Heartwood (62 page)

“I think we need a change of plan,” said Procella. “They are not going to come in through the doors. They are going to come in through the ceiling, if the walls do not fall first.”

Valens nodded. “I think we should abandon the doors. We will make a ring around the outer circle and another around the inner circle.”

“What about the injured?” Beata asked softly.

Valens shook his head. “We will have to leave them where they are; we cannot afford for them to get in the way while we are fighting. Let us start organising this.”

The group split, and everyone began preparing themselves for the last stand. Furniture was moved well out of the way against the walls, and the knights organised themselves into two rings, one in the inner circle, the other in the outer. Beata took Teague's hand and pulled him into the inner circle. He tried to resist her, but this time, she refused to release him. “There is nowhere left to go,” she said. “This is it. Now, do you have a weapon?”

“Yes, I have a short sword. I am not skilled at warfare, though.”

“It is for self-defence,” she announced. “You will not be fighting. You will only need it after they have come through me.”

She drew her own sword and started checking the lacings and buckles of her armour. Around them, the Temple groaned and creaked again. She had the terrible image of a wall of water climbing up the Temple, washing over the bodies of the knights who had fallen, sweeping them away as they continued their relentless attack.

What would be worse, she wondered: falling to a sword or drowning? She thought about the panic that had engulfed her when she had been shot in the water. She had always expected that if she didn't die of old age, she would die in battle; it was the nature of the role she had played all her life. But drowning was such an alien concept. Though they learned to swim in the Flumen, few of the Heartwood knights were comfortable in water, and she suspected the thought of being unable to breathe under water was as frightening to everyone else as it was to her.

She finished tightening the buckles on her belt and turned to see Teague staring her. “I should help,” he said, clutching the hilt of his sword, looking strangely vulnerable without the heavy armour she was used to seeing around Heartwood.

“I thought this was not your fight.” She wasn't accusing him; she just stated the fact. He looked confused, and turned and looked up at the Arbor. The point of his sword dropped slowly to the floor, and the hilt hung loosely in his hand. His gaze went unfocussed.

Beata frowned. “Teague?” He did not reply. She went over to him. The sword fell from his hand. Still he did not look away from the tree. “Teague?”

It was no good. Something had happened to him: he had been entranced by the tree. Her heart gave a funny little flip. Perhaps it wasn't all over, she thought. Perhaps there was something he could do.

“Look!” someone yelled, and she turned to see people looking up at the ceiling. She blinked, finding it difficult to see in the moonlight. Was she imagining it, or was water lapping at the glass in the top of the dome?

“Arbor, help us.” She said the words under her breath, leaving Teague and backing towards the ring of knights who had all drawn their swords and were waiting nervously.

The water level crept up the glass panes set into the stone. Higher and higher it rose, and then finally it was at the top, and the Temple was covered.

Beata held her breath.

When the first pane broke it made her jump, the splintering of glass sounding loud in the silence of the Temple. The fragments fell to the floor like glittering snowflakes, another danger they would have to think about. Water seeped through the crack, running down the Temple wall. They all watched it trailing down the bricks, where it pooled on the flagstones.

Through the rest of the panes Beata could see the High Moon. Coloured by the glass and its surface fragmented by the water covering the dome, it was a strangely surreal picture, giving her the impression she was actually at the bottom of the sea. She looked across at Dolosus, wondering if he was remembering how it felt to be a water elemental in the ocean. To her surprise, he was smiling slightly. It unsettled her, and made her grow cold. Surely he was not working for Darkwater?

Her attention was distracted then by another pane breaking, then another. Water now began pouring down in streams, then in torrents. All around puddles formed on the floor, and the knights tightened their formation, raised their weapons. How long would it take for the elementals to take physical form? Beata was sick of the waiting. Now she wanted to get on with it, wanted to fight.

She cast one last glance over her shoulder. Teague had not moved at all, even when the glass broke; he was still staring at the Arbor, seemingly lost in a dream. She could not do anything for him now, she thought, except try to keep him safe until the very end.

