me to wield a blade than I shall do so.’

  ‘There will be time, should they breach the walls. Come, you wield more power with your voice than you do with a sword.’

  Tarnwood Forest quakes with the advancing Venecians, who have recognised the enemy ahead and broken out into a run, pauldrons glinting in the sun, banners thrusting upwards as though there are so many of them that some need not fight at all. Their fine muskets are topped with bayonets keen to impale the fearsome and the flighty; their few horses sheathed in silver armour.

  Carrics clamber through the Keep’s outer door; Commander Drummel barks orders; Gatemaster waits to throw down the lever.

  Venecians run in file with abundant poise, metallic spheres at their waist, fuses sticking up, ready for a torchbearer’s fire.

  Forest forces hear the dreaded falling of the gate, unable to act. The few left outside turn, raise their swords to the river of men and are seared by the opening shots, cries lost in the din. Those unused to the invisible death seek the weapons that have killed their kin, frightened by the chain of thunderclaps.

  On the Keep’s western battlements longbowmen string their bows, eyeing up weak spots in their foe’s armour. Whistling through the air go a white hail of Carric arrows, joining limb with leaf, man with man. A torchbearer stumbles back, eyes wild, flame twirling out of hand and igniting a musketman’s silk. Arms flail with the orange blaze. Comrades hear the fizz. Stare in disbelief. Dive to the floor as the gunpowder ball explodes, man chunks spread here, there, everywhere.

  A return of fire from the rallied Venecians. There is no search for the right arc. No broken beat. A captain of Tenés admires the countenance of a Leitrim farmer boy, then shoots him through the nose. His sister watches him spasm for a while. The tongue lolling. The body limp.

  Katharine breaks away to an archer’s window and with the Milbourne females around her lets the Venecian army feel the terrible sting of a woman scorned. A frozen sliver of time while she holds her aim, waits for her prey to come to her, the shot in reach, the arrow flown. It digs into metal and drives out breath from the old lungs below, inhaling their last in a strange, green land.

  The three cauldron keepers are arguing. If too many cooks spoil the broth, then the pots of boiling oil above the murder holes are decidedly rancid.

  ‘There aren’t enough yet, you’ll waste it!’ says the first to the second, who really ought to know his place by now.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Give me that lever. Give it me!’

  ‘Don’t make me throw you down there.’

  The second narrows his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  To the Venecians, the flight of the second cauldron keeper over the battlements came as a surprise, though it was not an unwelcome sight. Those who saw the pot-bellied man likened him to a human cannonball, and his landing seemed to support that opinion. His blubber provided ample cushioning for the fall, but thwarted his attempts to get up. Eventually he came to a decision to stop rocking to and fro and lie still, feigning death. He was later discovered to have fled the scene, though how far he got, blubbersome as he was, is anybody’s guess.

  Back on the battlements, gunpowder balls drift serenely towards four Orcester gentry, who have declined the use of armour since it would, quote, ‘spoil their ensemble’.

  ‘I declare, what are those things?’

  ‘They are so silly,’ comes a reply, concurred by the other three gentlemen. A short dialogue ensues on the lack of chairs, a sensational error obviously committed by that unthinking ignoramus of a commander, with the three breaking off to inspect the incoming articles. ‘The ape men have forgotten to light the fuses again. Typical Venecian attitude: so blasé about everything.’

  Enemy takes aim.

  ‘So, so silly.’

  Enemy hovers over the trigger.

  ‘Ah.’

  A chain of blasts rips the top off the western wall, sending out a pulse of gentry and soldiers, bows and face-smashing brick. Dilating eyes, men scrambling, fallen, hit in the chest by shrapnel followed up by an express delivery of fat slabs. A cloud of grey powder descends over their bodies. The lucky ones get up and go with the earth moving beneath them. They are aware of men on the towers above lighting pitch-coated arrows. Some that have gotten up the stairs witness firsthand the ignited gunpowder caches; the man-made thunder and thinning of the horde. The Venecian commander is not d
azed. He is incensed.

  ‘They’re at the gate,’ Sutton bellows to the Queen through a tower door. He has shed his armour, she notices.

