Whitemantle (29 page)

‘Where is he?’ Lotan demanded, astonished.

‘Vanished…’

But there was no time to think the situation through. A crowd of soldiers was pressing towards the southern end of the bridge and Will knew their spell-born urge to cross into the town would be irresistible. Lotan took up a broken poleaxe while Will went to Tutor Aspall who cried out for fear of his life, not knowing who was upon him now.

‘Up!’ Will shouted, stern-faced and furious. ‘Run for your life! You cannot help him now.’

‘I…’

‘Leave the body and do as you’re bid! Carry the news of Edmund’s death to those who most need to know of it.’

The tutor’s short-sighted eyes opened wide and he was caught in two minds, though he shook with fear.

‘
Sir…who are you
?’

Will gave no answer but thrust the worthy onward, as he knew he must, to save his life. Lotan followed fast, his warrior’s brain convinced now of the better part of valour as the queen’s army once more began to pour across the bridge in unstoppable numbers.

So it was that the poor yeomen of Awakenfield bore the brunt of Maskull’s plan that night. Their doors were burst open and their thatches broken in by wart-faced monsters. Their houses were set alight with them inside, and they died in their hundreds like dogs, seeing all that they had ever owned or loved carried away, for such is the curse of war upon any land.

And while such horror was unfolding in the dusk of the day, Will went out by back ways towards the town midden, and there he shoved the bewildered tutor into a thicket of holly bushes that lay a little way beyond. He stepped a spell out, saying afterwards, ‘Stay here, Robert Aspall, till the dark be truly down. Then go by the light of the moon, south, south and south again! Do you hear me?’

Tutor Aspall sank to his knees, terrified by the shadow of Lotan’s poleaxe, but more by the wonder-working stranger. He gabbled like a madman. ‘I shall do as you say, kind sir. Nor shall you want for reward once report is made of this deed that you have done. Only give me your name so that I may remember you by it.’

Will answered grimly with a rede. ‘My name is not important. If it was a kindness I have done, then that is reward in itself. Take news of that bloodsupper’s doings as you have promised. Do not fail me in this!’

Then the tutor peered more closely and was amazed.

‘
Willand?
Can it be you?’

But they left him without reply or further farewell, and though Will needed to draw fresh strength from the earth, even that need was set aside in their urgency. They went to the north-east, following the flow. Will was already feeling hale and clear-headed. His mind was again turning over the fate of the duke, but the way to find him if he was alive remained unclear. If that was their aim, Lotan said, then they must try to discover what fruits might be found dangling from the grapevine.

In the event, there was a surfeit of rumour to be had from the looters of Awakenfield. Lotan’s demands were met with eager but uncertain answers. Some men swore upon their souls that they had seen the duke die on the battlefield. More than one said that a great lord had been taken and was now on his way to Castle Pomfret. A few of them
said that an earl had been caught and beheaded by the common soldiery for his crimes.

Whatever the truth of it, Lotan waylaid a number of men and established on pain of death that throughout the battle the queen had kept to the city of Ebor, and that seemed to be the place to which her entire army was repairing.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked.

‘Go there,’ Will told him. ‘What else?’

A look of concern pained Lotan’s features. ‘Not to Pomfret, then?’

‘Not unless the queen has gone there. If Duke Richard has been taken, she’ll want him brought before her. Don’t you think?’

The big man continued to look unhappy. ‘What about the others?’

‘They’ll know where to find us.’

‘Will they? How?’

Will seemed to ignore the question. ‘Maskull’s vanishing trick must have taken him back to the place where he set up the spell. I don’t know what the trigger was, but my guess is that he made that precaution in the days before the battle in case things went awry for him. That would most likely have been done with the queen’s safety in mind. I think he’s in Ebor with her now.’

‘Slow down. Who’s in Ebor? Do you mean Gwydion?’

‘No, no – Maskull.’ Will realized he would have to explain. ‘Look – Queen Mag plays a most important part in Maskull’s plan. That’s probably why the queen was told to wait seven leagues away in Ebor. So that, if her forces suffered defeat, she could still be ridden off to safety.’

‘But they didn’t suffer defeat.’

‘In the event, no.’

Lotan rumbled, ‘I think I see what you’re saying, but it doesn’t answer my question.’

‘Which was?’

‘How will the others know to find us in Ebor?’

