Whitemantle Page 28

  The bailey was all in a bustle as thousands of soldiers made ready to fight. Lotan pointed out the way that men were drawn up in their companies. ‘When first we came this way blades were being sharpened, but now helms are being put on,’ he said. ‘Do you see how they’ve been kicking over their fires? Nor do I see any riders here. This army has been ordered to arms!’

  Will recalled that they had passed lines of horses tethered in the woods. What cavalrymen the duke had were already mustering there.

  ‘Which way shall we go?’ Gort asked.

  ‘Follow me,’ Will said, for now the lign was clear to his eyes, sparkling across the sward like the trail of a snail. Gort’s tonic was helping him. He felt the lign as a barb in his guts like another man might feel a fear of heights or narrow confinement, but it was no longer such a burden that he was forced to his knees by it, and that filled him with renewed hope.

  ‘Richard said “today”,’ Gwydion told them, half turning as he spoke. ‘I see what is in his mind. He means to sally forth and attack the queen’s army even as it comes towards him. He is hoping to catch them unawares!’

  Lotan groaned. ‘Unawares? But they’re expecting him to do just that!’

  Willow gritted her teeth and struggled on through the tussocks. ‘Can’t he see that those arrow-borne insults are the queen’s way of winkling him out. She’s drawing him into an ambush.’

  Gwydion made no answer but turned to Will. ‘Can you say where the battlestone lies?’

  ‘I’m leading you to it as fast as I can!’

  Gwydion halted. ‘I would rather you led us away from it, for we can do nothing about the battle now.’

  Will gave the wizard a hard look and dragged him onward. ‘Nothing? Nothing except to secure it against Maskull and his helper. By all means feel despair, Master Gwydion, but there’s no need to give in to it so readily.’

  But though he berated the wizard for his faintness, Will did not know himself what he would do once he had found the Awakenfield stone. They could not drain it in time, not with Gwydion so weakened and Will’s talisman gone. And, in any case, they dared not disperse more harm into the middle airs for fear it would tip the balance further and send the world hurtling down a steeper slope towards Maskull’s new future.

  Will called them into a circle. ‘We must stay together. We’ll get as close to the stone as we dare, then wait while the battle rages all about. We’ll make Maskull think twice about approaching the stone, and set upon him when he tries. And afterwards, if we’re able, we’ll see what the stump can be made to reveal, and maybe even draw a boon from it to help us.’

  ‘What plague waits in store for us this time?’ the Wortmaster asked fearfully.

  ‘If we die, then we’ll die fighting,’ Will told him. ‘But if we live, we’ll have denied Maskull his desire. If there’s one among us who is not fast in this aim, speak now, for we must enter this final fray together. Lotan once told me that he would not, for shame, die in the company of cowards. We have proved, I hope, that we are worthy company for him. Gort, you are a healer, what better place for you than the thick of battle? Willow, my best beloved, if I am as dear to you as you are to me then know that this matter is my life’s burden: it is grained deep in me like the veins that are in marble. So help me if you can. And you, Master Gwydion, your task has been to guard this little world of ours against all the weaknesses and the failings that come to undermine it. Will you not do your final duty now, in this last battle at the year’s end? I ask you: have we the strength to fight?’

  Lotan produced a grim smile and drew his sword. ‘Let them come!’

  ‘They’ll not take an Ogdoad wizard, hey, Master Gwydion?’ Gort said. He patted Maglin’s ancient staff. ‘Not with this on our side to make the difference!’

  Willow nodded. ‘Yes, and open up that crane bag of yours, Master Gwydion. Let’s be having that nasty black bangle you keep in there. I’ll take charge of that, in case the chance comes.’

  ‘Good!’ Will said, seeing them all take heart. ‘Now, Master Gwydion, what say you?’

  The wizard’s eyes were on Will. ‘It is a fine thing that when folk act in concert their efforts do not add up, but rather multiply. Only this do I ask: that first we make haste to spy out the lie of the land so that I may get some better notion of how the battle is to proceed.’

