The Skeleth (31 page)

K
atherine drew her sword. She glanced behind her and saw some of her neighbors leaping the shield wall with spears in hand. She looked ahead, across the river, and caught the moonlight glinting off the tips of helms, steel pauldrons over shoulders, and chain-mailed arms holding shields with metal bosses burnished to a shine.

“We can't make it back before they reach us.” Katherine took up a fighting stance. “Cousin, can you swim?”

“You know I can't.” Martin set the butt of his spear to the surface of the bridge.

“Don't even ask me,” said Edmund in answer to Katherine's look. “I'm staying with you.” He set his own spear next to Martin's.

Katherine braced her sword in two hands. “Then take your mark, both of you, and aim for the face if you can.”

The knights began their charge. Horseshoes struck sparks on stone.

Katherine looked north to the darkened banks. “Gilbert!” She raised her sword. “A volley!”

A distant burst of
thwips
turned into a rain of hisses through the air. Two dozen arrows arced high over Katherine's head to fall onto the far side of the bridge. From what Katherine could see, more than half missed the span entirely and splashed harmlessly into the water, though one armored man did tumble off the side. The lead knight kept his shield braced high and took an arrow on the boss without slowing his horse.

Katherine lowered her sword, sick to her heart. “Indigo.”

Sir Wulfric of Olingham reached the apex of the bridge, riding Indigo at an eager trot. Sir Richard Redhands flanked him, his heavy sword-of-war held aloft.

“They're trapped out there!” The shout rang from the shield wall. Katherine glanced behind her, and though she tried to wave them back, Horsa Blackcalf, Henry Twintree and half a dozen village men jumped out to charge up the span.

The two knights bore down upon Katherine, Edmund and Martin, leaping to a canter, and through her fear Katherine could not help but marvel at their skill. The bridge was barely wide enough to fit both horses side by side, and yet they came on at a flying charge.

“Set your spears, set 'em!” the village men shouted from behind Katherine. “Edmund, Katherine, come back to us!”

There was no time. Katherine crouched, watching the arc of Wulfric's sword at the same time that she marked the roll of Indigo's paces. There was but an instant to mourn it—by the time she finished the move she was about to make, either Indigo would be mortally wounded, or she would be dead herself.

Indigo raised up his head at the top of his stride. He lowered it, raised it—and held it there. He flared his nostrils, fixing one large brown eye on Katherine.

“This will grieve me.” Wulfric brought his sword up high. “War is no place for a girl.”

“Indigo.” Katherine truly did not know if she could make herself do it. She knew the best move with a sword against a charging knight—duck and take the horse at the legs. A vision flashed through her thoughts: the little foal Indigo, approaching her as though a blast of trumpets had announced him. All his life, since then, she had believed that there was something that bound them together. Perhaps—she started her dodge, readying to block Wulfric's downswing and then cut at Indigo's tendons—perhaps such feelings amount to nothing, in the end.

Indigo let out a snort. He stiffened his front legs. His shoes struck a hail of sparks, and before Katherine could even think on what it meant, he had slid to a screeching halt in front of her and thrown Wulfric flying from the saddle, over her head to land with a clanging crash on the bridge.

“You stinking peasant!” The words turned out to be the last Richard Redhands would utter, for he failed to guess at Martin's strength, and in knocking the point of the spear aside thought he could charge through to the kill. Martin recovered with lightning speed, twisting the spear back to lever Richard out of his saddle and over, down off the bridge and into the Tamber.

The second rank of riders slowed their pace, for if they had not, they would have crashed headlong into the horses before them. “Wulfric. Wulfric!” Lord Wolland raised his sword,
while trying to prevent his rearing stallion from throwing him. “Men, help me get to Wulfric! Help me reach my son!”

Indigo turned sideways, blocking the whole of the span. He cocked his head and threw Katherine a look.

Katherine needed no further invitation. She sprang up onto Indigo's back and wheeled him about to face Lord Wolland. “My lord, call off your attack, for if you do not, you and all who follow you will die.”

“You groundling. You slatternly, ragged little milkmaid.” The ready smile so common to Lord Wolland's features was at last exposed for what it was—a brittle lie. “Do you think a pack of peasants can stop me? I will have the north, all of it, and when I do, I will use no mercy on your village.”

