The Raven Collection

by James Barclay

  In four places Wesmen had gained the walls, their ferocity driving back the defenders. Too close for spell assault, the walls had to be cleared by men alone and, as the Wesmen surged, it quickly became clear there weren’t enough.

  Yelling for reserve teams, Kard flailed about him, his unmistakable frame and voice a rallying point for his men. In tandem, Barras and his mages poured FlameOrb and HotRain on to the clamouring masses waiting below. But while the death toll was awful, they merely regrouped and came again.

  ‘The gate!’ yelled Kard. ‘Hold the gate!’ As if to reinforce his words, the powerful thud of a battering-ram shuddered through the stone of the north gatehouse. Immediately, spells arced out and down, but barely had the fires died than the scattered Wesmen were back on the ram, sensing victory.

  From the south, the roar of attack grew as Wesmen forced further inroads on the walls and a woman screamed as one found his way to the inner courtyard before being felled by a townsman.

  The defence crumbled so quickly. Catapult rounds smashed anew inside the College, the ram thumped again and again into the North Gate, its iron-clad timbers creaking, WardLocks fizzing and repair crews fighting desperately to reinforce it. A dozen wall breaches of varying severity had left the defenders ragged when Kard turned to Barras, wiping blood from his face.

  ‘Now is the time,’ said the General.

  ‘No, we can hold them,’ said Barras, eyes searching for hope but finding none. Kard gripped his arm.

  ‘No, Barras, we cannot. Now go. I will shield you.’ The elven mage clasped arms with Kard, his face grim.

  ‘Goodbye, old friend.’

  ‘Do what you have to do,’ said Kard gruffly. ‘I am a better man for knowing you.’

  But still a dead one, thought Barras. He ran for the stairs and as he did so, five mages detached themselves from the fighting and made their way to join him. They were the chosen whose task guaranteed their deaths but enshrined their memories forever.

  As he ran to the Tower, the calls of Kard ringing loud in his ears, the tumult all around him a muted roar, Barras scanned the southern ramparts for Kerela, smiling as he saw the High Mage pointing out over the city, directing spell and soldier alike. As if feeling eyes on her back, she turned and caught sight of Barras who slowed to a standstill. For a moment, the two elves stared at one another, every time they had shared passing between them.

  Barras felt a warm gentle ManaPulse bloom against his body. Kerela smiled, nodded slightly and waved. Barras returned the gesture then ran on to the Tower, drinking in everything and knowing he would never see any of it again.

  Chapter 28

  Lord Senedai sauntered among the ruins of the College while his warriors readied themselves for the fast march south. He’d known the boy mage would talk. Good with his magic but weak-willed under torture. It had been a bonus that he had been found weakened and in the infirmary. The others of the Council, old strong-heads, he’d simply put to death. It was the only way to reduce the danger. All except Barras. He had eluded them so far but then the College was vast underground - any coward could run and hide.

  But before he left Julatsa, Senedai would keep his promise. He would have the head of the elf negotiator. Only then would he ride after The Raven who held the weapon to win the war, the weapon to bring dragons to Balaia. The weapon that would fulfil the myth of doom for the peoples of the West. His bird was already flying to alert Tessaya.

  ‘Barras, where are you hiding?’ Senedai was walking across the courtyard surrounding the Tower. His men marauded through the College; the cobbles were awash with the blood of mages. Their bodies littered the ramparts, the ground at his feet and the halls of their burning ancient buildings while their beloved people cowered under guard at the South Gate. For those who had so recently been released from the grain store the swift return to captivity was almost too much to bear and the weeping from men and women alike spoke everything about the mood of the surviving Julatsans. Crushed without hope of rescue. No one would come to save them now and every head was bowed in miserable submission.

  Their soldiers, brave in the face of overwhelming odds, would, those that still lived, be given the honour of choice. To die a warrior’s death or take enslavement. For the townsfolk, no such honour would be bestowed. They would rebuild their city for their new masters.

  Senedai stopped walking. The answer to his question stared him full in the face. The Tower.

