Meg’s dark green eyes searched the forest shadows, anticipating the flicker of movement, the glint of metal, the cry that would bring the enemy charging headlong into battle. In that darkness, the man destined to kill her lover was waiting. What was he thinking? Did he already anticipate the first blood, the sharp steel slicing through warm flesh? Was he already imagining his triumph? She shivered. Had he already dreamed of this morning, this field, just as she had? Did he already know what was coming?
A ghostly war horn echoed deep in the forest, answered by three more. Meg’s heart quickened. The young man to her left was nervously fingering the shaft of his spear, his eyes fixed dead ahead. His face, like her own, was dirty, but his eyes were fearful, full of uncertainty. She could almost taste his fear in the dryness of her own mouth. Only a fool would have ended here, on the front line, like she had. Foolishness. Utter stupidity. ‘It’s starting,’ said Nails on her right, but he stared straight ahead. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Red. I didn’t know we were going to be on the front rank this morning.’
Where’s Blade? she wondered. She looked along the line for anyone who might be a Leader, and saw only patiently waiting soldiers. In her nervous state, she thought of Wombat. He’d love to be standing here, she imagined. Instead he was somewhere behind the army, in the caravan, recuperating from his wounds.
A horn sang behind her, its mellow note frightening a flock of magpies into flight. The birds wheeled above the trees, where the first rays of the morning sun gilded their plumage. The sky was bleeding into soft blue, pocked with grey-white clouds. Further along the line, horses stamped and snorted as the Queen’s knights took position, preparing to charge into the enemy’s left flank when the full battle began. Over her right shoulder, she spied a host of black lances that waved as the knights’ horses shifted uneasily. They had the battle scent. Warmaster Kingsman was striding back along the ranks. She had to find Treasure—somehow—if he was still alive. The golden wash of sunlight was already staining the forest canopy.
‘There,’ whispered Nails.
Shadows stirred. Slowly, silently, like wraiths in the old ballads, Future’s Rebel army materialised between the tree trunks. Riders cantered back and forth, organising the front line. The renegade army was smaller than Meg expected. Just as Warmaster Kingsman had said, the odds heavily favoured the Queen’s army. She wondered why so many Rebels were willing to die for a lost cause?
‘Be bold and resolute!’ Kingsman shouted to the long line of warriors. ‘Breathe this morning’s sweet air! Smell the rich scent of victory! Today you are heroes of the realm!’ On cue, the mellow war horn bellowed a challenge to Future’s troops, and was swiftly answered by horns in the forest. Swords rattled, spears rustled around Meg. A horse whinnied. She undid the leather strap securing her sword, and placed her palm on the hilt. The metal pommel was bitterly cold. Why did she bother? She had no idea how to use the weapon. If she was on the front line when the enemy reached her, she would run for her life, or fall and feign death, to avoid fighting.
‘They’re coming,’ someone announced, and the front rank of Future’s troops swayed into motion. Meg’s heart raced, but after a dozen paces the Rebels halted and closed ranks. They were too far away to see their faces, and she guessed that they were still well out of bowshot. She wondered how many were frightened young men like those she stood amongst. How many had a reason for being there? An invisible drum began marking time behind Future’s men, thumping out a steady rhythm. The mist was dissolving. The morning sun angled in as it climbed, glinting gold on helmets and shields. Leaders bellowed orders to sections of the Queen’s army.
‘We’ve been given the honour of the front line!’ a familiar voice yelled, as Blade pushed to the front to face his Group, his sword drawn. ‘We will draw first blood this morning!’ he yelled, grinning, as if the prospect of death was a joke. ‘And I will stand among you!’ He stepped between Nails and Meg, and clapped Nails on the shoulder, but to Meg he whispered, ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘But I am,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Neither did I,’ he told her apologetically. ‘As soon as the battle heats up, I’ll cover your retreat. Get out the back as quickly as you can.’ He turned his attention to the others and bolstered their spirits with banter.
Warmaster Kingsman stood several paces ahead of the front rank, a single defiant figure, studying the Rebel force. A war horn bellowed from the ranks of Future’s army, and the drumbeat quickened into a march. The front line bulged. ‘They come!’ Kingsman yelled, and the Warmaster took his place proudly in the front line as a dozen horns answered the Rebels’ challenge.
