The Ghostfaces

by John Flanagan

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, still smiling. “I can’t wait to see those pasty-faced bogeymen when we start shooting them down.” Like Thorn, she realized the value of denigrating the enemy, of making light of their terrifying makeup. Some of the men smiled uncertainly back at her.

  Stefan and Jesper, who had been assigned to accompany Lydia, nodded to her, understanding what she was doing. Stefan yawned and rested against one of the crossbows, idly twirling his ax. The massive weapon spun and caught the rays of the sun that filtered through the trees. It seemed as light as a feather in his hands. The casual demeanor of the two Skandians communicated itself to the Mawags. They had heard from Simsinnet of the skill these foreigners showed in fighting. Following their example, the tribesmen relaxed a little.

  • • • • •

  Stig paced calmly behind the palisade, looking for weak points in the wooden wall where the Ghosts might penetrate. His shield was still slung over his back. From time to time he made an encouraging comment to the warriors as they stood ready, flint-headed spears and wooden clubs in their hands. Most of the men had shields of deer hide stretched tightly across a wooden frame. Approximately one in three was armed with one of the Mawags’ short, powerful bows and a quiver bristling with arrows slung over the shoulder.

  “Don’t waste arrows,” he said. “Wait till they’re close and then shoot. And remember, when you hear the horn signal, get down.”

  They nodded in reply. He saw several moistening their lips. Dry mouth, he thought. A common problem before a fight.

  The horn signal he’d mentioned was an important idea Hal had added to the defense. When the crossbow batteries were about to shoot, Lydia or Thorn would sound a blast on a horn. When they heard it, the defenders were to crouch below the palisade. That way, any bolts that missed the enemy wouldn’t strike down the defenders instead.

  He felt a light touch on his arm and turned to see Tecumsa behind him. He smiled at her and nodded his head toward the huts.

  “You should be back looking after the children,” he said gently. She smiled back. He could see she was nervous, but trying hard not to show it.

  “I wanted to wish you good luck,” she said. “Stay safe, my love.”

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. Some of the nearby warriors chuckled aloud and whistled at the show of affection. It was unusual among the Mawagansett, he knew. Her lips were soft and their touch was fleeting. But even after she had stepped back from him, he could feel their touch on his own.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “You take care of yourself.”

  She smiled again, then turned and ran back into the village, threading her way through the lines of huts until she came to one of the largest, where the children and young women were gathered. She paused at the doorway and waved a hand to him. He raised his own right hand in salute, then she slipped inside the hut and was lost to his sight.

  “I’ll see you when this is over,” Stig promised quietly.

  • • • • •

  The time passed with agonizing slowness. Hal paced the deck of the little ship, looking constantly toward the mouth of the river. But there was still no sign of the Ghostfaces. The smoke alarm signal was already dwindling. It was now nothing more than a thin gray ribbon rising into the sky. Soon, it would be gone as the fire died down.

  He looked across the bay toward the south to check on the wind for the tenth time since the Ghostfaces had been sighted. The wind was from the southwest, of course, as it had been for some time now. The first hundred meters or so of the southern part of the bay were smooth and undisturbed, sheltered by the high headlands that enclosed the bay. He could see the treetops on the bluffs swaying in the wind, however. Then, beyond that hundred-meter point, the wind eddied down and ruffled the surface of the water into a series of wavelets. He’d have plenty of wind to maneuver, he thought.

  “There they are,” said Edvin, drawing Hal’s attention back to the river. He felt a jolt of adrenaline as he saw the first canoes making their way onto the waters of the bay. He shook his head in disappointment as he saw that the Ghostface fleet was traveling in line astern, one canoe at a time. He’d hoped they might bunch up and clear the river sooner. This way, the leading canoes would be almost to the far beach before the last of them emerged from the river.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “Thorn and Stig will just have to take care of the first wave.”

