by Kim Wilkins
The guardsman, the one whom Bluebell had commanded to watch her, ran halfway across the hall to stop her leaving. ‘You can’t – ’ he said, but his words were cut off by the blast of wind that wrenched the door off its hinges and sent it crashing to the ground outside. The wind whirled into the hall, sending all the tapestries dancing, the ashes in the hearth swirling up.
‘Stand out of my way!’ Ash shouted, and they crept back, fearful. She swept out into the open air.
Bluebell saw it as soon as they started to march out the gate: Æthlric’s limp had worsened. Only yesterday he had fought as hard as any of the young men against the raiders, but today he was paying for his vigour. She struggled with complex feelings: she wanted him to have his last battle, but not like this. Not leading an army that could see him favouring his leg. Not on ground so steep and uneven that he could easily overbalance and fall prey to the rough steel of a much lesser man.
‘Father, a word in your ear,’ she said, grabbing him around the upper arm.
As they stood on the road, the others separated and flowed around them like water. Æthlric gazed at her curiously.
‘You cannot,’ she said simply.
‘I can.’
‘On stairs and cobbles and steep roads?’
‘I have been doing this much longer than you,’ he said, pulling himself up straight and puffing out his chest.
She gestured to the duke’s gate, the small, bolted opening to the compound where the bowerhouses stood. ‘We need somebody to guard the duke’s gate, the family, the tower where your daughters wait in fear.’
‘The tower is well guarded.’
She held his gaze and his watery eyes blinked back at her defiantly. Anger and fear arose in her.
Bluebell kicked him. Hard. In his bad leg.
He cried out, bent to cradle his knee. ‘What have you done?’ he shouted. ‘Foul, ungrateful child!’
‘You cannot,’ she hissed. ‘I will not see you killed at the hand of a filthy raider. Stay behind and guard the duke’s gate.’
He lifted his head and cursed her with his gaze.
‘Come,’ she said, grasping him under his arm and helping him to hobble into place. She left him there at the top of the narrow spine of stairs that led straight down to the harbour.
‘One day, you will see I did the right thing,’ she said to him.
‘One day, you will be wise enough to understand what “right” is,’ he shot back, but he didn’t follow her.
Bluebell hurried down the stairs to lead her army, her guilty pulse thudding in her ears.
Willow took her time. Swords were waiting for them on the docks, but the wolfskins went first with their flaming torches, then the raiders armed with spears and axes began to hack their way through the crowd. Willow was last to leave her ship, unused to the heavy mail whose weight lay across her shoulders, Hakon pushing her in the middle of the back. Smoke and bodies and shouting and confusion. Griðbani was in her hand and she refused to let the noise and blood distract her. Her instincts were homing in on Bluebell as easily as if she could see her. Maava was showing her the way. To the north. Bluebell was not among this mob, she was approaching from the west.
Hakon cleared a path for her, his mighty arms slashing and slicing. He was terrifying, a machine of death, hacking through heathens as they screamed for their mothers and for mercy. Many deliberately sidestepped him, some jumped in the water rather than face him. Willow could see they were outnumbered, she could foretell that Hakon’s army would not be taking Sæcaster, which made it all the more important that she take Bluebell.
Then, for a moment, the crowd cleared and she saw her sister, and her sister saw her. Charged recognition passed between them, and Willow ploughed ahead. Bluebell shouted an order to somebody nearby and stood, waiting, the Widowsmith raised, an overturned rowboat on fire behind her so that she was outlined in orange flames, as Willow had seen her countless times in her mind’s eye.
Willow’s knees turned to water. Her hand felt moist on the hilt of Griðbani.
Hakon stepped aside. ‘Maava be with you,’ he said, and with this one simple phrase, Willow felt once again Maava’s will rushing unfettered towards her. The surge of strength and faith in her body made her tall, powerful, and she ran at Bluebell with a guttural roar and the blessings of angels.
Bluebell deflected the first blow, but was unprepared for the speed of the second, twisting around awkwardly to block it. Willow was pleased to see her sister almost lose her footing, even more pleased to see the expression of shock on what was visible of her face under her helm.
