There were men in the battle, and horses, and 'ifrit. He had a cold certainty in his head, an utter knowledge that Sieur Anton was among the men. He would not have been brought here else. No need for him to scan the horsemen for one who wore white beneath his cloak, although he did.
Sieur Anton was still mounted - of course, he was still mounted! — where many were not. His stallion reared and screamed, blind with terror, lashing out at man or monster indiscriminately. Not so Sieur Anton, whose blade Josette was neat, vicious, lethal.
Blessed Josette, who has said a prayer over you? Did he do so himself, in his virtue?
Men were dying and horses too, but Sieur Anton would survive this. That was axiomatic.
Sieur Anton might survive alone. A look around showed no more men riding to his reinforcement; all that remained of the troops on the grassland were fighting now on their own account, clustered around the road that had led them down from the northern hills. There were 'ifrit there too, and broken walls, an ambush well repeated.
This one had cut the Ransomer army in two, north and south of the walled fields; the 'ifrit had severed its spine as it marched that narrow road. Or crushed it, rather: he climbed up fallen rubble to the top of the long boundary wall - his decision, or he thought so; what shared his eyes did not need them, it knew already all that he could see - and there was the proof of their power, laid out before him like a map written upon the land.
How many 'ifrit there were, he could not tell; they were enough to have struck all along the length of the road, where it was contained within those sheltering, concealing walls. The sudden collapse of so much stonework must have accounted for many of the brothers or their mounts in the first moments of the attack, the last moments of their ignorance. He could see men, horses, weapons all lying scattered in and among the heaps of rubble. Those fallen would not fight again. Some few men were heaving themselves free or trying to, hauling or dragging at stones they could barely lift; some few horses were kicking where they lay or struggling to rise, falling back with broken legs and bloody froth at their muzzles; most of the bodies were simply bodies, no hope of life in them.
Even the collapse of so long, so high a run of walls without warning could not bury an entire army. There were pockets of fighting all along the road, but this was nothing like the disciplined drill of the Ransomers in their troops, nothing like the way they had fought Hasan and his Sharai at the Roq. Disorganised, disrupted, distressed; ill-led through sheer confusion where they were led at all, where their officers or confessors had not been killed already; vulnerable, unready and afraid, the knights and brothers of the Order were fighting, yes, but they were dying too. Even where they had weapons that must have been blessed, that could pierce the shells of the 'ifrit — largely those towards the front of the march, he noted, those who had most closely followed Sieur Anton - they showed little wisdom in their use, only a desperate courage that led them to buy any damage they could achieve with their own speedy deaths.
He saw men charge hopelessly into reaching jaws, saw them crushed and broken, hacking at the chitin that gripped them as they died; and where their blades sliced through that chitin, he knew they must be dying with a sense of satisfaction, as at a victory dearly bought
But the 'ifrit could lose their jaws and still kill men. They had taken an insect shape, as they so often did, to haunt the nightmares perhaps of those who escaped them; fear was a weapon as deadly as any pincer, any claw. These insects were monstrous, though, with great plates of chitin - fit for pushing walls over - above their deep-set eyes, and vicious spurs projecting from their shell all around. Men with swords would find it hard to come close enough to harm, even where their swords were blessed. Except by hurling themselves into those cruel jaws, of course - and that still left the 'ifrit with the speed and lethal sharpness of the claws that capped its many legs, with the crushing power of its armoured head, with its questing intelligence that sought ever new ways to kill.
There were ghuls too, coming from the fields behind their masters the 'ifrit. They didn't join the dozen brutal little battles that were like knots on the string of the road; instead they made their way along that string, long arms reaching for the wounded. Man or horse, it made no difference; those claws could kill, and did.
He saw what was happening and knew what would come, what must come unless help came first and swiftly.
Alone, he would have gone himself to help, and so died at Sieur Anton's side, perhaps, or struggling to reach him. He was not alone, and did not run to help, but ran to fetch it: ran along the tops of the fields' walls, leaping the openings and sometimes leaping corners to save an extra step, the slowness of a turn. Not that he was very slow, at all. Undistracted by the slaughter close below him, undisturbed by the long falls on either side of his narrow path, he ran as though on solid ground, and left all the fighting behind him.
He rah, and came to the final wall and the trees beyond, the first thin forest of the mountains; and here he found the remainder of the Ransomer army and their new recruits, gathered in rank and waiting while Marshal Fulke paced with his officers.
Paced and prayed at a little distance from the grooms who held the horses, and cast sidelong looks along the empty road. He might be waiting for news to come back before he sent his next divisions down; he might have sent outriders to find out why there was no news, and be wondering now why he had no outriders. Certainly he knew that all was not well. Probably he was beginning to calculate the nature of the trap into which he had sent so many men, what the sorcerers of Surayon might do with a single track bounded by high walls and an army caught between them. Certainly he did not know, he was not capable of imagining the true strength of what lay ahead of him. He must have been warned of the dangers, he might even have believed the warnings - this was a cursed country, after all, of course he must expect to find cursed creatures at large within it — but he would still believe above all in his own righteousness, and the victory of the righteous.
He was an alert man, a wary man; he had paused in his pacing the moment he saw movement, a runner high on the walls. He had spoken swift words to his generals and sent them to join their divisions, not to have all the army's heads grouped together where they might be cleaved with a single blow. Other men came running at a signal, archers among them. This was no messenger of theirs for sure, this boy in a Sharai robe who was so fleet of foot, so casual of his balance on a height.
