Fell (The Sight 2) (40 page)

“King Stefan?” whispered Alina hopefully.

“He’s far, but if we can get to him, perhaps we can persuade him to send help.”

To help the Helgra, wondered Alina, or to aid his own overlord in surpassing his rebellious subjects? Besides, from the sounds outside, if the King was far it was too late for any help. Alina’s heart was thundering.

“But my manacles,” she said. “Vladeran has the only key.”

Landu stepped fully into the prison. He was carrying her own wolf-topped sword and Alina stood away from the wall and pulled the chain taught, as he raised the beautiful thing and struck. Alina was free. She rose, rubbing her wrists, and Landu took the sword by the blade and, turning it, offered her the hilt. She clasped the thing again and felt a sudden flood of strength, as she balanced its trusty weight.

“Now we flee this place,” said Landu.

“No,” answered Alina, feeling herself restored again. “I must go to their aid and fight. We’ve a pact.”

“It’s too dangerous,” said Landu. “And it will be of more help to the Helgra if we can reach Stefan and tell him the truth of this.”

Alina could see the sense of flight, although she desperately wanted to be at Catalin’s side, and secretly determined to join him as soon as she got her mother and half brother away in safety. But Romana had stepped forwards too, snatching up the dagger again in her elegant hand.

“The way to the courtyard will lead us past the steps to the arras and Vladeran’s chamber, will it not, Landu?” she said.

“It will, my lady.”

“Then I’ve killing to do myself,” hissed Romana. “For, daughter, are we not both women who run with the wolves?”

“No, Lady Romana,” insisted Landu. “If you get close and strike, the Shield Guard will strike you down in turn. Leave justice to the King, Romana. And to heaven.”

The thought of her mother being struck down, so soon after Alina had found her again, made the young woman terrified.

“Landu’s right, Mother. Besides, you can’t strike Vladeran down. Some oracle speaks to him of the things that will be, and he may only be slain when … when my father is in sight of his own palace.”

“But Dragomir is …”

“Yes. So let us leave Vladeran to the shadows.”

Alina’s strange words had amazed both her mother and Landu, and Romana lowered the dagger fearfully in front of the storyteller. Romana was not a fighter, and although she hated Vladeran with all her heart now, these words of witchcraft made her wish to be away in the open, free air and the warming sunlight.

“Come,” said Landu, pulling at Romana’s arm. “Hurry.”

They stepped out into the corridor and began to run, and as they passed the cells Alina began to see how many people Vladeran had locked in his prisons. Yet the moans were stilled now, as the prisoners heard the dim sounds of battle beyond, and wondered how the fight of great ones would affect their own bitter destinies.

They came out into an open courtyard and suddenly Landu raised his sword. Five Shield Guard soldiers had seen them and drawn theirs instantly. It was Alina WovenWord who stepped fowards, pushing her mother aside, and she began to move as if in a dream, the warrior smith’s sword cutting and slicing through the air, turning and jabbing, unafraid. In her mind the warrior storyteller remembered Vladeran’s accusation that it had all been her fault, but she threw it off. Landu fought at her side, and at last the soldiers stood no more. They all lay dead.

Romana was amazed at her daughter, but it was Landu who was staring at her in disbelief. At Alina’s eyes. As she had fought they had flashed with yellow gold, and Alina Sculcuvant suddenly had the eyes of a wolf. They cleared again as the three of them stood there, but with that a note came to them on the air. A piercing animal cry.

“Morgra. Why did you not show me this?”

Lord Vladeran’s bloody hands clutched the sides of the stony font again, as he too heard the cry outside the palace. He glared down at the she-wolf in the water, with fury and hate, and the scarred creature glared back coldly.

“The Helgra are on the plain, Morgra. And Fell is with them. Why did you not warn me, damn you?”

“Warn you?” came Morgra’s scornful thoughts. “Did I say that I may foretell everything, human? And does a human need to know every step of the way, before he can show true courage and continue? I once thought your kind the greatest of Lera, but now …”

“But it was you that convinced me in all this. You that reassured me.”

