by Simon Kewin
It was impressive. Perhaps a third of the archers were left in reserve, away from the front line, ready to rush to any point on the periphery when a concerted attack came. The town had a plentiful supply of arrows: cartloads of long, heavy bolts, metal-tipped. Venn demonstrated to Cait how far they could fire the arrows as well as how destructive they could be when they hit, splintering wood and shredding targets with ease.
While the archers prepared, Cait, Hellen and the other witches from Islagray met to prepare the magic they would use. They could try and bring down individuals, but there were too many undain and nowhere near enough witches. Instead they'd use the Teem. Hellen still thought it likely the undain would wait for the ice to fully form before they attacked rather than allowing the rushing waters to drain them. Her plan was to wait for that moment, then crack and melt the ice under their feet. Throwing them into the running waters would drain them or even destroy them.
“The witches of old brought down mountainsides of snow into the An to bring it into flood,” she said. “I'm sure we can manage a bit of ice on this stream.”
“It will only work once,” said Cait. “Once they see what we're doing they'll attack, jump across the river.”
Hellen nodded. “Most likely. Their ignorance is our defence. They don't know how strong we are, how many of us there are. If they knew, I don't think they'd bother waiting. They'd ignore the running water and overwhelm us.”
They waited three days for the attack. Long, cold days, Cait alternating between boredom and terror. The all-clear call clanged again and again from across the town, the sound mournful. She walked the banks of the Teem with Danny to keep warm, reaching over the waters with her mind's eye to try and detect the approaching army. Each bird clattering into the sky, each breeze ruffling the branches sent her heart fluttering.
Snow swirled repeatedly over Hyrn's Oak, obscuring the world beyond, coating ground and buildings in white. Cait sat for hours, mesmerized by the spell of the endlessly falling flakes. The waters froze over on the second day and on the third day the air was icier still, all memory of warmth gone from it. It sucked the heat straight out of Cait's body as she sat and watched the snow.
In the end it was one of the archers who raised the alarm. They'd sent a few scouts out to ghost through the trees, watching for the approaching undain. One appeared suddenly on the far banks, chest heaving, eyes wide. At the sight of him, the archers rose as one, flexing the muscles in their arms and fingers, drawing arrows in readiness. Bells began to ring out, passing Nox's messages around the defences.
Cait could feel them now: a tide of the undain rolling forward to engulf Hyrn's Oak. They'd waited for the ice as Hellen had thought. The scout slid down the snow-coated bank onto the frozen Teem, slipping her way across, casting alarmed glances backward all the time. She reached the near shore and was being pulled up the bank by Venn when the undain emerged from the tree-line behind her.
The archers unleashed their first volley, the arrows flying almost horizontally to slam into the attackers. A line of the creatures went down, limbs and faces broken by the heavy wooden bolts. There was no screaming from them, though. That was almost the worst part. That and the way they rose again if their bones and muscles worked well enough to permit it. One or two were so shattered they stayed down, writhing uselessly on the floor or crawling forward as best they could. Those that stood over them reached down to place a hand upon them and drain the Spirit from them, taking it for themselves.
More volleys of arrows flashed from the defenders and more undain crashed to the ground. Each time most but not all rose again. As at Guilden, the undain appeared to be assessing the defences of Hyrn's Oak, working out what they faced.
Then at some unheard call the mass attack came. Once again they moved with blinding speed, covering the ground between the trees and the Teem in the blink of an eye. Thousands of them: normal-sized soldiers and huge muscled giants, all carrying swords and shields. There were others who loped along on all fours, part-human and part-animal, teeth bared in snarling mouths.
From the trees, a wall of arrows slammed into the defenders, arching over the top of the attacking forces. Where the hunters had relied on accuracy, choosing targets carefully, the undain simply tried to overwhelm with the sheer number of their shots, one or two managing to find their way through the narrow slits to send defenders spinning to the ground.
The giant undain, meanwhile, hurled boulders with a terrifying force, smashing down the hastily assembled walls where they struck. Each time the defenders were exposed to a rain of arrows slamming into them. The archers of Hyrn's Oak returned fire as best they could, aiming and shooting in a blur, some standing despite the arrows protruding from bloody wounds in their legs or chests.
The reserve defenders raced up to help plug the gaps where the assault was heaviest. Venn dodged around, calling out orders, reeling off arrow shots. Cait caught glimpses of Nox, too, watching over the scene from atop one of the stone buildings, occasionally bellowing out orders to the archers to cover a point where a breach in the defences looked possible.
Cait stepped back from it all, horrified at the slaughter, screams and cries filling her ears. The snow, once so pristine, was trampled and stained red. The calls of the bells were a constant cacophony, ringing from all directions, all meaning lost. There were too many of them. Far, far too many. She watched as Torven, peering out to unleash an arrow, was thrown backward to the mud, four or five undain bolts in him. He didn't move.
Hellen grabbed her by the shoulder. “Come. We have work to do.”
