by Jon Jacks
A great many men, women and teenagers were already there, having already taken up position on a walkway sheltered behind a high parapet.
Lacking the power of Galilee and Beth, a surprisingly high number of people were still involved in erecting and forming the defences. As well as wind and water, the very earth itself was being manipulated, with soil and rocks moving and shifting under invisible commands.
While some turned over huge mounds of soil, others took on the more delicate work of forming the necessary steps and walkways, utilising both recently unearthed stone and wood magically torn from nearby buildings.
A few spells were already taking their toll on the oncoming rats, even though each spell’s power naturally weakened over such long distances. Wind, water, fire, noise, lightning, concentrated storms and upending earth were all wreaking havoc.
‘I can’t imagine how much energy is being used here,’ an obviously impressed Galilee observed. ‘And over a vast area too. Rounding them up, controlling them.’
He glanced down at the large array of people hurriedly constructing the trench and walls.
‘So why isn’t some of that energy being used to destroy our defences?’
‘It might be; when they’re closer,’ Beth pointed out.
Beth’s own swirling funnels of water required only the most basic directions to whip up and aggressively toss aside hundreds of rats every second.
As an awestruck James declared in an anguished cry from below, however, the reinforcements seemed to be endless. The brown flood stretched out across the landscape as if it were enveloping the whole world.
Millions; James had said there were millions of them. More than he believed could have possibly existed in the whole of Britain.
Beth turned to Galilee.
‘Galilee, I–’
She was drowned out by a thunderous blast.
On Tull’s urgently yelled command, those who had been ordered to conserve their energy threw a multitude of extra spells at the rapidly encroaching rats.
The front lines of rats were close enough now to be seen as individual creatures, each one pushing itself into a frenzied, headlong rush as if its life depended on it.
The brown flood swarmed into the ditch.
It rushed up the embankment.
Squealing, snapping, gnashing.
And then they were leaping over the parapet, leaping on everyone who was there.
*
Chapter 63
As a mass, the rats had been an easy target.
Individually, flying through the air, latching onto arms, legs, faces, they were impossible to hit except by the most experienced or powerful of magicians.
In the panic, bluntly wielded spells struck humans rather than rodents.
Whereas Beth, Galilee and Tull had found it relatively easy to remove the rats earlier, their spells being delicately meted out, few others possessed a similar level of skill. The injuries inflicted would have been severe if the inner spirits hadn’t instinctively applied defensive cocoons protecting them from the worst effects of other magic.
Still, everywhere people were being sent flying through the air, or painfully rolling across the ground.
The rats, too, seemed impervious to the pain that should have repelled them. They broke though the energy shields to claw, bite and tear.
‘Stop using magic if you can’t control it!’
Galilee didn’t bother yelling out his order. Using magic himself, he sent his command flowing around the farm.
It was heard even above the uproar of screams, cries, screeching, squealing and clap and bang of spells.
Utilising everything they came across as springboards, the rats moved swiftly and unpredictably. Their small size and speed saved many of them time after time from being shredded, fried or crushed by bursts and pulsating waves of air, sound, water, fire, lightning and even plumes of earth.
Tull’s sword was a blur of movement, chopping at the rats attempting to force their way into the barns where the horses were stabled. Inside, Heddy and Drek’s fiercely brandished shovels landed heavily on any rat that made its way past the whirling blade.
Even Beth found it difficult to hit individual rats. There were too many people rushing around, moving every bit as erratically as her targets.
She was constantly weakening or hanging back from releasing a spell to avoid striking the person she was trying to help. Defensive shields became a hindrance rather than a help, as they held back the swirling waters that would have dashed aside the scrabbling, squealing rats.
‘Galilee!’ she cried out ‘How can there be so many? Are they all real?’
Galilee paused,
‘An illusion, you mean?’
With a magical shrug, he shed the rats that had clambered over him.
‘Yes, of course! That’s why energy wasn’t wasted destroying our defences! Most of them are just an illusion!’
‘But which ones? And how many?’
Knowing that the majority of rats attacking them didn’t actually exist hardly seemed to help them; they couldn’t just hold off from protecting themselves without letting the real rats through.
Which were the real rats? Which were the illusions?
‘James!’ Galilee yelled back to where they had last seen the scrawny teenager.
He wasn’t there.
Galilee and Beth moved through the chaos, nonchalantly keeping the rats away with the deft control of wind and water, searching for James.
They found him cowering amongst the waste and clutter that had been thrown down the side of a small shed. He was trembling with horror and disgust as he flicked off any rats finding their way to him.
Galilee reached for him, pulled him to his feet.
‘Sor…sorry!’ James wailed. ‘M…my powe…powers are useless against these horrible things!’
‘Just the opposite James! Show me the attack!’
‘But…but you can see it!’
James aimlessly, nervously, waved a hand to indicate the commotion taking place around them.
‘You don’t need a close up!’
‘Show me! Show me as much of it as you can!’