‘Jarudha protect us,’ murmured the young man on Meg’s left. She wriggled her aching shoulders, and twisted the sword awkwardly in her hand, fighting her rising desire to run. If she ran now, who would stop her? Blade was willing to cover her escape. If she stayed, she would die before she could warn Treasure. But her dream would be wrong then, wouldn’t it?
The Rebel army advanced at a steady pace. ‘Wait!’ Kingsman ordered, above the growing din. ‘Bowmen ready!’ The whisper of arrows being nocked rose and fell. The oncoming mass melted into individual figures carrying an assortment of weapons—pikes, spears, swords, pitchforks, spades. ‘Release!’ Kingsman yelled. Three thousand bowstrings thundered as arrows whooshed into flight. With morbid fascination, Meg watched the first volley rain on the enemy and decimate their foremost ranks. The Rebels baulked, but the drum broke into double-time, and with a rousing war cry they charged. A second volley of arrows cut another swathe, but the distance between the forces quickly narrowed.
Faces took shape—screaming, wild, murderous faces. Meg edged backwards. Men were charging at her, spears aimed, swords flailing. Another arrow strike cut down the men in front of her. Blade stepped into the space she left as the first Rebel wave broke on the front wall of the Queen’s army. The impact sent men stumbling and sprawling backwards. Nails crashed against her and they collapsed at the feet of the second rank. Limbs and weapons thrashed. She kicked and lashed out blindly with her sword, desperate to regain her feet, until arms grabbed her and helped her up. The skirmish became a frenzy of screaming men and clashing weapons. A horn bellowed, and the noise of fighting rapidly diminished. Over the heads of the soldiers in front of her, Meg saw the enemy retreating. The first attack had disintegrated. Dead and wounded men littered the line.
Warmaster Kingsman reappeared at the head of the ranks. ‘Get the dead and wounded away!’ he yelled. The ranks shifted, and Meg was pushed aside as designated men quickly lifted the wounded and dragged the corpses back through the lines. Nails Carpenter was carried away, his left arm hanging loose and dripping blood. ‘Second line forward!’ Kingsman ordered. On that command, the front rank survivors stepped back to let the soldiers in the second row replace them. ‘Well done!’ Kingsman commended, as the shuffling ceased. ‘New rank ready.’ As he finished, the enemy drums commenced another steady rhythm, and a second line of Rebels began their march across the intervening field.
‘Are you all right?’ Blade asked, turning Meg to face him.
‘I’m fine,’ she whispered, conscious that others might be listening.
‘Now is the time to leave. Go along the third rank, towards the rise over there,’ he said, indicating a point where a small mallee-covered crest overlooked the battlefield. ‘The caravan is just over that hill. You’ll find Wombat there.’
‘What if I’m challenged?’
‘Tell them you’re a minstrel with a message from Leader Cutter for the caravan Group Leader. No one will query that.’ When he saw her hesitate, he said, ‘Bravery is for idiots. Smart people know when to get out,’ and he pushed her away.
Meg went quickly. She pushed through to the next rank and headed towards the distant hilltop. The Queen’s archers loosed a storm of arrows, and she looked up as they whistled overhead towards the enemy. As the volley struck, the screams of the soldiers were drowned by the cry of a high
-pitched trumpet. A collective gasp rippled through the army. Driven by curiosity, Meg peered over the shoulders and heads of the men and saw that new events were unfolding.
Riders emerged from the enemy’s main force at the foot of the forest, spurring their mounts into full gallop. A bass horn blasted behind Meg, and the Queen’s knights behind the foot soldiers lowered their helmet visors and their black lances. A second horn blast sent them charging along hastily created channels through the ranks into the meadow. The opposing cavalries crashed head-on in the midst of the Rebels’ advancing front line, and quickly became a chaotic jumble of men and horses, armour and lances. The clash of forces stopped the archers, whose arrows would fall among their own knights if they persisted.
