Yet the mysterious force that had killed so many Wyrdborn in the woods didn’t need to pierce their armour to go about its deadly work. Coyle would know that, and a cruel streak in me hoped he was tormented by fear for the first time in his life.
Afraid or not, Coyle was the first to restart the fighting.
The battle went as it had yesterday, with the Wyrdborn standing alone, savagely defending the space around them and eager to kill any Felan too slow to jump clear of their deadly steel.
‘What is the point?’ I wailed. ‘The Wyrdborn can’t escape back to Athlane. Their ships have gone.’
‘And we can’t allow them to roam around our homeland,’ said Birchon, but he didn’t seem to have a plan to break the stalemate.
Early in the afternoon, messengers came to the crest of the dune with news for Birchon. We were kept away from the whispering, but when Birchon and his companions stared southward, we followed their eyes and soon picked out the clash of battle.
‘Who is it?’ Birchon asked one of his companions. ‘We didn’t send any of our brigades to that end of the beach, did we?’
At such a distance it was difficult to tell what we were seeing, but there appeared to be only a handful of fighters engaged in the struggle.
‘Perhaps it is two of the Wyrdborn settling a quarrel,’ someone suggested.
Because we all knew the Wyrdborn distrusted one another, we accepted this explanation — until the fighting grew closer. We should not have been able to hear it above the din of battles much closer, but the impact of steel upon steel tore the air like a punch to the ear. Every eye strained into the distance, but the sea spray and sand drifting on the breeze made it difficult to make out precisely what was going on. Whatever the dispute, it was vicious, because I could see one body prostrate on the sand. Soon there was a second.
The line of Wyrdborn strung out along the beach shifted a little northward, not a retreat by any means, but a sign of their growing unease.
‘They don’t know what’s going on either,’ Ryall whispered.
‘No, and they’re doing what the Wyrdborn always do,’ said Tamlyn with a hint of disgust. ‘They’re fighting separately instead of together. Look, it seems to be just one man taking them on.’
He was right. I could see clearly now that a single fighter was attacking one Wyrdborn after another.
‘You were certain the Wyrdborn were all evenly matched,’ I said to Tamlyn. ‘How can one man take on the rest like that?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. He looks no different from the others.’
No, he didn’t. His entire body was hidden inside the grey steel of his armour, but he appeared no taller or more powerful in the shoulders than his foes, yet he was leaving a string of bodies in his wake.
‘It’s as though their Wyrdborn magic amounts to nothing,’ I said to Tamlyn.
‘Look, there’s an odd way he goes about fighting each one,’ he replied.
The lone warrior was closer now and I watched for the tactic Tamlyn seemed so sure about. I couldn’t see anything different in the brutal sweep of his sword as it cut through the armour of its latest victim, spilling more blood onto the sand. Immediately, another Wyrdborn took his place. He was quickly forced back and took a savage blow on his breastplate, enough to dent the steel and bruise the flesh underneath. But bruising wouldn’t kill an ordinary man and certainly not a Wyrdborn. It did sap his energy, though, no doubt about that. The man fought back, but his arms seemed to be growing tired of defending himself so desperately. At last he fell to his knees and I winced, expecting to see the stranger’s blade crush his helmet and the skull inside it. Instead, there was a moment’s reprieve.
Using his left hand, the stranger reached down and grabbed his struggling opponent by the wrist. He held it for only a heartbeat before the kneeling Wyrdborn snatched his hand away and sprang to his feet ready to renew the fight. It was the last decision he made, for the invincible sword was already on the move, sweeping round in a powerful arc until it caught the sword of the defender. The defender’s blade snapped under its force, leaving the mighty warrior’s sword to open the defender’s armour as though it were leather and not the strongest steel. After that, there was only the muscle and bone of a man about to breathe his last. That was when I looked away.
‘Why did he take the man by the wrist if he meant to kill him a moment later?’ I demanded of Tamlyn.
‘Because he couldn’t kill him while there was still Wyrdborn magic in his soul,’ came the answer.
