Fallowblade (23 page)

It seemed inevitable that the night would end in red ruin, and dawn would bring only the terrible stillness of mass extinction, but unexpectedly there came relief. All of a sudden, when complete victory was in their grasp, the goblin knights withdrew from the field and vanished northwards. Once again it was as if the wights, in their vindictiveness, were trifling with their adversaries, luring humankind to suppose they had some chance of escaping harm, merely to later excruciate them anew. There was no doubt these lords of wickedness could overwhelm the troops at any time, but they restrained themselves from dealing the death blow, as if enjoying the moment, amused by prolonging the torment of their helpless victims.

Dawn mists rose from the battlefield like a spectral ocean, submerging stonework, crushed flowers and fallen men. Weary and sick at heart, the soldiers of Tir retreated, bearing the wounded, the dying and the dead.

The dandelion petals of morning unfolded.

‘Goblinkind cannot abide daylight,’ everyone was saying, clinging to all vestiges of hope. ‘We shall, at least, be safe until nightfall.’ They avoided mentioning the eldritch mists of daytime.

Goblin lore had become the burning topic, and no one knew more about the wights than Avalloc Maelstronnar—save perhaps for Asr
ă
thiel, for he had taught her a great deal during the moments they had stolen together for private discourse. There was much he had discovered in Rowan Green’s history books; past generations of weathermasters had had numerous dealings with goblinkind in days gone by, and the elderly mage took it upon himself to disseminate the truth.

‘Storm Lord,’ many soldiers asked as Avalloc moved through the tents helping tend to the injured, ‘why is it that the goblin knights look like human men? We believed them to be ugly creatures, small in stature, something like spriggans, or bogles, or the blue kobolds.’

‘After the passing of the goblins, men told stories to diminish the vanquished enemy,’ the weathermage patiently explained afresh. ‘Our tales made out the enemy to be stunted, repulsive monsters. Humankind considered it comforting to ridicule the danger after it had passed.’

To stave off the weariness of the troops the carlin Lidoine Galenrithar had mixed barrels full of invigorating herbal potions. She saluted the Storm Lord as she hurried by, on her way to distribute the remedy, accompanied by three other carlins and an apothecary. He nodded acknowledgement, noting the anguish graven into her features. The carlin seemed hunched, as if her shoulders were bowed beneath the burden of mortality. The battle had been waged at a terrible cost—thousands had fallen and countless numbers had been wounded.

The Storm Lord was more skilled in healing than his granddaughter for, being unable to feel physical pain, Asr
ă
thiel found it difficult to empathise with sufferers. Therefore, while the old man went about his doctoring amongst the tents with the apothecaries and carlins, the damsel attended meetings with the military commanders of the united kingdoms. They asked her to repeat all known facts about the goblins, and as she did so, she was reminded of a time when she had sat with William in the gardens of Wyverstone Castle. They had seen a black and white bird; William had called it a magpie, but she had another name for it. The prince had commented, ‘I have heard my old tutor say that in some cases the same name is applied to entirely different birds in different parts of the country, and thus confusion reigns.’ Ruefully she thought:
How true! We gave these human-seeming warriors the same label as the beastly little woodland imps who hawk enchanted fruit to unwary buyers . . .

‘By what means were the goblins imprisoned, Lady Asr
ă
thiel? How is it that they have returned?’ she was asked.

‘Long ago, after the overthrow of the goblin king, Lord Avolundar drove the wights under the mountains, sealing them in with rock falls veined with gold and lined with gold leaf. As for how they escaped,’ the damsel shook her head, ‘we do not know.’

‘Is it true they cannot abide daylight?’

‘It is thought they might be able to endure the rays of the sun,’ Asr
ă
thiel replied, ‘but they prefer moonlight and starlight. When the sun is in the sky they seek cloud cover, or conjure their mists as a shield.’

‘In that case, might they attack by day?’

‘Perhaps not, but remain vigilant.’

Later, in the presence of his granddaughter, the Storm Lord confided, ‘There is no need for the hordes to put themselves to the trouble of a daytime assault. They have the upper hand, and may defeat us at their leisure.’