  Will agreed, though the wizard’s words surprised him. After all that Gwydion had said about firing narwhal arrows into Maskull, he seemed oddly reluctant to come to grips with the sorcerer, and that made him suspect that Willow’s part was even more dangerous than he had admitted.

  They hurried north to intercept the dark waters of the Caldor and then turned along it a short way. As they approached the deserted town of Awakenfield they heard clarion calls and a distant beat of drums that sounded to Will like a death knell. And when he looked into the east, there was a rising mist, or perhaps a stirring along the marshy banks, then hulking shapes moving through the grey.

  ‘Duke Richard’s army will be caught like fish in a net here,’ Gort said.

  ‘He’ll be a deer in a buckstall,’ Lotan agreed.

  Will nodded, realizing now that the Awakenfield stone could not be in the town, but must lie in the fields between the river and the castle. To find it he would just have to walk the lign itself and chance to his protections.

  A rolling thunder began to reverberate from the woods, and Will saw with alarm just how close the queen’s forces had already come, for riders were hidden back there.

  ‘The stone is the other way!’ Will cried. And they were relieved, for they saw that to have gone further would have taken them into the midst of the Duke of Mells’ cavalry.

  It was not long before he pointed to a place in a long meadow where it seemed that a giant molehill was being thrown up.

  ‘It’s unburying itself.’ he said, flinging his arms wide to stop them. ‘Quickly! To the trees!’

  They took cover in a little brake of birches nearby, and there, as they watched, a grey tooth that was as big as a man thrust up through the turf. It cast a ghastly glow all around, and the air began to turn and twist above it so that it seemed to draw down the leaden clouds above.

  Then Willow stiffened, seeing something that captured her whole attention. ‘Will, look! Oh!’

  ‘Willow!’

  She began to run forward and Will dashed after her. He threw his arm around her waist and brought her down just ten paces short of the stone. And then he saw what she had seen.

  ‘She’s here!’ Willow said, scrambling to her feet.

  It was Bethe, standing by the stone, her little face anxious, holding out her arms as she did when she wanted to be lifted up.

  ‘No!’ Will yelled, grappling with Willow. ‘It’s not her!’

  But the semblance cried for its mother and Willow struggled madly to be near her.

  ‘Let me go! Let me go!’

  ‘It’s the stone!’

  And then Gwydion was with them and his staff was thrust towards the apparition and cunning words were in his mouth.

  ‘Begone!’ he cried, and there was a flash of blue light. Painful to the eye it was, bright as a lightning stroke, and Will shielded his face from it. But when he looked again, there, stepping out from behind the stone, was a beautiful woman. Her hair was red-gold, she was as slender as a weasel, and dressed in raiment that marked her as one who had lived in an Age that was long dead. She reached out to Gwydion as if to beg his help.

  The staff fell from the wizard’s grasp and he whispered, ‘Gwendolen?’

  And Will saw that although Gwydion must have known the semblance for what it was, still he went towards it, for he was captivated by the power of the stone and unable to do otherwise.

  This time it was Gort who launched himself upon the wizard and smothered him to the ground. Will picked up the discarded staff and danced out a spell that gushed clouds at the apparition and engulfed it thickly, snuffing out the vision.

  They drew back to t
he brake and held the wizard until he came to his senses. Will hastily stepped out a spell of protection upon the trees, that they might go unregarded by all who would otherwise have seen them. He could feel the magic trailing eerily from his fingertips, the flux being dragged from him by the close presence of the battlestone. He danced out augmenting spells, enveloping their hide with stronger words of concealment and magic that bent straight lines of sight around them. When the spells settled a darkness came upon them and Will knew that he had succeeded in cloaking them.

  By now the whirlwind had begun to descend from above, and was already tearing at their clothes. Will stood on the forward edge of the protected area. The very air here tried to drive him back. He wanted to approach the stone, and forced his way against the blast with outstretched arms. But it was useless. He was blinded by hail that drove into his face.

  He tried to rally, to attack the stone directly, but with Willow so near he could not press forward for fear that she would try to help him.

  ‘It’s no use!’ Lotan cried.

  ‘I must try!’

