Alan Big Nose, Ranald Lachlan, Ewen the Sailor, Erik Blackheart and Hector. The last men left.
Hector was hit again with a shaft that tickled his ribs. He was ready to die. He had no wind left, no joy in battle, and he was in enough pain that simple cessation seemed like a victory.
Even as he thought it, Ewen took an arrow in the throat and went down.
He wracked his memory for a song to end with. He was no bard, but he knew some songs. Nothing came to him but drinking songs, but then he smiled – a free smile – to think of his young wife crooning. She’d sung to him, a lullaby.
He knew it well. Hill folk called it ‘The Lament,’ the song of their loss.
A fine song with which to end.
Hector stood straight, took a deep breath, and began to sing. He swung his sword back onto his shoulder and cut an arrow from the air, and Ranald picked up the tune, and Alan Big Nose was there, his voice strong and true on the notes, and Erik Blackheart stepped over Ewen’s corpse and roared into the chorus.
At some point the Sossag stopped loosing arrows.
Hector finished the song, raised his sword – a salute to his enemies, who had given him that gift of peace, right at the end.
A warrior, painted black head to toe, raised a sword – just a short bowshot away. And Hector could see that the Outwallers had gathered in tight while his men sang.
Good. It would be a clean end in a straight fight.
Ranald sighed. ‘Your brother will never forgive himself for missing this,’ he said, and they charged.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Peter
When it was over, Peter sat on the ground and wept. He didn’t know why he was crying – only that his body needed the release.
Skahas Gaho came and put a hand on his shoulder. Brant was meat for the ravens. Ota Qwan had a wound across his chest that would probably kill him, inflicted when the last giant had stumbled forward, dragging three Sossag warriors, shaken them off, and landed one final cut with his great axe before Ota Qwan and Peter had managed to put him down.
The woods were full of death.
But even after a day of vicious fighting – and Peter couldn’t imagine worse fighting – there were still hundreds of Sossag unwounded, or capable of movement, and Ota Qwan had enough breath to send them to round up any cattle they could find and start them for home.
Peter sat by Ota Qwan and held his hand, watching the blood leak out of the man’s chest.
Just at sunset, the faeries came.
Peter had never seen one before but he’d known men who believed in them. He was sitting with the dying Ota Qwan. There were a hundred wounded Sossag groaning or worse, and scavengers had begun to move in on the corpses.
Peter was too tired to care.
The first one he saw looked like a butterfly, except that it was ten times the size and glowed faintly, as if sun lit. Behind it were four more, in a formation.
Peter had time to wonder whether they were predators, scavengers, or pests, and then the first one alighted on Ota Qwan’s chest.
What is he worth to you, man of iron?
Peter started, wondering if he had been dreaming.
A faerie is to a man as a hummingbird is to a bumblebee. Or so Peter thought, gazing at the jewel-like being.
What is he worth to you? A year of your life?
Peter didn’t think. Yes, he thought.
The pink shape drifted along Ota Qwan’s chest, and then reached out, oh, so gracefully, and touched Peter – and that touch was like every slaver’s iron ever forged. Something was ripped from his chest, as if red-hot pincers had entered his heart and dragged it out past his ribs, and he vomited over his lap.
And the faeries laughed. Their laughter seemed to echo in his empty head like the shouts of revellers in a cave-
And Ota Qwan coughed, spat, and sat up.
‘No!’ he said suddenly, his usually too-calm voice alight with wonder. ‘No! You didn’t!’
But Peter was crying, because now he had something to weep for – whatever it was he’d just lost.
And the faeries laughed.
So sweet, so sweet. So far away! So rare.
A bargain is a bargain.
Perhaps we’ll give you another, you were so sweet and rare.
Their laughter sounded more like a curse.
Otter Creek Valley, East of Albinkirk – Ranald Lachlan
Ranald Lachlan rose from the black curse, through pain, and into the soft darkness of an April night. He sat up without a thought in his head, and the arrow that had penetrated his mail fell by his side, and he cut his hand on his own long sword lying in the bloodstained flowers by his side.
And then he knew where he was.
Never say we do not give everything we promise! So sweet, so sweet!
Peter saved you. Peter saved you!
Fair folk. And Ranald knew that he had been dead, or close enough as made no matter, and someone named Peter had given them the usual trade. A piece of your soul for the life of a friend.
And the Outwallers were all around him in the moonlit dark. Just for a moment, he thought to steal away – but they were looking at him. A hundred of them.
Cursing, he dragged himself to his feet.
Black death was behind him, and in heartbeats would be his again, and he spat.
Ah, Rebecca, I tried. I love you, he thought. He lifted the axe that Master Pyle had made for him – well tested now – and put it on his shoulder.
At the base of the little knoll where he’d made his last stand, he saw the gleam of moonlight, and one of the dark figures got to its feet, lit by four of the fair folk like some kind of ethereal bodyguard.
The man was painted black. Ranald remembered him. He came up the knoll, and Ranald awaited him, hands crossed on the haft of his axe.
‘Go,’ said the black man.