 

III

When the Darkwater Lords rose out of the water, they rose as one, about a hundred warriors, green-skinned and broad-shouldered, dressed in their beautiful shell armour.

Dolosus hefted his sword in his right hand, waiting for them to approach. His sword was a little lighter than the usual Militis broadsword, as he had adapted his fighting manner following the loss of his arm. Before, he had used the standard thrust and parry, relying on his size and weight to gain control over his opponent, but now he kept his fitness at a higher level and his weight down and moved more quickly, relying instead on his speed and a greater variety of sword movements to keep ahead.

He felt healthy and ready for this battle. Though the swim from Darkwater had been long and tiring, his transformation back into earth elemental had somehow rejuvenated him, and he felt stronger and more alive than he had in months.

He looked along the line of knights, seeing Procella, Valens, Grimbeald, Gravis, Niveus, the Hanaireans and all the others he had known in his time at Heartwood who were still alive, all there readying themselves for the first contact, and pleasure surged through him that he was included in their ranks, that he was one of them. This was why he had returned, he thought: for the companionship and the feeling of belonging he just hadn't had in Darkwater.

The first group of Darkwater warriors advanced quickly, engaging the ring of Heartwood knights in the outer circle, and then suddenly more emerged from the water that had fallen on the inner circle, and in seconds one came towards him, and their swords met with a mighty clash.

One of the water warriors landed right in front of Dolosus, and he prepared himself to fight: feet spread wide, knees bent a little, sword across his body, on the balls of his feet so he was ready to move in any direction. The warrior turned to him and drew back his sword, and then… He stood, dropped his sword arm and stepped back.

Dolosus did not waste the opportunity and swung at him, cutting deep into the weak space between the warrior's helmet and shoulder guard, biting into his neck. The warrior shuddered, then melted into a puddle at his feet.

Dolosus stared at the water, puzzled, but there was no time to think on the matter because there was another warrior, and another, springing up in front of him.

He turned and did the same: spread his feet, readied himself for a blow; but again, the same thing happened. The warriors turned, saw him and stood to attention, lowering their weapons. Again, he took the advantage and swung his blade; the first he cut through the arm and then stabbed in his stomach, just below the shell breastplate, the second he got in the top of the thigh. Both warriors melted away, leaving him standing, hardly even out of breath. He swung his sword, growling, not satisfied by the easy deaths. He wanted a fight!

Ahead of him, across the channel, a vicious battle was going on, with the knights in the outer circle engaged in bloodthirsty fights, and so he pushed his way through, swinging his sword and cutting down water warriors until he found himself in the middle of the fray.

He yelled at the warrior nearest to him and the warrior turned, raised his sword. But then he saw who he was fighting and lowered his sword, stood to attention. Dolosus swung his weapon, cut up into the invader's armpit. Again the enemy gurgled and died.

“Fight me!” he yelled, spinning and approaching someone else, but every time it was the same. They would prepare to fight, see who it was and then lower their weapon, even though it meant certain death.

Dolosus roared, a flailing fury in the centre of the outer circle, warriors falling every which way from his blade. He fought for a long time, but every time he felled one of them it seemed two more sprung up in his place, and none of them would fight him.

After a while, he stopped fighting. He stood in the centre of the invaders and watched while they attacked his friends, but he found he could not raise his sword to help them. He felt sickened by the killing fury he had just experienced. There was no joy in taking a life in such way, no satisfaction. He could slay these Darkwater warriors forever, and still they would rise up and defeat Heartwood.

One of them rose up beside him, and he turned, saying, “I will not fight you.” Then he stopped as he looked at the golden sash across the warrior's chest.

“Father,” he gasped.

Dolosus stared at the High Lord of Darkwater, feeling all the energy and enthusiasm he had received on returning to Heartwood drain from him.

“What, not happy to see me?” said Thalassinus, with absolutely no humour in his voice at all.

