The soldiers ceased their butchery for a moment and an eerie
silence descended over the canyon; then, there was an explosion of cheers as
Fabian strode calmly into view, with Mormius’ severed head dangling from his
upraised fist.
Anna awoke with cool liquid trickling into her throat. She swallowed it
thirstily but immediately gagged. It was thick and tasted of iron and she
realised her mouth was filling with someone else’s blood. She groaned and
struggled to rise, but a heavy weight held her firmly in place. Upon opening her
eyes she found that the weight was a dead marauder. The full mass of his
stinking flesh was pushing her down onto a wooden floor that was jolting and
bouncing painfully against her back. She gasped in disgust. The man’s pale,
clammy face was pressed right against hers and she could see his eyes rolling in
their sockets. His limbs were cold and already stiffening and she guessed she
had been trapped under him for some time.
As Anna wrestled with the dead man, a low, guttural voice rang out nearby and
she froze. The words meant nothing to her, but she immediately recognised the
fierce language of the northern wastes. A second voice replied in the same
language, but this one whined in a higher register than the first, speaking in a
babbling torrent of bleats and snorts.
The first voice replied with an angry, dismissive grunt and they both fell
silent.
Fear crippled Anna. The voices had sounded very close: just a couple of feet
away at most. She lay still for a second and tried to calm her breathing. She
was surrounded by broken limbs and weapons but through a gap in the corpses she
saw a tiny square of sky and realised she was moving. Low, moonlit clouds were
rushing overhead and she guessed from the lurching movement beneath her that she
was on some kind of cart. As she listened more carefully, she heard the sound of
creaking wheels and horses’ hooves and the loud, heavy breathing of the two
marauders.
The wheels bounced up over a ridge and as the vehicle slammed back down onto
the ground, the corpse’s head knocked against Anna’s, spilling a fresh load of
semi-congealed blood over her face. She groaned and rolled quietly to one side,
finally freeing herself from the weight of the corpse. Other bodies lay over
her, but she managed to carefully disentangle the mass of torsos and limbs and
brought her face up to the surface, gasping for air like a tired swimmer.
Luckily for her, the moonlight was too weak to illuminate most of her fellow
passengers, but from what little she could make out, the scene resembled an
immense butcher’s slab. Ostlanders and marauders lay where they had fallen in a
confused jumble of broken bones and severed arteries.
Other shapes were travelling beside the cart, slipping through the darkness
like ghosts. With a thrill of horror she saw that she was surrounded by
marauders: some riding ferocious-looking steeds and others sprinting on foot,
but all racing with grim determination from the distant silhouette of Hagen’s
Claw.
We must have won, thought Anna with a shock. This is no victory parade—they’re running away. She nestled back down into the pile of damp bodies,
relieved to be unnoticed for the moment. As the cart bounced wildly over the
uneven turf of the valley, she saw that huge crowds of northmen were fleeing
from the stone towers with no pretence of order. It was a complete rout and
Anna’s head reeled. The last thing she could remember was fleeing for her life
as the hordes of enemy soldiers overran the command tents. She had tried to
escape down into the canyon with the others, but as she dashed between the
struggling soldiers something had cracked against the back of her head. She must
have dropped into the back of this cart and then been gradually covered by the
dead and dying.
The hopelessness of her situation suddenly hit her. If she stayed where she
was, the marauders would carry her to whatever ungodly destination they were
racing for, but if she tried to escape, she would be seen immediately. She
shuddered, wondering why the marauders had not detached the cart. What foul
purpose did they have in mind for the bodies?
The higher, whining voice cried out again and she felt hands pressing down
near her head. She realised one of the drivers must be looking back over her,
towards the hill. She froze, doing her best to look like a corpse. The marauder
whined again, pointing to something as he leant over her. His face was so close
to Anna’s that she could smell his rancid breath. Then the other marauder
bellowed furiously and wrenched him back onto the driver’s seat.
Anna looked cautiously where he had pointed and saw that several of the
marauders were dropping to the ground. As she strained to see more clearly, she
saw flashes of black and white moving amongst them: Ostlanders, pursuing the
defeated army and hacking them down as they fled.