‘Yo…you mean like this?’
The air between them rippled as if it were a hovering pool of water. It revealed what, at first, seemed to be an overhead shot of the rat assault on the farm.
But Beth realised that, with only the slightest move of her head, she could see everything in three dimensions. Faintly, she could even hear the sounds; the screeching and squealing of the rats, the cries of men and women, the booms and crashes.
‘Pull back,’ Galilee ordered brusquely. ‘Pull back so I can see the whole farm!’
James didn’t move even a finger, yet the view of the attack changed so that every part of the farm could be seen.
It was a view more terrifying than the reality taking place around them. Beth could now see the endless waves of rats descending on the farm.
‘Now, help me Machal!’
Galilee momentarily closed his eyes to aid his concentration. Perhaps, Beth reasoned, he was speaking out loud with a similar aim.
‘What can I do?’ he asked hopefully.
Galilee plunged his hands into the scene floating before them.
Instantly – even though there was no effect on the cacophony of human cries and the magic spells – the frenzied squealing of the rats faded away to almost nothing.
Within the hovering picture, hundreds of thousands of rats had vanished, along with their shrieking.
There were still thousands of them, but nowhere near the amount the farm’s defenders believed they were dealing with.
‘Now, Machal; how can I allow everyone to see what I see?’
Just as Galilee had spr
ead his voice around the farm earlier, the image before them began to grow and extend past them.
It grew and spread until it was fully life size, an image overlaying reality.
The truth overlaying illusion.
As Galilee withdrew his hands from what was now only the rippling centre of the image, he somehow transformed it all into shades of red.
Only the real rats, suffused with their moving image, took on the same bloody tones.
‘Only the red rats are real!’ Galilee’s voice once again reached all the way across the farm. ‘Deal only with them!’
Repelling an attack by thousands of organised rats is still a formidable task.
But it is far easier to deal with than an assault by apparently endless hordes.
At last, spells could be more carefully and directly targeted. There was a hardly person there, too, who hadn’t taken the risk of drawing on more of the power and experience of their inner spirit.
So, bit by bit, more and more rats were finally being taken care of.
The sense of confusion and commotion diminished with every passing minute.
But Galilee was far from happy.
‘What’s wrong?’ Beth asked. ‘It will all be over soon enough now. The attack’s failed.’
‘Has it?’
He turned to her as he casually dashed a number of rats against a wall, breaking their backs.
‘How much energy have we thrown away? And on what was mainly an illusion too? An illusion that has itself used up vast reserves.’
‘Less energy for us means less energy for them too,’ Beth said.
‘That depends who “them” is. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll keep their distance. They’ll draw on the energy reserves to their rear and out of our reach. So–’
The rapid clatter of a charging horse distracted him.
A mounted Epona was rushing towards them, the rats that survived the pounding hooves falling to the claws and beaks of three birds closely flocking about her. The birds dived and swooped and clutched and rived excitedly at the rats.
‘I think an army is on its way,’ Epona cried, nimbly sliding down from her horse. ‘Equas–’ she indicated her mount with a nod – ‘says he felt the ground rumbling.’
Beth glared irritably at Epona.
She failed to see how Epona’s horse – no matter how intelligent he was – could have let her know that the rumbling he had felt was a sign of an oncoming army.
But before she could raise this objection, there was a flurry of wings as a fourth bird swiftly descended alongside them.
Wings, body and legs abruptly lengthened, grew and stretched. Before it touched the ground, the bird had transformed into an elegant, fair-haired woman.
‘It is an army,’ she announced. ‘Just regular soldiers, though. Not a magical one that I can see.’
‘Clever; they don’t need magical energy,’ Epona said.
‘Doubly clever,’ Galilee added, grimacing anxiously. ‘If we start killing humans, we’re no better than the enemy.’
‘So even if we win,’ the fair-haired woman said, ‘we lose.’
*
Chapter 64
‘What have they got with them, Cleiona?’
Galilee led the way back towards where they had left James conjuring up his image of the attack.
‘Tanks or horses? Artillery?’
‘Yes, tanks, artillery; a fully equipped, modern army.’ The fair-haired woman, Cleiona, spoke grimly. ‘Though no planes, obviously.’
Even as she spoke, the ground beneath them began to ominously rumble and shake.
Beyond the waning noise of the rats’ flagging assault, the dull metallic clank of heavy, slowly rolling machines could be heard.
James stared unblinkingly as he controlled the rippling centre of his image.
‘James,’ Galilee said, ‘we need you again.’
Once more, Galilee plunged his hands into the hovering, undulating heart of the scene.
‘Machal – we need a quick resolution!’
Epona shared a wary, concerned glance with Beth; was Galilee calling on Machal too deeply and too regularly for his own good? Was he in danger of losing himself completely?
A flickering blue light flowed around Galilee’s hands. Abruptly, the light flew off in all directions, sparking towards the rats.