  Gort grabbed his arm. ‘If it’s Chlu and Maskull who’re worrying you, I think neither will dare to jeopardize himself out there today!’

  And it was clearly so.

  The advice shook Will’s resolve and he wavered. Almost immediately the sky began to swirl with bruises – yellows and reds and purples. It seemed like a bloody overcast, underlit by an inferno blazing unseen in a pit. Then the ground began to shake with giant footfalls, and he saw moving through the mists the heavy heads of trolls. They were not giants such as Magog and Gogmagog, but half-wild hill dwellers who stood head and shoulders above ordinary men.

  Crests of russet hair flowed from their heads, and many wore bracken-red beards. Their gross-featured faces were tattooed blue in terrifying war masks, for it was their habit to raid incessantly. Usually they held to their own fastnesses in the mountains and fought among themselves, or troubled remote castles upon the moors of Umberland where they came to steal sheep and cattle, but when times were hard they could range all down the mountainous spine of the north in worrisome numbers. And now they were in thrall to a terrible power.

  Will saw that their presence explained the sounds of rolling thunder, for when warring upon men they wielded knobbed maces, and made a fearsome din by slamming them against their shields, which were as big as cottage doors.

  The company stood fast in their little hide. Will watched grimly as the battle erupted. To the north he saw the colours of the men who led the queen’s battalions. In red and gold, and on his high horse was the Hogshead. Helmless he was, and in high dudgeon, wholly transformed at last from the neck up into a great, tusked boar, with no lingering trace of humanity about him. His foaming snout gurgled orders, while all those around him did his bidding. His red-clad levies rushed on with billhooks and poleaxes, ready to encircle their enemy, confident they had the numbers and enough advantage to carry the day.

  When Will looked to the east he saw the blue and white of the Duke of Mells’ footmen teeming forward in vast numbers from the woods. Most of them waved axes and pole-arms, but many were carrying arquebuses, weapons that allowed sorcerer’s powder to be burned inside a small cannon and a volley of stones to be shot out into the ranks of the foe. Emerging along with Duke Henry’s colours were a forest of others now, those of the northern lords, like Duke Pierce of Umber with his stiff-tailed lion on a field of black and red, and the red and white banner of Duke Richard’s son-in-law, Lord Exmoor. And then Will saw with dismay the flags of Jasper of Pendrake and his father, Owain, staunch supporters of King Hal, for reasons of blood.

  Will decided he must go forward alone and engage the stone as best he could. It was a plan as suicidal as Duke Richard’s, but he knew he must try. Before he could shake off his friends’ restraining hands however, the wet ground trembled again. Will turned to see a great piebald charger whinny and rear. Astride it, red-armoured and shimmering with crimson silk, sat Mad Clifton. Will had not clapped eyes upon him since the day at Delamprey when the battlestone had filled him with foolhardy passions and he had sent out a thunderbolt to unseat the insane lord. Will had brought down Clifton’s airborne steed that day, and the wyvern had snapped its neck in the fall, but the Mad Baron had lived to fight again. Here he was now, implacable, drooling for blood, and hardly able to wait until his enemy’s head was properly in the noose.

  Will swore, seeing that he had lost his last chance, for even with all the magic that remained to him he could not appear before Clifton’s bloodthirsty legion and hope to reach the stone alive.

  Then all hope vanished, for Duke Richard was already leading his bodyguard from the South Gate of the castle and his army was wheeling around to meet the threat that was bearing down upon them. There would be no victory here for the duke. Even so, he harried his men on, impetuously leading the charge deep into the enemy. And they, loyal and faithful as the best men are, followed him towards the jaws that would gobble them up.

  The bangs of arquebuses peppered the air with noise. Sorcerer’s powder gave its distinctive taint to the air. Will saw the blue and yellow Morte banners and the green eagle of Sarum flanking the duke’s own standard. He saw the Lord Harringdon and his son spurring their chargers on, and Sarum’s second son, Thomas of Norvale, raising up his sword. And there, visor closed, and wholly encased in shining armour came…

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘He has come!’ Gort cried. ‘Edward is here!’