“Your deaths lie on the other side of this bridge.” Katherine said it loud enough that the ranks of men behind Lord Wolland could hear her. “If we do not kill you, the Skeleth will.”

“You were betrayed from the very start, my lord,” said Edmund. “You seek conquest, but all the Skeleth want is destruction.”

“Silence!” Lord Wolland rushed forward and clanged swords with Katherine, but could not get through her guard. Indigo reared and spooked Wolland's horse, driving him back and nearly toppling him off the bridge.

“My lord, you sought to make a deal with Lord Aelfric and then Lord Harold, promising them friendship until you had the one thing you needed of them.” Katherine had to smile. “Surely you are wise enough to see that such a trick can be played on you, as well.”

Lord Wolland spluttered. His answer did not make it out of his helm.

“What does she mean?” Lord Overstoke held up the ranks of knights behind him, turning his horse so that none could pass him by. “What does she mean by that, my lord?”

“You rode for days across those moors, my lords and knights,” said Katherine. “You marched past ruin after ruin, through a land so bleak, it stung you to the heart. Did it not?”

The knights could not help but answer her with the truth on their faces.

“That is the legacy of the Skeleth.” Katherine pointed with her sword, across the river at the crowd of creatures coming up the Longsettle road toward the square. “That is what they do to the lands of men. They are in the service of the Nethergrim—they will destroy you with as much callous speed as they use on us. They do not seek to make Lord Wolland king, they seek the end of us. All of us.”

The knights hesitated, many of them staring with hard suspicion across the river at the distant Skeleth, who by then had drawn close enough that their monstrous aspect could no longer be concealed.

“Unhand me, knave!” Wulfric sprang to his feet just as Martin reached down for him. Though he had no sword, he could still fight like a cornered bear. Before Katherine could react, he had Edmund tumbling over the side of the bridge and had come to grips with Martin, wrestling back and forth with him across the span of the bridge.

“Wulfric!” Lord Wolland sprang forward, but Katherine met him sword on sword. There followed a tumult, a mad
and desperate scramble over the slanted stone expanse of the bridge. Katherine could do nothing but block Lord Wolland's advance, hoping with all she had that her words would have some effect on the men who had heard them, and hoping just as much that Edmund would have the strength to swim to shore.

Lord Wolland's stabs and slashes grew desperate. “Curse you—curse you! Tand! Overstoke, help me!” His horse shied away from Indigo's furious kicks, denying him the chance to close the distance and come in for a killing strike.

“I did not come here to make war upon all men.” Lord Overstoke backed his horse, forcing the knights behind him to follow suit. “I did not ride with you, my lord Wolland, to make a waste of all the north.”

“She's lying!” Wolland raised his sword. “Curse you all, she's tricking us! We will have the north, all of it!”

“What I see across this river looks like a pack of misshapen beasts attacking men and women.” Lord Overstoke turned his horse around. “I say back! Back, men, or come through me.”

Lord Wolland's face writhed into a snarl. He pointed his sword at Katherine, his deep-set eyes flashing black. “You accursed wench!” He jammed his spurs into the flank of his horse, causing gouts of blood to pour down its legs. “I will see you dead!”

“Before you do, my lord, tell us how much you love your son.”

Wolland stopped, his sword raised high. Katherine spared a glance behind her. Martin held Wulfric facedown on the bridge, hands up behind his back. Edmund had not fallen into
the river after all—he hauled himself up from behind the nearest post and lay heaving for breath on the span.

“Father.” Wulfric struggled, red in the face. “Forgive me, Father. I have shamed you.”

“It is no great shame to lose a wrestling match to the son of Hubert Upfield, companion of Tristan himself.” Katherine smiled back at Wolland. “Or don't you remember your histories?”

Wolland's face contorted, until it looked as though he might burst. “Give me back my son. Give him back, and I will go. You have my word of honor.”

“Done.” Katherine waved Edmund back down the bridge. “Over the shield wall, Edmund. Cousin, bring Wulfric forward.”

Martin dragged Wulfric to his feet and walked him past Katherine and Indigo. Katherine nodded to Lord Wolland—he returned it.

“Come on, then, we're needed in the village.” Katherine nudged Indigo around and turned away, but as she did, she saw Martin's face go white, staring past her at Lord Wolland. She swung back with her blade, knowing that she could not hope to block what was coming.