Ranald had to replay the word again. It was a shock to hear Gothic, and another to be told to go.
‘We are the Sossag people,’ the man said. ‘What the faeries return, we do not touch.’ The man’s eyes were brilliant in the darkness. ‘I am Ota Qwan of the Sossag. I offer you my hand in peace. I was dead. You were dead. Let us both walk away from here and live.’
Ranald was a brave man, veteran of fifty fights, and yet the relief that flooded him was like a mother’s kiss and the release of love, and never, ever had he felt he had so much to live for.
He looked down at the corpse of his cousin. ‘May I bargain with the faeries for him?’ he asked.
Their laughter was derisive.
Two! We gave two! And we will dine for days!
So sweet and rare.
Ranald knew what men said of the fair folk. So he bowed. ‘My thanks, fair people.’
Thank Peter!
Hee hee.
And they were gone.
Ranald reached down and took Lachlan’s great sword from his cold, dead hand. He unbuckled the scabbard from the great gold belt, and left the belt for spoil.
‘For his son,’ Ranald said to the black man, who shrugged.
‘I would meet this Peter,’ Ranald said.
They walked down the knoll together, and the Sossag all moved back.
One warrior, reeking of vomit, was weeping uncontrollably.
Ranald pulled the man to his feet, and put his arms around him. He didn’t know why himself. ‘Don’t know why you saved me,’ he said. ‘But thank you.’
‘He saved me,’ Ota Qwan said, his voice thick with wonder. ‘Somehow, the fairies chose to bring you back, too.’ Ota Qwan leaned forward. ‘I think you killed me.’
Ranald nodded. ‘I think I did.’
Peter sobbed, and was still.
‘I hurt,’ he said. ‘I’m cold.’
Ranald knew the cold to which he referred. He shook the man’s hand again, shouldered his dead cousin’s sword, and walked away to the east, through a corridor of silent Sossag warriors.
Lissen Carack – The Red Knight
A
league from the convent, the captain began to relax and let the feeling of victory suffuse him.
They had almost thirty wagons, full of goods – many of them would be of no use, but he’d seen the armour in one, fine helmets, and weapons in another, and wine, oil, canvas cloth-
But it wasn’t rescuing the wagons that lifted his heart. Nor the capture of the wounded knight, a moment that he had yet to allow his mind to savour.
It was the men. Ten professional soldiers, three dozen guildsmen with bows – almost fifty stout men. If he could make it back to the fortress, he’d have hurt his adversary cruelly and gained in strength.
Half a league from the fortress, when it was plain that Lissen Carak was not afire, had not fallen to assault of black sorcery, he found himself whistling.
Sauce rode by his side. ‘A word?’ she asked.
‘Anything you like,’ he said.
‘Do you have to kill every single one of the monsters?’ she asked, and she spat like Bad Tom.
Looking carefully, he could see she was literally spitting mad.
‘I had that tusked thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you stealing my kills. If another man had done it, I’d gut him. Even Tom.’
The captain rode in silence for a few paces. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said.
‘Fuck you,’ she said.
‘I don’t mean that the way it sounds, Sauce,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it. If they see me, they come straight at me. It has been that way for as long as I’ve faced the Wild.’
Sauce didn’t wrinkle her lip – she wrinkled her whole face. ‘What?’ she asked, but her tone betrayed that she had noticed something of the sort.
He shrugged, but he was tired and wearing forty pounds of hauberk and armour, so it wasn’t all that evident a movement.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, lying.
She narrowed her eyes.
He didn’t offer any further information.
‘Who’s the knight?’ she asked.
The captain realised he was entering a whole field of cowpats with her questions. ‘Ask him when he wakes,’ the captain said.
‘He was going to kill you,’ she said. It was somewhere between a statement and a question.
‘Haven’t you ever been tempted yourself?’ Jacques asked from behind them.
Sauce’s clear, honest laugh rolled across the river and announced them to the Bridge Castle.
And the captain rode on, whistling.
In his head, he saw a beaten, angry adolescent, who said hot words – hot and true – to a man who was not his father, and rode away bent on death. He tried to reach out to that boy, across the years.
Whatever befalls us, he told the broken boy, today we won a great victory, and men, if any survive, will speak our name for a century.
Of course, the desperate, angry boy simply kept riding. He would ride his horse to death, and then he would walk, and then he would try to kill himself with a dagger, and he would find that he didn’t have the stomach for it, and he would fall asleep, weeping. And wake to try again, and fail, hating himself for what he was, and hating himself again for his cowardice.
The captain knew it. He’d been there. He still had the two sloppy knife scars.
‘Happily ever after,’ he said, with very little bitterness. He touched the white handkerchief at his shoulder and rode to the convent, still whistling.
Lissen Carak – Mag the Seamstress
Mag watched them return from her barrel by the main gate, where she sat with her back against the lead down pipe from the chapel gutters, sewing.
Like many of the farmers and folk in the fortress she had reason to fear the armoured men. But today, they were different. Today, they seemed less like a gang of thugs bent on violence and more like something from a song.
