The Promised Lie

by Christopher Nuttall

***

  “They’re shooting flaming arrows at the caterpillars,” the messenger said. “Two of them have caught fire.”

  “I can see that,” Reginald snapped. “Order the archers to provide covering fire.”

  He frowned. His men were overrunning the second trench now and making preparations to take the third. It wouldn’t be long until it fell ... and yet, it felt too easy. Something felt wrong. But what? The battle seemed to be going his way.

  “Order the reserves to stand at the ready,” he added, after a moment. “I want them to be ready for anything.”

  ***

  Havant allowed himself a tight smile as he surveyed the battlefield from his strange vantage point. The invaders were doing well, but ... but they had no idea that they were forcing their way into a trap. Earl Goldenrod’s plan was on the verge of failing – he hadn’t really understood just how experienced the invaders were – but Havant’s plan, the real plan, was about to work. The trap was about to snap shut.

  He gathered himself, then forced his way down the link. Earl Goldenrod’s mind let out a yelp – a startlingly apt reaction – a second before Havant took complete control. The man struggled, but he had no experience at all in mental combat. Havant forced him down, locking him away in his own mind, then spoke through Goldenrod’s mouth.

  “Saddle my horse,” he ordered. It felt strange – as if he were in two places at once – but he held the thread together through grim determination. “I’ll lead the charge personally.”

  Goldenrod screamed, deep within his mental prison. Havant ignored him as he moved the body forward, allowing its instincts to take control. It was hard to remember how to breathe, let alone how to move. Everything felt wrong ... Goldenrod was old, very old. The presence in Havant’s mind leaned forward, studying Goldenrod with interest. Havant smiled coldly as he heard Goldenrod scream again.

  He scrambled onto the horse, smiling coldly as he heard the men – Goldenrod’s men – cheering him. They thought their earl was going to lead the charge personally and, in a sense, they were right. Goldenrod would be remembered as a hero, a martyr ... it would be easy, in the aftermath, to take control of his earldom. Everyone would bow to Goldenrod’s son-in-law, his chosen heir. Havant wouldn’t even dissuade them from hailing their former leader as a hero. It was the least he could do for a man who’d done him such a wonderful service.

  You’re mad, Goldenrod said. Or thought. What are you? What have you done?

  Havant blinked in surprise. He’d thought he’d locked Goldenrod away for good. And yet ... he could feel the man’s horror at what had happened. And, perhaps, at just how foolish he’d been. He’d played a game without knowing anything about it, even the rules. Now ... now he could see too much, too late. Goldenrod had thrown his earldom into his enemy’s hands.

  Shut up, old man, he thought, savagely. He hated old men. His father had been a nightmare and Goldenrod, for all that he’d made a show of treating Havant like an equal, had talked down to him time and time again. And he’d planned a betrayal too. Your time is over.

  He reached out, drawing on the power of the ritual, and pressed down hard. Goldenrod’s thoughts winked out of existence, leaving his body empty ...

  Now, Havant thought. It was growing harder to control Goldenrod’s body, now the man’s soul was gone. Let us lead the charge.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  For a long moment, Reginald refused to believe what he was seeing.

  The enemy horsemen were leaping across their trenches and charging his men. He could hear them hooting and howling, strange words echoing through the air as they converged on their targets; he could see them waving swords in the air, daring his men to stop them. It was insane. They’d all be killed. Cavalry might be able to take infantry if their targets panicked, but his men knew what to do. They were already taking up defensive positions as the horsemen charged towards them.

  “Move up the reserves,” he ordered, shortly. “And get the archers targeting those fools.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  The messenger hurried away. Reginald barely noticed as he pressed his eye against the telescope, determined not to miss a moment of the spectacle. His archers had already switched targets, dropping hundreds of arrows over the advancing cavalry. Reginald felt a flicker of pity – cavalrymen were almost always drawn from the upper classes – as the horses began to fall, their riders slamming into the boggy ground with terrifying force. And yet, he couldn’t help cursing the enemy commander under his breath. What terrible sin had his men committed to deserve to be under his command?