  It alone stood undamaged by fire and force of Wesmen. Any mages left, those not running scared in the catacombs, and he had no doubt there were some, were plainly hoping the Wesmen fear of magic would keep them away from the hub of the College. Wrong. The College was broken, the Tower now just another building awaiting clearance.

  Senedai smiled to himself. At least, that was the theory. The practice, as its unblemished stones testified, was very different. Every Wesman feared the power within a mage Tower but it was surely a power that had been lessened by the deaths of so many of its mages. He summoned half a dozen men to his side, dismissing their anxiety with a wave of his hand, so bolstering his own fragile confidence.

  ‘The College is ours,’ he said. ‘Any inside are scared and beaten. Follow me and we will secure the ultimate victory.’

  Almost immediately on entering, the weight began to build. Senedai’s men could feel it too. An oppressive atmosphere that pushed on the shoulders and neck, constricted the throat and shot lead through the limbs. It only served to heighten their unease and Senedai fought not to stutter in his stride and convey his own thoughts.

  The Wesman Lord feared having to search the entire Tower for his quarry but needn’t have. Once inside and moving around the central column, he could hear voices coming from below, murmuring and chanting.

  He led his men down a short flight of stairs which hugged the outer wall. At the bottom of the stairs, a single door, outside of which stood a man whom Senedai recognised. The Wesman advanced, sword in hand.

  ‘Ah, the senile last line of defence,’ he said.

  ‘And one that kept your gutless, brainless hordes at bay for twelve days,’ said General Kard. ‘And I will personally see to it that you get no further.’ Kard’s sword was at ready but he made no move to attack.

  ‘This is a time for honourable surrender. The fight is over,’ said Senedai.

  ‘How little you know.’ Behind the closed door the voices rose in volume and pace, cut off sharply and were replaced by one; strong, confident, determined. Barras.

  ‘Get out of my way or I will cut you down,’ snarled Senedai.

  ‘So be it.’ Kard lunged forwards, his sword flashing in the lamp light. It was a quick strike but his age and exertion told against him and Senedai was able to block it aside and return a stab Kard moved smartly to avoid. To either side of Senedai, his men moved to attack, axes falling simultaneously. Kard’s sword diverted one but the other thudded into his shoulder, driving him to his knees.

  Kard’s sword clattered to the floor and he fell back against the door, free hand clutching at his wound as the blood poured down his arm and chest. His eyes flickered and he gasped with pain. Senedai squatted in front of him.

  ‘You are a brave man, General Kard. But foolish. There was no need for you to die.’

  Kard shook his head but was unable to raise it to face Senedai. ‘Wrong,’ he mumbled as his last breath rattled into his lungs. ‘There was every need.’

  At a gesture, one of the warriors pulled Kard’s body to one side. Behind the door, the voice had ceased. The Tower shifted gently, dust drifting from timbers and stone.

  ‘The door,’ snapped Senedai. ‘Quickly.’

  It was locked but an expertly placed boot had it shivering back on its hinges. Inside, six mages knelt in a circle in the centre of a room covered in books and parchments. Again the Tower moved, a more definite displacement this time. The sound of pottery breaking on stone was heard. The atmosphere of dread washed out into the corridor. Senedai stepped back a pace, his warriors more. The ai
r was chokingly thick, deadening thought and muscle. Now the Tower shuddered, lamps fell from the walls and the sound of breaking glass echoed through the building. The Wesmen staggered; one fell, cracking his head against a wall; others exchanged anxious glances, tongues licking dry lips.

  ‘My Lord?’ The plea was drenched in fear.

  ‘I know,’ said Senedai through gritted teeth. He looked again into the room, straight into the eyes of Barras. The old elf smiled.

  ‘You can take our buildings and our lives but you can never take our Heart.’

  ‘You owe me your head, Barras.’

  ‘The deal has changed. Now I suggest you leave my Tower before it becomes your grave too.’ He raised his arms above his head and shouted words the Wesman Lord could not understand.

  The Tower rocked violently, coving crashed down, timbers splintered, ceilings cracked and shifted, floors subsided. In front of Senedai’s wide eyes, the chamber in which Barras and his mages knelt began to sink. Wood groaned and squealed against nails, stone and brick shattered like thunder. Everything vibrated.