Willow drove at her again, received a shield bash in the face for her trouble and stumbled onto her backside, heart thudding. But then a huge shadow passed over them, and a rumbling, sucking, drawing of mighty breath split the air. Bluebell’s eyes went skywards, and Willow glanced up too, and her heart leapt with joy when she saw it.
An angel had come. Glittering white wings spread across the heavens, spewing fire down on the heathens of Sæcaster.
Ash knew she would never get out the huge west gate of Sæcaster. The footbridge was up, the ditch was fortified, and she would have to cross the entire city square and pass all the mobilised soldiers to get there. But from here, she could see a route down past the unguarded bowerhouses to the duke’s gate. It was high and narrow, bolted and locked, but on the other side was a staircase that led to the harbour. If raiders killed her, so be it. Once she was dead she was of no use to Unweder, and he would have no reason to come for her.
By now her scalp was itching so violently that she could have happily ripped it off her skull. He was looking for her, finding her, but she had no idea how far away he was.
Ash didn’t want to blast off the door and leave an entry point for raiders, but beside the bowerhouse she found a thick, fallen bough among the tangle of trees that screened the northern flank of the wall. She bent over and closed her hands over the rough wood and tugged it towards her. Bugs and ants began to run madly in all directions, off the bough, over her hands. A sharp smell of decayed leaves and mud arose. The bough was cracked at one end, and rattled with dried leaves at the other. Ash pulled it all the way to the gate but couldn’t lift it. She breathed, spread her palms, and the little hands were all around her, pushing the bough into place with its split end resting on top of the gate. Ash dropped her hands, waded through the dead leaves and then carefully crawled up the bough to the top of the gate. The wood bowed underneath her. Her skirts were tangled around her knees and ankles and she barely gained her balance on top of the gate before she dropped heavily to the other side, falling sideways onto her hip and grazing her palm.
It was only then she saw her father, halfway down the staircase, still and silent. He hadn’t seen her yet. He was trying to keep people from heading into the city, not out of it.
Æthlric wouldn’t let her leave.
A high cliff face flanked her on one side, the crooked city on the other. She could disappear among the buildings, hide somewhere until the siege was over, and then run. Slowly, quietly, she stood, ready to disappear. Creeping down the stairs, seeing an opening into a side street …
But then her body began to tingle. Dread crept over her, into her. Mortal fear, cold as death. Her eyes went out to sea in time to see the harbour erupt with boiling steam and fire, to see the white dragon rise, salt water sheeting off its wings, and take to the sky.
Ash was frozen. It was Unweder, of that she had no doubt, and he intended to destroy her and absorb her and her powers, so that he may keep this new body of his, which would otherwise decay all around him, turn to foetid soup. All these years, trying to avoid this fate and yet she had brought it towards herself inexorably.
The dragon made one pass over the battling armies, indiscriminately spewing fire down upon the city, the reflection of the flames tinting its white wings red. It then seemed to sense she was out here, exposed. And all there was for her to do was stand here and be burned to death, because then he wo
uld leave and everyone else would be safe. She had thought facing death she would be frightened, but all she felt was bone-deep sadness for her loss of the world and all the beautiful people in it.
She stood straight, opened her arms, and called, ‘Come then, Unweder! Let’s be done with this!’
And as she cried out, her father – only twenty stairs away now – heard and turned. Saw that the dragon was arrowing towards her, pulling in a massive breath.
Æthlric ran towards her, uneven on his feet. ‘Ash!’ he called.
‘No, Father!’ she shrieked, waving her hands. ‘Stay away! Stay away!’
But with the speed and energy of a desperate man, he raced up the stairs, between her and Unweder, was within an arm’s length of reaching her.
A bright flash of fire, a stench of burning flesh, and Æthlric lay on the stone stairs, blackened and bloody.
Twenty-nine
‘Close the shutter!’ Ivy cried. ‘I hate the sounds of war.’
Rose glanced over her shoulder. Ivy had been sitting on the floor, clutching her boys and crying since the first horn of battle had been blown. ‘Ash has gone out there.’