‘Well, obviously Gwydion will go to Ebor because he’ll realize that Maskull is there.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I know him well enough, and he knows me. He’ll know how to find us and he’ll take care of Willow.’

‘Hmmm. The way of wizards is strange. I hope you’re right.’

‘Don’t worry.’

And so they set out upon the journey in the early Ewletide dusk. Though he had never had the good fortune to visit Ebor, Will knew that it was the greatest city of the north. Gwydion had spoken of its long and bloody history, saying that its formidable walls had been built and rebuilt a dozen times. They had first risen up at the command of the Slavers, and the city’s many-sided towers had once been a famous sight. Since then, two castles had been built there, one on each side of the River Ouzel, near to where it joined with the River Fosse. A king of old had ordered the Fosse dammed as a defence, and Gwydion said there was a lake there full of fish that made good eating for those who dared to poach them from the Sightless Ones. There was a very large chapter house in Ebor, but all in all, it was the queen of cities, and known as such far and wide. How sad, then, that it must now play host to a real queen, and one so deadly.

Mag’s human plague, having ravaged Awakenfield, was now being drawn away from the battlefield by a power greater than either drunkenness or exhaustion. It would soon fall upon Ebor. As Will and Lotan travelled along moonlit lanes the air was dry and still. The cold intensified as the moon rose higher. That silvery disc stared down on Will like a dead man’s eye.

Twenty thousand soldiers were making their way north,
some walking in disciplined formations, others in ragged bands, still more raking the countryside in ones and twos, but all would eventually meet the Great North Road.

Will felt for the lign. There were glimmerings in his feet, but nothing like the spirit-destroying power he had felt in the days before the battle. It was the lorc’s usual torpor, having just spent its malice on the battle. Will longed to repair to a grassy meadow and plant his feet in the ice-cold dew, to drink a draught of earthly powers, but he could not risk revealing himself, so once more refreshment would have to wait.

As they went on they saw baggage waggons clogging the way at every bridge. Thousands were coming back together into one mindless army. Will was pleased he had taken Lotan’s advice and put on the livery of the Hogshead. To be taken for a member of one of the most feared companies in the queen’s array gave a measure of protection. But it was not Lord Strange and his men who played most on Will’s mind that night; it was Mad Clifton.

Edmund’s murder had shocked Will more than he had allowed. Now he felt a gush of guilt that he had not been quicker upon the scene. Nor did it help when Lotan asked how he could have known. A burn of wicked desire stirred at his core as he walked. He pictured in his mind the thrusting of an obliterating bolt through the body of the bloodsupper. He imagined doing him to death with his own hands. And how great was the effort Will had to apply to blot out that pleasurable phantasm. He succeeded, at last, in bringing the savagery in him to heel, and told himself strictly that for a lawmaker to kill a man for murder was a paradox and so against all the laws of magic.

I would for choice burn him down like a scarecrow, but the consequences would in the end outweigh the justice of the case, he told himself, feeling almost at first hand how revenge piled upon revenge in the hearts of wronged men.

And while they walked Lotan felt his pain and said, ‘The red knight is no soldier but a tyrant, for the lion is wont to be a furious and unreasonable beast, cruel to them that withstand it. He is no soldier, and unworthy prey for such as you.’

‘He is mad, and known to be mad,’ Will said shortly. ‘And it is all the lorc’s doing. What blight the Dragon Stone began was finished up at Awakenfield. Such was Edmund of Rutteland’s unhappy lot.’

My third upon a bridge lies dead…

Lotan said, ‘And it’s not finished yet. I can feel it in my bones.’

‘Your bones tell true, I think.’

They forded the River Hare at Woodle then joined the Slaver ridge road that ran due north through the ancient kingdom of Elmet. All the way Will was increasingly aware of the birch lign that passed through Awakenfield, and how it seemed to provide a pointer to the tramping army that pushed north and east more or less in company with it. They crossed the lign not long after passing through the ruined hamlet of Bywater, and its influence faded, but after Bramham Cross, where they turned east, they crossed the strong-running power of an entirely different lign.

‘Celin!’ Will said, stopping dead at the first appearance of it.

‘Trouble?’ Lotan asked. The sheared-off poleaxe still in his hand rose up.

‘No, it’s the holly lign.’ He looked back over his shoulder.

‘So?’

‘I was expecting…’

‘What?’

