When Asrăthiel looked up, her gaze locked with William’s. His expression said, Would that I could be numbered amongst your escort, but they both knew he could not leave his father’s side.
‘Gramercie, my liege,’ Asrăthiel said, ‘but I need very little assistance and my aerostat is not capacious. I will take only my maid, if she is willing, for I have trained her to help with the take-off and landing of aircraft.’
‘What of the situation in the far north, at Silverton and the Harrowgate Fells?’ Prince Walter asked his father. ‘Is Narngalis to be pinched in the claws of baneful tongs, between weapons of steel and weapons of gramarye?’
‘According to the last report all remains tranquil throughout that region,’ replied the king. ‘The local shrievalties remain on alert, and sentinels have been posted in strategic locations to keep vigil, in case the unseelie slayings should recommence. For now, that danger sleeps. But enough of this talk! It is time to gird ourselves and hasten to defend the kingdom. Farewell, Asrăthiel!’
On Mai the twenty-second, a date Asrăthiel used to celebrate as Highland Mai Day when she dwelled in the Mountain Ring, Uabhar and Chohrab crossed the border and entered Narngalis. Their armies in colours of blood-flame and sun-fire advanced into the north-kingdom, marching rapidly. Through blossoming fields they trampled—crushing the buttercups underfoot—and along muddy highways. The metal wheels of their supply wagons and ordnance carriages crushed the hedges bordering the roadsides; the hobnailed boots of the infantry clattered across bridges of wood and stone. Slender spears and pikes and standards surged like some storm-driven forest, and the cavalrymen made an awesome spectacle as they sashayed forth, resplendent, beneath regimental banners.
King Uabhar himself rode with his troops amidst his retinue of bodyguards, their fleet-footed horses having caught up with the slow-moving columns. King Chohrab, too, travelled at the head of his own army, although initially he had lagged somewhat behind the King of Slievmordhu. In fact, he had not intended to venture from the safety of the city walls at all, until Uabhar suddenly took his leave, declaring that he was heading for the battle front.
‘But why?’ Chohrab had cried, rousing from his waking nightmares. ‘Surely your commanders are competent enough to make decisions on the spot. Why risk your own person?’
‘My wife nagged me until I could endure it no longer,’ Uabhar replied ruefully. ‘Pity me, for she can be a tyrant behind closed doors. Go and prove your courage, she harped. People will laugh at me if I have a craven husband! Chide me not, Chohrab, fool that I am, for being ruled by womanhood.’
Chohrab did not question that this was so, for he had never taken much note of the reticent Queen Saibh and knew next to nothing of her true character. Try as he might, he could not visualise Uabhar enthusiastically charging head-first into battle at risk of life and limb, so he supposed that his ally’s motive for his proposed heroics was valid.
‘I must go to the front also,’ declared Chohrab, ‘otherwise I will be named a coward.’
‘Not at all!’ Uabhar protested. ‘Everyone knows you suffer from ill health and are too delicate to fare abroad. No one will blame you, brother. Ádh be with you!’ And he departed precipitately.
Chohrab, however, seethed with discontent and a smattering of suspicion. ‘Uabhar will recite words of inspiration to his men,’ he said to his brother-in-law, Rahim. ‘He will appear to be a better leader than I. To him will go the glory and the power when we triumph. I wonder whether he truly has my interests at heart, for he takes precious little note of my opinions. In future I shall stand up to him!’ He had his apothecaries mix a strong stimulant, which he quaffed without delay, then girded himself for war and followed after.
Day by day, rumour proliferated that Uabhar was openly in league with Marauders; that he had sealed a peace agreement with several large comswarms, promising to cease harassing them in return for their cooperation against his enemies. Uabhar’s paid gossip-mongers made certain to conceal the truth about the exact date this treaty had been ratified, asserting that, if such a compact existed, it would have been a recent development forced upon the king by the exigencies of war.