In a dark corner of my mind I knew what was happening. I just didn’t want to admit it. I simply watched, overwhelmed, as the stranger wielded his sword the way a farmer sweeps a field with his scythe. Before him, the Wyrdborn were falling like stalks of wheat.
14
Blood on the Sand
As the number of Wyrdborn still on their feet dwindled, Birchon gave the order to surround them.
A messenger was dispatched to the Felan on the beach, but Birchon decided that it wasn’t enough to command from so high on the dune. He made his way down the slope with his entire retinue trailing at his heels. With no one to guard us, we hurried down the face of the dune, as well.
‘It will end here,’ Tamlyn shouted in my ear as we ran. ‘Whoever it is inside that armour, he will rid us of a great curse before the sun goes down.’ He grabbed my hand and tugged me along faster. ‘Come on, we must be there, we must be part of it.’
‘We have no swords,’ Ryall shouted, only paces behind us.
‘What use is a sword against magic?’ said Tamlyn. ‘That’s what this is. Nothing could cut a swathe through the Wyrdborn but a magic none of us has ever imagined.’
It was exactly what I had been thinking since word first came of a Wyrdborn found dead in the forest. Tamlyn didn’t care who it was inside that armour. But I did. A terrible fear had hold of me, and it wouldn’t go away until I saw with my own eyes this warrior who carried the strength of a thousand men in the body of one.
We fell into step behind Birchon and his commanders once we reached the flat sand. By then, Birchon’s order was taking effect and the Felan fighters were forming a circle around the remaining Wyrdborn. Before the circle could close, Birchon’s party rushed through the gap. We did the same, but stayed well back from the fighting.
In desperation, the Wyrdborn had finally begun to work together, forming a circle of their own around their single foe, just as the Felan had circled them. They were no more successful. Their opponent’s agility and his prodigious strength kept them at bay. When one fell exhausted, the others left him to his fate. Again I saw how the attacker grabbed his victim, if not by the wrist then by the upper arm or with a gloved hand around the throat. Moments later, the Wyrdborn would be released, only to die by the hand that none could resist.
The sickly smell of blood filled the air. Blood stained the sand, as well, and clung to the feet of the fighters. I found specks of red splashed on my tattered dress, and when my hand tried to wipe them off, it left an orange smear.
I was still staring at my bloodied hand when a cry went up.
‘Don’t let him through!’
I looked up to see one of the Wyrdborn make a dash for freedom. It was the dark-armoured figure of Coyle Strongbow — the last of his kind still alive. He was aiming his run at the thinnest ranks of the Felan, where they had just closed the circle.
Immediately, a Felan raced towards him, determined to break his stride before he could barge his way through. When Coyle swung his sword to knock the defender aside, it came down hard on the Felan’s blade, skilfully placed to deflect the blow. But the brave man was thrown off balance and, before he could spring back, a second sweep of Coyle’s sword caught him beneath the ribs. His armour ruptured and blood appeared as he fell to the sand.
By then, more Felan had advanced and they forced Coyle Strongbow back to face the unknown warrior.
Coyle was a cunning man. He knew he stood no chance if he fought as the res
t had done. Despite his heavy armour, he danced lightly in the soft sand, using his Wyrdborn strength to the best advantage. In this way, he was able to avoid the withering might of a sword that had already dispatched hundreds like him.
Yet this tactic couldn’t save him forever, and the longer he avoided combat the more his foe learned the rhythm of his movements. When he feinted to the left once too often, the stranger’s blade guessed he would spring to the right and, as he did so, it struck him a devastating blow on his shoulder.
A cry of pain echoed around the wall of bodies formed by the Felan as Coyle fell, clutching his arm.
The invincible warrior stood over him, his weapon raised.
‘Wait,’ came Coyle’s cry. ‘If you know who I am you won’t kill me so quickly.’
The sword hesitated at the top of its swing giving Coyle time to snatch at the buckles of his helmet and let it fall away from his head.
