Whitemantle (47 page)

‘It’s Chlu!’ Will shouted.

Two more bolts of fire swept past them as they ran, leaving smoke trails and lighting the ghastly field. They too burst in lurid red, but again harmlessly. Will and the wizard splashed through icy meltwater and a little way down the slope to the west, hiding from the summit by using the lie of the land.

‘Where are you going?’ Will shouted frantically. ‘Master Gwydion, they can’t hurt us!’

‘Look!’

As soon as they dropped below the sightline Gwydion drew Will to a halt and pointed down the slope. Their way was blocked. For the first time they saw the full horror of what had happened here. The little stream that drained the west side of the battlefield was a swollen torrent from which the death cries of thousands of men were rising. A seething morass of soldiers were locked in a continuing struggle, a grey chaos, like insects contending furiously with one another. But they were men, dying horribly and in great numbers.

Will could see what had happened. The queen’s army had been outflanked on its left, rolled up by the arrival of
a reserve battalion coming in late and unexpectedly from the south-east – Lord Northfolk’s army. And once the queen’s left began to crumble, panic must have swept through her ranks and her whole army had disintegrated. It had fled the only way it could – to its right – which was onto the slope that dropped down towards the stream. Men had abandoned their weapons, skidded and tumbled down into the wash of icy water. They were packing the fast-flowing stream and trampling one another underfoot as they sought to escape all at once into the flooded pastures beyond.

Will saw drowning men attempting to pull themselves up, but only dragging others to their doom. He saw men threshing in a mile-long quagmire of blood. He saw merciless attacks launched upon the heads of the dying. The whole stream was now running red.

‘The queen’s army is being annihilated!’ Will gasped. ‘What now?’

The wizard stared back up the slope and he gritted his teeth with grim satisfaction. ‘Good!’ he said. ‘They are coming through the window.’

Two tiny black figures had appeared on the shoulder of the hill. Even outlined against the sky there was no mistaking them.

‘What are they doing?’ Will asked.

‘Ha ha! Maskull thinks that the only way to prevent the advent of Arthur now is to take the Dark Child with him into this world!’ Gwydion said. ‘We’ve won, my friend!’

‘Won? But how?’

‘To thwart me, Maskull has had to make good his promise to Chlu. Now I understand my destiny. I am to counter Maskull here. We shall stand in opposition in this new world, just as once we aided one another in the old.’

‘You’re not going to stay
here?
‘ Will cried, aghast.

‘If Maskull stays, then so must I, for this is truly a world
of good and evil.’ He threw wide his hands, begging Will to understand his sacrifice. ‘I cannot abandon a whole world to him, can I?’

‘But surely—’

The wizard shook his head. ‘Our spirits are both locked within Philosopher’s Stones back in the old world. If Maskull stays here he will have one part of his heart’s desire, which is to live forever. I must stay too, for he must never rule in this world!’

‘Master Gwydion, you can’t!’

But the wizard’s face grew grimmer and he stood back a pace. ‘My days in the old world are over. My destiny is clear, Willand. Promise me you will do what is necessary to fulfil your own. Lure Chlu back. I will make sure Maskull does not follow. Now, go! We both have work to do!’

With that, Gwydion began to pick his way back up the death-strewn slope. Will could do nothing but watch him go. When he tried to open his mind, he found he had forgotten how to do it. And so he took an axe from the hand of a dead man and made straight for Chlu, roaring out his pain as if the wizard’s decision had been his twin’s fault.

Chlu raised two hands and tried to step out the magic required to send a thunderbolt spinning into Will’s guts as he approached. But Will came on undaunted. Only at the third attempt did Chlu realize that something was wrong. He saw that his magic had failed him, and instead looked to the corpses at his feet for protection, finding among them a war-hammer.

When Maskull pulled a lance from the ground and tried to rush to Chlu’s defence, Gwydion moved to intercept him, locking staff against lance in an adamant struggle to force the other to the ground.

From the corner of his eye, Will saw that wizard and sorcerer fought with liquid movements that deceived the
eye, whirling and spinning, their magic gone but their mastery of the fighting arts undiminished. Their combat flowed back and forth, but Gwydion was forcing his adversary away, leaving Chlu and Will to face one another alone.