  ‘Leave, Senedai. Leave my College.’ The door whipped shut, thrust by an unseen hand. It thudded into the frame, crackling across its panels. Senedai turned to his terrified warriors.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Go! Move!’ As if to hurry them on their way, a tortured groan of timber, brace and stone tore from the sinking room. The warriors turned and ran, Senedai hard on their heels, while the walls rattled around them, the dust filled the air and, one by one, the lamps and braziers guttered and fell, the darkness spreading up the stairs behind them.

  They burst back into the sunlit courtyard to join a circle of Wesmen staring up open-mouthed at the shuddering Tower. Tears ran up and down its length. Networks of cracks were scattered around it like carelessly woven spider’s webs and, here and there, holes had been gouged in the stonework, the debris littering the courtyard.

  It was a sight that brought fear but ultimately cheers as the Tower of Julatsa collapsed in a tumult of tumbling stone, billowing dust and shattering glass. But, as the dust blew away and the echoes died to silence, Senedai turned and walked away back to his command post, knowing that what he had witnessed was far from the end of Julatsan magic.

  The march had been swift and proud, Darrick’s cavalry at its head, Blackthorne and Gresse flanking the young General. Having despatched three thousand back to Gyernath to help rebuild and defend the damaged port, Darrick organised his force, numbering just shy of eight thousand, into centiles each under a Captain. He built eight regiments from those centiles and each marched behind a mounted commander.

  The mood was determined and confident yet light for all that. Each part of the army had won important victories; the port defence had held Gyernath, Blackthorne and Gresse had stopped a force four times their size from reaching Understone and Darrick had aided in the sacking of Parve, destroyed a Wesmen supply line and had either burned or taken every craft he had found.

  But now the defence and harrying was over. Now the Eastern Balaians were on the attack and the talk was of liberation, not survival. It had taken them two hours to march from the beach to the rises surrounding Blackthorne’s town and castle. They had expected to see the Wesmen barricaded in the town, their standards flying on the battered walls and from the castle battlements. They had expected to feel the fear pulsing from the helpless enemy and they had expected to march victorious.

  What they saw, though, took the songs from their hearts. Blackthorne had been destroyed. A pall of ash from fires long dead still hung in the sheltered dip in which the town had stood. And beneath the dark cloud, barely one stone rested on any other. Blackened wreckage was strewn over a massive area. Here and there, timbers stood proud from the earth, scorched yet defiant, but of the walls there was nothing. Of the streets, the houses, the inns and businesses, nothing. And of the castle, Blackthorne’s ancestral home, nothing. Just scattered stone in slab and fragment. It was a sight of devastation that literally took the breath away.

  Gresse rode to Blackthorne’s shoulder and dismounted to stand beside his friend who stood pale and silent, a tear from his left eye drawing a track through the dust on his cheek. This was not a time for words, it was a time to stand with your friend. To lend all the strength that you had.

  And as the army crested the rise, the silence spread. Gasped expletives echoed hollowly and, here and there, Blackthorne’s men fell to their knees, the will drained from their bodies, their dreams of a return home snuffed out. Blackthorne was gone.

  The Baron stared down unmoving at the ruins of his town. Gresse saw the thoughts chase themselves across his face, on which anger flourished and spread. Behind them, the army waited, those native to Blackthorne stunned, those of Gyernath respectful of their anguish.

  Eventually, Blackthorne turned to address all that could hear him.

  ‘I’ll be brief,’ his voice echoed out over the massed ranks. ‘Down there, you see my town. Torn apart by Wesmen. And among you are those who can see only ruins where their houses once stood. I am one of them. That is why we must pursue the Wesmen and that is why they must be stopped and driven from our lands forever. Yes, I want revenge but more, I want none of the rest of you to feel the way I feel now.

  ‘Now let’s get moving. General, if you please.’

  The mist was just as Hirad remembered it. Like dust across the sun but this time on a day plagued by showers and a cold wind. The dreary light merely added to the sense of wrong that the mass of static mana Septern’s ailing rip generated.