“Was it indeed? Is that why you wear me on your back, like my dear niece, Larka?”

Vladeran fingered the fur on his wolf coat, made from two dead Varg.

“You said we would turn the black wolf, yet even now that beast leads the Helgra against me. If they cross the river, the palace may be lost.”

“There’s plenty of time yet, human,” whispered Morgra’s shadowy mind, “for how can an army cross that water, even if they breach the ditch? I’ve spoken to Fell and even now the bloodlust grips him, as he kills and maims. It shall not fade before he comes within the presence of the girl.”

“What are you saying?”

“When his teeth are at Alina’s throat, he’ll truly be ours. It was not I who saw Fell kill her, it was Fell himself who saw it with the Sight, and the Sight does not lie. As it did not lie when I looked into the shadows and prophesied your future.”

“And so saw that I’m invulnerable,” whispered Vladeran’s calming mind, “unless a dead man walks the palace.”

Vladeran seemed to swell in stature again, and he lifted himself to his full height.

“Word has come with my spies from King Stefan too, Morgra. He’ll not come to help these Helgra scum. Nothing comes to aid them now.”

Vladeran smiled as he thought of the King and of his cousin Draculea too.

“So I’ll fear nothing and no one. And when Fell comes, I shall command him myself, and he shall lick the Helgra’s blood from my hand.”

Vladeran suddenly looked magnificent, yet something veiled came into Morgra’s watching eyes. Vladeran was too lost in a dream to see.

“Command him and lead the wolf, still dripping with the bloodlust, to that little cell where the young woman lies, to fulfil his true destiny and make him what must be.”

“The girl is not there,” said Morgra’s thoughts. “Even now I see her hurrying through your prisons with her mother.”

“Her mother,” gasped Vladeran in horror. “Romana knows?”

“She knows everything. As we all know in the end.”

“Where are they going? Tell me, quickly.”

“They go to fetch the boy and take horse and flee.”

“To take my son!”

“Yes. Aided by one of your blessed Shield Guard, Landu. Perhaps you should not have promoted Cascu in his stead.”

“Damn you,” cried Vladeran, breaking away from the font, as Morgra’s image faded in the water. “Damn you all to hell.”

Vladeran turned and tore aside the tapestry, bringing it crashing to the floor to reveal the little chapel, and strode back into the great chamber, where thirty soldiers were waiting.

“Guards. Rouse yourselves. Cascu.”

Cascu and the Shield Guard were already roused, for they could hear the sounds of battle beyond all too clearly, and their hands had been poised on their weapons as their master prayed. They were sworn on their lives to protect Lord Vladeran whatever came, and their courage was far from wavering yet. Cascu thought Vladeran’s eyes looked so dark and sunken though, as if he had not slept in a month, and he saw the snarling fury on his lips.

“Hurry to Romana’s chamber,” cried Vladeran. “They’re trying to flee. Stop them and bring them here. Bring me my son. My heir.”

Ten of the Shield Guard saluted and went rushing from the hall, as Vladeran sat down wearily in his great chair. He cast a look to the tapestry where once Romana had appeared, then sunk his head on his fist and for a while seemed lost in thought.

“Lord Vladeran,” whispered Cascu, fearful of disturbing him. “Should we not go forth to fight my people?”

Vladeran looked up coldly at the Helgra spy but was silent.

“Or flee?” said Cascu.

Vladeran’s eyes were suddenly filled with pride and defiance, and he got up.

“I’ll never flee, Cascu. I’ll not lose this battle either.”

“But how can you be so sure, my lord?”

“I’ve sent for aid. Even now riders come to help us. My cousin Tepesh. But I know I cannot be harmed, and as for the battle, if my soldiers or Draculea’s fail, then the wolf is the key.”

“The wolf, my lord?”

“To control Fell, Cascu, is to win the field whatever happens,” hissed Vladeran. “For if we do that, we’ll control your people too. When they see him meekly at my side, they shall worship me, even as their swords and bows glance off the impenetrable shield of my own destiny. Is the wolf not really why they march?”