‘Ash is a grown woman and can do as she pleases. My children are just babies. Close the shutter!’
‘Close the shutter, Rowan,’ Rose said softly to her daughter, who was the one who had opened it in the first place. But Rowan did not respond.
‘Please,’ Rose said to her, dropping her voice. ‘Your aunt is worried about her boys.’
Rowan lifted her hand and extended it towards the sea. ‘Look. Both of you.’
Rose peered out and gasped. Ivy leapt to her feet and joined them. A monster, glittering white in the summer sun, was rising from the sea.
‘Mama?’ Eadric said, his voice shaking.
‘No!’ Ivy cried. ‘No, not a dragon! They don’t exist any more.’ She descended into hysterical crying, pulled her boys with her under the table as though that could protect them.
Rose’s stomach was hollow. Now, the tower seemed the very worst place for them to be. It may have been made of stone, but it was the highest point of the city. If the creature was determined to attack Sæcaster, it would come for them and no doubt. Already the stench of smoke was filling the air.
‘Rowan, get under the table with Ivy and the boys,’ Rose said.
‘No,’ Rowan said, striding to the corner where her belongings were and seizing Skalmir’s bow. ‘Help me out the window.’
‘What? No.’
‘Help me out the window, Mama. I can kill it.’
‘You’re a child!’
Rowan’s mouth tightened, her nostrils flaring. Rose remembered that expression from her babyhood, the expression that came just before a tantrum. But Rowan didn’t tantrum, she brushed roughly past Rose, hanging the bow and quiver over her shoulder, and seized a chair.
‘We need that!’ Ivy said.
There was a monstrous intake of breath, then the sound of heat expanding the air. Rowan raced to the window, then turned, her face ashen. ‘The beast has killed Æthlric,’ she gasped.
Rose was winded; her knees unhinged. A long, horrible silence descended upon all of them.
Then Rowan took an arrow from the quiver and pierced her own leg with it. ‘Blood of kings,’ she muttered, as she roughly shoved the chair in front of the window and climbed onto it. ‘I will avenge him.’
Rose, terror clawing at her heart, tried to pull Rowan back down. With strength and force unnatural in one so young, Rowan flung Rose’s hands off her. She bent to look Rose right in the eyes, and Rose became aware that her daughter’s eyes were different now. Harder. Older.
‘Æthlric’s blood is my blood,’ she said in a low, hissing voice. ‘I can kill the dragon. I must kill it.’ Then she pushed herself through the window with her back against the sill, took hold of the brickwork outside, and pulled herself up and out.
Rose threw herself under the table with Ivy, putting her arms around her sister. ‘Hush, all will be well,’ she said. Father was dead, their children and sisters were in mortal danger. ‘All will be well,’ she said again, although it couldn’t possibly be true.
Bluebell abandoned Willow, on her arse on the ground looking stunned and shredded with exhaustion, and ran towards the staircase where the dragon was aiming its attack. Father was there. She had left him there, all but crippled him to keep him there. All the armies were in disarray, some running towards the sea, away from the flaming city. But those problems could wait. The dragon was going after her father. She ran up the stairs, feeling the weight of her armour keenly. Ash was there. There was a body on the ground, and the dragon had turned to circle around once more. She heard screaming, felt the air snap with heat and flame. It spewed fire over the roofs of Sæcaster, but all she could think about was her father.
No, no, no, no.
‘Not Father,’ she said under her breath. ‘Not Father.’
Panting, she fell to her knees. ‘Father, Father. My king. My king,’ Bluebell cried, trying to make sense of his melted face, the blood in his hair.
‘Leave, Bluebell! Run!’ Ash cried. ‘It’s too late! He’s dead! Save yourself!’
Bluebell looked up. A shadow crossed the sun. Here came the dragon again. Ash stood there, pale and thin, living her nightmare.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bluebell said to her sister. ‘I should have listened to you.’
But Ash wasn’t looking at Bluebell, she was looking back at the hall. Bluebell followed her gaze. Rowan stood on the peak of the tower roof, an arrow fixed in her bow.