A soldier on Meg’s left yelped and collapsed, clutching a crossbow bolt buried in his ribs, and a second bolt whistled past her shoulder. She instinctively crouched as the soldiers scrambled to repel the unexpected attack, but another young man staggered sideways, and pitched onto her. She wormed her way from beneath the dead weight, and barely dodged a stray axe swung by a Rebel. Her frantic attacker was overwhelmed by a pack of soldiers. As the horns blared emphatically, calling the Queen’s soldiers to defend their position, Meg scrambled deeper into the throng of soldiers to escape the fighting, but a wall of armoured men trapped her in their path and pushed her back towards the front ranks. Turning, as she was washed forward by the tide, she glimpsed Kingsman still at the forefront, gesticulating and shouting, but his voice no longer carried above the wild clamour. She broke free of the advancing wall, and saw what the Warmaster was furiously indicating to a score of his archers.
A single rider was galloping on a grey horse at breakneck speed across the space separating the opposing armies, sweeping wide of the chaos where the cavalries were locked in combat, heading for the gap in the ranks of the Queen’s army created by the flanking attack. To the left of Future’s main force, where Kingsman was pointing, three blue-robed figures were facing the breakaway rider and weaving their hands majestically in a strange, ritualistic pattern. A strong tingling sensation rippled up Meg’s spine. They were casting a spell! The rider wore highly polished armour; armour with a strange blue hue to the metal. A cloud of arrows arched towards him, but they bounced harmlessly off his armour, and left his horse unscathed.
Kingsman, who lumbered across the battlefield as quickly as his heavy armour allowed while he dodged pockets of fighting that threatened to drag him in, motioned for the archers to target the Seers. The Queen’s archers loosed a storm of arrows and the three figures broke and ran. Two fell, riddled with arrows. The third miraculously escaped unhurt, and vanished into the forest verge. Seeing the Seers scatter, Kingsman raised his double-bladed battleaxe and stepped into the blue knight’s path.
The Rebel knight bore down on the Warmaster of the Queen’s army without slackening pace. Meg anticipated one would give way, more likely Kingsman given the rider’s mad pace, but as the horse thundered forward Kingsman merely waited. At the last instant, he sidestepped, swung his axe, and buried its blade into the charging steed’s chest. The impact threw the Warmaster aside like a rag doll. The mortally wounded horse cartwheeled, launching the blue knight into the air. He spun and landed in an ungainly heap several paces further on. The grey horse, its chest shattered by Kingsman’s axe, kicked and thrashed on the ground. Kingsman was also writhing in agony, clutching his right arm, the elbow bent and twisted at a distressing angle. The blue knight was motionless.
Meg stared at the scene in shock. Her dream didn’t end like this. Where was Treasure? Or had she come too late? Had the blue knight already slain the man she loved? She stared, and her tears welled. A knot of soldiers ran towards Warmaster Kingsman, determined to rescue their fallen leader before the Rebels reached him. A second group warily surrounded the prostrate blue knight. She wondered if Treasure was in that group. What if the rider wasn’t dead?
A new war horn bellowed from the Rebel ranks. War drums thundered into brutal rhythm and the whole army charged, a sea of green forging across the meadow in the brightening sunlight. Meg was momentarily distracted, but when she turned back, the fallen rider had already risen. A soldier reeled, clutching his face. A second fell from a fatal thrust. The knight in blue armour drove the rest back with his ferocity, hacking at them with his sword, before he plunged into the group protecting Kingsman. Another soldier staggered away, mortally wounded. Meg panicked. Treasure had to be down there. She dropped her sword and sprinted towards the melee, pushing blindly through the ranks preparing to meet the full Rebel onslaught.
As she stumbled into the space where the blue knight was fighting for his life, she saw him cut down two more soldiers and behead Kingsman with a brutal sweep of his sword. The space was overwhelmed as the waves of opposing soldiers clashed in full battle, and Meg lost her quarry. She scrambled through a press of cavalry, desperately searching the fallen soldiers for one that might be Treasure, and narrowly avoided impalement on a spear. A Rebel horseman knocked her to the ground with a kick of his boot, and for several confusing moments she crawled between legs, and over dying men, before she regained her feet. She screamed as a blade sliced her arm, but her attacker was gone when she turned. A young man fell in front of her with an open gash across his forehead. The deafening battle noise terrified her.
Then she saw the knight in blue armour. She pulled her dagger from its scabbard, and pushed through the throng, but he disappeared in the melee. A wounded Rebel grabbed her ankle, so she frantically hacked at his grasping hand with the dagger. Warm blood oozed along her arm and she was repulsed by what she’d done. She sighted her target twice more, but each time he vanished before she reached him. The chase was frustrating, fruitless, but the dream drove her. Treasure’s nemesis was hunting him, and only she could save him—only she could change the outcome.