  He had no doubt that his friends could handle the Ghostfaces’ attack. Even without the demoralizing effect of the eight giant crossbows on the enemy, the Skandians would provide a stiffening to the Mawags’ defense. They were highly trained and skilled, and their iron weapons were superior to the flint- and stone-edged weapons of the tribespeople. All the same, it would have been a neater solution if the Ghosts had bunched up, and he could have attacked the entire fleet of canoes before any of them reached the beach.

  Would have been, could have been, he mused. That was always the way when it came to a battle. Things never worked out quite the way you hoped.

  He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. Ulf had moved to the main rope holding the concealing screen of creepers and branches in place.

  “Not yet,” Hal said. “Let them get fully committed first.”

  chapter thirty-nine

  The first of the canoes had grounded on the beach, their crews spilling eagerly out of them. The expedition leader, a warrior known in the Ghostfaces’ tongue as Holds a Black Lance, waited impatiently. When the first six canoes had grounded on the beach, he hastily mustered his men, thirty-two of them in all, and led them at a trot to the path through the forest. The six canoes had carried the pick of his men—the best warriors and the fastest paddlers. The first of the following canoes was still only halfway across the bay, with others straggling behind it.

  “They can follow when they get here,” he told his second in command, a short but massively built warrior known as Crusher of Heads, by virtue of the heavy stone ax he wielded.

  The man smiled cruelly. “All the more booty for us,” he said. Neither of them expected any resistance. If things went as they usually did, the local villagers would have fled, leaving their homes and possessions for the invaders.

  Black Lance was familiar with the terrain. He had been on a previous raid against the Mawagansett village and he led his men through the dim shadows beneath the trees, their feet pounding the soft, leaf-matted ground as they jogged in two files, chanting a cadence as they went.

  They emerged into the bright sunlight at the cleared gathering ground in front of the village and stopped in surprise.

  They had expected a deserted, defenseless village, filled with plunder ready for the taking. Instead, they found themselves facing a defensive stockade, a chest-high tangle of brushwood and branches that surrounded the neat lines of huts, terminating at either end at the stream behind the village. The newly sharpened ends of stakes protruded like a porcupine’s quills, threatening any incautious attacker. Black Lance could see more stakes placed in the shallow water of the stream behind the village, preventing access in that direction.

  His face flushed with rage as he saw the heads and shoulders of the Mawagansett tribesmen above the palisade—and saw the weapons they brandished in defiance. He gestured for his men to form in a long line facing the barricade. A frontal assault was the Ghostfaces’ usual method of attack, relying on their ferocity and bloodthirsty reputation to chill the hearts of any enemies. His men readied themselves. The palisade was a mere twenty meters away and they poised, ready to begin a concerted rush. Black Lance decided to give the Mawagansett one last chance to surrender peaceably—and be hacked down as a result.

  “Mawagansett people!” he shouted in his own tongue, knowing they would understand him. “Surrender to us now. This is your last chance! Surrender and we will spare your women and children!”

  There was no answer, o
nly a muted growl of defiance from the barricade. He tried one more time.

  “Surrender now!” he demanded. “Otherwise we will kill you all! And you will all die slowly, in great pain!”

  Silence from the village. Then a voice rang out in an unfamiliar tongue.

  “You’ll have to take us first, Baldy!”

  He didn’t understand the words, but his rage grew as he heard the chorus of laughter from behind the barricade. Then a strange figure rose above the top of the palisade—a pale-skinned, pale-haired figure, wielding an ax with a strange, silver-glinting head and bearing a huge round shield on his left arm.

  Black Lance hesitated, feeling a chill of fear down his spine. This sounded like one of the strange demons who had attacked his camp several days ago. One of his men had survived the attack and described them to him. At the time, he had thought the man was lying to cover his own cowardice and had him put to death. Now here was exactly the sort of figure he had described—a warrior the like of which Black Lance had never seen. For a second, he considered retreating to the beach. Then he gathered his courage. To do that would be an invitation to his own men to depose and kill him. Demon or no demon, he had to go on with the attack. He heard his own men stirring nervously at the sight of the strange warrior and he screamed at them in rage.

