Lucien

by James Moloney

  The horses were just as poor to ride as they were to look at. At best, we’d force them into a steady trot for five minutes at a time before one would whinny and shake its head and stop altogether. Mostly, we let them walk.

  ‘Plenty of time to enjoy the countryside,’ said Ryall with a sarcastic edge to his voice.

  It was beautiful, yet no more green and fertile than what I was used to in Athlane. No, the Wyrdborn hadn’t come here for better pastures or richer soil.

  News of the invasion had spread through the villages and farms we passed and the inhabitants had responded in the same way as the city folk: the men had all gone south to join the fighting, and the strongest of the women, too, leaving behind only the frail and the very young to watch over one another. If too many of the Felan fell on the battlefield, there would be no one left to work these fields or to grind the flour and soon starvation would finish what the fighting would begin.

  I kicked hard, forcing my horse into another mile of reluctant trotting while my eyes scoured the road ahead for a wagon that might be carrying Lucien hidden among its cargo.

  Eventually the road began to swing eastward, but by then darkness was making the way ahead difficult to pick out.

  ‘We’d better find a place to sleep while there’s still some light,’ said Tamlyn.

  If the horses had been able to speak, they would have sighed, About time. We would have to camp well back from the road in case our fire was seen by passing riders.

  ‘Beyond that copse,’ Tamlyn said, and pointed.

  We found ourselves in luck, at last. The copse was thick enough to shield us from view, yet not very deep, and on the other side lay a meadow where the horses could graze overnight.

  ‘I wish we could eat grass like them,’ said Ryall. ‘I’m famished.’ He set off towards the woods we could see on the far side of the meadow.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Tamlyn told me. ‘Trapping takes patience. He might have something for us by breakfast time, at best.’

  He set about lighting a fire from the kindling we’d collected, but before the first flames could catch, Ryall was back.

  ‘I’ve got something for us,’ he said. ‘An absolute feast.’

  Tamlyn looked surprised. ‘You’re joking? You can’t have caught anything in this time.’

  ‘Come and see,’ Ryall urged, and he led us back between the weary horses and a little way into the woods. It was difficult to see now that the sun was gone, but even so we could hardly miss the dark shape of a young deer lying dead beneath an oak tree.

  ‘Who kills a deer and leaves it in the forest?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Ryall replied. ‘I can’t find an arrow or any wound at all.’

  ‘How long has it been here?’ Tamlyn wanted to know. ‘We can’t eat rotting meat.’

  We checked the deer over, but there was no telltale stench. The body was still lithe and warm, in fact.

  ‘Only been dead a few hours,’ I said. ‘Look how its fur has a healthy sheen in the moonlight.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Ryall.

  Our bellies answered for us. We feasted on the strange windfall, then slept around the remnants of the fire.

  I woke soon after dawn and went back into the woods hoping to find a stream or a small pond, because the venison had made me thirsty. I had no luck, and sensed something odd about the woods, as well, although I couldn’t decide what it was.

  I emerged from the trees into a much larger meadow that rose gently towards a ridge in the distance. I’ll walk to the top, I thought, and see if there’s any water beyond, but only a short way across the meadow, I stopped in my tracks. Ahead, a white mound poked above the lush grass. No, it can’t be, I thought. A few steps more, though, and I was sure. It was a cow lying on its side.

  By the time I reached it, I’d spotted two other mounds not far away. What a blow to the farmer who owned them, I thought. Three at once! Even a village would be rocked by such a loss.

  I forgot about the view from the ridge and turned back the way I’d come, only to see Tamlyn step out from the trees. He’d seen me, so I waited for him by the first beast. He inspected it more closely than I had done.

  ‘Just like that deer last night — not a mark on it,’ he said. ‘And look at that one there,’ he added, heading for the next carcass. ‘It’s lowered itself to rest on top of its legs, like a dog before its master. Cows don’t do that. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

  But I had. I’d watched a fawn die in that pose once before, in Nan Tocha. And I knew who had killed it.