She dropped back with a sigh of relief. It looked like it would only be a
matter of time before all of the marauders were overtaken and slaughtered. As
long as she remained hidden beneath the bodies until then, she should be safe.
As she shrugged herself back down beneath the corpses, she felt a movement
that didn’t seem to come from the wheels below. She looked around and saw a
large rat, perched on the face of one of the bodies and watching her intently.
There was a spark of intelligence in its eyes that she found a little unnerving,
but she decided it was too small to have been the cause of the movement.
She turned the other way and saw that one of the marauders was also staring
at her. His plaited hair was slick with blood and she could tell by the black,
clotted line around his neck that his throat had been cut. As she watched the
man, trying to discern whether it was he who had moved, he suddenly spread his
teeth in a wide leering grin and pulled himself towards her.
Anna stifled a scream and squirmed away from him, but she quickly felt her
back press against the side of the cart and realised she was trapped.
As the marauder crawled slowly towards her, he opened his mouth wider in an
attempt to cry out, but all that emerged from his ruined vocal chords was a
faint, liquid croak that was lost beneath the sound of the rattling cart. He
freed his legs and lunged across the cart.
Anna tried to worm herself away from the man, but his eyes were fixed on hers
with a fierce hunger and as he moved across the mounds of damp, ruptured flesh,
he wrapped his hand around the hilt of a broken sword. The blade gleamed with
the same cold fire as the marauder’s eyes and he jabbed it at her face with a
gurgle of amusement.
The two embraced in a silent struggle. Anna gripped his shoulders and shoved
with all her strength, but he would not give up. Gradually his grinning face
bore down on hers as he forced the shard of metal towards her throat.
Anna fought the urge to scream and reached around for something to use as a
lever. Her hand came to rest on a piece of metal and she realised it was the
hilt of another sword. Confusion and terror mingled in her head. She had sworn
countless oaths to cherish life in all its forms, but as the marauder’s broken
sword pressed up against her throat, she could not believe it right to simply
submit. Everything in her rebelled at the idea of hurting another being, but the
psychotic glee in the man’s eyes disgusted her. She screamed in despair as a
warm fountain of blood washed over her neck.
It was only as the marauder began thrashing about in pain that she realised
what she had done. Her trembling hand was still clutching the long sword she had
buried in his neck. She had murdered him. Anna closed her eyes and groaned in
revulsion as he jerked and twitched violently back and forth. In her horror, she
seemed unable to loose the sword, and as the man’s struggles grew weaker, she
felt every last one of his pitiful, gurgling breaths. Finally, he grew still
and, forgetting the danger, she screamed in despair. In that one second
everything she knew about herself collapsed. She felt as though she were
suddenly trapped inside the mind of a stranger.
Anna did not have long to wallow in her guilt. Her scream had alerted the
cart’s drivers to her presence and as she shoved the marauder’s body to one
side, she saw a sinewy, fur-clad youth grinning down at her. His knotted flesh
was networked with serpentine, self-inflicted scars and his greasy topknot was
dyed a deep, henna red. As he stood up in the driver’s seat, he drew a long,
curved knife and let out a whooping howl of pleasure.
Anna tried to pull the sword from the corpse, but her terror had jammed it so
deep into the flesh that it would not move. She raised her hands in front of her
face as the marauder lifted his sword to strike.
There was a staccato thudding sound as four arrows sank deep into his chest,
leaving a row of black and white flights buried in his thick furs. He spun his
arms for a few seconds, trying to maintain his balance, then he toppled beneath
the wheels of the cart. His lifeless body jammed in the axle and the cart
lurched out of control. The remaining driver roared in pain as the wheel
shattered and the reins sliced through his fingers.
The cart tipped and Anna flew through the air in a shower of weapons and body
parts. The air was knocked from her lungs as she slammed down into a clump of
long grass. Screams and howls surrounded her as the marauders nearby fought for
their survival. Everywhere she looked, Ostlanders were charging out of the
shadows, riding down the enemy with swords, lances and spears and howling
victoriously as they trampled the northmen underfoot.