‘Tir’s greatest tacticians have as yet failed to produce any design for victory,’ said Asr
ă
thiel. ‘Grandfather, Fallowblade is our one remaining hope. We must purchase more time; stave off the foe for as long as possible. I am determined to wield the sword, whether or not Desmond Brooks deems me sufficiently expert.’

Reluctantly, Avalloc nodded. ‘Very well, my dear. You may do so. Yet it is only in our hour of most desperate need that I acquiesce.’

The king’s private museum at Wyverstone Castle housed seven antique panoplies plated with gold, which were now quickly conveyed to the moorland encampment. These armours had been made long ago, during the Goblin Wars, after it was discovered that the supernatural weapons of the goblins could not scathe the yellow metal. The royal armourers offered this war harness to Asr
ă
thiel but, recognising that the craftsmen were unaware of her immunity to damage, she confessed to them, ‘I do not need this protection.’ As it turned out, none of the segments fitted her in any case, because her form was too slender. Avalloc, too, refused the harness, whereupon King Warwick, his sons and the Knight-Commander of the Companions put it on, encasing themselves within the warm lustre of ancient gold, like fantastic shell creatures abducted from ocean crypts. The rest they sent to Thorgild, as a gift.

News from the bleak and lonely dungeons of the Obelisk arrived, by way of the encampment of Warlord Conall Gearnach. The overthrown king of Ashqalêth had grown sicker than ever, ultimately expiring from his maladies. The body of Chohrab Shechem II had been borne away to his desert kingdom for burial. Subsequently Prince Ronin, acting on behalf of himself and his brothers, had petitioned Gearnach to free their disgraced father from the humiliation of imprisonment in such ignominious circumstances.

Most people could not understand why the prince seemed so intent on leniency. They did not know how long and earnestly he had confided in Queen Saibh before taking this step.

‘I have renounced anger, Mother,’ he said to her. ‘I can take no delight in vengeance. And my father has done unpardonable wrongs but I cannot, overnight as it were, alter my lifetime’s habit of revering him.’

Her eyes brimming with tears, the queen mutely signalled her sympathy.

‘In some strange manner,’ Ronin continued, speaking hesitantly, as if striving to decipher his own thoughts, ‘it is as if I have two fathers—one who exists in my mind’s eye, whom I regard with deference and devotion, and around whom all my circumstances are built . . . ’

‘The man you wished him to be, and in whom you tried so hard to have faith,’ Saibh said.

‘Even so, Mother. Then there is the real man, who is beyond redemption, and that is the man I no longer wish to set eyes on. Yet he represents the fleshly embodiment of the ideal father in my mind. And absurdly, I find it hard to separate the two.’

‘It is confusing,’ his mother concurred, ‘when one’s inmost beliefs are so utterly challenged. I know. It will take much time for the truth to really smite you, and even then you will long for the father you wanted. You will yearn so desperately that you will always be rebuilding that image in your mind and trying to make the real man fit the dream, no matter what evidence to the contrary presents itself.’ Tears trembled on her lower lids. ‘I am considered compassionate by all who know me well, yet even I can find in myself no mercy for Uabhar. But my son, though your heart is at war with your head, you must do as you see fit. If you wish to plead clemency for him with that hateful Gearnach—may the Fates curse him—I will not gainsay you.’

Displaying enormous fortitude and charity of spirit, at Ronin’s request Conall Gearnach ordered Uabhar’s release. The abdicator was brought to King’s Winterbourne, where he was placed under house arrest in well-appointed apartments within the heavily fortified walls of Essington Tower.

Asr
ă
thiel could not help but be irked at the knowledge that the tyrant who had ordered the destruction of her kindred should be quartered in comfort; yet she knew, also, that it must be so. Uabhar was no longer king but he was of royal blood, and would always be treated as royalty. Kings and once-kings were privileged by birth, no matter how heinous their crimes. More than anyone else it was their equals who recognised this, for they knew that if one who had ruled from a throne could be shackled and cast into a dank cell, then the highest rank of all was subject to the same fate as the lowest, and royal mystery would be cast to the winds. A king must be imprisoned with propriety. Even a king’s execution must proceed with dignity. Throughout history no sovereign had ever dangled from a public scaffold—royal heads were lopped, in ceremonies of relative privacy, by the finest steel blades.