Despite the false rumours being put about, some of the Knights of the Brand and a small proportion of the civilian populace guessed the truth: that the alliance had been struck in secret, long ago. Uabhar had been allowing the Marauders to persecute his own subjects in order to terrorise them into paying higher taxes, purportedly for protection. Though their outrage knew no limits, no one had the courage to speak out. Those who had deduced the facts began—in private—to question their sovereign’s methods.
Many Slievmordhuan subjects believed that if the tales of alliance were true their king ought to be feted for such a cunning move, as it would guarantee their security. Others, mistrusting the comswarms, dreaded the ultimate outcome of a league so incongruous. Those citizens of Slievmordhu who did not applaud their sovereign, and in fact cursed him and all his schemes, chiefly resided in the villages that lined the war machine’s northward route, for Uabhar and Chohrab supplemented the provisions of their forces by allowing the soldiers to strip the countryside bare of victuals and fodder as they travelled. Nor were the troops gentle with those from whom they pillaged, despite that they were fellow countrymen.
By the time the foremost newly mobilised battalions of King Warwick had swept southwards over the Black Crags and down past the Eldroth Fields to meet the invasion, the Slievmordhuan and Ashqalêthan vanguard had reached the crossroads known as Blacksmith’s Corner, where the byway to the Mountain Ring branched off to the west. Had they turned onto that path, they would at length have arrived at the very gates of High Darioneth. They made no effort, however, to steer for the stronghold of the weatherlords. Their goal lay in another direction.
At the forefront of the invading columns small groups of Slievmordhuan and Ashqalêthan foot soldiers continually conducted patrols, scouring terrain which might hide infantry waiting in ambush, and keeping a lookout for enemy scouts. Near the crossroads they finally confronted the first of the defenders: an advance patrol of Narngalish bowmen, who immediately loosed a hail of arrows on the southerners.
Messengers raced back to inform Commander Mac Brádaigh that hostile archers were concealed in the hedges and deep lanes, and that, further along the road, ranks of infantry were lined up and waiting, armed with bow, pike, war-hammer and axe. Without delay Mac Brádaigh ordered his leading troops to halt and deploy in combat formation, while the first companies of the main-battle caught up.
Before the southerners had time to arrange themselves in fighting order King Warwick’s vanguard surged forward in the attack. The Narngalish archers continued to shoot over the shields of their infantry into the invading troops, who were still frantically preparing to return the volleys and suffered numerous casualties. Mac Brádaigh, however, soon had them manoeuvred into a position to withstand the onslaught, whereupon his infantry retaliated with their own barrage.
Thus began the first encounter of the war—the Battle of Blacksmith’s Corner.
2
A WICKEDNESS
Why goest thou hence, my lovely lord,
Upon thy snow-white stallion?
Why leave thy home to fare abroad,
Without me riding pillion?
Say, is it to the tourney field
For prizes and medallions?
Tiest thou my favour on thy shield
Amongst the gay pavilions?
I dreamed the brazen trumpets sang,
Bells chimed in loud carillon,
And tents like stripèd flowers sprang,
Green, saffron and vermilion.
Alas! Not for the tourney bound
Art thou, with brave battalions.
Thine object is some battleground
Drenched with the blood of millions.
Farewell. Now I am left to sigh
Amidst bereft civilians.
I wonder—wilt thou live or die
Before the bright pavilions?
Hill and valley rang with the sound of eldritch weepers lamenting. Anyone who managed to catch a glimpse of one of these wights would have beheld a ragged little washerwoman on her knees at the banks of a stream, sobbing as she scrubbed at a bloodstained shirt. It was rarely, however, that humankind laid eyes on these elusive incarnations, though their voices were loud enough to be heard at great distances. The weepers’ cries prophesied the deaths of men, and at Blacksmith’s Corner there was much to foretell. Their keening continued incessantly, behind the music of war, the screams and yells, the clash of weapons, the trumpets and drums.
