‘After the passing of the goblins, men told stories to diminish the vanquished enemy,’ the weathermage patiently explained afresh. ‘Our tales made out the enemy to be stunted, repulsive monsters. Humankind considered it comforting to ridicule the danger after it had passed.’
To stave off the weariness of the troops the carlin Lidoine Galenrithar had mixed barrels full of invigorating herbal potions. She saluted the Storm Lord as she hurried by, on her way to distribute the remedy, accompanied by three other carlins and an apothecary. He nodded acknowledgement, noting the anguish graven into her features. The carlin seemed hunched, as if her shoulders were bowed beneath the burden of mortality. The battle had been waged at a terrible cost—thousands had fallen and countless numbers had been wounded.
The Storm Lord was more skilled in healing than his granddaughter for, being unable to feel physical pain, Asrăthiel found it difficult to empathise with sufferers. Therefore, while the old man went about his doctoring amongst the tents with the apothecaries and carlins, the damsel attended meetings with the military commanders of the united kingdoms. They asked her to repeat all known facts about the goblins, and as she did so, she was reminded of a time when she had sat with William in the gardens of Wyverstone Castle. They had seen a black and white bird; William had called it a magpie, but she had another name for it. The prince had commented, ‘I have heard my old tutor say that in some cases the same name is applied to entirely different birds in different parts of the country, and thus confusion reigns.’ Ruefully she thought: How true! We gave these human-seeming warriors the same label as the beastly little woodland imps who hawk enchanted fruit to unwary buyers . . .
‘By what means were the goblins imprisoned, Lady Asrăthiel? How is it that they have returned?’ she was asked.
‘Long ago, after the overthrow of the goblin king, Lord Avolundar drove the wights under the mountains, sealing them in with rock falls veined with gold and lined with gold leaf. As for how they escaped,’ the damsel shook her head, ‘we do not know.’
‘Is it true they cannot abide daylight?’
‘It is thought they might be able to endure the rays of the sun,’ Asrăthiel replied, ‘but they prefer moonlight and starlight. When the sun is in the sky they seek cloud cover, or conjure their mists as a shield.’
‘In that case, might they attack by day?’
‘Perhaps not, but remain vigilant.’
Later, in the presence of his granddaughter, the Storm Lord confided, ‘There is no need for the hordes to put themselves to the trouble of a daytime assault. They have the upper hand, and may defeat us at their leisure.’
‘Tir’s greatest tacticians have as yet failed to produce any design for victory,’ said Asrăthiel. ‘Grandfather, Fallowblade is our one remaining hope. We must purchase more time; stave off the foe for as long as possible. I am determined to wield the sword, whether or not Desmond Brooks deems me sufficiently expert.’
Reluctantly, Avalloc nodded. ‘Very well, my dear. You may do so. Yet it is only in our hour of most desperate need that I acquiesce.’
The king’s private museum at Wyverstone Castle housed seven antique panoplies plated with gold, which were now quickly conveyed to the moorland encampment. These armours had been made long ago, during the Goblin Wars, after it was discovered that the supernatural weapons of the goblins could not scathe the yellow metal. The royal armourers offered this war harness to Asrăthiel but, recognising that the craftsmen were unaware of her immunity to damage, she confessed to them, ‘I do not need this protection.’ As it turned out, none of the segments fitted her in any case, because her form was too slender. Avalloc, too, refused the harness, whereupon King Warwick, his sons and the Knight-Commander of the Companions put it on, encasing themselves within the warm lustre of ancient gold, like fantastic shell creatures abducted from ocean crypts. The rest they sent to Thorgild, as a gift.
News from the bleak and lonely dungeons of the Obelisk arrived, by way of the encampment of Warlord Conall Gearnach. The overthrown king of Ashqalêth had grown sicker than ever, ultimately expiring from his maladies. The body of Chohrab Shechem II had been borne away to his desert kingdom for burial. Subsequently Prince Ronin, acting on behalf of himself and his brothers, had petitioned Gearnach to free their disgraced father from the humiliation of imprisonment in such ignominious circumstances.
Most people could not understand why the prince seemed so intent on leniency. They did not know how long and earnestly he had confided in Queen Saibh before taking this step.