  ‘Then there is hope after all,’ Lotan growled.

  But the spiralling clouds drew themselves tighter around the battlestone, and snuffed the hope from his words, for when Will looked again he saw that he had misread the azure and murrey colours of the banner. This was not the white lion of the Earl of the Marches, but the peacock badge of the Earl of Rutteland. It was brave Edmund who was leading forward the thousand men of his father’s rear guard.

  The clash when it came was fierce and fearsome. Duke Richard thrust deep into the ranks of the enemy. A wedge of men fighting around him and his standard bearer rode down the enemy ranks. They set about themselves with sword and mace, contending furiously to reach the person of the Duke of Mells. But, just as it seemed the heroic drive would succeed, the man-trap was sprung.

  Richard of Ebor’s army was caught riding hard down the throat of a monster. From right and left the flank attack came, so that now three armies were bearing down upon one. A wall of Albanay hill-men with their curved blades and round, iron-studded shields shattered the mounted attack. Blue-faced ogres threw down riders and tore saddles from horses. The force that drove the spearhead faltered, and soon the Ebor army was severed in the middle. The forward guard in which the duke fought was surrounded and steadily cut to pieces, while the rear guard was halted before a troll shield-wall.

  ‘They’re breaking,’ Lotan said as he watched them turn and be put to rout.

  Will watched bitterly as Edmund’s efforts to rally his men failed. He could not reach his father, but saw him dragged down from his horse by a great tattooed hand to vanish among a morass of wild-men.

  ‘Run for your life!’ Will shouted, though he knew Edmund could not hear him. He started forward, his reason now cast to the winds, wanting only to help Edmund get away. But Lotan seized him.

  At last, Edmund’s bodyguard succeeded in extricating him. They turned his steed’s head and sent it galloping away from the enemy. Tears were in Will’s eyes, for a dreadful slaughter was being visited upon those among whom he had grown up. Those who had been surrounded fought valiantly but died violently. Duke Richard’s colours were snatched down and the shout went up that the duke was dead.

  Will knew it beyond question. He stared and stared, hearing only the death rattle of the house of Ebor. It filled his head and left him incapable of feeling anything except horror.

  Down on the field the battlestone was still fulminating, gouting black fumes of harm into the air. But the rush and swirl above it was already breaking up
, and Will knew that it had almost emptied itself of harm.

  After all they had come here to do, neither Maskull nor Chlu had deigned to show themselves. Why not? he wondered. Had they foreseen the trap that lay in wait for them? Or had they known?

  ‘Was I right to have brought us here?’ he asked the wizard. ‘Should we have stayed in plain sight, and behaved as if there was nothing we could do but watch?’

  The wizard could find no words of comfort in his heart for Will. From their unregarded little thicket the company looked out like mariners upon a tempest ocean. Men were streaming away from the fight now. The duke’s followers had thrown down their weapons and were dashing for their lives. Horses were galloping past as armoured men threw off helm and gauntlet, undoing the straps of their gear as fast as they could, both to unburden themselves and to strew in their wake valuable booty that their pursuers might prefer over murder.

  A war standard was thrown down from such a rider, its peacock colours trampled in the mud. Suddenly, a running man burst through the magic that hid them. He fell amazed in their midst like a fish that has leapt into a boat. He gasped and struggled in panic, no doubt thinking himself slain. But then terror seized him and he threw himself to his feet, and he was off in a flash, and running again.

  Will smelled the stench of fear on the man, and saw that the concealing spell must already have begun to lose its virtue.

  ‘To the stone!’ he yelled, gathering them.

  This time Lotan did not try to stop him, but rather followed, and once he moved so did the others. The air was still glittering with motes of pain and every lungful of air tasted foul and prickled the skin with vileness. But the lorc had had its day and the onrush of malice was already lifting into the upper airs.

  They gathered at the stump, eyes and teeth aching, just as the last sigh came. It stood, tilted and steaming and withered, and Will thought the last dregs of malice that left it made it seem triumphant and self-satisfied, a rock of adamant in the eye of a dying storm.