For three days the conflict raged back and forth, waxing and waning. Slievmordhu’s Knights of the Brand fought well, but they were short of their best company; furthermore, without their leader, Conall Gearnach, they lacked their usual zeal. Nonetheless their ranks were as well disciplined as Narngalis’s elite knights, the Companions of the Cup—in contrast to their compeers, the heavy cavalry of Ashqalêth. The Desert Paladins believed they deserved the honourable stations in the front lines. They jockeyed for position, not only vying against the Knights of the Brand but also against each other, often ignoring orders in their quest for individual glory. This lack of compliance caused disorder amongst the allied ranks of Slievmordhu and Ashqalêth.
Perceiving the increasing disarray that was thwarting his strategies, Mac Brádaigh decided to employ fresh tactics. He had been eagerly looking forward to the moment when Marauders would begin pouring into the battlefield like flies to a carcass, in response to the messages carried to them by his own officers. The enemy, he knew, would be dismayed when confronted unexpectedly by the vicious swarmsmen. When he began receiving reports that confirmed the first of the cave dwellers were, at last, converging on the scene of action, he judged that the time was right for an added surprise.
King Uabhar had entrusted Mac Brádaigh with the strange artefact discovered amongst the ruins of the Dome of Strang, the Sylvan Comb, along with the secret that governed it. Spurring his steed through the front lines into the very heart of the fighting, the high commander hurled the goblin artefact to the ground, articulating the Word.
The Comb’s nineteen teeth bit into the dust.
His own men and their allies were prepared for what happened next. The raising of certain flags and the sounding of drums and trumpets had signalled the alert: Ware the enchantment! The southerners fell back, having been instructed as to what would occur, but even they were astonished. As for the opposing troops, they were taken by surprise and thrown into confusion.
A sudden wood of silvery trees, most wonderful and uncanny, sprang up around and amongst the fighting men. Their bark seemed etched with spirals and flowing designs, their leaves shimmered and sighed in a nonexistent breeze. Dark vapours coiled between the trees, as if sentient. Eerie shiftings and blinkings in the forest’s shadowy depths gave suggestion that unguessable creatures lurked there. The skulls of the soldiers who found themselves in this wood of weirdness became flooded with a subdued oceanic roar, and a dry rattling like dead leaves shaking in an Autumn wind. They felt dizzy and dislocated, as if transported to some eldritch realm in which nothing they had ever known made sense. A feeling of impending doom and tragedy tainted their awe.
If the Comb’s illusions cast the defenders into turmoil, the incoming Marauders augmented their disorder. At their first appearance, both invaders and defenders were astounded. Mac Brádaigh had issued no forewarning of this to his own troops or Ashqalêth’s. Uabhar’s bizarre alliance had never been openly acknowledged; it had been a secret guarded as closely as possible—given men’s fondness for gossip—until the last moment, for if the southern troops had known, the knowledge would soon have been gleaned by the northerners, one way or another. Soldiers in all camps reacted sharply to the intrusion of their traditional antagonists, until commands rippled through the ranks of the southern allies—‘Stand unafraid, for the swarmsmen are on our side.’
Huge and powerful as oxen, the swarmsmen ploughed havoc amongst the Narngalish. Amongst the fighting men astonishment dawned as they comprehended that the hearsay had been true, and Uabhar had indeed struck some bargain with the monsters. Outrage and disgust flamed, even as they continued to do battle against each other, but when men in the uniforms of Slievmordhu and Ashqalêth remained unscathed by the monsters, and the southerners witnessed the carnage the swarmsmen wrought on their behalf, they took heart, and many began to approve of the unusual manoeuvre.