  Movement below, hundreds waiting for a single flame. Torchbearers advance only to be cut down by emboldened Carrics, thinking the enemy too slow, too many. The cauldron keepers pour their foul broth into the holes, boiling the enemy alive, the scalded thrashing about helplessly, yelling for agua, please agua, but their friends know that water can do nothing for them now.

  ‘Katharine, the keep, go!’

  Katharine silent, peering at Sutton’s tunic.

  Low, beckoning call of the horn and concealed Carrics descend from the east and flank from the south and north, charging with a war cry and meeting gun with sword. The Venecian commander orders a shifting of formation, but the forces are divided, swept up in the heat of battle. Behind a floor of guns cloven in two, blades face bayonets, owners croaking up taunts. For most there is no banter. There is my life, their death.

  Torchbearer throws his fire-tool at a cluster of gunpowder balls at the gate.

  ‘There hasn’t been silk like that in Carrigan for years,’ says Katharine.

  Sutton stops dead. Exposed.

  ‘No there hasn’t.’

  A stunning whoop underneath, cluster exploding, shattering the gate. The tower swoons in an apocalyptic twilight, Katharine knocked to the floor, gravity dragging her back and down. Life is a smear of broken colour, but she senses she is wedged under something wooden, clearly desperate to rupture her organs in one big, blotchy rainbow. Get it up, get it off. She shoves against it and it laughs at her feeble strength, tower joining in while it folds like a puny lover.

  And all she sees is Carric men, out in the open, oblivious to what is creeping behind. They allow themselves to believe they are winning because the enemy shows surprise. A question: is victory at hand?

  And the answer burnt into their backs. The swordsman crinkling; the labourer godless under the crescent moon and failing sun, shining together over this theatre of naïve actors, lives sold for a stool beside the tyrant’s throne.

  Twenty Six – Release

  Anna had watched the battle unfold, kept by the forest. When the wind came it was an old friend, trickling memories into her ear and leading her away from the others. Soldiers paused when she wandered into their midst. Those that went to strike her were lifted by twisters thrown out by her shield of wind, brought to life by a girl lost in the bleakest thoughts, a voice whispering, Come, come, I will take you to him.

  ‘We’ll be safe, will we?’ said Cesar incredulously, under fire from a countryman who had gone from freaky-tornado-spewing girl to hiding-badly-behind-trees six and decided the latter fairer game.

  ‘It was a simple mistake,’ said the monk.

  The other five stared him down.

  ‘Fine, a total bungle. When you’re done gloating I suggest we find Anna and get out of here before we are stabbed or shot. Which way did she go?’

  ‘Towards the keep. It’s a death sentence,’ said Kara cheerfully. Manchild replied that they couldn’t possibly leave apocalypse girl behind. Perfect. Bayonets and bullets were threatening holey destruction on her gold-trimmed cloak and he wanted to pick a fight.

  Cesar gave Kara a wink. ‘I know what’s wrong with you. You’re scared.’

  The Trickster took a vial from her belt.

  ‘Scared of getting a knot in that coiffed, blonde—’ Cesar broke off to dodge the Vial of Webbing, turning to see it break open on a Venecian’s jaw. Once he had gotten over the fright, he asked how long the man had been sneaking up on him.

  ‘About two minutes,’ Kara replied casually.

  ‘And you didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Somehow it slipped my mind.’

  Through the forest the six ran, shots lost to the trees and encroaching darkness. Anna had left a trail of mayhem. Woodland had been uprooted, soldiers cast upwards, grey and brown sewn into green. Those that had seen her were on the floor, running their hands over talismans. For believers there was a worse fate than being struck down on their knees. They recognised a girl in self-surrender, on her shield of wind eyes drawn from a primal evil. Come, I will take you to him.

  The six did not dare glance at the shapes huddled at their feet in an eternal sleep. Their eyes were on the main battlefield surrounding the keep, where supernatural chaos had not yet displaced that of war. Carrics were few. The Queen’s cavalry were scattered, their horses unused to gunfire. At the forest edge the six saw defenders clash with Venecians on the eastern battlements, realising the keep had been breached. Yet they could not see Katharine dragged from the tower by Sutton and his traitorous ilk, promised glory and gold beyond measure.