“But how can you control it?”

“The Helgra woman, of course,” hissed Vladeran. “Alina SkeinTale.”

Alina was following Landu and her mother through the grimy passages still, and as they went they heard that sound more clearly now, and it stopped her in her tracks. It was definitely an animal cry. The high, angry note that carried both courage and power in it. The howl of the wild wolf.

“Fell,” cried Alina, as her heart soared. “Fell is really here.”

AS ALINA WOVENWORD SAID IT, THE BLACK WOLF stood on a mound of raised earth before Vladeran’s fearful palace and the great river that protected it, spanned by the single wooden bridge. He looked magnificent. His tail was raised like the Helgra banners about him, carrying that open-winged eagle, and his cry rumbled from his belly and rose through his rippling throat, out of a black muzzle red with blood. The bloodlust was on the wolf.

Catalin stood to his right on the mound above the wide ditch, and although the storyteller was terrified, the young man’s bow arm was working at speed, threading arrows and sending them deftly towards the enemy soldiers lined in front of them. Fell kept swinging his head towards the young man protectively. If any of Pantheos’s words had been true, then Catalin was as important as Alina now, for it was their children’s children who would one day come to help them all.

The young storyteller had never seen anything as terrible as this battle, and his heart was heavy as he looked about the field at the dead, but he kept his courage, and thought of Alina alone. At times as he fought he was gripped by such terrible emotions that it was as if he hardly recognised himself, as if he had somehow been transformed into a wild animal, and it was only the image of Alina’s beautiful face that made him feel human again.

Ovidu was on the wolf’s left side, raising an antler also red with blood, and turning to call to the Helgra warriors flooding into the breach behind them. How proud that Helgra man looked as he went to battle again at the side of the wolf. Ovidu knew, as he called the charge again, how important Fell’s presence was to the Helgra attack. These Magyar-Dacian tribesmen carried the wolf’s call in their dreams and legends, and it was as if their ancient songs and stories were coming true. Many dogs had played a part in past struggles, trained to march ahead in packs to frighten their foe, but never a wild wolf. And never a wolf like Fell.

Which was why what happened next threatened to destroy their morale once more, and turn the wavering tide of the battle against them entirely, even as they swung with their swords and antlers.

In Fell’s desire to press forwards and find Alina, the wolf overreached himself. Until now they had pressed ahead together, in good order, fighting in hand-to-hand combat, with the weapons that Catalin had helped them forge again in the Helgra village and the antlers they had collected in the bracken. But two dozen Shield Guard soldiers had come on horseback over the long wooden bridge that crossed the widest part of the river.

They charged left and right, and some of the Helgra wavered on the mound, while more of Vladeran’s foot soldiers charged towards the centre of the fight. Fell saw them coming and leapt towards them, with fury in his belly. He thought of himself sailing over that ice chasm. The wolf leapt too far though, for his powerful spring allowed him to cross the wide ditch below the mound they were on, and cut him off completely from the Helgra behind. Ovidu, knowing Fell’s importance to his warriors, had ordered that his soldiers guard his flanks with their swords and bows and antlers, but now the wolf was alone and undefended.

“No, Fell,” cried Catalin desperately, even though he knew that the wolf could not understand him. “Come back.”

The storyteller strung another arrow and sent it scything towards a soldier who had leapt from the side to strike at Fell. It ended the threat, and the man dropped dead, but it was too dangerous for the Helgra to flood into the ditch and lose the advantage of height, while the black wolf was completely surrounded.

Fell swung in a half circle, snapping and snarling furiously, baring his teeth and his anger. The soldiers had seen the wolf from a distance, and now his proximity kept Vladeran’s men at bay. But as they began to realise that Fell was a real animal, and not some demon of the night, as they saw from the scar on his side that he could certainly be injured and killed, the soldiers’ own courage was returned. This was nothing but a wild dog.

A single soldier came running towards Fell, more dangerous to him than any of the others. It was an archer who was already stringing his bow to shoot. Catalin saw him and the terrible danger to Fell, but he realised that he had just fired his last arrow, and did not have time to retrieve any others.