“
I
GRANT THE
CURSE OF PEACE!”

There was a pinging sound. Katherine felt no pain, no blow. She turned to find Lord Wolland cowering, still grasping the hilt of his shattered sword. The sword in her own hand seemed strangely light. She looked at it and found it broken, the blade snapped off just past the crossguard.

Katherine stared at Edmund. An awful understanding dawned on her. The crash of the joust replayed itself in her
memory, and then the sight of Harry lying bloodied in the dirt.

“I'm sorry. It was me.” Edmund met her gaze, then looked away. “I didn't mean to hurt him. I'm sorry.”

Katherine paced Indigo away from the column of knights. “Back to the square, hurry!” Martin needed no further cue. He seized Edmund and ran for the relative safety of the square.

Lord Wolland dropped his broken sword. He fixed a look of fulsome hatred on Katherine and raised his hand. “Men of Wolland! Forward on my—”

Wulfric caught his arm and wrenched it back down. “You will keep your word, Father, and dishonor yourself no further.” He took the reins of Wolland's horse and turned him eastward, away from Moorvale.

Katherine gave Wulfric half a smile. “There is hope yet for the barony of Wolland.” She wheeled Indigo around and galloped for home.

T
he horn sounded from the south—and resounded, two notes thrust against the very idea of harmony. The more they echoed, the worse they got.

“They're coming!” Missa Dyer clutched her head, staring openmouthed over the barricade that blocked the Longsettle road. “They're coming! Oh, they're horrible, they're—” What she said next got lost amongst the terror-stricken shouts of her neighbors.

Edmund knelt on the pedestal of the statue, crossing back and forth through all he had read. Perhaps, just perhaps, he could do it—save for one piece, the one thing that utterly baffled him.
The Skeleth are man and monster both. The man can be freed if he awakens to what the monster cannot know.
The Signs of the spell jumped and slipped in his mind, a whirl of colors, thoughts and meanings. Nothing he knew could make sense of it.

He picked up the brooch he had found on the breast of the queen and read the riddle inscribed around the rim.
I am the weapon that wounds the wielder. I am the defense that is no defense at all. I am triumph in surrender. I am that which, by being given, is gained.
He stared down at his notes, his guesses at the hole in the spell. What could it mean?

“Here they come!” Katherine leapt onto the barricade. “Hold together, everyone!”

Edmund looked up and wished that he had not. The Skeleth sprang forward in a mass. The faces of the men trapped in the ghastly rows of limbs looked worse than merely dead—more like men frozen at the moment of death, a final agony drawn out forever. The sight shook him so badly that he nearly forgot what he was doing.

“Set your poles!” Katherine shouted her command along the wagon barricade, facing south down the Longsettle road toward the approaching Skeleth. “When they come up, give them a hard shove back—but remember, don't stab them, don't kill!”

“Stupidest battle I've ever heard about.” Hob Hollows took his place atop the wagons. “Got to win it without killing anybody.”

Edmund touched his fingertips together and prepared to call on the Signs of Perception and Closing. The Skeleth passed by the common green in between the first of the cottages down the Longsettle road, by Nicky Bird's little shack and by Walter Bythorn's long, low byre. They moved in a rough clump, one hundred strong in the veiled gray of the hour before sunrise. Their glow seemed like a rot, the last glimmer of a dead firefly.

“Get ready—don't back away!” Harman Bale held his pole overhand, the butt of it poised to jam down over the barricade. “We've got to buy my son time!”

Edmund breathed in through his nose. The Sign of Perception rose in a spray of white and amber in his mind. He focused his thought around it until he felt no fear, felt nothing but the certainty of its power. He moved his body into the stance that matched its form.

“They have a wizard!” Jordan's shout came over a sudden chorus of cries. “Edmund, they have a wizard!”

Edmund snapped up his head. The earth of the road rumbled and split, shaking the ground under the barricade and throwing many of the defenders back from its frame into the square. Someone stood amongst the Skeleth, but was not one of them. She wore her long gray hair in a simple queue down her back, over a dark-hued dress trimmed in fur.

