Whitemantle (28 page)

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.

I
t was a ghastly afternoon. Will stood for what seemed like an age as the queen’s horde scattered from the field in pursuit of their vanquished foe. Then he watched Gort and Gwydion circling the stump, impatient to know the verse that it would yield. Willow, with a hastily gathered knife, and Lotan, with his broadsword, looked out for their backs, but the fury of battle had already ebbed.

In the end Will left them all to the stone. He staggered forward unseen, wandering a hundred paces then clambering over a barrier of dead horses and men. He found the place where the bloodletting had been at its greatest. Here the dead lay thickly in an unimaginable litter. The fallen had already been deprived of their costliest possessions – weapons and armour were the prizes, rings and purses, shoes and saddles, lordly treasure left for the taking. A few tardy looters were fighting one another like carrion dogs among the bodies, looking now for lesser gains. They were stripping the dead of their last shreds of modesty, tearing off arming jackets, silken shirts and underlinen, leaving the bloodied corpses to lie naked in the mud.

Those who saw Will snarled at him and pulled back as he passed among them. Perhaps it was shame that made
them draw away, for he went unarmed, but there was something about his demeanour that gave them pause. They could see he was not here to do what they were doing. Will paid the scavengers no heed, for his heart was leaden with woe. The death prophecy that had sat upon the head of Duke Richard had now been fulfilled in terrible fashion. In the end it had come to this, despite everything they had tried to do to avert it.

But Will found no sign of the duke’s body. He stumbled among the carnage, turning the naked corpses over one by one. There were too many he recognized – Sir John Morte, who had taught him the soldier’s art, and who now lay dead because of it. And near the son lay the father – Sir Hugh, who had tried to turn them back from the castle gate. His Bulldog face was no less fierce in death, and Will saw with horror the open wounds that showed he had gone down fighting to the last, trying, it seemed, to reach his slain son.

Will searched silently, breathing the intimate stench of death, numbed by the odiousness of the task. All around him lay ogre-bitten bodies, some headless, others crushed. Here were a dozen more faces known to him, men remembered from Foderingham, Ludford and Trinovant. Over there, trapped under a dead horse and likely one of the last to die, was Thomas, Lord Norvale, the Earl of Warrewyk’s brother, and there were others he knew but could not name. Men lay blood-splashed and carelessly entangled with one another, men of high station and low, equal now in death. Yet of the duke’s body there was still no sign.

A strange kind of hope sprang up in Will’s heart. He wondered if he should pay it heed, for what use was hope that was not listened to?

The truth was simple: there was not much value in butcher’s meat. Yet a wounded lord, captured and borne away – such a prize would be worth a lot, for any duchess
or countess would surely be prepared to pay a king’s ransom to see her beloved again…

Battle shock beat through Will as he staggered out of the bloody maze. Neither the duke nor the Earl Sarum had been there, he was sure, and that added weight to his hopes.

He shook his head in an attempt to clear it of the ringing that muted his thoughts. He hoped and trusted that Willow would be safe with Gwydion, but hope and trust were quantities easily twisted by the lorc, and the nearness of the stump would send his feelings awry. He must not forget that.

After a while he was drawn back to the battlestone. His state of mind was dream-like now and the stone’s appeal overwhelming. He imagined he would meet the others there, but a fog of unreason blinded him as he approached. It tried to make him uninterested. It invited him to sit down and rest and put his cares aside, but he stayed on his feet and so saw the truth at last. Of course the others were not there. They had retired to some safer remove once the verse had been coaxed from the stump. The pain had reached a climax in Will’s head. The worst was over and, as the mists cleared and his mind began to settle, the shape of the battle emerged from fragments of memory.

If the lorc had been working to confuse the duke, it must have been directing the queen’s commanders with lucid clarity. Her host had seemed like a vast and unruly mass of men, an army studded here and there with lumbering half-giants which had been partly tamed by Maskull. These creatures had been tempted south to be the queen’s hammer, but the laying of so complete an ambush had the stamp of a sorcerer’s intervention about it.

Will decided that must have been the reason why Maskull had not come to tap the battlestone. Then he asked himself what would happen when Maskull’s power over the queen’s forces wore thin, as it surely must now.