“Ovidu,” cried the storyteller desperately, lowering his empty bow. “We must help Fell somehow.”

“The ditch,” shouted Ovidu. “We have to get over the ditch.”

They could both see that it was useless. The deep ditch itself was already piling with dead Helgra, and thus difficult to cross, and the gulf was too far anyway. In a moment Fell too would lie dead, and with him all hope might well break amongst the ranks.

The archer lifted and drew back the bow string, and in the sight of that metal arrow tip, Fell saw death pass into his own soul. But suddenly a grey shape came flying across that ditch of death. It landed next to Fell and then sprung again, reaching the archer before he released his arrow, and knocking him to the ground. Wolf teeth struck at him as the advancing soldiers shrunk back in terror, and now before Vladeran’s men was not one but two wild wolves. A black and a grey.

“Tarlar,” cried Fell in astonishment, sending not words but furious snarls to the ears of the defending soldiers, as the she-wolf lifted her muzzle and turned to him proudly. “You’re here too, Tarlar?”

In another bound the she-wolf was at Fell’s side.

“You think I’d leave you to fight alone, Fell,” she growled angrily, “after what I said that day, and what you did for the pack? When the survival of nature itself depends on us? I’ve been following you, dear Fell, though it was hard to keep pace with a Dragga such as you, and in the end I had to track your scent. But I’m here now.”

Hope swelled in Fell’s pounding heart. And something else too. Belief.

“But you should not, Tarlar. This is a destiny the Sight has forced on me, in my long, lone journeying. But not you, dear Tarlar.”

“Fell,” whispered Tarlar softly, “can’t you see it now? You’re no longer alone.”

Something strange rose in Fell’s belly, as if a kindly hand had stroked the black wolf, and his words felt choked and his heart about to break.

“The humans may kill us yet, Tarlar.”

“And all things must face that end,” said Tarlar boldly. “So let us unite our destinies, come what may. But not with the madness of the Vengerid, with purpose and meaning.”

The wolves both turned, the Dragga and the Drappa, and began to growl and snarl at the soldiers. In that moment the Helgra, who had seen Tarlar’s strange appearance, sent up a great shout. Like the salmon breaking from the manacles of the lower river towards the future, they rushed the ditch and began to push back Vladeran’s soldiers. They inched on towards the palace and the bridge across the furious river.

Yet the battle was not to be won so easily, if won at all. At that moment another wave of Vladeran’s men came riding across the bridge, hundreds of them, and to a man they bore those black crosses on their armour.

They were the most hardened of Vladeran’s feared Shield Guard, and little impressed with the presence of two wild wolves, as they fanned out across the plain. Although the Helgra protected Fell and Tarlar’s flanks, these fresh troops quickly engaged the surrounding attackers, who began to waver again. There were just too many Shield Guard soldiers and the Helgra were hopelessly outnumbered. They were losing the fight.

“It’s no good, Tarlar,” cried Fell bitterly. “We’re lost. This has all been a story. A bad dream.”

Tarlar whimpered, but suddenly a sound came to the air that froze Fell and Tarlar in their paw marks and made their tails rise and their ears twitch.

“What’s that?” whispered Tarlar, although she knew already.

It was a wolf howl. Yet not one but ten, twenty, forty voices, crying and howling through the air. From the surrounding mountains they came, those calling wolf throats, howling from the echoing hills.

The attacking Shield Guard paused fearfully, and Fell and Tarlar looked up and were quite astonished to see, there in the distance, forty wolves on the mountain. They did not move forwards, or join the attack; they were not there because of some strange enchantment. They were there, howling and calling, with one purpose alone. The Vengerid had come to salute Fell.

And there were five other wolves there too, set slightly apart from the rest. Kar and Larka, Kipcha and Skop and Khaz. The Helgra heard the wolves and rallied, while the Shield Guard wavered again, truly fearful now, and their frightened horses began to buck and whinny in terror.