  He sucked in his breath as the cavalry kept coming, even though more and more were falling to the ground. They were amongst his men now, lashing out with their swords; a handful of Reginald’s men fell, instants before their comrades could bring the horsemen down and hack them to bits. Reginald opened his mouth to issue orders for prisoners to be taken, then closed it as he realised there was no point. Their blood was up now. They wouldn’t listen to orders to take prisoners, even though Reginald was good at making sure the ransoms were fairly distributed. And issuing orders he knew wouldn’t be followed was dangerously unwise.

  A messenger appeared, holding a metal hat in one hand. “Your Highness, the cavalry would like to charge.”

  “Certainly not,” Reginald snapped. He’d hoped to use his horsemen to chase the enemy, once their lines broke. He was certainly not going to send them into that meatgrinder, just because his cavalrymen wanted to show that they too could be suicidally brave. “Tell them to hold position and wait.”

  He turned his attention back to the trenches, frowning in displeasure as the enemy charge finally came to an end. They hadn’t broken, not even at the last. But they’d died ... it would have impressed him, a little, if it hadn’t been so pointless. His troops were already ransacking the saddlebags and stripping the dead men of their armour and anything else they might be carrying. There wouldn’t even be any ransoms to collect afterwards ...

  Maybe the heirs will want the bodies, he thought, wryly. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had refused to accept that their father or brother was dead, either through sentiment or more calculative motives. A wife couldn’t be dispossessed from her husband’s castle if there was no clear proof that the poor bastard was dead. But they won’t pay so much for a corpse.

  He scanned the battlefield as the wind changed, cold air blowing towards him. The skies were growing darker, promising rain, but he doubted it would start before the battle was fairly won. Perhaps they’d overestimated the enemy’s strength. It wouldn’t be the first time a scout had counted the same man multiple times and returned with a grossly exaggerated estimate. Maybe the enemy had decided to mount a charge rather than retreat to inglorious disaster.

  And maybe we can end this sooner than I’d thought, he told himself. A push through now might just win the battle.

  Turning to the messengers, he began to issue orders. It was time to put an end to the affair.

  ***

  Havant closed his eyes for a long moment as he fell back into his own body. Earl Goldenrod was dead, his body lost somewhere in the trenches. The last set of impressions – before the pain had become unbearable and he’d lost contact – had spoken of multiple stab wounds, knives and swords digging into the dead man’s flesh. And Goldenrod’s men had followed him on a charge they’d known was suicidal ...

  “The sacrifice is complete,” Hark said. “We may begin.”

  He lowered his voice. “Our Lord comes ...”

  Havant felt the presence rising up within him, power surging through his mind and up and out into the world beyond. Someone was singing ... a song that pressed against his thoughts, forcing him back into his own mind. He’d had problems coping with having his mind expanded, but it was as natural as breathing to the presence. Power rose – the power from the sacrifice – and reached out, sliding into the land. And then it started to rise again.

  IT BEGINS, a voice said. Havant wasn
’t sure if it was speaking to him directly or something else. OUR TIME IS NIGH.

  The power surged forth. A series of impressions roared through Havant’s mind – voices speaking, worlds unfurling, power walking upon the land – an instant before the pressure got too much for him. He was dimly aware that the presence was speaking through him – that it had done it before, when he’d blacked out – but this was different. The pressure was rising ...

  ... And he finally, mercifully, blacked out.

  ***

  “This one was carrying a bag of gold coins,” a mercenary shouted. “Mine!”

  “Mine,” another snapped. “I brought the bastard down!”

  “I knifed his horse,” the first shouted. He drew his dagger. “Mine!”

  Lord Robin raised his voice. “Shut up,” he ordered. Perhaps the enemy had sent the horsemen on their suicidal charge in the hopes of starting a civil war within Prince Reginald’s ranks. A dispute over who got to loot the corpses could easily turn violent, simply because the men were feeling underpaid. “We’ll divide the money later!”