‘I’m getting ahead of myself again.’ He faced Lotan squarely. ‘I expected the ligns to cross at Ebor, but they cross somewhere else.’

‘Do you mean there’s another stone where they cross?’

‘Yes.’ He put out his arms, measuring the angle, then pointing. ‘It’s that way. Almost due south of us. A couple of leagues, maybe more.’

‘And the power’s flowing there now?’

‘Not as strongly as before. Not a ninth, nor yet a thirteenth, of the power.’ He orientated himself and felt for the flows in the earth, scrying towards the south for the magnitude of the stone. ‘I might be wrong, but that one seems big. I’d say it was a battlestone as potent as the Dragon Stone or the one that caused the fight at Delamprey.’

Ghostly soldiers flowed past them, their eyes candid with questions as to what he was doing.

‘Come,’ Lotan whispered. ‘Don’t spook them. You’re one of them now, remember.’

After that they bridged the River Worffe at the little town of Tadpole, and then they crossed the birch lign again. Will’s hopes guttered as he dared to consider the face-by-face reading of the Dragon Stone verse that he had read so long ago.

King and Queen with Dragon Stone.

Bewitched by the moon, in darkness alone.

In northern field shall wake no more.

Son and father, killed by war.

Whatever it meant, it seemed eerily apt tonight. And if the Dragon Stone had told true, then there was no hope for Duke Richard.

Now that the heat of the battle had truly cooled in the wash of moonlight, Will could see the day in its full awfulness. So many men he had known and liked were dead of the violence. Thousands had perished. What exact numbers might be placed on the disaster hardly seemed to matter, for the arithmetic of death was a strange count that did
not keep the usual proportions. When the heralds reported ‘a thousand dead’ they hardly described the thousand private tragedies of which they spoke, every death being total to the man concerned and to those who loved him. But what was beyond doubt was that many more men had died today than in any previous fight, and their sum surely betokened further grief.

Distant figures, hooded and walking in lines, caught Will’s eye. They were moving against the northward flow. Red hands, thousands of them, stirring from their chapter houses. Every Fellow for three leagues around would be aroused by the whiff of blood. They formed blind, caterpillar queues, preparing to make their pilgrimage to the sleepless field. Over the next week they would gather together what could be found of the local people and oversee the digging of grave pits.

Will felt fatigue growing in his limbs, but there was a greater need oppressing him. He dared to tune his mind to listen out for Chlu and found a shocking presence. Not close, but too furious to tolerate for long, and he quickly closed his mind again. Whatever was happening with Chlu, he was not in a mood of prudence or moderation. Judging from the ache Will felt inside his skull, his twin had directed a seemingly endless supply of malice throughout the battle, spending spells like a drunk spends silver. He had been part of the rout, riding down hapless men for sport as a hunter pursues wild boar, and now his mind was fixed on a more vital quarry. Why he and Maskull had not come to the Awakenfield stone and fallen neatly into their trap was impossible to say. Will’s earlier speculations seemed insufficient now – that Maskull had had his hands full with the fight. Could it be that his trials with fae magic were now complete, that he had no further use for the stones or the harm they contained? Was the greater fight already over, and the deed done? Had Maskull already made the checkmating move?

These questions and others vexed Will’s mind mightily as the army fell back upon the city. Will was amazed to see that tall bonfires had been heaped up and fired at the news of the queen’s victory. The road that led from the south into the Muckle Gate was lined with blazing cressets. The gate itself was formed of two round towers with an arched entry between and a wooden balcony set above from which prestigious visitors could be showered with white rose petals as they halted to ask permission of the City Father to enter.

No such welcome met the unwanted army that now poured into the city. Red shadows blazed across the white walls, and the chanting of troops resounded from Lord Clifton’s tower. The curfew bells of the Great Chapter House tolled midnight as Will passed beneath the portcullis fangs of Muckle Gate. The streets were packed with men, drunk now and revelling. The light of a thousand candles blazed from the ancient hall where the Elrondyng, the council of Ebor, usually met. The City Father and his aldermen had had no choice but to open the city to admit the queen, for there were many already within who would have thrown wide the gates for her. Now the city worthies were sitting in dutiful celebration of the victory, fearing for what the night would bring by way of fire and sword to their fortunes. But the sight that made Will’s heart sink the furthest was that of the crowd trying to enter the castle.