The young knight who led them was first through the gate, and he paused to call something back to the column – in fact, he shouted to them ‘Finish like you started!’ And she saw them all sat up in their saddles, even the ones with blood showing.
The only difference she could see was that most of them were smiling. But there was something else – a pride to them – that she hadn’t felt before.
The captain swung down from his charger and gave the reins to Toby, and the boy beamed at him, and the captain grinned and said something that made the servant boy grin even harder.
Defeated men wouldn’t look like that, the seamstress was sure.
Ser Thomas rode in with the female knight by his side, and the two barely fitted through the gate, but neither would give way to the other.
The courtyard was filling with nuns and farmers and their folk, taking horses, talking – in moments, it was clear that a great victory had been won, and an air of festival filled the fortress.
Mag finished her line of stitches quickly, gathering the heady aura of victory against long odds with every stitch and pulling it into the cap.
The old Abbess came to the steps from the hall, and the young captain, resplendent in his bright red surcote and gilt-edged armour, climbed up, knelt on one knee in salute, and spoke to her.
She nodded, gave him her hand, and then raised her hands for silence.
‘Good people!’ she called. ‘The captain informs me that our little army has won a great victory through the grace of God. But we are to expect an immediate attack, and every one of you is to get under cover now.’
The men-at-arms were already pushing people back into the nunnery, dormitory and the great hall. Mag saw the young knight turn, and catch the eye of the novice.
Oh aye, she thought. She smiled, mostly because they both smiled.
When the archers on the walls began to look at her pointedly, she gathered her basket and slipped into the dormitory herself.
But she’d just seen the priest do the oddest thing: he’d taken a dove from a cage and thrown it over the wall.
She might have said something, or reacted – but even as she watched, the Red Knight appeared and the priest departed. They didn’t see each other. The Red Knight spoke to someone who was with him up on the wall – a leg appeared over the dormitory balcony, and suddenly the armoured man held someone in his arms. Someone in the plain garb of a novice.
The intensity that bound them was blinding. Mag could see it, feel it, the way she could feel the well of power under the dungeons and the Abbess working her spells. It was a magnificent thing.
It was also private and she turned her head away. Some things, people are not meant to see.
Albinkirk Citadel – Ser John Crayford
The Captain of Albinkirk sat at his glazed window, and watched the distant woods.
My Lord,
I must assume that my last messenger has reached you. The citadel of Albinkirk continues to hold. Indeed, it is some days since we have been assaulted, although we are still close-pressed and we can see creatures of the Wild moving about in the town and in the fields.
Yesterday I felt it was my duty to take a sortie beyond the citadel walls. We scattered the creatures in the main square and rode beyond the city walls, too. As soon as my small force appeared in the fields north of the river, we were joined by dozens of local families who had held one of the outworks and sought admission to the citadel. I had no choice but to let them in – they had no food. Among them were two guildsmen from Harndon, members of the Crossbowmen of the Order of Drapers. They say that a great battle was fought yesterday, south of the Fords, and that the Red Knight prevailed, albeit with a small force, crushing a great ambush of the Wild, for which praise to God. But another pair of refugees from the east informed me that Sossag raiders have burned every town east of the Fords all the way to Otter Creek, and that the hills are crammed with refugees.
All of this may be rumour. If I can spare the men, I will send a scout west to cooperate with the Abbess and the Red Knight.
My lord, we face here the very worst of the enemy. I beg you for immediate aid.
Your servant,
John Crayford, Captain of Albinkirk
Chapter Eleven
Michael the Squire
East of Albinkirk – Thorn
Thorn sat cross-legged beneath the tree that bore his name and watched the world.
He couldn’t pretend that he liked what he saw.
He had suffered a crushing defeat the day before – the little army that the sisterhood had hired, led by the dark sun that could extinguish itself – had combined with the last convoy coming upriver to crush his best mobile force.
Even now, he couldn’t reach any of his chieftains among the irks. Boglins were coming back across the river. But the losses had been staggering.
And he could feel the waves of sheer power that still rolled across the sea of trees from the fight. Someone almost as great as him had loosed powers that were better left unloosed. That power sang through the Wild like a clarion call. And Thorn knew the taste of that power.
I should have been there, he thought. His stone mouth creased in a near smile. My great apprentice, free from his tower and loose on the world at last. He flexed the reins of his spell of ensorcellment, but the reins hung slack, severed at the far end, and he reeled them in. I wonder how the boy worked it out? He thought. But he didn’t waste much thought on it. His apprentice had tricked him once and would never, ever best him again.
But his rebellious apprenctice wasn’t the only problem. Someone had killed three of the dhags which men called trolls, the great cave giants armoured in stone of the high mountains. He had only bound a dozen to serve him, and now three were slain.
And perhaps the worst blow of all was the Sossag’s defection. Their chiefs had deserted him, and gone east to fight their own battle. Had they been present with his force, none of this would ever have happened.
Thorn wheeled his starlings and doves in the sky, and looked down from their eyes, and knew that he had been misled by the powers in the old fortress. The assault of the birds of prey had pushed his little helpers away. And he had been blind. For one scant hour.
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