Whitemantle (27 page)

‘You see?…arrows are found each morning…all over the keep…my father has them collected…and burned.’

‘Love letters from Queen Mag,’ Gwydion said with heavy sarcasm.

When Will asked after the whereabouts of Edward, Edmund confirmed that he had gone to the Marches to raise men. And it seemed that his young brothers Richard and George were with him. Of Lord Warrewyk there was equally dispiriting news – he had remained in Trinovant to have the keeping of King Hal.

‘Then the Ebor force is split three ways!’ Will groaned.

‘That is not good,’ Lotan said heavily.

‘Is some attempt going to be made to free the king?’ Willow asked, and Will saw that she was now worried beyond reason for Bethe’s sake. ‘Will, if there should be bloodletting in the palace, and if the duchess becomes caught up in it—’

But there was no chance for Will to reassure her, for now the doors flew open and the duke himself appeared. He was white-faced and red-eyed and he seemed suffused with a weird light. His cold anger was awesome to Will.

‘I fight for the crown!’

Edmund’s whinny was pitiful as he was roughly pushed aside. ‘Father…please! Those words…’

‘Were you not all instructed by my seneschal to go from this place?’

‘Father…’

‘Get out, all of you! Go! The dread hour is at hand!’

Then Gwydion spoke with all the power he yet commanded. ‘Richard, hear me!’

‘No, Crowmaster, you may not speak here!’

But then the magnate collapsed and the weird light fell from him. He sat down on his own step like one suddenly aware of a weight of tragedy that had settled upon him.

When next he spoke, it was with a sigh. ‘No, you may not speak here, Master Gwydion, for you will only try to tell me that I must keep this castle and defend it the same until my son comes with his power of Marchermen. I will not be counselled thus, for my fate is upon me and I must meet it in the manner best fitting. If you have loved me as you say, how now would you have me dishonoured? You never saw me hide from mine enemies like a bird included within a cage, for I am a
man
! I have not kept myself behind walls nor hid my face from any man living. Would you that I did so today for dread of a scolding woman? No, my friend, the great number of mine enemies does not appal my spirits, but rather encourages them, for if I am to die then it will be as the rightful king of this Realm dies, and in no other way.’

This time Gwydion did not seek to argue. He bowed deeply and withdrew without demur. Nor was the reason hard to fathom, for no one could negotiate with insanity.

‘Alas! Richard is already a dead man.’ Gwydion’s skirts swirled around him as he strode out across the drawbridge escorted by the men of Sir Hugh’s guard. Will felt the shame of the retreat keenly. Sneers and shouts followed them from the walls. But those who stood closer, though they may have lost their respect for a wizard’s crook, still did not dare to insult the cloaked giant who shepherded the little party down into the bailey and back across the ditch to the gate.

Will did not wish to look back, for a deep gloom had descended over him. How he had admired the duke in days gone by. Now it felt as if his own father had been put under a sentence of death, so firmly was the man reconciled to an unalterable fate.

‘Nothing is unalterable for those who truly wish to change it,’ he muttered.

Willow tugged on Will’s arm, and he realized how the meeting had affected her.

‘Why has Edward taken his two younger brothers with him? Why, Will? Do you think maybe they’re going in secret to Caster and taking ship to the Blessed Isle? What’s going to happen in Trinovant? Master Gwydion said they have riots there. What if the White Hall was to burn—’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, his jaw knotting. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

‘How can I
not
worry? Aren’t you worried?’ Her words were suddenly fierce.

Then Gwydion half caught the comment and said, ‘I hope he is worried – for I am.’

Will felt the presence of the nearby lign, and knowing the mark of the lorc was upon them all helped him bear their accusations. It frustrated him that only he could see it for what it was, but in a strange way it could also be a source of comfort. ‘Forgive them,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Forgive them their faults, for they are not like you.’

An undeniable odour drifted across the castle walls, the whiff of malice. There was certainly a battlestone sited where the two ligns met, perhaps seven leagues to the north, of that he was now certain. But there was something else much nearer, something
here
that did not wish to reveal itself.

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 the 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.