Fallowblade (21 page)

K
nowing they were on the verge of desperate combat, the soldiers of Narngalis were singing battle songs to fire their blood. Midsummer’s Day had passed without celebration. It was the beginning of Jule, middle month of Summer, twelve days since the Battle of Ironstone Pass, and throughout the Four Kingdoms of Tir tension had risen to an intolerable level. The goblins’ lethal advance proved inexplicably slow.

Without doubt, either the malicious creatures had discovered some formidable power beneath the mountains, or else the old stories of their ineptness were spurious. They seemed unconquerable. Clearly, if the whim had moved them, they might have swept down through Narngalis with excruciating speed, killing every human being they found. Yet they dallied. It was as if the wights, in their wickedness, were toying with their prey in the same way that fell-cats cruelly toyed with birds, allowing them to believe there was some chance of escape only to continue the torment, repeatedly dashing hope.

Displaced inhabitants of the northern villages were flooding through the streets of King’s Winterbourne. Moved to pity at their plight, Asr
ă
thiel offered shelter at The Laurels to large groups of refugees, gave them food and sympathised with them about the hardship they had to endure, leaving their homes. Terror hollowed their eyes; the weary men and women, the children clinging to their mothers and fathers, crying, or—worse—in blank silence. The children’s faces crumpled with bewilderment as their young minds struggled to comprehend the enormity of what was happening. Innocent and helpless were they, their unfledged frames too weak for them to defend themselves. The vulnerability of the little ones touched Asr
ă
thiel’s compassion and wounded her to the quick. The damsel forced her own pain aside so that she might bring consolation to others. It angered her to see how the contentment of good people had been ruined, their lives thrown into chaos by war.

The beggar’s tale of the slaying of Asr
ă
thiel’s kindred became well known, and bit by bit—with the help of Queen Saibh—the truth about Uabhar’s plot against them was pieced together. Bitterly the people of Cathair Rua repented the accusations they had levelled at the weathermasters. They sent apologies and gifts of atonement to the Mountain Ring, and aldermen composed contrite retractions to be read aloud in every city square.

Avalloc Maelstronnar, still frail and not fully recuperated from his recent illness, arrived at Wyverstone Castle in the sky-balloon
Windweapon
. Two prentices from Rowan Green crewed for him, and five others arrived in
Greygoose
and
Icemoon
, the two latest additions to the Rowan Green fleet. Great was Asr
ă
thiel’s joy at greeting her grandfather. The Storm Lord brought Fallowblade with him, in the care of the sword-master of High Darioneth, Desmond Brooks.

‘You must not use the golden sword immediately,’ the Storm Lord warned his granddaughter. Gravely he watched her from his deep-hooded eyes of jade. His mane of silvery hair appeared sparser, and he looked gaunt, yet his cheeks were ruddy.

‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘It is imperative that we defend ourselves against the goblins with every means at our disposal!’

‘You have not yet wielded Fallowblade in training, let alone in real combat.’

‘Only because I have never been presented with the opportunity. Besides, I promised you I would not do so until Swordmaster Brooks judged me to be of sufficient merit. He is here with us now, and I daresay he is pleased with me.’ She exchanged glances with Brooks, whose expression remained diplomatically noncommittal.

‘Dear child,’ said Avalloc, ‘it has been long ere you rehearsed even your everyday sword drills. I would have you practise well with the golden blade before you go into combat. Fallowblade is perilous to wield.’

‘History tells us that Aglaval Stormbringer offered Fallowblade to the brothers A’Connacht. I do not recall hearing that they had ever been trained to wield it, or even that the brí flowed in their blood!’

‘Oh, but they
had
been trained. In their earlier years Aglaval was great friends with their father, and he taught them the ways of the golden sword. Besides, their grandmother was a brí-child in her youth, though she never became a mage.’

‘But how can Fallowblade scathe me? I have never understood your stance on this matter. I am invulnerable!’

‘The blade is extraordinary,’ said the Storm Lord. ‘It is like no other in Tir. Do not for one instant consider it a mundane thing. This is no mere tempered and honed edge of metal. Gramarye and weathermastery are bound up in it, in the very essence of its making. Fallowblade possesses properties of which even I know very little. I suspect—’ he broke off.

‘You suspect?’ the damsel prompted.

‘Well, I may have been bedridden of late but I have not been idle. I have been propped on pillows, poring over tomes from the libraries of Rowan Green. According to the lorebooks, one of the reasons goblinkind is lethal is their uncanny ability to literally move as fast as lightning. I have long wondered whether the golden sword perhaps allows whoever wields it to shift rapidly through time itself, in order to match the supernatural fighting speed of the wights.’

‘An intriguing premise!’ Asr
ă
thiel said. ‘Yet, how could such a property harm me?’

‘I cannot say, my dear, for the manner whereby it works is a mystery, but it would be wise to take no chances. If ’tis true that the sword affects time, there is no way of knowing whether the wielder might, for example, risk becoming ensnared in some never-ending loop, or maybe trapped in the past, or the future.’

‘This is all conjecture, Grandfather. Alfard
ē
ne Stormbringer handled the sword, of course, for he fashioned it; and Avolundar Stormbringer used it to defeat the goblins long ago. Both mages lived to a ripe age, if accounts are accurate.’

‘Avolundar used it, but he had learned all about the sword from the teachings of Alfard
ē
ne. If any intimately understood the sword’s properties, it was Alfard
ē
ne and Avolundar. They wrote down what they knew, but over the years some of the records have gone astray. Much of their knowledge is lost to us. ’Twould be sleeveless for you to attempt to use the sword in haste, only to have it destroy you. You must not ply Fallowblade until Master Brooks is satisfied that you have attained perfect control over the weapon.’

