Fallowblade (15 page)

Paying no attention to the activities of the signalmen above, Halvdan read: ‘
Unseelie hordes unstoppable. Nor can we hold off southerners much longer. Look forward to your swift arrival
.’ The prince folded the paper and slipped it into his satchel.

To the station chief, who was hovering near at hand in a state of agitation, Asr
ă
thiel said, ‘Send Prince William a message informing him that the weathermasters cannot be found and that the Storm Lord names the hordes as goblinkind, broken loose from age-old confinement.’

The man bowed smartly.

‘Let’s go,’ said Thorgild. ‘There is no time to lose. Signalmen, remain at your post. We need no help relaunching the balloon.’

Asr
ă
thiel had hardly finished giving instructions to the chief signalman and thanking him before her two companions were out the door and striding across the grass towards the mooring spot where
Lightfast
bobbed and tugged at her lines. Their hair and cloaks flapped wildly in the wind as they knelt on the short turf to untie the tethering guys from the iron ground hooks. Asr
ă
thiel leaped into the gondola and summoned a blast of heat from the great sun-crystal in its cradle. As they all watched the balloon’s sagging, wind-tortured envelope gradually expand she said, ‘Another semaphore message is coming through. We ought to wait for it.’

‘There’s no time,’ said Thorgild, raising his voice above the wailing gusts and the boom of billowing fabric. ‘Every moment we delay is a moment lost to Narngalis and might mean the difference between life and death for Tir. Are we ready for lift-off?’

‘Not yet.’

Halvdan braced himself as he pulled hard on a rope to steady the bucking aircraft. ‘Asr
ă
thiel, how could your grandfather’s house brownie possibly be able to name the unseelie hordes?’ he shouted over the wind. ‘Domestic wights seldom leave their abodes. How could a humble brownie of Rowan Green learn about events hundreds of leagues away?’ He sprang into the basket beside Asr
ă
thiel, still grasping the rope.

‘I cannot say, sir,’ she answered distractedly as her hands shaped the gestures of weatherworking. ‘The ways of wights are not easily penetrated. Perhaps trows carry these tidings back and forth, in their ceaseless peregrinations.’

It came to the weathermage that Crowthistle might somehow have played some part in the brownie’s acquisition of strange tidings, but she decided to make no mention of her suspicions. The urisk had attached himself to the Maelstronnar house for some while, during which he had harassed the brownie to the point at which it had almost departed from the premises forever. Being a wight itself, the brownie undoubtedly knew more about Crowthistle’s comings and goings than any mortal being, and it was not impossible that the domestic wight had caught the news from him.

Beside the basket the king was coiling a hawser with the dexterity of a seasoned fisherman. Rope in hand, he climbed in beside his son. ‘Are we set?’ he asked the weathermage.

‘Almost!’ she cried, keeping an eye on the blazing sun-crystal. ‘Three crew members is a full load and I must wait for sufficient buoyancy. To take off too soon would be risky.’

The wind veered. A shower of leaves blasted in their faces. The basket was jumping, held in place only by two ropes in the grip of the king and his son, which passed through a pair of ground hooks.

Asr
ă
thiel stared up with irritated impatience at the inflating envelope. Her mind was worrying at Avalloc’s news as a dog gnaws a bone. ‘My grandfather declares that the brownie itself was frightened,’ she called out, ‘which disturbs me greatly. But the creature’s words must be true, because it is unable to tell falsehoods, and as for whether it is suffering from delusions, why the Storm Lord has been acquainted with the wight all his life, and would doubtless perceive any alteration in its outlook.’

The balloon had swelled taut and become buoyant enough to lift the load. Asr
ă
thiel was about to tell her companions to cast off when the chief signalman, who had just completed his latest task, burst out of the tower door and came running towards them. He was waving a piece of paper and begging the visitors to tarry.

‘This report has just now arrived,’ the man said hoarsely, thrusting the leaf into Asr
ă
thiel’s hand. It was a communication from King Warwick himself, from his encampment, via King’s Winterbourne. The message was short, as if hastily composed.

After silently scanning the note the weathermage inhaled sharply. She uttered no word, but crumpled the paper in her fist and let it drop from her fingers. It was snatched away by the gusts.