  A call made us turn around. Ryall was emerging from the woods carrying something I couldn’t make out at first. He was still a way off when I picked out feathers dangling from his load and realised he was clutching birds by their feet.

  As he drew closer he held them up. ‘Weird. They were lying dead all through the woods.’

  I’d seen a couple myself, and thought nothing of it. Death was never far away in the wild world. Yet the sight of so many lifeless birds in Ryall’s hands answered another question.

  ‘That’s what seemed so odd — there was no birdsong,’ I muttered.

  Ryall dropped the birds to the ground when he saw the first of the cows. He examined the other two while we watched, but instead of coming back to join us, he set off to climb the easy slope to the ridge. He had barely reached the top when he began shouting and waving to us.

  I was on the move instantly, Tamlyn, too. When Ryall continued urging us on, Tamlyn broke into an anxious trot, leaving me to struggle with the skirts of my dress in the long grass. At the highest point of the ridge, the two men were turned away from me, enthralled by what they’d discovered. Then I saw it, too.

  ‘Oh no,’ I breathed. ‘So many.’

  Spread down the other side of the slope was a flock of sheep, every one of them as plump and healthy as the cows behind us and every one of them dead. Some had collapsed onto their sides, but most had lowered themselves onto their forelegs and then folded their haunches just as calmly, coaxed into that position by a human hand, just as the fawn had been in Nan Tocha.

  ‘He’s taken the life from them,’ I said, ‘the same as the deer, and Nerigold, too. How many — thirty, forty sheep, those cows — the wealth of an entire village!’

  It was the callous act of a Wyrdborn, the kind I’d hoped Lucien would never carry out again. What a fool such hope had made of me.

  ‘We have to find him, or there will be fields of humans dead like this, too,’ said Tamlyn.

  We hurried back to the fire, rounding up our nags as we went. They were no keener to oblige than they had been yesterday, but with bellies full of grass they found the strength for a final trot until the pale yellow tops of sand dunes appeared in the distance. Ahead, we saw wagons, which immediately set my heart racing, but surrounding those wagons were hundreds of men, collecting what they needed from among the cargo of armour, weapons and food.

  ‘We have to be careful,’ said Tamlyn. ‘Those men will guess who we are in a trice.’

  His soldier’s instincts took charge, and after a quick scan of the region, he decided on our next move. ‘The horses are no use to us now. Leave them here. Come on, this way,’ and he led us off the road onto a sandy path through long and swaying grasses.

  ‘But Lucien might be in one of those wagons,’ I protested.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Tamlyn replied. ‘That was his work in the fields, which means he doesn’t need to hide in a wagon any longer. We may well find him among the dunes.’

  I could only pray for such luck.

  In the meantime, we came dangerously close to another group of Felan preparing for battle, and at a signal from Tamlyn we dropped onto our stomachs. Like lizards, we made our way slowly towards the dunes, which rose like small mountains ahead of us. Cautious, still, we climbed into the saddle between two dunes, then higher still until we could look over the top.

  The wind stung our faces with the salty tang I’d gr
own tired of during the voyage from Athlane. The sun’s glare meant I had to shield my eyes, and only when I’d grown used to it could I take in the ocean and what lay bobbing on its swell. Geran was right — a fleet of ships lay offshore. There were all manner of vessels, some grand enough to be an admiral’s flagship, others so small it was a wonder they had survived the open sea, and between those extremes there were dozens like the ship we had sailed in ourselves. Against the harsh morning light, they stood out black and threatening, transformed, somehow, into dragons of the sea. And, like the dragons in the tales my father told by the fire on winter nights, they brought with them the power to destroy an entire land.

  12

  Hungry Beasts

  The Wyrdborn hadn’t wasted any time coming ashore to begin the search for Lucien. Their rowing boats filled the water between the ships and the beach where the Felan waited.

  ‘Every Wyrdborn from Athlane must be here,’ said Ryall.

  ‘No point staying behind,’ Tamlyn responded. ‘Once Lucien is secure in the hands of one Wyrdborn, his power will sweep all the others aside. Their only hope is to be that one.’