Disappointed, the damsel bowed. ‘I submit to your wisdom, Grandfather,’ she said, adding with a flash of her blue eyes, ‘despite that it thwarts my wishes.’

The corners of Avalloc’s own eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘I am glad to be in your company again, dear child,’ he said.

‘Without Fallowblade,’ Asr
ă
thiel subjoined, smiling, ‘I am better placed at wielding weather than sword-fighting. In any case, William has begged me not to take up weapons other than wind and fire and water. In his view it is unseemly and dangerous for women to engage in battle.’

‘And what is your view?’

‘For my part, if I am to destroy living creatures, I must drive myself to it. I cannot imagine getting any joy of such an exercise. My natural inclination is to heal and nurture; causing injury or death is the antithesis of that. If I am to fight, I must first be convinced that my actions will protect those whom I love. Only then could I go to it with a vengeance—but what a vengeance!’

‘I have always understood that you abhor the unmaking of life, dear child, but our fight now is against unseelie wights. Eldritch creatures are not mortal. Their lives cannot be unmade.’

‘Truly. Nonetheless, the nature of eldritch immortality is that they may be forced to transmute to some lesser shape, which is their equivalent of death.’

Avalloc said thoughtfully, ‘That semblance of life’s end is the reason why, once in every few centuries, a new immortal entity is born. Were there to be no endings, there could be no beginnings.’

‘I do not know whether it is comforting or terrifying.’

‘Of what do you speak?’

‘The knowledge that, in some measure, even immortal life can be terminated,’ said Asr
ă
thiel.

One night Asr
ă
thiel dreamed that she found herself amongst the armies of Tir as they fought against goblinkind. In her dream she heard Prince William cry, ‘Beware!’ but she heeded him not, and drawing her sword of Narngalish steel she ran headlong into the fray. Surrounded by a churning mass of dwarfish monsters she hacked at them with all her might. They howled and screeched, raking her with their claws, slashing at her with their knives, and swinging axes to chop her limbs, but nothing could touch her, and her sword sang, and pitchy ichor spurted from eldritch flesh.

The fight lasted for a heartbeat or a millennium, but ultimately the imps rushed her and leaped upon her, without regard to her energetic blows. They fastened their teeth and talons upon her limbs, weighing her down until she could no longer lift the weapon, and she toppled beneath the weight of her assailants, falling upon her sword, which broke asunder and turned out to be a blade of birch-lath after all.

The wights tried to crush her with their bodies, and smother her, and gnaw her; but they laboured in vain for she would not be scathed. She was rendered powerless, however, and could do them no more harm. She was outnumbered, pinned down.

Then Prince William and a company of Narngalish knights, Companions of the Cup, came battling through the turmoil. They attacked her assailants, skewering them and throwing them off, until eventually they released the weathermage.

‘Come!’ shouted William, taking her by the elbow. ‘Quickly! There are too many of them, too many goblins. We must flee from the field of battle!’

It was then that she awoke, dazed and alarmed. Stars shone in at her window, and a cyanic breeze stirred the curtains.

The goblins were coming.

The Storm Lord had given his granddaughter the choice of any sky-balloon at Rowan Green to replace
Lightfast
. Most of the great aerostats lay idle, now that the majority of the weather-mages were gone—the old ones used by Asr
ă
thiel’s father:
Windweapon
,
Northmoth
,
Snowship
and
Mistmoor
; the newer ones:
Autumnleaf
,
Featherflight
and
Soapbubble
;
Silverpenny
,
Dragonfly
and
Icemoon
;
Greygoose
,
Farhover
and
Sparkapple
. Asr
ă
thiel selected
Icemoon
, its spidersilk envelope replaced with the heavier vegetable-fibre cloth she preferred on ideological grounds.

Two days later she joined the united armies of the four kingdoms as the commanders dispersed their troops along the southern borders of the Wuthering Moors in readiness for the inevitable assault. A thick and resilient carpet of heather covered large tracts of the open land. At this season it was beginning to bloom, its spikes of mauve flowers jumping with bees and perfuming the air. Heath, with its pink bell-shaped flowers, thrived in clumps amongst the heather, while common violet and scarlet pimpernel hid in the shade of the shrubs, and harebells sprang in the open grassy spaces. Spiny-stemmed gorse sprouted in the corners and crevices of decaying stonework—the antique remnants of buildings—its golden, sweet-scented blossoms furled tightly in their buds. Low bushes of bilberry had finished flowering, and small green fruit were beginning to set on the stems. Crisp tufts of hardy crowthistle bristled here and there, the dark green of scalloped leaves contrasting with the vivid purple of the inflorescence. Soon, most of these wildflowers would be crushed into the soil.

The choice of site had been thrust upon the armies of Tir by necessity: the hordes-in-the-mist were beating a path directly south from the Harrowgate Fells. It was estimated they would reach the moorlands that very afternoon, for they no longer travelled only during the sunless hours but by day, wrapping themselves in darkling mists. In favour of the setting an ancient city had long ago stood on the Wuthering Moors, and the broad acres were criss-crossed with remnants of old fortifications such as low stone walls and the shells of ruined towers. The defenders wasted no time in putting these barricades to good use. Furthermore the southern edge of the moors was slightly higher than the northern, which gave the mortal armies a small but significant advantage over the foe.