The witches of Islagray assembled in a small square behind a row of houses on the edge of the town, shielded from the arrows of the undain. It was one Cait had walked across on her first visit, the place the archers had set up targets for their archery competition. The screams from the defenders were muffled only slightly by the distance. Venn stood by Hellen, a curved hunting horn in her hand. Her eyes were wide and she panted hard. At a nod from Hellen, she winded the horn, the piercing sound cutting through the cries and clash of the fighting. The retreat. The defenders began to appear, limping through the gaps between the houses, many of them wounded, supported by others.
Cait, Hellen and the other witches formed a rough ring, and between them they began to work the magic they'd arranged. Closing her eyes, Cait caught glimpses of events outside on the Teem through her mind's eye.
The undain, seeing the defenders fall back, were pressing forward, marching onto the ice. Ranks of quick-moving, child-sized undain hurried to the front. They were lightly-armoured, carrying only knives, but there were thousands and thousands of them and they were light enough not to crack the ice. Perhaps they were children; it was hard to tell beneath their armour. Best not to think about it. In an instant the Teem was thick with them, skipping lightly across the ice.
At a word from Hellen the witches poured what magic they could muster into the river. Some threw heat and flame at it, trying to melt the ice beneath the undains' feet. Others stirred up the waters beneath, Cait among them. She thought about the river serpents, the way the An had boiled as they rose at Guilden. The image helped her form the magic she wanted. The pain of what she was doing pulled at her stomach, seeming to stretch her guts, but she didn't relent. She was aware of gasps of pain from the witches around her but none stopped.
The waters of the Teem frothed as they wove their spells, throwing up spumes of water as the ice cracked and melted. The front ranks of the attacking undain were already on the near shore, flying up the banks to launch themselves with abandon at Hyrn's Oak. But behind them, the cracking ice heaved and then tipped the attackers into the seething waters.
The effect on them was immediate. They screamed high-pitched screeches, floundering in clear agony is if the waters were boiling. Archers on the roofs of the buildings along the river popped up and shot at both the floundering undain and those that had managed to make the crossing. In only a minute or so the Teem was clogged with a raft of lifeless
bodies. With a final cry of pain, the assembled witches threw one more wave of their strength at the stream, keeping the waters flowing to sweep the lifeless undain away into the An.
More than one witch collapsed to the ground, exhausted at the effort of what they'd done, clutching themselves as if physically wounded. Hellen nodded at Cait, her mouth set in a line, but both were too out of breath to talk.
The archers in the square busied themselves picking off those few undain that had made it through, defending the circle of witches. Some of the creatures were killed outright by a hail of arrow-shots to their heads. Others were incapacitated by hits to their limbs. These were quickly finished off by the hunters' knives. Ran was there, too, sword busy as he made sure no undain made it near Cait or any of the other witches.
When it was done, a silence washed across Hyrn's Oak, broken only by the groans of those injured by the onslaught. And then, echoing off the stone walls, the all-clear call.
The archers and the witches filed out to the water's edge. The undain were gone, retreating into the darkness of the woods as quickly as they'd arrived. The ground was strewn with all those that had been felled, arrows protruding from their misshapen bodies. A cheer in the distance was picked up by the nearby archers and soon Cait and even Hellen were joining in.
They'd done it. For the moment they'd beaten the undain.
When she'd made sure Danny and Johnny and Merdoc were OK, Cait went to find Nox to thank him. His plans and defences had worked flawlessly; quite possibly they couldn't have defended Hyrn's Oak without him. She felt bad at doubting him all the time when, in truth, he'd done everything he could to help after being cast out by Genera. He'd given them the two halves of the book, and he'd helped her, in his own way, to cross Angere. She wanted him to know how she felt. Despite their history, she wanted him to know she was grateful.
She found him propped against the wall of a stone building. She felt annoyed at him for not bothering to seek her and Hellen out, for not telling them what he planned to do next. It was just like him.
But then his blood-soaked chest showed her the truth of it. Four of the undains' arrows sprouted from his chest and two more lay on the ground beside him. He panted little breaths as if anything deeper would hurt too much. Despite the pain he had to be in, he managed to grin as she approached.
“See what you've got me into now, Cait.”
She kneeled beside him, studying the ugly, ragged wounds that dribbled blood down his chest. “I … I'm sorry. I didn't mean this to happen.”
He shook his head and spoke in short, broken sentences. “Everything was going so well, you know. Until that day at the library. You just walked past me. A schoolgirl carrying a book and everything changed. If I'd stopped you, everything would have been different. Instead, here I am. I was going to be immortal, Cait. Now I'm about to die.”
“You're not about to die,” she said. “We can heal you. The witches…”
He shook his head. “These injuries are too bad. I've inflicted enough on others to know the signs. Too much blood lost. Perhaps if Andar had modern hospitals with proper medicine it would be different.”
“I didn't mean this to happen,” she said again.
He looked amused. “You hate me really.”
“At first, yeah.”
“And now? You can be honest. It hardly matters.”
“Now, I guess I don't know. You've done so much for us, giving us the book. Then everything in the White City and Guilden. I came here to thank you. Still, I remember the way you hunted us in Manchester. When I look at you I remember how much you enjoyed doing it, too.”
