Hallsfoot's Battle (39 page)

Ralph opens his eyes. The first thing he sees
is falling snow. The second thing is the dogs. A curse rises in his
mind, but he wipes it away. No time. He clambers to his feet,
surprised at how weak he is, but prepared to fend off all
attackers, whether man or animal. None challenge him. In a moment,
he understands why. Around him, his own soldiers are fighting an
army of people he does not know and it takes him a moment or two to
remember why—the executioner’s desire to make war with the
Gathandrians. These must be that people though Ralph does not
recognise the field they are in, not a field but more like a
parkland of sorts. They have arrived here in a manner he cannot
begin to fathom. For now, the soldiers, who fight with a frenzy of
clashing as if their very bones are fighting, too, act as a barrier
so no assailant can reach him. There are so many of his men he does
not know how Gelahn has called them up so quickly. Is this another
memory he has forgotten?

As for the dogs, they are focused on
something other than him. Their jaws drip with blood and if Ralph
could hear them above the din of war he is sure they would be
snarling. A flash of something long and white appears from within
the shifting blackness of their bodies and he gasps.

The sound of strange wings above his head and
the glimpse of Simon’s snow-raven as it circles away and a sudden
strength impels him forward, towards the mountain beasts. How he
wishes for a sword at his belt, or at least a strong knife, but he
possesses neither weapon, just the overarching desire to stop what
it is they are doing, to stop them and tear them apart if he can.
With a wild cry Ralph leaps at the nearest dog, the one holding in
its jaws the severed remains of an arm. A woman’s. He seizes the
limb and rips it from the dog’s devouring teeth. As he does so, he
sees the rest of the dead girl’s body is already being divided by
the pack and his gorge rises.

He has been too late. Though, even as he
leapt, he had known it. No time to retreat. The dog he has thwarted
for no real purpose other than honour howls and jumps towards him.
Its eyes flash red against the snow and he raises both fists,
prepared to do battle as best he can.

Just as the creature of moving stone bares
its teeth ready to sink them into his neck, something bright and
glittering interposes itself between them. A sword, a weapon Ralph
has longed for. It proves useless in destroying the mountain dog,
but it twists the animal in flight so it lands with a grunt at his
side. The soldier wielding the sword steps forward, raises the
weapon again. Ralph is about to call out a warning to this
liege-man of his, but it is then that he sees the skeleton fingers
and the fleshless grin beneath the helmet.

This army Gelahn has raised is not one of the
living, but of the dead. May all the gods and stars have mercy upon
them. Those who have perished in the Lammas Lands have been called
again to fight and there must surely be no victory that is not
theirs. Ralph’s dead have come to reckon with him once more and
there is no sin of his so deep it cannot be brought into the
light.

No matter. Right now, the dog is the enemy.
In battle, tides turn and turn again so quickly, and one must fight
to win and make what brief allegiances one can. So Ralph watches,
panting, as the undead soldier brings the sword down on the animal
for a second time. The dog leaps sideways and the blow falls
uselessly on the earth. The remainder of the pack howl their anger
into the bitter cold air, but none of them makes an attempt to
attack. The soldier turns his skull towards Ralph just as the
animal recovers itself and leaps towards the dead man.

Keeping his sightless gaze upon his Overlord,
the skeleton catches the animal in his bony hands and tears it
apart as simply as if it is nothing but the morning bread delivered
by the maidservants. Bone has defeated rock, and the dead that walk
again overcome the mountain life.

While Ralph watches, still speechless amidst
the din and screams, the soldier executes a clumsy bow and marches
back into the fray. The dogs make no further move to harm him,
although their eyes continue to glint crimson. An enemy of his has
been slaughtered, but the battle against those with whom he has no
real quarrel continues, and he does not know how to bring it to an
end.

Still, he must try.

Behind the dogs, Ralph sees a small outcrop
of rock. It will be a good vantage point to assess how near the
Gathandrians are to defeat for he cannot see how the battle can be
won. Neither can he see how anything after will turn to the good,
should the mind-executioner get his heart’s desire. He stumbles to
the rocks. It’s astonishing how weak he is. It’s as if a part of
his mind has disappeared entirely and the usual connections between
thought and limbs are no longer to be found.