“Edmund Bale.” It could be no one but Warbur Drake. She spoke from across the barricade, a quarter mile down a road filled with raging monsters and screaming villagers, and yet Edmund heard her as clearly as though she had stood at his side. “I pictured you somewhat taller. Go on, then. Try your little spell. It might present a salutary challenge.”

“Edmund, Edmund, you've got to cast the spell!” Geoffrey grabbed his arm. “Edmund!”

Edmund ducked down, out of view of Warbur Drake and the Skeleth, and frantically studied his tablet. He jammed Sign to Sign, guessed at angle and chord, hoping to find some way to get it past a counterspell.

The first of the Skeleth to come over the barricade did so at a flying leap, knocking Missa Dyer spinning off the back of the wagon. Warbur Drake sounded her double horn once again, the notes rippling against each other brash and sour, and the rest of the creatures swarmed toward the square.

“Edmund!” Katherine swung her pole down hard, knocking a second Skeleth back before it could gain its footing on the spars and climb over. “We can't hold them off for long!”

Missa Dyer let out a cough as she hit the ground, and lay limp. The creature kept coming, dodging in between the row of villagers on the barricade, rushing out to leap on top of Missa with its sword held high.

“Get off my sister! Get off her!” Jordan Dyer jumped from his post on the barricade. He brought his pole crashing down on the man inside the twitching, reaching coils. The Skeleth staggered—blood poured from the man's nose, then his mouth. He dropped the sword in his hands, blinked, and seemed to wake up—then he collapsed and died—

—and the Skeleth took Jordan instead. It leapt and reached up the pole, and before Jordan could so much as scream, he was one of them, a dead-faced monster.

“Don't kill them!” Edmund shouted at the top of his lungs. “You must not kill or the Skeleth will take control of you!”

He took one more glance at his tablet and books—it was now or never. He brought himself into the Sign of Perception.

“Y
OU-
W
HO-
C
RAWL-
B
ELOW,
I
NAME YOU,
I
GRIP YOU
.” It felt like it was working—an answering hum in his mind seem to vibrate with his voice. “I
SHUT YOU FROM THE
SUN,
I—”

His mind snapped and reeled. The air around him hissed, then with a
whoomph
his breath seemed to flee from his mouth, and then from his lungs.

“
A
IR IS FICK
LE, AIR BREAKS FAITH
.” The voice of the wizard woman crackled on the wind. “B
REATHE OUT, AND FIND IT
FLED.
O
UT AND NEVER I
N AGAIN.
T
HE AIR BE D
RAWN FROM YOU, AND UN
MADE.
T
HE AIR BE UNMA
DE WITHIN YOU, AND SO
BE YOU UNMADE
.”

Edmund pitched over, grabbing for the stone leg of the statue. He missed—he struck his head, seeing stars, white, then black.

“Edmund?” Geoffrey grabbed him by the collar. He ripped his shirt wide. “Edmund, why aren't you breathing?”

Edmund flailed out with both his arms. The pain was beyond bearing, beyond knowing. His lungs pushed out, out and out, sucked into themselves within his chest.

“A
IR I
S STEADY, AIR IS JUST
.” Another voice rose to a chant, higher in pitch than the first. “A
IR ABHORS THE EMPT
Y, AIR FLOWS WHERE IT
IS DRAWN.
T
HE AIR RI
SE WITHIN YOU, MADE U
PON THE TIDES OF BRE
ATH.
B
E THE AIR REMAD
E WITHIN YOU.
B
REATHE
. E
DMUND, BREATHE.”

With what felt like a pop, Edmund started breathing again. He rolled onto his side, bubbling spit from his mouth, and saw Ellí up on the barricade, her arms in the action of the Sign of Air and the Sign of Making. Between her and Warbur Drake thrummed a humming shift of wind, slices of it buffeting back and forth. The two spells canceled each other, brought the air back into balance—but the effort cost Ellí far more than her
opponent. The last residues of the spell smacked Ellí left and then right, lances of air released unbalanced in the world.

“It's that wizard girl!” Geoffrey reached for an arrow. “Katherine, beside you on the barricade, it's her!”

“No!” Edmund grabbed his brother's leg. “No, she's helping us!”

Katherine stepped along the barricade toward the place where Ellí stood swaying from the cost of her spell. She turned to look at Edmund, sword in hand.

“Trust her,” said Edmund. “Trust me.”