“Are you here to kill me?” Dolosus asked, conscious that all around them were the sounds of battle, and yet feeling as isolated from his companions as surely as if there were a brick wall between them and him. He kept his weapon across his body, his weight on the balls of his feet. If Thalassinus intended to strike, Dolosus was not going to stand there like the High Lord's warriors and take it without fighting back.

“Of course not,” said Thalassinus mildly. “You are my son; why would I want to kill you?”

Dolosus's eyes narrowed. “I am not going to stand by and let you destroy Heartwood.”

Thalassinus gestured to the warriors fighting around him and said, “They will not stop you; you have seen that already. Why do you not continue to hack them down where they stand?”

Dolosus said nothing. He realised Thalassinus was banking on the fact that he would have no stomach for a mindless slaughter.

The High Lord looked pointedly at the sleeve of Dolosus's tunic, where it had been tucked under and sewn just above his elbow. “Are you enjoying being a cripple again?”

Dolosus flushed. He swung his sword at Thalassinus, who met it with a parry that made the two weapons ring. “I am not a cripple,” Dolosus snapped. “I can fight as well as any knight in the Temple.”

“As well as when you had two arms?”

Unbidden, the memory flooded his head of how he had felt when he first transformed into a water elemental. He remembered looking down and seeing his hand back in place, and the thrill that had run through him at the thought that he was whole again. He looked at Thalassinus, who was smiling slightly, and he wondered whether the warrior had somehow stimulated the memory to return.

“Do you want me to show you how well I fight?” Dolosus asked, raising his sword.

Thalassinus just smiled, however. “Do you really want to kill your father?”

Dolosus felt Damaris stir within him, and he knew he would not be able to bring himself to do it.

Inside him, he felt something flicker, like the sun filtering through clouds, or a candle flame fluttering in the wind. It was Damaris, fighting to get out and take hold of his form and change it to a water elemental. “No!” he cried, trying to concentrate on the ground beneath his feet, but all he could think of was water, the feeling of cool blue liquid flowing through his fingers, and the beautiful green of the deep.

Dolosus felt Damaris shifting inside him. He felt his loyalties being torn and twisted between Thalassinus, his real father who had promised him a kingdom and who had the power to make him whole, and Valens, his adopted father who had taken him in and given him a place he could think of as his own.

He felt completely divided. How could he fight against his natural father? How could he turn his back on the chance to rule Darkwater, that beautiful, glittering jewel under the ocean? And how could he pass up the chance to have his arm back again?

And yet, the thought of leaving Valens to die made him ache inside. He could see him now, fighting in front of the Arbor. The Imperator was clearly favouring his right leg, and Dolosus's trained eye could see his reactions were slower than the other knights fighting around him. Still, his experience kept him ahead of the game, and Darkwater knights fell continually to his sword.

Thalassinus stood in front of him, the first signs of anger showing on his face as he saw Dolosus looking at Valens. Damaris pushed his way through briefly, and his body contorted as the two elementals fought for dominance.

Through his pain, Dolosus saw Thalassinus turn away from him and march towards the Arbor. Heartwood knights stepped in front of him to stop him, but he swept them away with one swing of his sword. Dolosus watched, frozen with pain and indecision, as the High Lord of Darkwater crossed the channel to the inner ring. Someone stood in front of him – was it Gravis? But Thalassinus swung his sword and cut him down.

“No!” Dolosus twisted inside and fell to his knees. He saw Thalassinus walk up to Valens.

Valens wouldn't know this was the High Lord of Darkwater, Dolosus realised. He tried to shout to him, but Damaris clenched his throat, forced him to keep quiet.

Valens turned and saw the warrior approaching and spread his feet, his injured right leg slightly behind him. He raised his sword, ready for battle.

 

IV

The moment the oak doors of the Temple shut behind him, Chonrad felt he was in a different world. The Temple had been unusually busy and noisy, the atmosphere filled with nervous tension, but here in the corridor between the Temple and the Domus, it was completely quiet, the only noise a muffled knocking as the doors were barricaded from the other side.