Halvdan brushed tousled amber filaments out of his eyes. ‘What’s amiss, Asr
ă
thiel?’ he asked in concern.

The weathermage simply stood, gazing into emptiness, making no move, unbreathing. As if in extension of her body the wind faded to a mere sigh.

‘What is it?’ Thorgild turned his attention to the bearer of the note. ‘What was the message?’

A row of jackdaws that had been perched on the semaphore tower took off in a storm of flapping pinions and a clamour of shrieks, like fragments of burned fabric. They scattered, startled by the sudden sound. Perhaps even they, with their alien, avian minds unattuned to human passions, were pierced by the sharp note of utter grief and desolation in Asr
ă
thiel’s scream.

The signalman whispered, as if the words were too appalling to be spoken aloud, ‘It said,
Regret to inform you Uabhar Ó Maoldúin has slain your kindred
.’

The alarmed jackdaws reassembled themselves in flight formation and flapped across the pouring skies into the distance.

A long bank of lilac-bellied cloud was rolling in from the west, promising rain. Intermittent shafts of sunlight slanted from the darkening firmament like lances of fallow gold. Soon the indigo clouds let loose their burden. Across Narngalis showers came pouring down, all that day and through the night.

The long veils of rain that swept in from the coast and settled in for several days failed to stop the fighting on the Eldroth Fields—the weather merely contributed to the difficulties faced by the troops on both sides. Fires went out and could not be relit, and the ground became slippery with mire. Heavy mud encased the boots of those who fought and the armour of those who fell. The showers were finally easing when the lord privy seal, Sir Torold Tetbury—a small, dapper gentleman with a neat black moustache—arrived from northern Narngalis at the indigo and ivory panelled pavilions of King Warwick.

‘How go the preparations at Ironstone Keep?’ was the king’s first question. He had directed his stewards to open the abandoned fortress at the mountain pass and provision it, in case the Narngalish troops were beaten back as far as the Black Crags before Thorgild’s reinforcements arrived.

‘All is in readiness. If our fears are realised, we will at least be able to retreat to a well-supplied stronghold,’ Tetbury replied.

‘And further north, what of the goblins from underground, as the Storm Lord reports that his drudge-wight names them?’

‘Night itself has become the enemy, my liege. These creatures are advancing slowly. Their secretive habits continue, for they prefer the rays of stars and moon to those of the sun, and they evoke opaque vapours to block out the daylight. Within these vapours they move cunningly. Their progress is like a thick wall of fog creeping across the land. Through the haze, daring folk may glimpse movement, a flicker of green fire, a glitter, the outline of an ugly head. Ominous mutterings issue from that cloud, and, sometimes, harsh laughter. In the heart of the darkness daemon hoofs thunder, and eldritch blades slay. Then the clouds engulf all, and when they pass, none of our people are left alive. Through Mountain Cross and Trowbridge the mists come rolling, and nothing can stop them.’

‘These things are far from being as innocuous as fashion would have had people believe,’ said the king, shaking his head in dismay. ‘They are mistaken, who deem goblins to be feeble wights.’

‘How could it have happened, sir, that such convincing tales of their impotence and easy defeat have arisen since their incarceration at the hands of our ancestors?’

‘On this I have pondered,’ the king said. ‘It is an age-old human trait; if men can scoff at the dark they do not fear it. If a menace is reduced to a joke, it is threatening no longer. When the goblins had been overcome and sealed away—as we thought, forever—mankind wished to make mockery of their longstanding foes so that they might banish their terror and become more confident in themselves. All the more reason for us now to verify the facts. We must know what foe we face.’

Tetbury shrugged. ‘Odd. I would have thought it more likely for folk to
embellish
tales of past enemies, making them seem more
dangerous
rather than weaker, so that our heroes’ feats in conquering them would seem more glorious!’ As one of the royal advisors he was forthright in giving his opinion.

‘Then you must brush up on your history, Torold,’ said the king. ‘Ridiculing genocidal monsters as figures of fun is humanity’s custom. It diminishes them; their stature, their power, their menace. All tales evolve over the years, and no doubt the portrayal of goblins, which was originally fuelled by fear and hatred, became fuelled—after the unseelie threat was removed and people felt safe—by scorn and mockery. People took to depicting them as weak and foolish—a caricature that would certainly have benefited puppeteers, for example, who are always seeking a target to lampoon.’