  “Ghostfaces! Attack now! Kill the Mawagansett! Kill the Pale Hair!”

  He raised his lance and charged ahead. It had been many years since the Ghostfaces had tasted defeat in battle. His men charged with him in an extended line, yelling vile insults and threats at the enemy and uttering the chilling, high-pitched, ululating scream that was the Ghostface war cry.

  As he came closer to the barricade, Black Lance surreptitiously veered to his right, taking his line of approach away from the strange warrior. Let someone else take care of him, he thought. He saw the Mawagansett warriors inside the barricade readying themselves to repel the assault. He centered his aim on one young Mawag, and drew back his lance, ready to thrust.

  Then he stopped, his heart rising into his throat with fear as another Pale Hair, this one with large black circles around his eyes, rose up from behind the barricade, directly in front of him. He was even larger than the first Pale Hair, and he held a strange type of spear ready—a spear with a head fashioned from that same glittering silver metal. The warrior smiled at him and rage filled Black Lance once more, overcoming his fear. He leapt forward.

  • • • • •

  “He’s coming your way, Ingvar!” Stig warned.

  “Let him come,” Ingvar answered, holding the voulge diagonally across his chest in the ready position Thorn had taught him so many months ago.

  The Ghostface was carrying a long, black lance, fitted with a razor-sharp flint warhead. He darted it at Ingvar now, but the big youth casually parried it with the voulge, flicking it aside. Then, with a speed that was remarkable in such a bulky frame, Ingvar lunged forward himself. But Black Lance was expecting the counterstroke and swayed to one side, so that the gleaming spear point slid past him, over his shoulder.

  Then he realized his mistake, as Ingvar rapidly jerked the voulge back, snagging the Ghostface leader’s bare flesh with the wicked hook on the back of the voulge’s head. The razor-sharp iron bit deep into the muscles of Black Lance’s upper back and dragged him forward, screaming in sudden agony. The lance fell from his hands as he threw his hands up, trying to quell the sudden pain in his back and shoulder.

  Long hours of practice under Thorn’s tutelage had made Ingvar a master of his unusual weapon, and taught him how to exploit its triple warhead to best advantage. The voulge was equipped with a spear point, a hook and an ax blade and now Ingvar jerked the hook free and raised the ax blade, chopping down in a short, controlled action at the off-balance attacker. He didn’t need to take a long, extended swing. Had he done so, the ax blade would have removed Black Lance’s head from his body. But Ingvar’s powerful muscles put plenty of force behind the ax blade, even with a shortened swing.

  Black Lance felt another jarring, agonizing impact, this time on his neck, just above his shoulder. He felt his knees weaken and he began to fall. His vision dimmed and he realized that he had just lost a combat for the first, and last, time. The last thing he saw was the pale-skinned demon above him, staring down at him with those black circles that seemed to contain no eyes. Then his own vision faded.

  His men were shocked by the brief, brutal combat. They had never seen Black Lance bested in battle. Now he lay sprawled and lifeless across one of the sharpened stakes projecting out from the barricade. Involuntarily, the leading attackers took a pace back from the timber barricade.

  In the trees, pacing behind the row of giant crossbows, Thorn watched the brief fight, nodding his approval at Ingvar’s skill and power. His men were nervous, wanting to shoot immediately, and he spoke to calm them. The first volley was their best chance to do maximum damage. He wanted all the bows to shoot simultaneously, and all of them to be aimed carefully. After that, he knew, the shooting would become more ragged.

  “Not yet,” he cautioned his men. “Wait till they’re bunched up in front of the barricade, and then make sure of your aim.” Several of the Mawags adjusted the alignment of their giant weapons, seeking out individual targets among the Ghostfaces. Thorn glanced at the warrior with the signal horn, saw he was nervously moistening his lips.

  “Ready . . . ,” he said, raising his arm.

  • • • • •

  Crusher of Heads, in command now that Black Lance had fallen, stepped forward, half turning to face his own men, and raising his massive ax.

