Fallowblade (14 page)

The king stretched out his hand.

Ronin stood as wan and still as an image painted on the silk draperies. He was lost, utterly lost. A moment later the training of a lifetime reasserted itself and he saw, again, the only path he knew, the familiar, deep-rutted track along which he had been driven so often that it had become the only way he could find. He stooped, pressing his lips to his father’s hand in the gesture of fealty and acknowledgement.

Dismissively his father turned away and began speaking to Kieran, diverting his attention to matters of war.

‘The wicked hordes are coming,’ Ronin said under his breath, intentionally unheard and unheeded. To his hands that he had lifted, upturned and empty as shells, he whispered, ‘and the weathermasters are betrayed.’

Then he went to put on his battle gear.

A
pair of eagles had flown over the crimson pavilions of Uabhar just as the despatch rider was making his exit. Swift though the rider was as he headed for the lodgings of Lord Genan, he could not outrace birds on the wing. The eagles soared and glided on their way north-west against the morning breeze, across hill and dale, over reedy brook and rushing river, until they reached a region where no war was being waged amongst humankind.

A shimmering orb hovered in the sky.

Matching the wind’s speed, Asr
ă
thiel’s sky-balloon floated amid airborne motes of thistledown and flocks of ravens whose cries tore open the throat of the wind. The basket was filled to capacity, though the weathermage had dispensed with the services of her maid, Linnet, bidding her return to King’s Winterbourne out of harm’s way. Beside her stood two tall men garbed in gleaming chain mail and tabards of darkest aquamarine. King Thorgild Torkilsalven scanned the horizon through eyes creased by the salt winds of the western sea, while Prince Halvdan leaned over the side of the gondola. The prince surveyed the marvellous spectacle below: burnished battalions were filing as sinuously as dragons through the countryside. The heavy drumming of marching feet was punctuated by the ravens’ calls, the creaking of the basketwork and the haphazard flapping of the envelope when buffeted by a sudden gust. Now and then Asr
ă
thiel murmured a brí-command to the local currents, or to the sun-crystal in its cradle, ‘
,’ and executed a quick, practised gesture, elusive to her companions. Sensing air pressure without effort, she was aware of her exact height above the ground.

Presently the weathermage worked a vent-line to release puffs of air from the balloon’s crown, decreasing buoyancy. The aerostat descended at a steep angle. She guided it with precision until its woven floor scraped the ground beside the next hilltop semaphore station. The assistant signalman was waiting with the station’s manservant to help anchor the balloon to hooks hammered into the rocky ground. She waved them away and saw to it herself, with the help of her royal companions, instructing Halvdan how to throw out the ropes, before vaulting over the side as gracefully as a leaping deer, despite her encumbering skirts. The wind was strong; not only did it batter at her garments, it also buffeted the envelope as if it were a punching bag. To decrease the strain on seams and fabric Asr
ă
thiel allowed some air to escape before tying everything down securely.

Having watched the approach of the Lady in the Moon, the station chief had hastened to finish deciphering the latest messages, writing in careful script on thick sheets of paper. When the crew alighted he was astounded to behold not only a weathermage but also a prince and the King of Grïmnørsland, his locks shining like iron-streaked copper as they swept his shoulders.

It took him some while to recover his usual placidity and he spoke to them breathlessly. ‘Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness and my lady, two communications have come in this very hour,’ he said, saluting and offering them the pages as soon as they entered the signal tower. The first message was from Avalloc, at High Darioneth; Asr
ă
thiel had been keeping him informed of her whereabouts. The damsel scanned the message quickly, eager for her grandfather’s counsel, and proceeded to read it aloud. ‘
Avalloc Storm Lord and Declan of the Wildwoods greet Lady Asr
ă
thiel
.’

‘Who is Declan of the Wildwoods?’ Thorgild interrupted.

‘He is a friend of my grandfather’s, a scholar,’ Asr
ă
thiel replied without taking her eyes from the pages. ‘Sometimes he sojourns at High Darioneth.’

The king nodded. ‘Go on.’

First, the Storm Lord informed his granddaughter that the rescue mission despatched to Cathair Rua had not yet sent back any word of the weathermasters’ whereabouts or welfare. Next, the Storm Lord revealed that he had discovered an astonishing fact about the unseelie strangers from the northern mountains.

Asr
ă
thiel read out, ‘
Maelstronnar house brownie claims unseelie attackers are—
what?’ she broke off, staring in perplexity at the billet in her hand. ‘But that is impossible!’

‘What does he say of the attackers? And how can a brownie have anything to do with the matter?’ the king demanded.

Slowly, shaking her head bemusedly, Asr
ă
thiel continued. ‘
Maelstronnar house brownie claims unseelie attackers are goblinkind, escaped from caves
.’ She looked up and stared at her audience. ‘Goblins? I thought they were all wiped out years ago. Surely the brownie is deluded. How could that sequestered wight be privy to such information, in any case, when better informed folk are in ignorance?’