‘Listen to me,’ he called to the figure. ‘I know who you are. I know the power in you and what it can achieve. Let me guide you. Let me show you how to wield that power as savagely as you wield your sword.’
Silent moments passed until, slowly, the lone warrior relaxed his threatening pose. The weapon dropped to his side, seeming an invitation to Coyle to speak again.
‘I knew you would listen once the others were dead,’ Coyle said. ‘There are only the two of us now. Together we can bend every man to our will. Erebis Felan, Athlane, kingdoms we have never heard of — we will make ourselves kings of them all.’
At this, the triumphant warrior extended his left hand towards Coyle, who took it and rose to his feet. Already the sly grin of victory curled his lips.
‘I don’t like this,’ Tamlyn whispered. ‘That creature can kill the Felan as easily as he has the Wyrdborn.’
I didn’t respond. Like the others gathered in that tense circle, I was watching the two men at its centre.
As Coyle was on his feet now the mysterious figure should have released his hand. But he hadn’t and Coyle was suddenly aware of it.
‘Let go of my hand,’ he said calmly.
When this did no good, he tried to jerk it free. That didn’t work either.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked, the nonchalant calm of moments earlier vanished.
There was no reply from inside the stranger’s helmet.
‘I feel something strange,’ Coyle said. ‘What are you doing to me?’
His efforts to free his hand became more frantic, but they were futile.
Finally, the lone warrior seemed satisfied and let Coyle go. Coyle was thrown back a step or two by the force of his own tugging. He stood examining his hand, which hadn’t suffered in any way I could see.
‘I feel different,’ he said, his voice tinged with panic. ‘What have you taken from me?’
Through all of this, the lone warrior hadn’t uttered a word. We knew him only by his actions, and it was in the same way that Coyle received his answer. Before he could back away, in fact, before he even saw it coming, the tip of that murderous sword was pointing upward at his belly. With a thrust of arm and shoulder, its full length rammed through the armour that Coyle Strongbow had boasted would deflect any steel.
Just as quickly the blade was yanked free again. Left unsupported, Coyle fell to his knees and then face first into the sand, where his body convulsed one final time then lay still.
The silence. That is what I remember about the moments after Coyle died. It must have lasted only seconds, but for me, each of those seconds stretched into minutes, even hours.
At the centre of so much carnage stood a single figure no taller than those he had slain. In fact, there was nothing to set him apart at all. He wore a helmet made ugly and menacing by short spikes in the style so many of the Wyrdborn preferred. The rest of him was encased in armour, although the colour of its steel was no longer visible. His deadly work had painted it red from his shoulders to his heels, and blood dripped onto the sand from the bottom of his breastplate and the elbow of his sword arm. That sword, killer of hundreds, remained in his grip, the blade raised and ready in case any of the bodies around him showed signs of life. There was none. He had gone about his work too well. Only the Felan were left to face him.
He made no move to start the battle again. Instead, the heaving of his chest slowed and he lowered the tip of his sword a fraction. Still, around the circle the tension remained. Every man, every woman, who stood confronting him knew death was only minutes away if he turned his fury on us as well.
In those terrible moments while we waited to see what he would do, every eye, mine especially, stared at this mysterious warrior in horror and in awe. How had he done it? The Wyrdborn had always been protected by the magic of their birth, making them difficult to kill and impossible to defeat in battle. Only a magic more powerful than theirs could account for what had happened here.
Birchon stepped forward, just a single pace yet enough to draw the faceless warrior’s attention. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
The stranger offered no reply. He began to turn a slow circle, as though he had only then realised he was surrounded by a wall of human beings. His grip tightened on the sword and his head moved quickly to left and right and left again like someone who doesn’t like what he is seeing. For a terrible moment, I feared he would launch himself at the wary Felan.
The steady turning continued until he was almost facing Birchon again. Then he stopped, and I could barely breathe for he was staring straight at me. Worse still, he took three tentative steps towards me.
Around the circle, armour clanked and squeaked and swords rose. Tamlyn pulled me behind him.