Ellí staggered down. Katherine reached out to cushion her fall.

Edmund gave his brother a shove. “The old woman on the road, the one with silver hair, she's your target. Go on!”

Geoffrey raced up to the barricade. “There's a wizard down there—that one, the woman by the dye tubs. Bring her down!” He fumbled for his bow, then an arrow.

“I see her.” Hob Hollows grabbed for his bow and took aim along with Geoffrey and a few others—but then, with a searing blast of words from Warbur Drake, every longbow on the barricade snapped at once. Ellí lay dazed, unable to counter the spell. In the confusion that followed, another Skeleth nearly made it over the wall, and it was only by the surprisingly quick action of Wat Cooper, knocking it back with a hard swing from his garden hoe, that it did not kill Ellí then and there.

Edmund gained his feet, though when he did, he stumbled, seeing gray. The bow-breaking spell rippled in the eye of his mind—its cost, the fact that as each bowshaft hit the ground, it took root and turned into a lovely, fragrant young yew tree
from which dozens of new longbows could eventually be made, must not have bothered Warbur Drake very much. His neighbors, family and friends fought a desperate stand against the onrushing Skeleth. He could spare no thought for his own pain. He must not fail.

“Edmund, look out!” The warning came nearly too late. Edmund leapt aside from the swing of a long pole. He had forgotten all about Jordan Dyer, consumed within the luminescent coils of the Skeleth. Jordan was a young man in good health, and the Skeleth used all the strength he possessed. Edmund could do nothing but roll away from his books and off the pedestal of the statue.

Katherine jumped from the barricade, tackling Jordan to the ground—but almost at once, Jordan was up on his feet, seeming to care nothing for the bruises and cuts he had suffered. Katherine grabbed up the sword dropped by the first of the Skeleth and chopped his pole away, but that only brought him forward at a headlong run, without the slightest fear of her blade. Katherine backed and twisted, leading Jordan on. When at last he sprang, she leapt aside through the door of the mill, and he tumbled past and down the steep bank of the Tamber.

“M
OTH
ER OF RIVERS, RISE AN
D FLOOD THE EARTH
.” Warbur Drake started up another chant. “S
W
ELL FOR RAGE, BRING T
HE ENDING, DROWN ALL
IN THE DEEPENING TID
E.
R
ISE,
M
OTHER, RISE Y
OU SULLEN, RISE YOU H
ATEFUL, RISE—”

“S
LEEP,
M
OTHER, SLEEP!”
Ellí spoke over her, her words desperate, out of rhythm.
“
M
OTHER OF RIVE
RS, COME TO
REST.
T
HE
EARTH EMBRACES YOU.
B
E STILL, COME TO REST.”

Edmund heard the sound of crashing, rushing water from the east, as though a flash flood had started up without warning. The river rose, waves lapped up hard against the banks—then sank again, receding.

“Edmund, hurry!” Ellí trembled on her knees. She spat up a gut-full of water. “I can't hold her for long.” Edmund watched her teetering from her imperfectly cast counterspell, the unbalanced Signs around her snapping and tearing at her in ways that ordinary folk could not perceive. Any doubt he had that she truly meant to make amends disappeared.

“Everyone, everyone from the bridge, to the barricade!” Katherine rushed back across the square, with Martin Upfield, Nicky Bird and a dozen more villagers. “We've got to give Edmund time.” With speed born both of skill and desperation she charged at a Skeleth that had made it over the wall, a man who held a woodsman's axe and looked about to cleave Wat Cooper in half with it. She stabbed in, looking for a moment as though she meant to kill, but instead got her blade hooked under the axe-head and then jerked the weapon away, disarming the creature. Martin crashed into it a heartbeat later, bowling it backward through the dirt of the square.

Edmund gained his feet.
“
Y
OU-
W
HO-
C
RAWL-
B
ELOW,
I
NAME Y
OU,
I
GRIP YOU
.” He made the Sign of Closing.
“
I
SHU
T YOU FROM THE SUN,
I
SHUT YOU FROM THE A
IR,
I
CONFINE YOU.”

One breath went by, and another.

“Oh, no.” Edmund staggered. Terror rose to claim him. “No, no.”

The Skeleth came on, clawing and grabbing at the barricade, as though he had not spoken a word.