Lacking the ability or impulse to organise themselves into a unified force under a single leader, the Marauders had taken to roaming the countryside. Reports poured in from the field of battle near at hand: swarmsmen were crawling across the Wuthering Moors, plundering every fallen speck of gold they could find amongst the blood and flies, the mire and the corpses. They were also seeking goblin swords, which had been seen to pierce steel armour as if it were as soft as tallow, but by all accounts none were to be found. Disgusted by this opportunistic behaviour, archers from all kingdoms were shooting at the pillagers. Now that Uabhar had been displaced, swarmsmen were considered fair game. Whatever clandestine treaty had once existed between them and Slievmordhu was deemed null.

Asr
ă
thiel paid little heed to the reports. The goblins’ wholesale slaughter made her sick at heart and she longed to defend the people of Tir from catastrophe. Distressed by having witnessed such butchery on the previous night and still aching with grief for her slain kindred, she made use of the peaceful interlude not to rest but to rehearse with the great sword Fallowblade.

She and Avalloc were accommodated, along with the king and princes of Narngalis, in a stately
chastel
on the edge of the moors, where the heathlands verged upon the slopes of a straggling, windswept pine forest. Hundred House, turreted and ivy-webbed, was one of King Warwick’s country estates. Soon after dawn the damsel took herself to the ballroom to rehearse her sword drill. She would not be trading blows with the swordmaster—Fallowblade was too lethal for practice games—but she knew it was necessary to accustom herself to the weapon’s weight and balance and distinctive characteristics before bearing the powerful heirloom into battle.

At one end of the chamber a small conclave, unable to find repose after the night of ruin and terror, had gathered to watch from the sidelines. The king and his sons were present, as well as Avalloc Maelstronnar, Desmond Brooks the swordmaster from High Darioneth, the swordmaster’s apprentice, Knight-Commander of the Companions of the Cup Sir Huelin Lathallan, and several officers of the king’s household guard. They were wide awake; not invigorated, but shocked. Tension and astonishment kept them alert. The world had suddenly become a different place; it could no longer be trusted, when goblins turned out to be disarmingly beautiful, and weapons of steel lost their potency, and the long-enduring human race glimpsed its own annihilation fast approaching.

Asr
ă
thiel was to practise with the golden sword under the astute gaze of the swordmaster. As she awaited his signal, letting the scabbard rest across the palms of her outstretched hands, the young mage mused:
Only someone who wields the brí of weathermastery can employ Fallowblade to fullest advantage. And of all full-fledged weathermages now living, only I have rehearsed with this weapon. How strange it is that I once wished to handle this sword of gold and electrum purely as a pastime, because it intrigued me—and now the burden has
been laid upon my shoulders, that I must brandish it in the face of absolute wickedness. To defend humankind, to slay goblin knights; for this purpose Fallowblade was wrought.

She gripped the scabbard. The spectators’ posture altered elusively, and a tremor ran through them. They had been keeping a perfunctory eye on the proceedings while discussing important military matters amongst themselves; now they focused their attention.

As sword slid from sheath the watchers sighed.

Fallowblade gleamed. Sun motes swarmed up and down its length. Asr
ă
thiel held the weapon in a steady grip, staring in renewed wonder at the fluted blade engraved with its runes of gramarye. The words of the old song chimed though her mind: ‘
And all along the keen and dreadful blade he wrote the words in flowing script for all to find:
Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht—
I am the Bane of Goblinkind
.’

‘
Mé maraigh bo diabhlaíocht
,’ she whispered. The sword seemed to be giving off luscious twinkles of white-gold glitter, while attracting them at the same time. The entire weapon was a smooth seethe of glimmers. Other famous swords might be fair, but had they not been compared with Fallowblade they would have seemed fairer.