‘Read on!’ Thorgild urged.

Eyes wide with astonishment, Asr
ă
thiel continued, ‘
Brownie terrified. Lethal force. Beware
.’ Avalloc’s message, all the more alarming in its conciseness, came to an end.

Dumbfounded the three companions gazed at one another. The hilltop wind whistled through a crack beneath the closed door, whirled up the spiral staircase and rattled the windows in the tiny observation chamber overhead.

‘Goblins!’ Thorgild cried suddenly. ‘That was it, goblins! They were the only wights that ever associated with the fierymaned trollhästen.’ He laughed disbelievingly. ‘Odds fish! As you say, Asr
ă
thiel, by all accounts those ridiculous imps were wiped out decades ago.’

‘It appears not,’ said the weathermage. ‘At least, my grandfather believes so, and I have never known him to blunder.’

‘They had their own eldritch slaves, as I recall,’ said Thorgild, pacing back and forth agitatedly as he sifted through his memories. ‘It is all coming back to me now.’

‘It makes no sense, if these riders are goblins,’ said Halvdan. ‘Such feeble and foolish manikins ought to be defeated with ease, yet they have proved beyond doubt to be dangerous.’

‘The Storm Lord takes the brownie at its word. He asserts they are both goblinkind and a lethal force, and I doubt him not,’ said Thorgild. ‘I am confounded, to think that all these years they must have been lying in wait in some hidden place, some
cave
, by Avalloc’s report. Yet this does arouse an indistinct memory . . . ’

Said Halvdan, ‘Why should the tales assert that they were all destroyed?’

‘Not all the tales gave the same account,’ said his father. ‘As I dwell more and more on this conundrum, it seems to me that I recall fragments, stories of another kind of doom.’

‘What doom?’ Asr
ă
thiel asked.

‘Imprisonment. That fits with the Storm Lord’s account. Yet, it is all so hard to credit . . . ’

‘A lethal force, he declares!’ repeated the prince. ‘If these Tom Thumbs have escaped from solitary confinement, then it is possible they have grown stronger during their decades of isolation. Should that be the case, the weathermasters may be Tir’s only hope.’

‘Indeed,’ the damsel replied quickly. ‘Yet there is no news from those who are trying to rescue them. My kindred remain in the clutches of our enemy. May they return safely and swiftly!’ Her blue eyes appeared darker than usual.

‘How came the goblins to be locked into caves?’ Halvdan asked his father. ‘Can you recall?’

‘If reminiscence serves me well, it was the greatest weathermaster of yore who drove the wights under the mountains.’

‘Ah! So they can be defeated by lightning and hurricanes!’

‘It was not with storms he foiled them. It was with Fallowblade,’ said the king.

Asr
ă
thiel glanced up sharply.

‘It is now clear why the trow population of Tir has been moving north,’ Thorgild went on. ‘They wish to serve the goblins, whom they traditionally viewed as their masters. Since Avalloc has discovered the truth with relative ease, others will soon find it out also, by questioning brownies, or urisks, or other seelie wights. Scholars will deduce as we have done, from the clues of the fire-maned steeds. Word will spread. Panic may spread also.’

Halvdan said, ‘Conversely, if word gets about that this influx of wights is of goblinkind, the fears of many folk may be lulled. After all, popular stories and puppet plays ridicule goblins for being puny and stupid and easily defeated.’

‘Let us hope those stories are true,’ his father said grimly. ‘Let us hope the Storm Lord’s brownie is mistaken.’ It was plain that the king nurtured few shreds of such hope. ‘Goblins are unseelie,’ he said, ‘They have always hated humankind—all the more so, no doubt, after the weathermasters jailed them. It is now evident that contrary to their reputation they are a formidable host. Somehow these goblins and their daemon horses—and probably their dreadful slaves to boot—have broken free from their centuries-old incarceration, and they have caught us unprepared. Who knows, but their plan might be to sweep across the kingdoms of Tir and slaughter every member of the human race! Your brownie, at any rate, Asr
ă
thiel, implies they are bent on further atrocities. As soon as we return to camp I will order a forced march. Let us make short work of this other report and hasten away without delay.’

The weathermage shuffled the pages of Avalloc’s message while Halvdan perused the second bulletin, a brief note that had been sent from the battlefield by Prince William. As the prince commenced to read the contents aloud, one of the signalmen, ever vigilant at the view-windows in the room at the top of the stairs, applied a spyglass to his eye. He directed the instrument towards a neighbouring station, situated high on a remote peak across the valley. The distant semaphore’s arms were rotating. While the watcher described the code sequence his assistant transcribed it to paper, ready for deciphering.