‘I have renounced anger, Mother,’ he said to her. ‘I can take no delight in vengeance. And my father has done unpardonable wrongs but I cannot, overnight as it were, alter my lifetime’s habit of revering him.’
Her eyes brimming with tears, the queen mutely signalled her sympathy.
‘In some strange manner,’ Ronin continued, speaking hesitantly, as if striving to decipher his own thoughts, ‘it is as if I have two fathers—one who exists in my mind’s eye, whom I regard with deference and devotion, and around whom all my circumstances are built . . . ’
‘The man you wished him to be, and in whom you tried so hard to have faith,’ Saibh said.
‘Even so, Mother. Then there is the real man, who is beyond redemption, and that is the man I no longer wish to set eyes on. Yet he represents the fleshly embodiment of the ideal father in my mind. And absurdly, I find it hard to separate the two.’
‘It is confusing,’ his mother concurred, ‘when one’s inmost beliefs are so utterly challenged. I know. It will take much time for the truth to really smite you, and even then you will long for the father you wanted. You will yearn so desperately that you will always be rebuilding that image in your mind and trying to make the real man fit the dream, no matter what evidence to the contrary presents itself.’ Tears trembled on her lower lids. ‘I am considered compassionate by all who know me well, yet even I can find in myself no mercy for Uabhar. But my son, though your heart is at war with your head, you must do as you see fit. If you wish to plead clemency for him with that hateful Gearnach—may the Fates curse him—I will not gainsay you.’
Displaying enormous fortitude and charity of spirit, at Ronin’s request Conall Gearnach ordered Uabhar’s release. The abdicator was brought to King’s Winterbourne, where he was placed under house arrest in well-appointed apartments within the heavily fortified walls of Essington Tower.
Asrăthiel could not help but be irked at the knowledge that the tyrant who had ordered the destruction of her kindred should be quartered in comfort; yet she knew, also, that it must be so. Uabhar was no longer king but he was of royal blood, and would always be treated as royalty. Kings and once-kings were privileged by birth, no matter how heinous their crimes. More than anyone else it was their equals who recognised this, for they knew that if one who had ruled from a throne could be shackled and cast into a dank cell, then the highest rank of all was subject to the same fate as the lowest, and royal mystery would be cast to the winds. A king must be imprisoned with propriety. Even a king’s execution must proceed with dignity. Throughout history no sovereign had ever dangled from a public scaffold—royal heads were lopped, in ceremonies of relative privacy, by the finest steel blades.
Lacking the ability or impulse to organise themselves into a unified force under a single leader, the Marauders had taken to roaming the countryside. Reports poured in from the field of battle near at hand: swarmsmen were crawling across the Wuthering Moors, plundering every fallen speck of gold they could find amongst the blood and flies, the mire and the corpses. They were also seeking goblin swords, which had been seen to pierce steel armour as if it were as soft as tallow, but by all accounts none were to be found. Disgusted by this opportunistic behaviour, archers from all kingdoms were shooting at the pillagers. Now that Uabhar had been displaced, swarmsmen were considered fair game. Whatever clandestine treaty had once existed between them and Slievmordhu was deemed null.
Asrăthiel paid little heed to the
reports. The goblins’ wholesale slaughter made her sick at heart and she longed to defend the people of Tir from catastrophe. Distressed by having witnessed such butchery on the previous night and still aching with grief for her slain kindred, she made use of the peaceful interlude not to rest but to rehearse with the great sword Fallowblade.
She and Avalloc were accommodated, along with the king and princes of Narngalis, in a stately chastel on the edge of the moors, where the heathlands verged upon the slopes of a straggling, windswept pine forest. Hundred House, turreted and ivy-webbed, was one of King Warwick’s country estates. Soon after dawn the damsel took herself to the ballroom to rehearse her sword drill. She would not be trading blows with the swordmaster—Fallowblade was too lethal for practice games—but she knew it was necessary to accustom herself to the weapon’s weight and balance and distinctive characteristics before bearing the powerful heirloom into battle.