  “It’s mine,” the first man snapped. He clutched the pouch to his chest with one hand, while holding his dagger in the other. “I found it first!”

  “Later,” Robin snapped. More and more men were running up to the third trench, forming up for an attack on the fourth and last. He didn’t have time to let his troops start an argument over money. “It will be fairly distributed!”

  “Hah,” the second man said. “Officers will take half of it ...”

  Someone screamed. Robin blinked in surprise, then swung around, blade in hand. The cry hadn’t sounded like a man who’d been hit. It had sounded more womanish ... a young man, so young that he hadn’t even started to grow a beard, was stumbling away from one of the dead horsemen. Robin stared, unsure what to make of it. Peasants, even female peasants, were rarely squeamish about dead bodies. Only aristocratic women could afford such luxuries.

  “It moved,” the youth said.

  Robin bit down several nasty remarks. The trench was muddy, water splashing down and pooling at the bottom. Of course the body had moved. It was so poorly balanced that it was lucky it hadn’t already slid down and landed in the mud. The horse looked to have died in agony, unsurprisingly. It went against the grain to eat the beasts, but what else were they going to do with the remains? Horsemeat would improve their rations beyond belief ...

  The corpse moved. Again. Robin stared as the dead body lumbered to its feet, staring at them through beady yellow eyes. Dead silence fell. There was no doubt that the body was dead – no human could possibly have survived a broken neck, not without very strong magic – but it was moving. Somehow, impossibly, it was moving. He looked back at the other body and cursed in disbelief. It was moving too, its skin slowly turning grey. They were all moving.

  “Get back,” he snapped. He remembered, all too well, stories about necromantic plagues, about zombies that had been trapped in the ice for centuries until some idiot had come along and accidentally unleashed them once again. “I ...”

  The corpse lunged forward, its hands becoming ... things. It stabbed right at the young man, stabbing deep into his neck. The man’s skin slowly turned grey, his eyes turning yellow as he turned to face his comrades. His former comrades, Robin realised. Whatever foul sorcery had been unleashed was converting the victims into new enemies. It had to be stopped.

  He lashed out with his sword. The young man’s head flew off as Robin cut through his neck, but the rest of his body kept coming. Robin heard the sounds of panic behind him as he sliced the poor bastard’s body apart, then did the same to the dead horseman. It wasn’t enough, he realised grimly. Every corpse on the field was coming back to life. Eerie yellow eyes followed him as he jumped out of the trench and looked around. A dull grey fog was rolling southwards, right towards him. The ground was shuddering below his feet.

  “Move south,” he snapped, as another dead man came at him. He wished, suddenly, that Big Richard had accompanied him. An axe would have been ideal for fighting the dead men. “And ...”

  The ground shook, again. He turned, just in time to see the forest slowly moving towards them. The trees were uprooting themselves, marching forwards inch by inch ... he thought he saw, just for a moment, wooden faces within the branches. They didn’t look happy, he thought as the ground continued to move: they looked angry, as if they were marching to a ruthless war of extermination. And there were things in the ground under his feet ...

  He shook his head, grimly. He was a brave man, but he knew he couldn’t fight magic on such a scale. He didn’t even know where to begin. What would happen if he hacked at the trees with his sword? He didn’t know ... he didn’t think anyone knew. The battle had turned into a catastrophe. They had to fall back and rethink their tactics.

  “Run,” he ordered. “Get back to the city and ...”

  Wooden tendrils erupted around Robin’s feet, wrapping around his ankles and holding him down. Robin stumbled, then fell to the muddy ground. The water felt different – alive, somehow – as he splashed down, faint flickers of energy dancing around him as the tendrils grew stronger and stronger. He drew his dagger from his belt in the hopes of cutting himself free, but no matter how many tendrils he cut there were always more and more, choking the life out of him. It was suddenly very hard to breathe ...