The clash came. Chlu’s skull showed beneath his skin: black hair, black lips, eyes burning red in a white face. Laughing.

Will swung his axe at the death’s head, but Chlu raised his hammer and their weapons rang together, locking, crook to crook. Will kicked Chlu’s leg away, and as he staggered, drove him back, but the jarring wrench of falling tore the axe handle from Will’s grip, leaving Chlu sprawling in the snow. Will was first on his feet but now he was weaponless.

Chlu took up the axe hungrily and cast the hammer far away behind him. He hefted the axe and swept it testingly at Will’s head. Will spat and clenched his teeth, for in the blink of an eye the advantage had turned greatly in Chlu’s favour.

Will readied himself as the attack came roaring at him. It was poorly controlled, a lunge followed through too violently, so that Will was able to duck under the swing and ram his shoulder into Chlu’s stomach, lifting him, and dumping him over onto his back. But the ground was slippery and they went down together. Will’s left hand closed on Chlu’s wrist, pinning the axe, while he slammed blow after blow into his face.

Blood from Chlu’s burst nose coloured the snow around them, more gurgled in Chlu’s throat as he screamed out defiance. His outstretched fingers tore at Will’s eyes, forcing him to turn. Chlu bucked to free himself, and as Will was thrown off he twisted back. A battle-sharpened axe slashed at Will’s chest. It sliced open his jerkin just as he regained his feet. He felt the cold and saw the wound, a cut across his side, white-edged and bleeding.

But there was more than shock in his response. The idea came to him at the speed of thought that the tit-for-tat link that had connected him with Chlu in their own world did not work here. No prophecy lay upon either of them in this place, no natural law governed their movements so they were unprotected. Chlu’s bloody face and the wound to his own ribs had served notice that the strike and counterstrike he had expected would not happen this time. And the lessons he had learned in all those armoured fights against Edward in the combat yard of Foderingham were not forgotten. Now it was time to seize the advantage.

Hope goaded him to attack. He rushed at Chlu, lunging forward to take hold of his axe-arm. It was a dangerous move for a weaponless man. With the axe, Chlu’s reach was already longer than his own, but the weight of it made his movements slower.

Now the Dark Child slipped his grip to the very end of the axe handle before he swung. It was a cunning trick which gave him an extra three finger-widths of reach. It could have been the margin that let the blade bite this time. But Will saw the move coming. He swayed back as the swipe came. Even so he felt the wind of the axe as it shaved his brow.

Will was aware of shapes moving towards them. It flashed through his mind that looters were coming to strip the bodies. There was movement near them, soldiers being drawn to their fight—

Then Chlu struggled and lashed out. Will tried to avoid the blow, but it concussed him. He had been caught under the chin with the back of the axe haft. The contact jarred against his jaw, blasted bright colours through his head and threw him off balance. His head rang and, seeing the next blow coming, he staggered back half a pace. But that was a deadlier mistake, for his heels came up hard against a corpse that lay behind him and he fell backwards over it.

He froze as he grasped that he was now wholly at Chlu’s mercy. There was no time to feel terror, for Chlu stepped forward to finish him without delay. He lifted the axe and brought it down with all his strength.

What flashed between them, Will could not tell. A great shape, bearlike, screaming, lunging in from his right. But he knew that whatever it was carried away the danger. It had also taken the blow and saved his life.

Blood splattered him and he stared into the face of a head now cloven where axe had split bone. Will gasped as the Dark Child toppled forward, almost falling on top of him, and in his place there appeared an impossible figure. It was Willow. In her hand was the hammer Chlu had relinquished. She had swung it at Chlu’s head and laid him low with it.

Will struggled out from under the dead weight that had saved him and drenched him in crimson. The body groaned and rolled as he scrambled up, but he could not shake off so easily the terrifying sight of the wound that had split the face wide open. That blow had been meant for him, that wound had been meant for his own face. The dead man was barely recognizable, but his eyes were open to the sky, one blue and one brown.

‘Will!’ She was beside him, fingers on his face. He clutched her, saw her mouthing words that made no sense. How had she got here? What was happening?