The lorc’s influence would have bent and buckled what remained of the sorcerer’s magic. And now that the lorc was weakening, what corrupted spells were guiding the horde? Where would the magic send them now? What would they do?

The likely answers gave Will little comfort, for ogres were dangerous beasts – dour, lumbering creatures whose only interest ordinarily was to spit and roast stolen mutton up on the moors. That they had had their simple hearts twisted to an unnatural desire for booty did not bode well for the land hereabouts. Would the army withdraw now to Ebor to enjoy its ill-gotten gains, or was there fresher meat at hand?

Will found himself hugging the stone. He wiped the sweat from his face, wondering in particular now about the madness that had sent Duke Richard sallying forth from the Castle of Sundials. To his warrior’s eye, the enemy troops must have seemed like a rabble who were breaking every rule of military discipline, a mob that could easily be routed. Nettled into rage and suspicion, and taunted by Queen Mag’s enchanted challenges, Richard had refused Gwydion’s advice. He had ridden out by the South Gate, swinging his thrice-outnumbered army around to meet what he saw as a morass of farmers and fieldsmen. But other forces had come from the woods and driven down into the open space between castle and town. Duke Henry of Mells, Baron Clifton and Lord Strange had each sent a column cutting into the fray like a spearhead. And the most fearsome of these warriors had been Lord Strange, who sat tall upon his charger, laying about him furiously with a six-flanged mace.

Now, as Will cast about, he saw Gwydion, and, sitting among the dead, one of the great man-like trolls, a trickle of blood drooling from its thick lips. Taller by half a head than Gwydion it was, though it sat on its haunches, groaning
like thunder. But still the wizard attended it in the same way he attended any other self-knowing creature, calming and curing, tenderly teasing arrowheads from its flesh. It seemed to Will that all the wizard’s old strength and power had returned…

‘Let’s go! They’re coming!’

Will turned to see Lotan, out of breath, hulking and grimfaced, bare steel in hand.

‘Willand! There are trolls and wild-men hunting down all who have no spell of protection upon them. Come with me!’

‘Did Gwydion send you?’ he asked dreamily.

‘Stop hiding behind that damned stone! It feels good, but it will not help you stay alive.’

Will would not be persuaded, and even when the big man pulled at his arm, he resisted until roughly dragged away. But Lotan was right: he
was
drawing false comfort from the remnant of the battlestone. And now as he looked again he saw that the dying ogre was indeed alone, and no one had bothered with its sufferings.

‘Give me a moment,’ he said, shaking off the kindly visions.

‘We don’t have one to spare,’ Lotan growled. ‘Trust me. I know about these things!’

Will checked himself, then he began to follow Lotan towards the river. Now that he was beyond the stump, fears for Willow bubbled up inside him. In a shambles like this there was no easy way to tell friend from foe, and it mattered little to men whose main concern was to find, then hold onto, the rain of riches that battle had scattered among them. Will was fortunate, for those who saw Lotan showed little desire to contest the sword from his hand. The big man picked up a tabard of russet red that looked much like the faded livery of one of Lord Strange’s men, and threw it at Will.

‘Put it over you.’

Will and Lotan joined the great flood of men that were pouring northward like a tributary gift sent from the bloody battlefield to the River Caldor. Men streamed towards the little town of Awakenfield, leaving others to take apart the Castle of Sundials, which was an altogether harder nut to crack. The defenceless town lay like a bound hostage, its people helpless now. There was no longer any reason to keep them cowed with promises of safety, so doubtless Maskull had unleashed his dogs upon them by way of payment.

‘Take what you will!’ was the cry from the parapet as they came to the bridge. ‘Have you not earned it this day?’

And there the brazen sorcerer stood, high upon the stone lip of the bridge’s main arch. Maskull held only his staff, a glittering rod of iron, careless of the danger, yet secure as a crow on a roof ridge. His beetle-black eyes had not alighted on Will, for triumph was upon him. Now he was exhorting those who had won the fight to set about still fouler work.

‘Use the people! Wring them dry then burn their hovels! Did I not promise you a great victory?’