Anna looked away from the slaughter and studied the blood on her hands. As
struggling figures tumbled past her, she tried to clean her fingers, rubbing
them desperately against her white robes, but the more she rubbed, the more
blood-stained she became and after a few minutes she let out a low murmur of
despair. “Murderer,” she whispered under her breath.
“Sister,” cried a young, wide-eyed soldier, spotting her sat amidst the
carnage. “Watch yourself,” he yelled as he steered his horse to her side and
dismounted.
She flinched at his touch and looked him up and down in terror, taking in his
bloody sword and battered breastplate. Then, seeing the concern in his eyes, she
relaxed a little and accepted his helping hand. “Murderer,” she muttered as he
pulled her to her feet.
He shook his head in confusion, shaking the tall white plumes on his helmet.
“Who’s a murderer?” he asked, looking round at the violence that surrounded
them.
“I killed him,” she answered, staring at the young soldier with an intensity
he found unnerving.
“Aren’t you the priestess who was travelling with the Knights Griffon?” he
asked, struggling to meet her eye.
Anna nodded vaguely and continued trying to wipe the blood from her hands.
The young soldier nodded back, relieved at the thought she might be someone
else’s problem. “They’re still making their way down from Hagen’s Claw,” he said
lifting her up onto his horse. “Let’s get you back to them.”
As they rode back towards the monuments on the hill, fighting against a tide
of victorious soldiers, Anna saw the Iron Duke leading a pack of wolf-helmed
Oberhau. They thundered through the heart of the other soldiers, bellowing
commands at them as they charged past. Fabian himself had flung back his visor
and she caught a brief glimpse of his gaunt face and glittering eye patch.
“They’re heading for the forest,” she heard him scream as he rode past her.
As he made his way up the hill, the soldier spotted the unmistakable squadron
of Knights Griffon. Despite everything that had occurred that evening, they were
still riding with their shoulders thrown back and their chins raised to the
heavens. Even the blood of their foes seemed ashamed to stain the knights’
armour and it still gleamed and sparkled in the moonlight.
“It’s Anna,” cried Ratboy, as he saw the soldier’s horse trotting up the hill
towards them. Wolff was riding next to him and nodded in reply, but did not slow
the speed of his horse as he charged down the hill. Ratboy reined in his own
steed and allowed Wolff and the Knights Griffon to race on ahead, so that he
could greet the young soldier and his passenger. “She’s alive,” he gasped as the
soldier approached.
Recognition flared in the priestess’ eyes at the sight of Ratboy and she
held her stained hands up to him like a guilty child.
“What’s happened?” he cried, grabbing her arms and noticing that her gaze
seemed even more passionate than usual.
Anna gave no reply and simply hung her head in shame, but she grasped
Ratboy’s arms as tightly as he held hers.
Ratboy gave the soldier a questioning look.
“I found her next to a wrecked cart,” he said. “It looks like some of the
marauders had been trying to use it to escape in.” He shook his head. “It’s a
bloodbath down there. I thought she would be safer up here with her friends.” He
looked at the blood that covered her hands and robes. “I’m not sure how she got
mixed up with the enemy retreat.”
Ratboy frowned in confusion, but nodded all the same. “Thank you for finding
her,” he said, dismounting. He helped Anna down onto the ground, steadying her
as the ranks of Ostlanders charged past, screaming for bloody vengeance.
“Anna,” he said, taking her head in his hands in an attempt to make her focus
on his words. “You must stay here. My master and Maximilian are in pursuit of
the duke and I must follow, but it’s not safe down there. The marauders won’t
die without a fight.”
Anna’s eyes opened even wider as she realised Ratboy meant to abandon her.
She shook her head fiercely and threw her arms around him.
The soldier chuckled. “Looks like she has other ideas.” He looked around at
the brooding stones that covered the hillside. “She’s probably no safer up here
anyway. Not all of the marauders will have fled.”