The dogs snarl at him as he passes, but he
doesn’t slow his pace. Under his hands, the rocks feel hot in spite
of the snow. The land is burning up. Perhaps it is dying. Another
issue he does not have the knowledge to solve. Best then to stick
to what he knows, the ability to read a battlefield, to understand
which way the victory is turning and where its weaknesses might be.
This is the one talent he has that his father never tore down. It
is truly time to use it to the utmost.

As Ralph crouches on the rock, keeping an eye
out for stray or deliberate weapons, he takes what is left of his
mind and sifts out the noise and the pain, all the colours of
orange, red and black. They have to go before he can see what he
must. It takes longer than usual, and he wonders if this is what
Gelahn has done to him, but at last he sees it, the field of war
laid out before him like a game of strange logic. The Gathandrians
are losing, that much is obvious. They are not a fighting people
but the weapons they wield surprise him. Ralph thought that, even
in a physical battle with deadly enemies such as this one, they
would use only their minds, and perhaps their fists, to try to hold
back the tide. Instead, they carry swords that sparkle, lengths of
wood that do not shatter against the skeleton enemy although
neither do they overcome them, bricks, stone and strange metal
shapes that burn and glow like small fires in the midst of
destruction. A moment later, he sees these objects do not come from
the land, though they mimic the forms that can be found throughout
their countries. No, they are made by the thoughts of these people,
whose power must be greater than he had imagined.

It is something about the stories, the past
and present combined, the tales they tell to ease the time
away—legend and dream, words and the mind. Still, he has never seen
the power of tale-telling change the world they live in as clearly
as this. It is, however, no match for the undead army Gelahn has
raised from Ralph’s people. His eye scans bloodied limbs, wounded
flesh, the terrified eyes of dying men, and women, too. By the god
and stars above, there are even children here. It is Ralph who has
helped this to happen and the deaths of all these poor ones lie
heavy on his shoulders.

As he turns away, a cry he will not voice
lying trapped in his mouth, another sweep of movement draws his
attention again, a darker blackness against the blood and bone and
destruction. A man in a cloak strides through the confusion and
uproar as if he is simply walking across a field. A glimmer of
green surrounds him, and Ralph recognises the colour of his
emeralds at once. The mind-executioner. And with him is Simon. They
are leaving the battlefield. Somewhere more deadly and vital to
Gelahn’s mission—Simon’s, too, perhaps, though Ralph cannot believe
it—entices them and he does not know what will happen to any of
them if they get there.

Denial floods his thoughts as if it has been
waiting for that moment to be heard. At the same time, too far away
for it to be anything other than Ralph’s own blood and wishing, he
thinks that Simon flinches and half-turns towards him before the
executioner’s unstoppable purpose pulls the scribe forward
again.

No. He must follow them. At the same time, on
the far edge of the battle arena, at the place where the parkland
and trees give way to shattered buildings and rubble, a vast group
of women appears. Leading them is the red-haired woman Ralph saw
the first time he came here. His heart skitters in his chest and
his throat turns dry. They are running towards the fighting when in
all reason they should be running away. Around them, and hovering
in their arms, slide glimpses of words and meaning, shifting and
repatterning themselves constantly with every movement. More
stories, more tales to add to the ones the men and women already
fighting have turned into weapons. Will they prove to be the
Gathandrians’ salvation or will they, however explosive, prove as
nothing against the all-conquering army?

He has no way of telling. Gelahn is almost
upon the women. Simon, too. The mind-executioner raises the great
cane and fire spits from its carving. The red-haired woman stops
running and stretches out her hands as if to defend her would-be
army. From his right Ralph hears a great cry that pierces the
fragile mind-silence he has structured. It’s somewhere between a
shout and a moan and, when he glances at its origin, Ralph sees a
tall, dark-haired man straining towards where the woman stands.
Something about him is familiar but it slips away from the
Overlord’s memory and cannot be found. The tall man is at least a
field’s length away from the woman and it is impossible for him to
see her. He does not have the vantage point that Ralph does but,
somehow, he senses her presence and, in his glance, the Overlord
catch a hint of the colours that once flowed between the scribe and
himself.