‘No,’ I called urgently. ‘Let us see why he has singled me out.’
The stranger had stopped his advance as soon as the Felan reacted. It was as though he’d briefly forgotten they were there and only the sound and movement of their armour had reminded him. He turned his own sword blade to point downward, then drove it far enough into the sand that it stood by itself. Then, with both hands free, he removed his helmet.
Gasps broke out around the circle, not just from Tamlyn and me but from everyone. The stranger was a boy, little more than fourteen, one who sprouts quickly to be as tall as his father yet retains the soft, beardless skin of childhood. Hair spilled from the helmet, so much hair I wondered for a moment whether this was actually a girl. But no, the jaw, the brow, his whole face, were masculine, there was no doubting it, even though that dark hair fell almost to his waist. Already, it was becoming matted with the blood that soaked his armour.
I examined his face looking for familiar features. Were there any at all? Surely I had never seen this boy before, and yet he was staring at me as though he knew me. Then he spoke — a single word. ‘Silvermay.’
His voice was no more familiar than the rest of him, yet since soon after first seeing the lone warrior a suspicion had been growing in me — impossible to put aside. I moved out from behind Tamlyn and took a step towards the boy.
Tamlyn put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No closer until we know who he is,’ he whispered.
But I already knew.
‘Silvermay, don’t you know me?’ the boy called out.
How could it be, though? Only days ago I had carried him on my hip. How could he have grown ten years?
Even as I thought it, I knew. The answer lay in the dead deer we had found two nights earlier and the other creatures we’d seen the following morning, and in the woods where dozens of the Wyrdborn had fallen into the sleep that never ends. He had taken all of those lives into himself, just as he had taken the life force from others, beginning on the day he was born.
‘Yes, Lucien,’ I called across the bloody sand. ‘I know you.’
I took two more paces towards him. To go any further I would have to find a way through the corpses, and the horror of this brought me to a halt.
Tamlyn was quickly beside me. ‘That can’t be Lucien, Silvermay. Have you gone mad?’
I shook my head
. ‘I wish I had. It is Lucien. The little boy has become a young man.’
I could see Tamlyn still didn’t believe me. Did I even believe it myself?
‘It’s the magic we saw in the mosaics,’ I explained.
This made him think, at least. But before we could talk any further, Birchon was demanding answers from me. I knew he would be even harder to convince.
‘What’s going on, girl? How can you know this monster?’ His voice was harsh and he made no effort to hide the anger all the Felan held towards me.
Lucien heard that anger, both the words and the tone. He snatched his sword from the sand and pointed its blade at Birchon, which made the Felan stir in response. The battle might begin again at any moment.
‘Stop! All of you!’ I cried. Turning to Birchon, I said in a calmer voice, ‘There’s no need for fighting. Aren’t there enough dead already? Stand down your soldiers and Lucien will do the same.’
Birchon glared at me and gave no order. Around us, fear prickled the air until it seemed too heavy to breathe.
‘The girl is right, Birchon,’ said an unlikely voice. It was Delgar, who had shown me only contempt since the disaster in the Great Hall. ‘A force that cuts down the Wyrdborn like weeds will do the same to us. There has been enough killing.’
When Birchon said nothing, Delgar gave the order instead. Slowly, with cautious eyes firmly on Lucien, the circle of Felan widened until they stood back fifty paces.
This left room to attend to the wounded, and I saw a group gather quickly around the brave Felan who had prevented Coyle from fleeing Lucien’s sword.
One of the nurses broke away and hurried towards us. ‘Lord Birchon, you must come. Your daughter is badly hurt.’
‘Geran,’ I cried. ‘But she wasn’t supposed to —’
I snapped my mouth closed. Of course Geran had found a way into the fighting. She had been bursting for the chance since news of the invasion had reached Meraklion. I started towards her stricken figure, only for Birchon to round on me.
‘This is not for you. Stay with the monster you’ve brought to our shores and let me tend to Geran.’
Lucien Page 10