But still their discipline held, and it would have vanquished the day if it hadn’t been for another extraordinary sound, a rushing, like a great wind, or a wave breaking on a shore. Fell thought he was in the river again and behind the waterfall, except all around him the moving cloud was so black it blocked out the sun.

“What’s happening?” growled Tarlar fearfully, feeling a presence about her as ominous as Pantheos had been to Fell. Shapes were moving all about them, swirling and eddying around the Shield Guard’s starting horses, and suddenly Fell realised what it was.

“Starlings,” he cried.

The giant wave of starlings turned and swirled and broke around the humans and wolves, and Fell almost expected the salmon to come leaping amongst them too. But as they watched, Fell realised that within that great organism, individual birds were breaking away and rushing at the visors of the Shield Guard. And as those wings fluttered, Fell seemed to hear a voice whispering around them, but as loud as the voice of the Guardian:
Ask this then, wolf, if you seek the wonder and magic of the world
, it seemed to say.
Ask only what consciousness is. Consciousness, that does not live in man alone
. Fell shuddered and remembered Pantheos’s words of a Great Secret carried on the air. Skart had prophesied it too.

“But how?” cried Tarlar. “It’s impossible.”

“The Sight,” answered Fell. “The Sight is filling the world, like a great mind. The Lera have come to show man what he is, and to help the girl and boy. The Helpers are here.”

“And to help you too,” growled Tarlar.

It was indeed as if all nature had risen up, and suddenly the Shield Guard broke completely. The way to the bridge was open. Yet even as the wolves led the Helgra through, their hearts sank. They saw that long ropes had been strung from supports of the thin bridge, back across the churning river to Vladeran’s palace, and soldiers on the far bank were pulling now. Suddenly there was a thundering crash, as the attackers reached the shore. That long, thin bridge, the only way across, collapsed on itself and crashed into the swirling waters.

Fell thought of Alina and the ice bridge, and felt his heart go with it. The river was so wide, and its waters looked so angry and deep, that the wolves and the Helgra had little chance of crossing it safely. Their swords and antlers would only weigh them down, while if they made it at all they would be easy prey for the Shield Guard.

Fell began to growl helplessly, hearing a voice in his mind, too,
Fear it, wolf, fear death by water
, but even as the wolves and the humans stood there, defeated again in their attack, the most extraordinary thing happened in that extraordinary fight.

Ovidu pointed at the river in disbelief. Through its swirling current, shapes were moving rapidly upstream. The Helgra thought it witchcraft, as the logs made for the shore, as if guided by an unseen hand. Some of the logs had come moving rapidly up the river, while parts of the bridge itself now turned towards the shore and the Helgra. Fell’s tail rose, as a wide, flat part of the bridge reached the shore where he and Tarlar stood, and he padded forwards onto the little platform.

“Come, Tarlar,” he said softly.

The she-wolf was growling in terror behind him, her tail between her legs.

“But Fell. It’s witchcraft. And death by water.”

“You’ve nothing to fear now,” growled Fell. “You’re with me, Tarlar.”

Tarlar padded onto the platform nervously, and immediately the wolves found themselves turning in the water and moving across the river. The wolves had given the lead and now, everywhere, Helgra were springing forwards onto those little boats to cross the river too.

“I don’t know what power you have, Fell SpellWeaver,” whispered Tarlar, “but I think it a good thing.”

“Power?” said the wolf, gazing into the waters and suddenly believing with all his heart. “Only the power that is all around us, Tarlar, always.”

Fell had already guessed what was driving those strange boats on, and suddenly two familiar little heads popped up from the river.

“It
is
you, Ottol,” cried the black wolf, with pleasure, “and your mate.”

“And zo it is,” answered the beaver, squirting water from his mouth, “and many others, Fell. Beaver and otter too. It is a strange zing, no? It’s as if vee couldn’t resist, and zumthing was zummoning us. As if you were speaking to all of us.”

Yes
, thought Fell, thinking of what Pantheos had said and that great mind, moving through nature.

“But one came to us too. A bear.”