  The ground shook, time and time again, as the walking trees approached. They were blurring into the land, he thought numbly, their roots crawling underground and spreading rapidly through the trenches. He remembered his mother complaining about tree roots attacking the foundations of her house and shivered, helplessly. If a slow-growing tree could do so much damage, what could a mobile tree do?

  A tree loomed over him, branches lashing down. It was impossible to avoid seeing the wooden face blurring into the trunk, twisted with madness and a sheer hateful rage he hadn’t seen outside slave revolts. The tree hated him. It wanted him dead.

  The branches slammed down. There was a moment of pain, a moment when it felt as though his body was being ripped apart, then ...

  Darkness.

  ***

  “Gods,” Reginald breathed.

  The scene before him was nightmarish. He pinched himself, just to make sure it wasn’t a dream. But his body refused to wake up. The dead bodies were coming to life, the trees were coming to life ... he looked up as droplets of rain started to fall and saw watery faces within the dark clouds. He wished, suddenly, that he’d paid more attention to Isabella. But who could have predicted this?

  “Tell the archers to start launching fire arrows into the trenches,” he ordered. “Now!”

  It was all he could do to keep his voice steady. Fire. Fire was a standard countermeasure against walking corpses, right? But there were gods arrayed against him. Fear trickled down his spine as the ground shook, the trees completing the destruction of the trenches and then turning to face Rupert. Reginald cursed as he saw his men breaking and running, their officers and sergeants too scared themselves to restore order. He’d seen men panic before, but not like this. None of them had anticipated gods ...

  The men streamed into Rupert, looking for a safety Reginald suspected was largely illusory. He couldn’t believe the town would last long, even if his men regained their nerve. The trees could simply press against the walls, such as they were, and break them down. Or maybe they could launch seeds into the city, seeds which would grow into more trees ... he cursed himself, once again. The entire army was on the verge of being destroyed.

  We can’t stay here, he thought, grimly. Whatever the enemy had unleashed was too powerful to stop, at least for the moment. Maybe we can outrun it.

  He waved to the messengers. “Sound the retreat,” he ordered. “And then order the town to be abandoned.”

  The messengers hurried off, leaving Reginald alone with his thoughts. Sounding the retreat was an empty formality at this point, but it might restore a little order. He wouldn’t complain if th
e men kept retreating until they reached the formal regrouping point. Reginald’s father had hammered into his head, time and time again, that he had to prepare for defeat as well as victory. Reginald silently blessed the old man as he turned, silently promising himself that he would be back. The war wasn’t over yet.

  And we’d better hope that Isabella makes it out of the city, he thought. In hindsight, sending her after the Red Monk had been a dangerous mistake. She might be the only one who can tell us how to fight back.

  ***

  “Wake up,” a voice said.

  Isabella jerked awake, half-expecting to find someone kneeling next to her. Long experience on the campaign trail had taught her that it could be dangerous to be unconscious during the aftermath of a battle, but ... she was alone. She kept one hand on her sword as she rose, glancing from side to side. The Red Monk’s body was just a pile of dust in an empty robe, the axe pinning what remained of it to the ground: Big Richard’s body hadn’t moved, but ... the ground was shaking. Something was very wrong.

  She looked around, then realised her own mistake and dabbed some more of the ointment on her left eye. The world seemed to come alive, things running south like animals fleeing mounted hunters. She turned slowly, feeling power thrumming through the air as she peered north. An entire world seemed to be touching the ground, something so large that her mind refused to grasp it. It seemed to be infinitely large and infinitesimally small, so vast it contained the universe and so small it was just a single point ...

  “You have to move,” the voice said, firmly. It sounded as though the speaker was right behind her. “You’re not safe here.”

  Isabella spun around, but saw nothing. The hidden world was shifting ... the physical world was changing too, a building crashing to the ground as the two worlds started to interact. She could feel the ground shaking under her feet, hear a terrible voice echoing through the air. Men were screaming, crying out in horror ... she could feel them being crushed by something immensely greater than themselves. Prince Reginald hadn’t just lost the battle, she realised numbly; his forces had been decisively defeated.