He nodded, as if these were fond memories. He licked his lips. “You asked me if I blamed you for what happened to me. Perhaps I do a little. But you can repay me by beating them, Cait. By destroying them completely. Promise me you'll do that.”
“I'll try.”
“Good. See, I've stopped underestimating you now. I know you can do it.”
There was something she'd been meaning to admit to him. It seemed now would be her only chance. “Nox, you remember when we first arrived in Angere, and we climbed that hill from the stone circle?”
He nodded his head but didn't speak.
“There was a dead crow on the ground. Later I … I think I saw it fly away to raise the alarm. You asked me about it but I said it was nothing. But I think, maybe, that was why the undain came to Greygyle's for us. I should have told you.”
He looked amused. “See. We're not so different. You have plots and secrets all of your own.”
“Tell me,” she said, “if you had a chance, if the undain would take you back, give you immortality, you would, wouldn't you?”
“No. I told you. They pissed me off.” But he sounded like he was mocking her, and there was a spark of amusement in his eyes.
“But if they offered you Genera again, let you run it instead of Ms. Sweetley, you'd bite their hand off.”
“You want to watch her, you know. She's dangerous.”
“But would you?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “What do you think, Cait?”
What did she think? It always seemed like Nox was playing a double game, or a triple game. Hedging his bets so that it looked like he was helping both sides in the war.
“Sometimes I think you're a friend,” she said. “Sometimes I don't trust you at all. I don't know whose side you're really on. So tell me, if you even know yourself, which is it?”
But when she looked back down at him, his eyes were closed and his ruined chest had stopped moving. He was gone.
Unexpected tears came to her eyes. She had feared and hated this man, but somehow it was no longer that simple. The lines between good and bad weren't always as clear as the river separating Andar and Angere. Menhroth said he trusted Nox to do only what was in his own best interests, yet Nox had died trying to defend Andar. Perhaps that had been nothing more than a way of surviving as he awaited his chance to turn against them. She'd never know, now.
Danny found her ten minutes later, still kneeling in the dirt beside Nox. Danny held her close, saying nothing. He, too, had reasons to despise Nox, but also to thank him. They crouched there together for a time.
“We should go,” said Cait eventually. “Before they attack again.”
“Hellen says we have a little time. The Teem is still flowing. Most likely the undain will wait until the waters freeze again tonight. We've held them off for now.”
“What shall we do with him?”
“Put him with the others, I guess.”
The archers carried the dead of Hyrn's Oak to the quay. The skiffs moored there for the winter were normally laden with gulping, flapping fish but now they were given another use, loaded with a very different cargo. When the bodies had all been lifted aboard, the boats were doused with oil and pushed into the An. There was still open water in the bay. The sun sank in the west, seeming to melt into the waters of the river as it shaded to orange and then blood-red.
The dwindling band of defenders lit the tips of oil-coated arrows and aimed them at the boats. Venn was among the archers, the body of Torven on the skiffs. At a cry, a volley of flaming arrows arched into the sky with a roar. Most found their marks, igniting the oil on the boats. Soon they blazed with an orange light. No one spoke as the burning boats drifted away, taken by the current of the great river to jostle with the ice floes in deeper waters.
After a few moments, Cait could no longer tell which fire was Nox. It occurred to her she didn't know if he had family or even friends back home. If there was anyone who'd miss him, puzzle over what had happened to him.
She wondered, also, who else she was going to lose before the end.
Hellen came to stand beside Cait. The flames from the burning boats flickered in her eyes as she stared out to the river. “They'll come in the night,” she said quietly. “The undain. There are more of them all the time. Do you feel them? There's an anger to them. There's nothing more we can do here. Th
ey know our numbers, now. The night will be cold enough for the Teem to freeze once more and I don't think it will unfreeze again before the spring.”
“We've held them back for a while,” said Cait. “We've bought a little time for those who fled for the woods and hills.”
Hellen nodded. They both knew it was a small victory. “Their tree didn't save them from the flood this time.”
Back at Smoke on the Water, Cait sat next to Danny while Johnny and Ran untied the ropes. Merdoc glanced around nervously, fiddling with the drawstrings of his leather purse. Hellen conversed on the wharf with the remaining archers. Venn and the others would retreat into the forests, too. They'd harry the undain with ambush and trap before slipping away into the deeper woods. It was all they could do. Perhaps they could survive by hiding away, living like wild animals. Hyrn's Oak, like Guilden, would fall to the undain. Their victory had been glorious, but brief.
Once Hellen was aboard they pushed off to follow the course taken by the burning boats, south for Caer L'dun. It was only after a few minutes that it occurred to Cait she'd left an empty space for Nox to sit beside her.
11. The High Walls of Caer L'dun
Cait shivered in the blast of the cold wind blowing through the open windows of the watchtower. The wyrm lords were too tough, too heroic to notice the chill. From what Hellen had said they probably enjoyed freezing to death. But she, Cait, felt like a block of ice. She'd been offered furs, which she'd refused on principle, although she was regretting it now. Her fingers were numb, fizzing unpleasantly when she touched them to something. Surely they could light a fire, as Phoenix had at the top of his tower in Angere?