Will felt the compelling rapture infect those who heard it. He himself was caught among that same press of men, running across the bridge into the town. But something made him stop before he reached the end of the bridge, for there he saw another fearsome and familiar figure: Mad Clifton, unmissable in his wyvern-hide armour, sword in hand and aroused to an immense passion.

There at his feet, imploring mercy on bended knees, was the cause of his vengeful ecstasy – Tutor Aspall.

Will’s old teacher from Foderingham was older and greyer now, but unmistakable. Will staggered at the sight of him, white-faced and pleading on another man’s behalf.

‘Mercy!’ Tutor Aspall begged. ‘Please save him, for he is a duke’s son and worth your while! If you must kill, then take me in his stead, for he is but a young man!’

Yet the scholar’s well-meant words proved to be a death sentence. A long knife was put at the tutor’s throat, and a gleeful shout rang out from Mad Clifton.

Then the other man, until now bent down in the mud, leapt up and threw off his cloak. He dived awkwardly at the dagger blade and wrestled for it.

‘Edmund, Earl of Rutteland!’ the madman exulted. ‘What a prize!’

‘No!’ Will cried, throwing out his hands and kindling green fire there.

But it was too late and too little. Will’s feeble spell-cast burst into splinters against resilient wyvern skin as Clifton bent to slit the strings of the learned man’s neck.

Edmund’s second lunge saved his tutor’s life and the latter fell back, but with a grasping fist Mad Clifton lifted up the unarmed youth and shook him like a rat, saying, ‘By God’s blood, your father slew mine, and so I will do to you and all your kin!’

Then he stuck the young earl to the heart, deep as his dagger would go, and bade Tutor Aspall bear the earl’s mother and brother word of what he had done.

Will felt sympathetic pain lance into his chest as brave Edmund lay frothing blood. There had been no time for Will to act, and the next moment rooted him absolutely, for a purple fire broke over them all, scattering men from the bridge in screaming panic.

The core of the flame searched Will out. It roared and scorched, searing skin and infusing whatever flesh it touched with agony. But the wavering brightness had smitten a knot of men who happened to come between Will and his persecutor. They took the worst of the fire and fell as cinders or ran, hair and coats flaming.

The noisome stench of burning flesh rose up. Will had known that his desperate spell-cast would draw Maskull’s eye. He now realized that it had drained him utterly and he
must suffer the afterclap as the magic burst back on him. He threw himself down and hugged the road, desperate to draw earth power. But he was on the bed of a bridge and no renewal was possible. He felt the sorcerer’s eye mark Lotan and then fall upon him. The purple blast came again, this time well-directed and shaped to kill. But in that moment while Will lay on the ground searching for his last reserves of strength, a perfect peace descended over his mind and he was able to pull together all the unmade strands of his talent and bind them into a whole that was more than its parts.

A green glow sprang out and enveloped him like a beetle’s carapace. It batted Maskull’s deadly fire aside. Then Lotan roared, charged the bridge parapet like a berserker, and his sword melted as he hewed deeper and deeper into that spewing flame. Sparks fountained from the grinding contact.

It seemed that the fierce fire must soon be turned on the source of such foolhardy daring. But the purple played single-mindedly on Will as he continued desperately to shield himself inside his shell. So it was that Maskull’s fixed hatred became his undoing, for though he would not change his plan for a mere swordsman, that swordsman was now so close that he was able to fling a red-hot hilt into the sorcerer’s face.

Lotan threw the iron cross with all his might, and with a mercenary soldier’s aim. Abruptly, the stream of flame burning down on Will’s back broke off. Maskull was caught unprepared, was forced to lift his elbow to fend away the smoking steel. He began to fall and had to twist in order to right himself. He stepped lithely to keep his balance on the narrow stone ledge, and it was then that Will’s tardy green bolt struck his knee and lit him up purple and gold. He threw his arms wide, leapt like a tumbler then disappeared, leaving behind only a billow of black smoke.

Will could hardly believe his success.

‘You hit him!’ Lotan shouted.

‘I couldn’t have. Not Maskull.’

He reached the parapet at Lotan’s side and they both looked over and down into the clear, cold waters of the Caldor.

Smooth brown boulders showed under the rippling flow, but no Maskull.