An unexpected push from behind sent her sprawling into the churned earth. She coughed and rolled onto her back, dagger raised defensively, and discovered that two of the Queen’s soldiers were fighting for their lives against the Rebel in blue armour. Although her back stung viciously, she clambered to her feet. She had to stop him. She lunged at the blue knight from the side with her dagger, but her move was slow and clumsy, and her target anticipated it. He caught her a sharp blow across the bridge of the nose with his elbow, and she fell to the ground, spots spinning across her eyes from the shooting pain, blood gushing from her nose. The Queen’s soldiers dodged and weaved, striking solid blows, but the knight’s blue armour was unscathed. One soldier collapsed, stabbed through the groin. The second Queen’s soldier cleverly evaded his opponent’s vicious thrusts and sweeps, until the Rebel feinted high and struck low. The young soldier screamed as the knight’s sword split his mail jerkin and ripped out his guts. As he fell to his knees, the blue knight kicked him over and dropped his broken sword on the dying man. He unhitched a war-axe from his belt, twirled it arrogantly, and turned to fight a new opponent.
Resolving her courage, Meg rose and circled in the blue knight’s wake. When he was off-guard, hacking down another hapless opponent, she charged again, stabbing at his chest, but her blade slid harmlessly across the polished blue metal. In a futile bid to knock him off balance, she grappled with him, but he effortlessly broke her hold, this time punching her on the side of her helmet. As she reeled, he swung his axe, but his aim was high. The blade caught her helmet’s lip, swept it away, and gouged a shallow chunk of skin and hair from the left side of her head. She collapsed. Through a mist of pain, blood, and blurred vision, she saw the blue knight swing his axe high to strike the deathblow and she waited for it to fall—but he turned away. The dream holds true, she thought. He isn’t fated to kill me. Only Treasure. Spurred by her belief in the dream’s power, she scrounged through the battle detritus for her dagger and found it under a bloodied arm. Her head stung. Her back stung. Sticky blood oozed down her cheek and neck. For all she knew, she could already be dying. But she rose one more time, intent on her target.<
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She stepped over a corpse, and circled behind the blue warrior who was effortlessly fending off the concerted attack of three opponents. Gripped by a sudden urge, she reached inside her corslet and touched the amber crystal. ‘I hope your advice is good, Emma,’ she whispered. She took a deep breath. She had one chance only. With a throaty cry, she went to leap heroically onto his back, but her leading foot caught a dying man’s leg, and she sprawled foolishly at her target’s heels. He glanced down, and stepped over her, but as he did she buried her dagger to the hilt into the back of his knee joint. He jerked, staggered, turned, and kicked her in the ribs viciously, thumping the breath from her body. A rush of darkness numbed her pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Blue sky. Grey clouds. She blinked. A weight pinned her. Her head throbbed. She blinked again and turned her head. An armoured arm dangled across her shoulder. The weight on her chest was a corpse. Smoke drifted across her vision. She remembered. She was on a battlefield. She listened. The noise of fighting seemed muted and far away. With great effort, she levered the corpse off her chest, and sat up. When she put her hand to her left temple and drew it away there was blood on her fingers. The meadow was littered with bodies. Spears and arrows and a variety of weapons stuck at angles from the earth and bodies. Riderless horses waited patiently for their dead riders to remount. People moved among the bodies, searching for wounded, carrying heavy sacks, furtively looting the dead.
‘You surprised me, girl,’ a gruff voice said. ‘Thought you were dead.’ She turned and rose sharply, but her reaction made her head pound harder and she sank to her knees. She squinted up at an older man astride a bay stallion, dressed in silver plate armour, his hair and beard heavily streaked with grey. A foot soldier, bearing a black banner with a gold serpent insignia, stood dutifully beside the horse. ‘Didn’t know we had young girls in the army,’ the old knight said, and chuckled. ‘Doubt it fits regulations. But you served the Queen’s army well enough for the best of men today, my girl. No one else could bring him down.’ He indicated the object of his comment with a cursory nod.
The Amber Legacy Page 20