  To be the helmeted figure in the mosaics, I wanted to add, but the words dried in my mouth as I looked at the scene below us.

  The Felan weren’t accustomed to war. Their armour looked makeshift and most were missing a vital piece — an arm guard, or even a breastplate that would complete their protection. What they lacked in armour, though, they made up for in determination. They waited in disciplined ranks, ready for the fight.

  ‘Look at the water,’ cried Tamlyn.

  I didn’t understand what he meant at first. The water was choppy, making it difficult for the Wyrdborn to row through, but wasn’t the ocean a gigantic field of waves, after all. Only when I inspected those waves more closely did I see dark shapes diving, skimming, shooting back and forth beneath the foam. In places fins broke the surface and plumes of water shot into the air. I realised the struggle between these two forces was already being played out.

  ‘Dolphins!’ I cried.

  ‘And seals,’ Tamlyn added.

  The seals, especially, attacked the boats, making them rock awkwardly.

  ‘Aren’t seals afraid of humans?’ I asked. ‘And I thought dolphins were peaceful creatures.’

  ‘Under the command of the Felan, they do what the magic tells them,’ Tamlyn said.

  ‘Magic!’

  ‘It’s not much,’ Tamlyn explained. ‘For both sides, the strongest magic is in their muscles. But there are other powers …’

  His voice trailed off as he watched, and I did the same. The sea creatures glided so easily in their element. Where three or four collided with a boat at once, they brought it close to tipping over. I saw more than one Wyrdborn dumped into the water this way. Under the weight of their armour, they struggled to keep their heads above the surface, and since their comrades didn’t give a thought to hauling them aboard their own boats, they had no choice but to swim back to the ships they had come from.

  Soon there were different fins, though, and I watched in horror as a seal was tossed out of the water, not by its own power but by the jaws of a shark.

  ‘The Wyrdborn,’ I shouted. ‘They summoned the sharks, didn’t they?’

  ‘Whatever magic the Felan possess, you can be sure the Wyrdborn have something stronger,’ Tamlyn said.

  Even the dolphins retreated when the sharks grew in number, and the small craft headed more easily towards the shore. The Felan waited with swords drawn, but they weren’t done yet with their clever magic.

  As the first of the Wyrdborn jumped onto the beach, a wind rose suddenly. I could see it stirring the sand into swirls and eddies that swept along the beach, yet high on our dune, the wind blew in the opposite direction. This time I didn’t have to ask what was happening. The wind blew wickedly into the faces of the Wyrdborn, finding ways to propel sand through the narrow slits in their helmets. Some put up their hands to fend off the attack. Others staggered blindly, swinging their swords well wide of the Felan who rushed to surround them.

  Yes, make that wind howl, I pleaded silently. It was worth a thousand extra men on the beach if the Wyrdborn couldn’t see the fighters who’d come to drive them back to their ships. The Felan might win this battle, after all.

  Yet I should have known. For every enchantment the Felan called upon to thwart them, the Wyrdborn had a way to defeat it. Hadn’t Tamlyn just told me so?

  There were few clouds in the sky that morning, yet three, four, five began to scurry across the water, drawing in moisture from the sea spray. They lost their woolliness as they came, and by the time they reached the beach they had become a dark and menacing storm, which dumped rain heavily onto the sand. The Felan’s cruel wind lost its sting, for the dampened sand no longer rose with it to blind the Wyrdborn.

  Freed from this torment, the Wyrdborn wielded their weapons with deadly force and the Felan began to fall.

  I had never witnessed a battle until that day, and it is my dearest hope that I never have to watch another. There was never any doubt whose muscles commanded the greatest magic. The Felan outnumbered the invaders by seven or eight to one, but the Wyrdborn were ten times stronger. The fighting would have been over in an hour if it had been a struggle between two armies following the orders of their generals. What saved the Felan from early defeat was a weakness of the Wyrdborn that had nothing to do with force or ferocity. It was a weakness that Tamlyn had named when he first heard of the invasion. Each Wyrdborn thought only of himself and so he fought alone, rather than in ranks where his own strength would help those beside him.