While Ralph stares at him, a skeleton hand
rises up to one side. A knife lies in the bony fingers and is swept
down at the man’s face. Blood gushes out and he hears the tall
man’s scream echoing in his head. The sound of it galvanises the
Overlord into action. Slipping down, almost falling, from the rock,
Ralph begins to run towards him. Out of all the dying here, it is
this man more than any, more perhaps than Simon in this pure moment
of time, that Ralph wants to save. He has no idea why.

He reaches the soldiers and, with a loud
shout, tries to clamber through to where he last saw the so
familiar stranger. At the same time, something hooks itself into
the torn fragments of Ralph’s cloak and the ground disappears from
under him.

Annyeke

She had never heard anything like this noise,
the noise of battle, either in the flesh or in the mind. She could
barely comprehend the skittered thumping of her own heart. A wave
of blood and pain and terror filled the park area, the trees, the
grass, the earth itself. Screams and cries and the crashing of
mind-weapons. It was like the centre of a storm, one she could not
escape. She jerked to a halt, spreading her arms wide as if to
protect those women she’d brought with her from a horror surely
impossible to contain. She wanted to run. She did not. Her feet
would not let her, her body seemingly responding to its own hidden
purpose when her mind was telling her to go. Flee. Escape.

This was what they had prepared and not
prepared for. This battle. A war to end all wars and something they
would always remember. Annyeke blinked and took a breath. It tasted
iron, like blood. She scanned the field, trying to steady her
limbs, and saw soldiers who were not soldiers but dead
men—skeletons, even—dressed in the armour of the Lammas Lands. Lord
Tregannon’s men. How dark had his life become that it had come to
this? She saw her fellow Gathandrians, too, eyes wide and muscles
straining, fighting against a tide of death they could not
overcome. In her thoughts she acknowledged great waves of
shuddering colour, black, red, green and orange that jarred
together, making the sound of dying men and women even louder.
Where were Talus and Johan? She had to get to them, save them if
she could.

They weren’t the only colours, though. A slow
stream of blue edged its way into her realisation from the shadows.
She recognised it. Couldn’t for a heartbeat tell who it might
be…

And then she saw him. The scribe, the Lost
One, appeared from the midst of the scenes of clashing pain before
her. He plunged to his knees as if an unknown hand pushed him
towards the earth. His eyes were wild and staring, his tunic torn
and his whole body shook as if he would never be able to stand
again.

She cried out, took a step in his direction,
and a figure coalesced in front of her from amongst the white bones
and fleshless teeth of the Tregannon soldiers. In one hand, he held
the mind-cane, glittering black against the snow and, in the
clasped palm of his other hand, he held something that gave out a
green shifting pattern she did not comprehend.

“Gelahn,” she whispered. “You’ve come at
last.”

“Did you think I would not?” he replied.

And then he struck her with the cane. A shaft
of agony hit her mind, exploding thought, desire and memory. She
went down, slipping on snow and crying out sounds no one but she
could hear. Wild fire played in her head and she couldn’t breathe.
Didn’t know how to. She heard the Lost One call something to her,
her name, but she couldn’t make out the words. She could have been
lying in the snow forever, or it could only have been the space of
a heartbeat. It was impossible to tell, but at last the pain seeped
away and she knew her mind once more.

She got up, faced the mind-executioner,
brushing away a damp strand of hair from her forehead. His tunic
was torn at the shoulder and his cloak was barely there, but the
power that flowed from him meant that was as nothing. The heavy
darkness of it surrounded them both. No, all three of them. A
slight movement on her left told her the Lost One was also now on
his feet and she no longer sensed the presence of the women she had
brought with her, or the stories they carried. Her own tales, the
ones she’d snatched from the Library, were dust between her
fingers, the snow washing them away.