  ‘You ought to be grateful, Your Majesty,’ said Sutton, poking a pistol into the lady’s back as they walked the length of Danduin’s dungeon. ‘I did just save your life.’

  ‘So you can sell it. Next you’ll be saying one ought to be grateful for the pox, though from the little I recall of Barbosa that may be a sensitive issue for you.’

  The man felt the sting quiver in his stomach. ‘You would be wise to save that biting wit for the King. Perhaps you won’t be so talkative with him, mm?’ The two of them waited while the cell door was unlocked. The men were useful, Katharine thought, and easily disposed of when their use ran out.

  ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘was it because I was a woman?’

  ‘What?’

  The door opened and Sutton’s men got to work opening up the underground passageway.

  ‘Did you sell out your country because it was ruled by a queen?’

  ‘Could be ruled by a pirate for all I care. Compared to you it may even be an improvement. You rejected Barbosa’s marriage proposal when it was your country’s only chance for survival, banished conscription and stripped Carrigan of its defences, then riled your people up for war because you thought it was right.’

  ‘Would you have our people in chains?’

  ‘Better chains than coffins. Did you honestly think we would win here today? That we stood a chance? His army is better equipped, more easily trained. Three thousand men against that… That’s a heavy load to hold on your shoulders.’

  The henchmen were ushering the two in, quickly, others may be coming. The Queen and her former minister stood stock-still, challenging one another in the dank air. Katharine did not hold Venecian tailoring in high regard. It made an ordinary fool like Sutton into an overpuffed clown.

  ‘You won’t break me,’ she said, swallowing her fear. Sutton let a set of cold cuffs answer for him, then led Katharine into the underground passageway and away from the battlefield.

  The people were small next to the forest. Anna’s breath was the wind that would tidy them away; the fire sliding off her fingernails a sprinkle of pixie dust to make this space peaceful again. There was no guessing when hands covered her eyes in a game of peek-a-boo. Her father took her into his arms, head tucked under his chin. Blame the quiet chest on the night chill.

  ‘I want you to do something for me, Anna, and then you can go home. Are you listening to me? Good. Look at the men down there. Go on, it’s alright.’

  Anna peered over the tower battlements. Fire had broken out in the courtyard and walls that had jutted into the night, defiant, were crumbling. The rank aroma of war burned in her nostrils. She had smelt enough and went to turn, finding a restraining arm round her waist.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘The drumming is there, isn’t it? Do you feel the drumming in the ground, too? The energy slipping into the earth, feeding this world. Speak to it.’

  ‘Pa,’ she said, adrift.

  ‘Concentrate on this for me. Ask it where it’s going.’

  The six ran across the fallen tower remains and into the courtyard. They could see her up on the tower, Aetherial energy pulsing out in waves. Every time they tried to get closer they were pushed back by a new set of bodies, forced to fight another set of shapes covered in m
ud or blackened by fire.

  The man slid his hand up to Anna’s hair, letting the warmth from her scalp pass into his skin. ‘You have the strength to see this through to the end. Feel the Aether flow from the thousands into the earth. Hone in on the darkness, the pleasure in another’s misfortune, the thrill of the fall. Let it in.’

  Six hurried to the tower stairs. A Carric looked at the three bandits’ tabards, went from brown hair, to brown skin, to brown eyes, then charged head-first and was struck across the back by a singed Venecian musketman, who didn’t stick around long enough to be thanked.

  The Black Aether of the fallen began to hurry under the mud, up the stone, along the tower roof floor, drawn into the daeva by an innate call. Lives flickered on Anna’s eyes as yellow flames glutted by a draft: new lust whipping old love; greed overpowering friendship; one moment of wrath deciding the rest of a man’s life. Every sin of the Danduin fallen swam in Anna until she was nothing more than a host for the foulest half of mankind.

  And then the man hovered his lips over the girl’s ear and dripped in: ‘He begged before the end.’

  Girl turned, looking into her father’s eyes as they dilated to black. He stroked her hair with his hand, then pushed the other into her stomach, sending her flying off the tower roof into the fighting soldiers below.