At one end of the chamber a small conclave, unable to find repose after the night of ruin and terror, had gathered to watch from the sidelines. The king and his sons were present, as well as Avalloc Maelstronnar, Desmond Brooks the swordmaster from High Darioneth, the swordmaster’s apprentice, Knight-Commander of the Companions of the Cup Sir Huelin Lathallan, and several officers of the king’s household guard. They were wide awake; not invigorated, but shocked. Tension and astonishment kept them alert. The world had suddenly become a different place; it could no longer be trusted, when goblins turned out to be disarmingly beautiful, and weapons of steel lost their potency, and the long-enduring human race glimpsed its own annihilation fast approaching.
Asrăthiel was to practise with the golden sword under the astute gaze of the swordmaster. As she awaited his signal, letting the scabbard rest across the palms of her outstretched hands, the young mage mused: Only someone who wields the brí of weathermastery can employ Fallowblade to fullest advantage. And of all full-fledged weathermages now living, only I have rehearsed with this weapon. How strange it is that I once wished to handle this sword of gold and electrum purely as a pastime, because it intrigued me—and now the burden has been laid upon my shoulders, that I must brandish it in the face of absolute wickedness. To defend humankind, to slay goblin knights; for this purpose Fallowblade was wrought.
She gripped the scabbard. The spectators’ posture altered elusively, and a tremor ran through them. They had been keeping a perfunctory eye on the proceedings while discussing important military matters amongst themselves; now they focused their attention.
As sword slid from sheath the watchers sighed.
Fallowblade gleamed. Sun motes swarmed up and down its length. Asrăthiel held the weapon in a steady grip, staring in renewed wonder at the fluted blade engraved with its runes of gramarye. The words of the old song chimed though her mind: ‘And all along the keen and dreadful blade he wrote the words in flowing script for all to find: Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht—I am the Bane of Goblinkind.’
‘Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht,’ she whispered. The sword seemed to be giving off luscious twinkles of white-gold glitter, while attracting them at the same time. The entire weapon was a smooth seethe of glimmers. Other famous swords might be fair, but had they not been compared with Fallowblade they would have seemed fairer.
Experimentally, the damsel weighed the hilt in her hand. She sliced the air. Swoop sang the blade, like a gust passing through tight-strung wires, or through ship’s rigging; but behind the hair-raising threnody another note breathed, as of bright, untame voices singing without language. This sound was accompanied by the eerie sensation that the world, for an instant, had slowed. Wild and strange the melody, Asrăthiel whispered to herself, the blood-song played by winds against the leading edge. She had felt and heard these phenomena before when holding the sword, but never so forcefully, so immediately. Perhaps the runes of gramarye written along the blade were wakening, now that goblins were in the vicinity. Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht—I am the Bane of Goblinkind.
The swordmaster’s usual advice floated through Asrăthiel’s mind.
Remember—to make a thrust truly effective you must use your shoulders, hip and thigh to give impetus to the blow. To deliver the thrust with maximum force, push your body weight through behind the weapon.
‘Wrapcut!’ she cried, aiming at an invisible opponent with a thrust at head level. When she judged that the blade’s fulcrum had passed the adversary’s spine, she flipped her wrist, turning the blade perpendicular to his body, and behind his neck. Abruptly she leaned backwards, as if dodging her opponent’s swing, bringing her own blade towards her. An imaginary head flew off a set of fictitious shoulders, and crashed silently to the floor.
Asrăthiel returned to her balanced stance, holding the shimmering weapon pointing outwards like a horizontal streak of living sunlight. The observers uttered not a single word. She wondered if she had erred in some manner; until the sword-master suddenly applauded, and it came to her that her audience was dumbfounded. They were regarding her with looks of astonishment.
‘A pretty decapitation,’ Desmond Brooks said admiringly. ‘’Twas a shame I barely saw it. I commend you. Never have I witnessed such speed! That is to say,’ he amended, in an undertone, ‘never until last night.’ He brightened. ‘Perhaps it is true what they say about Sioctíne.’
‘I believe it is true,’ said Asrăthiel, lavishing her gaze on the creamy loveliness of the blade in her hand. ‘It alters time. Methinks it slices between time’s very particles. That is how it feels to me.’