He was interested to see how near he could come before one of them knew him, and whether they would see his eyes before they saw his face; and, in either case, whether any man would shoot an arrow before he came close enough to speak to them. Or after.
They did not, but they came dose: twice close, and he might have died at either time if either man had loosed, if the arrow had flown true to heart or head, if it had been faster to strike than his hand to knock it aside. He had the speed, he could be ready for it before it left the string; but there was that distance to consider, that same curious detachment that might decide not to make the effort because he might be interested to die at such a time, when it could so much matter.
He heard the pou
nd and suck of his own body, wetl
y working; he heard the thud of his feet striking ground as he leapt from the wall, and then their steady rhythm on the earth, and the earths reply; he heard what they thought he could not possibly hear, their voices at this distance. He heard:
'Magister, it is a demon, see its eyes! The Sharai are possessed, I always said it, let me shoot
...'
And he heard:
'No, Magister, that is not Sharai.
That is the heretic squire, Mar
ron he called himself when he was with us; he that passed himself off as a brother first and then Sieur Anton took him, but he showed himself friend to both Sharai and Surayon. His dress
betrays him, and his being here,
what evil else he has done, I dare not know, to make his eyes glow so. He comes as a messenger, but there is nothing he should say to you; his words are poison and deceit. His death is decreed, demanded
...'
And in response to each, he heard:
'No, let him live for now. If he acts as messenger, I should like to know from whom, and why'
'We have no friends in this country, Magister, to send us messages.'
'All the more reason to hear what he has to say. Quiet now, say nothing to him; this is for me alone. If he has come here to learn, better that he has only one guarded voice to learn from; wickedness is
subtle
, too much so for you lads. Just keep your arrows nocked and watch me, be prepared to kill him at my gesture
...'
So they came to stand face to face, and within almost a sword's-strike distance; and if ever he could have lost his sense of distance, of being far away and untouched even when he was closest, this should have been the moment and the man to make it so. Fulke's clothes were rank with blood and smoke; his gaze was fixed, his mouth was set and grim. There was no mercy in him, for a rebellious land open to his harrowing nor for a people who had abandoned true religion in the very heart of the God's own country.
Marron had feared and hated him
, when Marron was alone. But Mar
ron couldn't find himself, or his simple passions. He felt disinterested, unconcerned; he said, 'You are waiting for news of your men. I bring it to you. Those on the road are lost. You may yet save some of those who have reached the river, but you cannot go this way.'
'Magister, he is a demon, he lies, you must not listen to him
...!'
'Be silent.' Fulke didn't turn his head to administer the rebuke, didn't shift his gaze; he went on staring levelly, with a sli
ght frown and no sign of fear. ‘What are you?' he asked, directl
y but musingly, as though it was
a question he was putting to h
imself, to his own wide knowledge as much as to the figure now before him. 'Once, you were a boy; I remember him. Then you were traitor, renegade, apostate, and I hunted him and lost him in the hills. Now, though - now you come back with hell in your eyes, and I wonder what you are, what you have become — ?'
'I am wiser than I was, when I was a boy. Else I would not offer you this news. If you wish to save any of your men, Magister, you will take them to the river by another way.'
'What, have the Surayon sorcerers set a devilry to work upon the road?'
'Not the Surayonnaise, but there are demons, yes. The 'ifrit are waiting for you, and killing as you come.'
'We were told our weapons would be good against 'ifrit, if we said a blessing over them.'
'So they are, or can be. Are they good against stones? The 'ifrit have collapsed these walls atop your men, and are destroying those who survived. Weapons may score, but it takes strength and numbers to kill, and sometimes luck besides. Your men have none of these.'
'Then we will ride to their assistance.'
'Then you will die, as they are dying. The road is a trap; it would be folly to follow the dead.'
'Then perhaps we should pitch our tents here, and go no further. Any 'ifrit that ventures this far we can despatch, to protect the world beyond; meanwhile they will do our work for us, in scouring this polluted land.'
And will you abandon your men, to share the fate of those who belong here?'
'You said my men were lost already.'
'Those on the road, I said. Those who won through to the river, some of them may be saved, and the world with them.'
'The world, I think, can save itself, with the God's guidance; but I cannot reach my men, except by that road which you tell me I may not use. Your advice is a snake that eats itself.'
'Not so. There is always more than a single road.'
'Not in this pass, and I have no time to go back and ride around the mountains, west or east.'
'You have candles, you have priests. Open the King's Eye, and lead your army through; you know the way. All hope dies else.'
Hope for whom, he did not say; perhaps he could not. Perhaps he did not care.
Jemel had known this before: the desperate sense of being trapped, caught in a body that he could not move, breathless and panicking and utterly unable to save himself.
Usually it was a dream or a half-dream as he drifted towards sleep, and he would jerk himself out of it with a cry just before he dreamed that he choked to death; and there would be comfort on waking, more than just the comfort of being awake and not choking, not trapped. There would be Jazra, or latterly there would be Marron; and being awake would be a fine thing then, and being vulnerable would be easy, no harm in the world.
Once before, it had not been a dream. Then the choking had been real, and the paralysis also; and he had felt himself fall and fall until he had entirely fallen away, into some deep deep place inside himself from where he thought he could never climb out. But Lisan had come to find him, sending her questing spirit to seek through his body and blood and bring him up again. She had mended what was torn in his throat, and he had opened eyes on a golden world and the naked body of a girl who was not his own. An imam might have thought himself in Paradise; Jemel remembered only doubt, wondering where Marron was, why not there, why her to be his shadow?