  But the weather was not all that was different. In front of the ruins of the Septern Manse stood Styliann and the Protector army, visible as a dark mass of barely human stillness through the mist and five hundred yards of distance. And to Hirad’s left, riding so slowly he barely moved The Raven on at all, was The Unknown Warrior.

  During the four days of their ride to the Manse, his mood had changed by degrees from one of hard determination to tetchy introspection, and now angry confusion. And as The Raven neared the low barn where he had met his death, his lack of focused thought led to snarled exchanges with Hirad that were merely exacerbated by the nearness of the Protector army.

  ‘You should just ride on by,’ said Hirad. ‘Put it behind you.’

  ‘And that demonstrates exactly how little you understand.’ The Unknown jabbed a finger at the Protectors. ‘They know. They understand but they cannot say anything.’

  ‘Would it help if they could?’ asked Hirad a little shortly.

  ‘Yes, damn you, it would,’ snapped The Unknown, reining to a halt. ‘Try and get your head straight. Have you really no conception of how I might be feeling?’

  Hirad shrugged. ‘But you’re here,’ he said. ‘Here and breathing. Under the earth there isn’t you. It doesn’t have your soul.’

  The Unknown flinched as if struck. ‘ “Soul?” Gods in the ground, your mouth will be your undoing one day,’ he growled. ‘You know nothing about my soul. By all that’s right, it should be with those of my ancestors. At peace. Not back in a body that isn’t the original and exposed to all this . . . this shit!’ He swept his arms about him expansively, taking in everything: the Protectors, the Manse, The Raven.

  ‘If you want to leave, go right ahead,’ said Hirad. ‘Desert the only true friends you have. I won’t stop you.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Hirad, listen to what he’s trying to tell you,’ said Ilkar before The Unknown could speak again. ‘Unknown, you need time alone. I suggest the barn is the right place. Hirad, we have Styliann to deal with.’

  Hirad felt his anger surge but he kept it in check. Ilkar’s expression had hardened. The Unknown simply nodded at Ilkar, shot Hirad a withering look and urged his horse to a walk towards the barn and the grave he should never have had to face.

  ‘Hirad, we need to talk,’ said Ilkar.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If Denser and Erienne will talk to Styliann on behalf of The Raven, I think now is a very good time, don�
�t you?’

  Hirad raised his eyebrows. ‘You think I’ve been a little insensitive? ’

  ‘You haven’t lost your gift for understatement, have you?’ said Ilkar. ‘Ride with me, Hirad Coldheart. Ride and listen.’

  The Unknown Warrior slid from his horse well before the long barn and let the animal wander away to trail the others to the ruins of the Manse.

  Memories flooded into his head and his heart beat loud and wild in his chest, neck and ears. He pictured the Destrana war dogs running at him, their teeth bared, their saliva dripping and their eyes rolling. He felt his sword biting their flesh, the hot breath on his face, the clamp of fangs on his shoulder and the blood pouring from his torn throat.

  He clutched at his neck with a gauntleted hand, his vision dimming as it had done before, the taste of his death in his mouth, the sounds around him diminishing. He fell to his knees and forward on to his free hand, gasping for breath, tears fogging his eyes. He coughed and retched, took the hand from his neck and stared at it while his vision cleared. No blood.

  No blood, no dogs, no death. He raised his head, saw the barn dimly but found his gaze locked solid on the raised mound of earth just to the side of its doors.

  ‘Oh dear Gods,’ he said. ‘Save me from this.’

  But there could be no salvation. For while The Unknown lived and breathed, his body still lay there. He retched again, bile flooding his mouth which he spat to the cracked earth.

  ‘Why couldn’t you let me have my death?’ he growled, hauling himself to his feet. He cursed Xetesk. His home for his youth but the place that had stolen his death from him. Given him a hideous perversion of life behind a mask. He cursed the city and its masters, the mages who still retained the abominations that were his brethren.

  With his every footstep like wading through thigh-deep mud, he ground his way to the grave, his eyes stuck on the dusty mound, unmarked save for the vague imprint of The Raven symbol burned into its surface - mostly gone now, eroded in a few short weeks by the incessant breeze.