  The Wyrdborn’s aim was clear: to charge through the dunes and into the woods, where the Felan would find it harder to harass them and force them back to the ships. Then the search for Lucien would begin. But first they must fight their way off the beach, and instead of forming themselves into a phalanx to drive through the Felan like a spear, they spread out along the shore. Tamlyn, Ryall and I soon found ourselves watching not one terrible battle, but hundreds.

  The Felan broke their ranks into small platoons, each surrounding a Wyrdborn and darting in to attack whenever his sword was busy elsewhere.

  The scene reminded me of the bear-baiting that took place in our village every spring, when the carnival wagons came through. Among the jugglers and the dancers, there was one wagon loaded with a cage, and inside the cage lived a huge bear with an iron collar around his neck. On festival days, the bear was led into the square outside Mr Nettlefield’s inn and his collar chained to a post. Then every dog in the village was let loose to bark and snap at its heels whenever they could get the chance. I hated the sport because it had no winner, and some years one of the dogs would pay a terrible price for being the loser. With so many animals to fend off, the bear became frenzied, kicking and twisting to avoid their teeth, but if it managed to grab one of the tormentors, the scene became worse. The bear would rip the dog’s belly open with his claws and clamp his jaws savagely around its neck. It was not a quick death. I hated it, and the way the battle played out that morning reminded me of it.

  For a while, the Felan seemed to have the upper hand. Their fighters were agile and landed blow after blow on the invaders. If they had been pitted against any other race, they would have forced their enemies onto their knees and finished them off. But the Wyrdborn were no ordinary foe. Wounds were not lethal for them. They could die only by the terms of the strange magic that protected them, and armed with this ultimate weapon they stood firm.

  The Felan had no such magic and they began to tire. After an hour, many of them lay spread-eagled on the sand, while dozens more tumbled lifelessly in the waves that rolled against the shore.

  ‘So many dead,’ I whispered.

  ‘War is a hungry beast,’ said Tamlyn.

  He lay close beside me in the sand, his eyes as forlorn as my own must have looked as we stared down at the bloodshed.

  ‘Look there,’ cried Ryall. ‘Do you see
that young Felan holding his head.’

  I followed the direction of his pointing arm and saw the figure staggering across the damp sand. He seemed to have no idea where he was, making him vulnerable to the stray slash of a sword.

  ‘What can we do?’ I asked Tamlyn, but when I turned to hear his answer, there was no one beside me. He was charging down the face of the dune towards the stricken fighter, and only ten paces behind him was Ryall.

  They had no strength for a battle like this and, worse still, no weapons. But they weren’t joining the fight, I realised, they were intent on rescue — and with good reason, because three of the horses that roamed freely on the beach, riderless and frantic amid all the fighting, were bearing down on the stricken Felan. Blinded by the blood that streamed from his scalp, he wouldn’t see them until he’d been trampled by their hooves.

  Ryall was too far behind to help, but Tamlyn was already on the flat sand and sprinting as though a Wyrdborn’s strength still powered his legs. He ran straight into the path of the horses.

  ‘Tamlyn, no!’ I shouted.

  He couldn’t hear me. No one on that beach heard anything but the clash of steel and the cries of the wounded.

  Tamlyn slammed into the young Felan at full pace, knocking him off his feet and lifting him out of the way at the very moment the horses thundered past. They shied a little at the sudden movement so close to their hooves, then galloped on in a frenzy.

  I breathed for the first time in almost a minute when I saw Tamlyn flex his legs, then his arms, and roll off the man he had saved. Ryall had reached them by then and, with Tamlyn back on his feet, the pair of them hoisted the Felan upright, each taking one arm to lead him away from the fighting.

  I was on the move myself by this time, racing down the sandy slope more in leaps than regular strides.

  ‘Can you help him, Silvermay?’ Tamlyn asked when I reached them.