Outnumbered, demoralised and unable to shield themselves from the debilitating effects of the Comb’s supernatural visions, the northern forces were eventually driven back. King Warwick’s officers endeavoured to beat an orderly retreat so that they might rally the troops, carry the injured with them and review their tactics. The invaders pursued, skirmishing and picking off the few stragglers, until Mac Brádaigh summoned them to fall back and regroup. Both sides had sustained substantial casualties, but the southerners successfully took control of Blacksmith’s Corner. For King Uabhar the invasion had begun well.
That night his triumphant troops, their spirits high, sang songs of ancient battles as they drank their ration of ale around their campfires:
‘Time bygone, wicked goblinkind came down from northern heights,
Laid siege to lands of mortal men and ruled the death-dark nights.
Through many battles terrible, both wights and men engaged,
But Silver Hill was named amongst the greatest ever waged.
From mountain-halls the goblin hordes poured forth with eerie sound,
But, combat-ripe, the Slievmordhuan soldiers stood their ground.
Ever towards the south men turned, expecting soon to see
Three companies of reinforcements, armoured cap-a-pie.
“We’ll hold this camp,” their captains cried, “Until relief arrives!
We’ll not surrender Silver Hill. Defend it with your lives!
Noble Sir Seán of Bellaghmoon commands us in the fray—
No bolder or more valiant man ever saw light of day.”
Yet goblins thronged, wave upon wave, in numbers unforetold.
Alas! The ranks of mortalkind boasted few swords of gold.
They found themselves outnumbered, yet unyielding, pressed the fight.
“The north-bound troops will join us soon! We’re sure to win the night!”
But ere the goblins issued from their vast and sunless caves
In secrecy they had despatched their crafty kobold slaves,
Who, under cover of the dark, by pathless ways had crept.
They struck the northbound companies and slew them as they slept.
All through the night at Silver Hill Sir Seán of Bellaghmoon
Fought on beside his men. At last the sun rose, none too soon.
For, as night’s shade gave way to day the goblins had withdrawn.
A bitter scene of carnage spread beneath the rays of dawn.
“Alas!” cried Bellaghmoon. Sore anguish creased his noble brow.
“Ill fate has met our soldiers, else they’d be beside us now!”
“We must retreat,” his captains urged, “before the setting sun,
For goblins move in darkness. They outmatch us two to one.”
But bold Sir Seán of Bellaghmoon cried, “Never shall we flee,
I’ve sworn to fight for Silver Hill, though death should be my fee.”
His troops thus stayed upon the mount, aware there was no chance,
And when the sun began to fall they sharpened sword and lance.
As darkness came a-creeping, goblins overthrew them all,
Hewed off the head of Bellaghmoon and of his captains tall,
Hoisting the severed polls on pikes. Unto their eldritch halls
They bore their dreadful prizes, for to nail them on the walls.
Above the gates of goblin-realm they hung their grisly plunder.
The mourning winds keened through the vales, th
e mountains rang with thunder.
But proud Sir Seán who fought so well, he did not die in vain.
Ye bards and minstrels, sing his praise and eulogise his name.
For, hard against all odds, he would not let his sovereign down
And through harshest adversity stayed loyal to the Crown.’
All the while, high above and far away from the clamour of war, Asrăthiel journeyed westwards in her sky-balloon accompanied by her maid, Linnet. The servant leaned on the basket’s rim, gazing dreamily at the landscape over which they were gliding. She enjoyed flight, and her mistress had tutored her well in the rudiments of crewmanship.
Preoccupied with the straitened circumstances of her kindred and worried about her friends who must defend Narngalis, the weathermage was piloting the aerostat somewhat absentmindedly. It was sufficient. After numerous flying hours she had no need to consider what to do next. Her intuitive perception of altitude, and of wind speed and direction, combined with her own observations, enabled her to find the right level to catch the currents she required. Without having to think about it she let heat escape from the sun-crystal a short while before she wanted to ascend, and shut it off a few moments before she wanted to stop rising. Inexperienced pilots often overshot, rising too high before levelling off, but Asrăthiel, to whom the elements were as extensions of her own faculties, never erred.
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