Hallsfoot's Battle Read online

  From somewhere, he managed to speak, although the words refused to stay in his head. “These…these people, Gelahn. Th-they are not fighters. Please, don’t massacre them, I beg you.”

  He couldn’t see how, amidst the noise and horror, the executioner could possibly have heard his useless speech, but still the man dragging him forward stopped abruptly and turned to face him. Gelahn’s eyes were as impenetrable as the sea that had almost been the end of Simon. Around them, a net of protection cut out the sound of war for a few moments, even though the scribe could still see what was taking place. By the gods and stars, he believed he could see it even if he shut his eyes. Perhaps he would see it always.

  Gelahn spoke into the strange silence and this time his words were not simply those of the mind.

  “These people imprisoned and tortured me,” he said, “for long, long year-cycles that you, in your simplicity, cannot even begin to imagine. Oh, yes, you will say it was their leaders, not the people themselves. But in the mind of a Gathandrian Elder, the voice and desires of the people are most truly heard. Do you think they do not deserve punishment? All of them? And revenge does not rest with a balanced measure but must give back with interest where it was received. You see, my friend, vengeance is the most pure thought that exists through all the lands we know. It brings justice and clears the past of its wrongs. When that is done, then, and only then, will mercy begin. For then will I have the power to show it.”

  Gelahn clicked his fingers and the world came tumbling in again. The scribe’s heart beat wildly at what his captor intended, and how he might fulfil his deadly dream. The darkness seemed to close in around his mind, tear at his flesh. It was impossible to deny it. What the mind-executioner wanted would surely come to pass.

  As Gelahn continued to drag the scribe through the field, intent on some purpose he could not twist out of him, Simon caught a glimpse of the great black cane with its silver carving. The glint of it almost blinded him for a moment or two before the snowfall came between them. At the same time, a current of air swept over him and he glanced up to see the snow-raven as it twisted in flight above. What was the bird doing?

  He had to get the cane and use it against Gelahn somehow. But how?

  The executioner laughed and this time Simon felt the full strength of his presence in his mind. Fire tracked through his thoughts as they had the first time he’d met Gelahn, the first time he’d succumbed to him. He gasped and tried to cry out, but his throat was constricted and he could form no words, not even a scream.

  Gelahn pulled him closer. Now the scribe could see the glints of crimson in the darkness of his eyes. It was as if the Gathandrian was on fire from within, driven by a power Simon couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  Oh, yes, the executioner whispered in the scribe’s weakened mind. I hear all you think and all you are. Because you are mine and you can never break free from me.

  Then where are we going? If all I am is yours, then what harm can there be for me to know it?

  Simon didn’t know where the courage to fling those thoughts at his captor had come from, but then another flash of silver from the mind-cane held him and he felt its warmth pierce into his skin. The sudden small shaft of pain made him blink, but then it was gone. Even so, he could feel something in his mind had changed. He glanced at Gelahn but the executioner gave no sign of having seen anything unusual, but the emeralds at his belt glowed a deeper green for a moment or two before subsiding.

  Then the mind-executioner spoke, out loud.

  “We must get to the Gathandrian Library,” he said. “There all things will be made as one. There will all our journeys end.”

  Ralph

  The last thing he remembers is an explosion—in his courtyard. The mind-executioner has the emeralds he longed to keep from his enemy and Ralph cannot fight back. How that has galled him, not fighting back. But his mind is like water and he cannot stand within it.

  There is Simon, too. The scribe who reads him better than he’s ever been read. Ralph tried once to tear him apart, but he has not been destroyed. The Overlord does not know whether that truth brings him grief or joy. Still, he remembers the scribe and his touch upon Ralph’s arm as everything rushed away from him. A circle of fire, dead men wearing the insignia of Lammas soldiers, and the mind-cane in Gelahn’s hand tumble through his thoughts for a moment.

  Then, nothing.

  No, not quite nothing. A sense in his thoughts that everything he understood was vanishing and he was being swept away into a world he knew nothing about. Now the world is still again, but the air smells different. There is no longer the scents of stone and earth, but something sharper. Cedars, perhaps? And the clarity of snow. The noise is the same, however, as it was just before the world tilted. The noise of war and the beginning of war.

  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. T
he 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.