She couldn’t hit it. She was a child.
And yet …
‘Rowan!’ she boomed in the voice she used to be heard over battle.
Rowan glanced down at her. Bluebell jammed her index finger against forehead, directly between her brows. Rowan nodded once, then returned her gaze to the dragon. The dazzling wings caught the sunlight, blinding Bluebell. She lifted her arm to shield her eyes.
With supernatural cool, the girl loosed her arrow.
It sailed through the sky; Bluebell followed it with her gaze. The dragon’s jaw twitched open, ready to breathe fire, Ash clearly its target.
Then the arrow found its mark, with a spurt of boiling blood.
‘Look out!’ Ash screamed as the vast shadow began to fall, spinning down to earth. Bluebell crouched with her shield over her head, braced herself for a mighty crash, but instead there was nothing more than a dull thud. She whirled around to see a man in black lying on the stairs at a crooked angle, back and legs and arms all broken.
‘Unweder,’ Ash said.
Bluebell rose and drew her sword. If the magician yet drew breath she would gladly steal it from him as her father had been stolen from her. But as she stood over him he twitched once and died.
Ash was at her side a moment later, grasping her hand, leaning into her. ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘Really over.’
Footsteps on the stairs behind them. They turned. Willow advanced on them, the trollblade in her hand.
‘Not over,’ Bluebell said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Come, sister,’ Willow cried and turned her wrist to flourish her sword. ‘I shall send you to the Blacklands!’
Bluebell wasn’t in the mood for speeches about Maava and no matter how good Willow was as a swordsman, she wasn’t Bluebell’s match, magic sword or not. She dashed down the steps, on the attack. Over, under, side. Willow blocked, but not fast enough. Bluebell caught her across the thigh and she staggered, cursed.
You could kill her.
Bluebell took a step back, held the death blow.
Just kill her.
Ash cried out behind her. Bluebell turned to see Hakon emerging from between burning buildings, grasping Ash around the throat and dragging her to the ground.
The hot slice of the sword on her exposed left shoulder. Bluebell turned back to Willow, angry, went hard after her. Over, under, side. Willow’s other thigh opened up.
‘Maava blesses me for my su
ffering,’ Willow said.
Bluebell backed up a few steps, glancing over her shoulder. Long ghostly hands of flame were reaching towards Hakon, setting fire to his clothes. He shrieked and dropped Ash, slapping out the flames. Bluebell returned her attention to Willow. She had to finish this quickly. ‘Drop the sword and don’t make me kill you,’ she said.
Willow gathered herself, pressed forwards, struck low from weariness, slashing across Bluebell’s foot. Hot pain. Bluebell struggled to right herself. The stairs were uneven, steep. A flash of rage across her heart. Hakon’s footsteps came fast, his axe held high.
Bluebell lifted her shield, caught Hakon’s axe but exposed her middle. Willow lurched forwards. With one swift movement, Bluebell brought her shield, with Hakon’s axe still embedded in it, down on Willow’s head.
She fell, striking her head on the ground. The trollblade clattered out of her hand. Hakon reached for it, but Bluebell reached for it too, smacking him across the head with her shield. He sprawled flat on the ground, eyelids flickering.
Then the trollblade burst into blinding flames. Bluebell stood back, shielding her eyes. She could see Ash standing very still, her attention fixed on the sword, as its shape began to melt and run.
‘No!’ Willow cried, struggling to her feet and reaching through the flame, then snatching her hand back and howling, falling on her backside.
Bluebell brought the Widowsmith down, stopped it a half-inch above Willow’s head. Willow looked up, pupils shrunk to pinpoints.
‘Don’t make me kill you, sister,’ Bluebell said.
Willow remained silent.
Bluebell could see her pulse flicking at her throat. Hakon was rousing. She didn’t have much time. She dropped her shield. Reached out her free hand to help her sister to her feet. ‘I don’t want your blood on my conscience. The trollblade is gone. Come back to Blicstowe.’
Willow’s hand came up. Her white fingers closed around Bluebell’s.