  “Ghostfaces!” he screamed. “Avenge our leader! Attack! Kill the Pale Hairs! We have them outnumbered!” The Ghostfaces stirred, their failing courage bolstered by his words. Then a strange thing happened.

  A horn rang out from behind him to the left, and the faces of the defenders promptly disappeared below the barrier.

  Crusher of Heads had no idea what was happening or why it had happened, but he saw his opportunity.

  “Now!” he screamed, and surged, hauling himself up onto the tangle of branches and saplings, ax drawn back to smash the skull of any who dared to oppose him.

  • • • • •

  While Crusher of Heads and Black Lance led the attack at the center of the barricade, a small group of Ghostface warriors ran to the eastern end, crouching to keep out of the defenders’ sight. As all attention focused on the main attack, three of them leaped, screaming abuse and war cries, onto the palisade, striking out at the startled defenders. In a matter of seconds, two Mawags fell back, one dead, the other seriously injured.

  Inside the palisade, Orvik ran to the wounded man and half dragged, half carried him back from the fence. The old Skandian had been assigned the task of rescuing the wounded and getting them to safety. He had volunteered to fight alongside his adopted tribesmen, but both Mohegas and Thorn had shaken their heads. In his time, Orvik had been a valuable man in a battle, but the years had taken their toll. His movements were slow and his strength wasn’t what it had once been. On top of that, the passage of years had seen his right knee stiffen so that it ached in cold weather, and the resilience of his muscles wither.

  “You’ll do better tending the wounded,” Thorn had told him, and Orvik had reluctantly accepted the inevitable. Better to serve a useful purpose than to become a victory marker on a Ghostface lance, he thought.

  He settled the wounded Mawag on a litter, arranging his arms and legs so the man was comfortable, and turned to call for one of the healers who were standing by to treat the wounded.

  He never got the chance. One of the Ghostfaces, seeing the gray-haired old man tending to a fallen Mawag, screamed in fury and launched himself from the top of the barricade, over the heads of the defenders, and dashed toward him.

  Orvik heard the scream and turned to face the charging Ghost, quickly drawing his saxe
—the only possession he had come ashore with all those years ago. The brass and leather hilt felt solid and familiar in his hand. It was an old friend that had seen him through many battles, and he waited confidently for his attacker.

  The Ghostface lunged underhand with his lance. But Orvik was an experienced fighter, with a score of successful combats behind him. He sensed the blow coming even before it was on its way and sprang lightly to one side, so that the lance would pass harmlessly by him.

  At least, that was what his mind planned, but his body let him down. The unreliable right knee folded as he tried to leap aside, turning the intended graceful movement into an awkward stumble. He lurched forward, and felt a hot stab of pain in his stomach as the lance took him. He gasped in agony. Then, oddly, the area went numb and he felt no pain. He could sense the lance head tearing at his body as the enemy warrior tried to withdraw it. He locked gazes with the white-faced Ghost and allowed himself a grim smile. Then he slashed the saxe, kept razor-sharp over the years by dint of constant honing on a smooth rock, across the man’s exposed throat in a killing stroke.

  The Ghostface emitted a gurgling scream and fell facedown on the hard-packed dirt. A moment later, Orvik fell across him. In his last moment, he realized that his right knee no longer troubled him.

  • • • • •

  Crusher of Heads heaved himself up onto the suddenly unprotected barricade. He felt a moment of triumph. The defenders’ nerve must have broken, causing them to fall back in panic and disarray.

  Then it seemed that a massive fist smashed through their tightly packed ranks. A heavy projectile took Crusher of Heads in the left upper arm, spinning him round and throwing him to the ground. Beside him, he saw another Ghostface transfixed by a bolt. Three others screamed and fell, wounded or killed as two more bolts tumbled through their ranks. Before he could make out what had happened, another horn blast sounded, this time from the forest to his right.

  Once more, a barrage of projectiles smashed into the tightly packed attackers. This time, two Ghostfaces went down, but Crusher of Heads saw the violent impact of two bolts on the palisade itself, as they shattered the branches and timbers, sending splinters flying.