‘Will! Listen to me!’

His mind found the truth impossible to accept, but Willow’s voice confirmed it.

‘He begged to come with us. He said he couldn’t live with himself otherwise!’

‘
Lotan
?’ It was his own voice.

‘He needed to apologize to you himself, Will. He needed your forgiveness. He begged us.’

Will began to shake.

The great body jerked down as steaming blood guttered from it. Lotan was as dead as any man could be.

‘We gave him another chance.’

‘Oh, Willow…’

She grasped her husband, and he held onto her, feeling as if he would shake apart. Shock blotted everything from his mind. He shut his eyes and found he could not open them. She was crying his name, trying to shout some sense into him, but the world was taking a while to reconfigure itself.

‘What about him?’ she demanded, her face distorted. ‘Listen to me, Will!’

He took hold of himself, braved the new world. He took a dagger from his wife’s hand. Death was all around, but he forced himself to focus on the body she was showing him. Chlu’s bloody head lolled as she grabbed a handful of hair and lifted it back. Breath gasped from his open mouth.

‘Do what you must do!’ Willow told him. ‘Do it now!’

It sounded like an accusation, as if he had negligently overlooked something vital. And it was true. He had Chlu at his mercy and there was nothing else left to do to win, nothing else except slit his throat But he could not murder an unconscious man, not even the Dark Child. He could not do it.

‘No…’ he muttered. ‘No, no.’

Willow stared at him helplessly, then started away. ‘I’ll fetch Morann.’

Morann? That made no sense either. Where had they all come from? What had happened on the other side of the window? Blood gouted from his side, filled his hand. At least Willow had not seen that. Confusion settled over his mind again like a fog. It enraged him. Nor would it clear no matter how he tried to penetrate it. They must have travelled north after him, maybe by a different route, but only hours behind.

‘Wait!’ he called after her.

But she went on heedlessly up the slope.

He stood up, grabbed Chlu by the wrists and began to pull, knowing only that he had to take Chlu back into his own world. At first the body slid easily over the icy slush, but it was a dead weight and hard to drag uphill. He pulled it ten paces before he lost his footing, then he saw that he would have to lift it. With a tremendous effort he sat Chlu up and hauled one arm over his shoulder, bending until Chlu’s feet were off the ground, but then his knees gave and he crashed down in a puddle of mud and gore. Pain gripped him. The wound in his side was deeper than he had thought. He had torn through some membrane beneath his ribs. It would probably not kill him, but it had made it impossible to shift Chlu further.

Will started to get up again, but by now Willow had come back, and the window was in her hands, floating towards him through the air. She stepped over him and shoved it over Chlu. Will felt the rush of air tugging them back towards their own world. Then a more powerful heave came against the body and Will realized that it must be Morann pulling from the other side.

He got to his feet to help but could not straighten himself. Blood had made his side and thigh sodden. With a sudden change in sound Chlu’s legs vanished and Will looked through the window to glimpse an oak tree and Morann manfully dragging a body across green grass.

‘Now you!’ Will said, taking the frame from his wife.

‘You first.’

‘Willow, do as I ask.’

She began to argue, but he insisted. She braced herself, flashed a glance at him, then dived head-first back into her own world.

Will held the frame in his hands for a moment and looked over his shoulder to see if he could see the wizard, but there was no sign of him.

‘To hell with this world!’ he shouted. ‘They don’t deserve to have you, Master Gwydion! And they’re not going to have you!’

He started to carry the frame down the slope, but after a few paces it jerked from his hands and flew up into the air. The next thing he knew, it had crashed down over him and he was being pulled by the arms into warmer air.

The pain made him grimace and groan.

‘Oh, no you don’t, my friend!’ Morann said, struggling to close the flapping shutters. ‘You have work to do on this side!’

‘Gwydion’s through there!’

But Morann pushed him back. ‘And that’s where he has to stay. With Maskull.’

‘No!’

Morann flung the window high so it caught in the branches of the oak and hung there out of reach.

Will felt light-headed. ‘
What are you doing?
’

Willow was staring with horror at the wound in his side. ‘Oh, Will, look at you!’