With a sizzle and a screech, each rat – whether in the middle of a leap or rushing up a leg, whether inside or outside a defensive cocoon – instantly dropped dead to the floor.
‘Withdraw the image and give me a new one,’ Galilee said to James as he pulled his hands back. ‘We have a new army attacking us!’
‘A new one?’ James shuddered. ‘Don’t tell me; it’s not millions of cockroaches, is it?’
As James opened up a new image, Galilee grinned.
‘Not really; but I suspect there might be something even worse in those tanks!’
He pointed to the armoured flanks of the oncoming army. The highly mechanised battalions were swiftly and proficiently moving into position outside the farm.
‘Is there any way you can take me inside one of them?’
James shook his head.
‘No, sorry.’
Galilee probed deeper inside the image with his pointing finger, letting it pass through the sides of one of the virtual tanks.
The scene instantly changed.
Everyone abruptly felt like they were actually inside the cramped, claustrophobic interior of the tank.
A tank whose electronic systems were being helped to function with a little glowing, sizzling magic.
A tank crewed by demons.
James shivered.
‘What the…what are those things?’
‘Something to give them an extra advantage,’ Epona growled angrily.
‘And to ensure they create a literally bloody mayhem.’ Galilee scowled.
It was one more of the many, interlinked problems being cleverly stacked up against him. He withdrew his hand, the image returning once more to an overview of the army making its preparations to attack.
‘The humans are just here to be sacrificed.’
‘If we gather enough of us together with the capability, we could put all the humans to sleep, or under a holding spell,’ Cleiona said.
She stared with mounting concern at the young soldiers taking up their attack positions.
‘That way we could deal with the demons separately.’
Beth found it odd, and not a little disquieting, that they had begun to casually refer to ‘humans’ as if they were now a completely separate race to themselves.
‘I believe they’ll attack before enough energy has been replenished to allow us to put them to sleep.’
Galilee turned to Beth as if he knew she might require further explanation.
‘Delicate surgery takes more skill than killing someone.’
Cleiona, tall and slender, her long hair hanging about her like a silver curtain, stood up straight.
Having made her own decision, she required no further observation of the hovering image.
‘Then we have no choice,’ she said. ‘We have to retreat.’
*
Interesting, don’t you think, how lover boy calls on Machal’s powers like he’s ringing up a free helpline?
He’s putting himself at risk for us. Haven’t you seen how haggard he looks?
Haggard? I know people who’ve looked worse after a restless night’s sleep; which is the only problem he’s really suffering. All that responsibility on such young shoulders. Notice, though, how all that exhaustion just simply disappears once he calls up Machal?
He doesn’t want to call him up. He doesn’t
have any choice.
Ah, that’s the way he explains it, is it? He doesn’t have any choice, poor dear. But you, of course, do have the choice – and therefore you really shouldn’t draw on the huge potential just waiting inside you, should you? Oh no; only he’s allowed to do that. For the good of you all, of course!
So what do you think would have happened to us if he hadn’t called up Machal? We’d all be rat food, wouldn’t we?
Precisely my point too dear! Sometimes, there are perfectly good reasons for drawing on your inner power, obviously. And what harm has it really done him, do you think? You say he’s a bit tired, diddums. Is that this great retribution he’s been warning you about? You end up feeling a bit tired?
Aren’t you listening? He did it to save us!
So, would you do it, then, if you could save everyone?
Save everyone? Me? Oh, wait – you! You mean you, of course!
Of course I mean me! I admit that darling! But I can only do it through you. I can only do it if you allow me. The way lover boy allowed Machal to – well, literally – work his magic. And don’t you think he’d do it again if he knew it would save you once more?
Yes, of course he would.
Sooo…we get back to us, darling! Why won’t you allow it, even though you know it could save everyone?
Well, for one thing – how do I know you can really save everyone? How do I know this isn’t just a trick? How can a water fay stop an army?
Haven’t you ever heard of charm? A mermaid’s charm? Men just go simply crazy whenever they come under a mermaid’s spell darling!
*
‘There’s another army approaching.’
James delicately ran a long-fingered hand over his image. He drew out a cloudy edge to one side as if it were a smaller screen. This showed another, far hazier part of the action.
‘Would you like me to take a look at it?’
Galilee peered curiously at what was only a hint of a mass of men, a mass of blue.
‘Another army?’
‘Arthur?’ Epona managed to say it both hopefully yet doubtfully.
‘Too far away,’ Cleiona pointed out.
Using his hands as if he were drawing out and moulding the softest clay, James gently pulled at the smaller image until it became the dominant one. The original scene was now exiled to the outer edges as a misty splurge of colour.
Everyone’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
The men lithely and athletically rushing across the fields were naked. Their skin was adorned with large, elaborate tattoos of blue and red.
Their only armaments were spears, axes, swords and bows and arrows.
‘If this is what I think it is, this makes things worse than ever.’
Galilee glanced back at Cleiona and Epona with a stern, perhaps even fearful expression.