Tetbury bowed in acknowledgement of his lord’s argument. ‘My clerks have been plundering the libraries of King’s Winterbourne,’ he said, ‘digging out every scrap of information about these little terrors. Silver was ever their metal of choice, which is perhaps one of the reasons the trows loved them so. Indeed, they were called the silver goblins. In olden days, as a warning to humankind, the silver-mining towns were named for the goblins that plagued them, and named also for the trows that fawned on the goblins. Now the imps return by their old haunts, by Silver Hill, Silver Moss and Silvercrags, through Yardley Goblin and Elphinstone. They cut down all human beings in their path, although, curiously, they do not pursue those who flee. Villagers are escaping southwards in ever increasing numbers.’

‘Most of what you say is not news to me, Torold,’ said the king, ‘but I thank you for it.’

Later, when Warwick held counsel with his sons and advisors, Tetbury repeated his account, after which the king made known the latest news from Rowan Green. ‘When he learned of the fate of his kindred the Storm Lord was struck down by a fit. He has taken to his bed. His son’s wife nurses him, and he is too weak to travel. His mind, nonetheless, remains sharp. As you are aware, he communicates daily with me.’ The king’s grey eyes rested calmly upon his audience. ‘Avalloc, of all men living, is most learned in goblin lore. He confirms what Torold has told us—that they love silver, and are therefore named the Silver Goblins. As to defending ourselves against these wights and driving them back, he advises that the best weapon is gold. As silver is their joy, so gold is anathema to them. Therefore we shall gather together all the gold in the kingdom and melt it, to plate our steel blades.’

Prince Walter said, ‘What of the famous weapon of the weathermasters, Fallowblade? Once the golden sword was employed to defeat the goblins. Why not again?’

‘Indeed,’ said his father, ‘that question has occupied my thoughts. I shall ask Asr
ă
thiel, on her return, if she will fetch the sword from its keeping place.’

William gave a start as Asr
ă
thiel’s name was spoken. ‘But Fallowblade is useless!’ he cried. ‘No ordinary man can wield it.’

‘An ordinary man called Tierney A’Connacht handled Fallowblade in days of yore,’ stated King Warwick, ‘and to good effect, too, or so say the lore-books of Rowan Green.’

William countered, ‘Maybe Aglaval Stormbringer put some forgotten charm on the weapon, or some old magick of Alfard
ē
ne was still clinging to it. Only a weathermage with years of training may use that weapon without danger to himself.’

‘Aye. Asr
ă
thiel alone has learned the secrets of the sword.’

‘You cannot ask her to do this. Would you send a girl to fight the goblin hordes?’

‘Will,’ said his father, ‘I cannot speak for Asr
ă
thiel. It is for her to choose.’

‘Even so,’ replied the prince, scowling, ‘but she must choose in full knowledge of the peril she would face if she confronted them, and the hopelessness of making such a stand. In his letters the Storm Lord continually emphasises the fact that goblinkind is no force to be trifled with, for they possess supernatural arts, and they have no compunction. The slayings around Silverton bear that out. In days of yore they slaughtered hundreds of thousands—a fact conveniently overlooked by storytellers who would make them out to be easily duped bunglers—and in their wickedness they would have wiped humanity from the face of the known world.’

‘If not for Fallowblade,’ subjoined Warwick.

William made no reply, but his look was thunderous.

Next morning, as the rising sun made a burning battlefield of the cloud-barred heavens, the armies of Slievmordhu and Ashqalêth gathered their resources and launched a determined, well-orchestrated onslaught. On the eleventh of Juyn by virtue of their superior numbers they succeeded in driving the defenders from their fortified trenches and embankments. The army of Narngalis was forced, once again, to retreat. Warwick quickly withdrew his troops from the Eldroth Fields, leaving their tents standing, and hastening northward while the rearguard shielded their backs. They went precipitately, but also in orderly fashion, pushing ahead with great swiftness, and they did not pause until they arrived at Ironstone Pass, high amongst the Black Crags, where the highway passed over a saddle between two peaks.