The swordmaster stepped close to the damsel and adopted a more serious tone. ‘A heavier and stronger fighter has a huge advantage,’ he said. ‘So does one with a longer reach, or one who is faster. Therefore, you must be faster. Do not depend on the enchanted blade. You must have quicker reflexes, be better balanced, possess greater endurance. Naturally your tolerance of pain is greater than that of any mortal creature, but you must be more cunning than your opponent, better trained, defter.’
‘Luckier,’ added Asrăthiel.
‘If your adversary is a lot bigger than you, you cannot afford to let him close with you. He would just push your sword out of the way and mow you down. And be sure, those unseelie warriors we saw last night are no dwarfs.’
‘Pushing Fallowblade away would be no easy task,’ said the damsel. ‘This blade is so sharp that I’ll warrant it could sever your shadow from the soles of your feet. Some compare broadsword fighting to killing an opponent by degrees, because one is more likely to maim a limb than succeed in driving a thrust to a vital organ. I sense that Fallowblade, on the other hand, would kill instantly, with the slightest touch.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Brooks pragmatically, ‘but it is always a mistake to rely on one’s weapon rather than one’s training. Eventually it all comes down to practised reflexes—you cannot actually think through a fight because it happens too fast. Once a serious exchange of blows starts, a bout is usually over in a very short time. Your body reacts, and you are either defeated or triumphant. Now practise!’
Needing no further encouragement the damsel rehearsed swordplay all morning. Her audience gradually dispersed. Many urgent tasks awaited them; they could not afford to spend time idling. All must prepare for nightfall—a night that might prove to be their last. Asrăthiel was their greatest hope—perhaps their only hope—but they must take every measure to aid the cause.
Patrolling troops reported no sign of goblin riders returning on the northern horizon, so after partaking of refreshment when the sun reached its zenith, Asrăthiel resumed her sword drill, staying at it throughout the afternoon.
As the shadows were lengthening Avalloc entered the ballroom. ‘Cease your exertions, dear child!’ he exhorted. ‘Take your ease. You will need all your strength if they come back tonight.’ He said ‘if’, to indicate hopefulness, but he meant ‘when’.
Asrăthiel was reluctant to desist, but eventually she sheathed the golden sword and tried to obey her grandfather. Relaxation, however, eluded her. She f
elt keyed up with excitement. If the goblin knights reappeared after sunset and battle started afresh, then she would be severely tested for the first time in her life. With Fallowblade in her hands, she would confront the unseelie horde. It would be her part to strike down beings that resembled human men.
Hitherto, the closest she had approached to doing such a deed was smiting Desmond Brooks with a sword of birch-lath, or plunging a rapier into the heart of a straw-stuffed scarecrow. The notion of extinguishing life, even the life of a creature that would continue to exist in some altered, confounded state, filled her with revulsion. Yet there would be no avoiding it.
To work herself into a killing mood she called to mind the faces of the refugees on the streets of King’s Winterbourne, and her memories of butchered copses in the cellars of Silverton. It seemed sufficient to summon determination, but she could not know whether she would pass the test until the circumstance eventuated. When confronted by a magnificent warrior, strong and vigorous, eyes flashing with intelligence and vitality, could she bring herself to skewer him through the heart? Or would she drop her sword and run away? Would the prospect of such a morally confusing deed be too dreadful to bear?
After dinner, restless and fidgety, the damsel set out for a walk in the forest park behind the chastel. Alone she went, shunning company, for she wished to contemplate in silence, with no distractions. There could be no danger; vigilant sentries surrounded the parklands, and the entire area had been scoured for signs of anything untoward. King Warwick and his household were well guarded, and the sun was still in the sky.
She wore no cloak but a gown with layered skirts in weathermaster hues; dove-grey, blue-grey, ash, steel and slate, all stitched with silver thread. Strapped at her side, the golden sword in its scabbard slapped her thigh with each step she took. Since morning, she had not allowed Fallowblade out of her sight. Even as she strolled beneath the wind-sculpted pines, deep in thought, her fingers found their way to the hilt and she caressed the intricate embellishments on the elemental ores. It was in her mind to practise fighting moves alone, one final time before battle.
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