Dusk

Chapter 24

LENORA LED THEMages’ advance force across the Bay of Cantrassa and approached the mainland of Noreela. They flew low. Their objective was to secure a landing area at Conbarma for the Krote army following on in ships, and as such one of their main aims was to preserve the element of surprise. She knew that there would be a fight once they alighted on Noreelan soil, but it had to be contained, a skirmish rather than a battle. Their landing had to be kept secret for as long as possible.

Lenora had listened for her daughter’s shade. There were hints and flushes of presence, but she could not be certain that these were not manufactured in her own mind. There you are! the shade said, and Way away, so far away, and See me hear me find me. But these words made little sense, and Lenora found no comfort in them at all. If anything, they disturbed her more than she could have imagined. If they were the words of her unborn daughter’s shade, then there was no warmth or sense of belonging there for her. And if it was not the potential of her dead child’s voice, then Lenora was mad. So she listened, doing her best to keep her watchfulness subdued; it was the Mages’ bidding she was here to oversee. Her own aims-her own lust for revenge-had to remain at the back of her mind. For now. But there would come a time. ..

The huge hawks were tired almost to the point of death. They had lost some over the Bay, rescuing the Krote riders whenever possible, and now their force was reduced to around eighty hawks and ninety warriors. The hawks were almost finished, but the Krotes, tired and hungry though they were, perked up at the first sign of land. They knew that there was a fight ahead, and fighting was their life.

Seaweed bobbed on the waves below them, and a few scraps of wood from some wreck, and then their shadows touched a small flock of birds that could have only originated on land. The Krotes called to one another, laughing, singing, making warlike melodies with the metallic impact of sword on knife, stabbing at the failing hawks to add their wounded voices to the song. The horizon concealed land, but they knew it was not far away. After so long in the air these warriors were more than ready to feel firm ground beneath their feet, and enemy flesh around their blades.

They came across a small fleet of fishing boats, and their howls froze the fishermen and women where they stood. Lenora sent five hawks down. The Krotes let loose arrows and poisoned stars, and bodies splashed into the water. A few halfhearted arrows met them on their second approach, but it only took two more passes to ensure that everyone on the boats was dead. Their blood up, the Krotes turned the hawks landward once again. Behind them the fishing boats bobbed with the current, their contents soon to rot in the sun.

Conbarma was a fishing village with a huge natural harbor. It had a massive capacity for ships of all sizes, the docking mole had been built and extended over the last thousand years, and it had long been decided by the Mages that this would be the ideal point for invasion. Mage spies had drawn maps of the land beyond the village; it was relatively level, the buildings low and well spaced out, and the village itself was peopled by fisher folk and a few dozen lethargic militia.

Lenora ordered the hawks in low. The Krotes were not expecting any significant resistance, yet they executed a perfect attack. To fail here would be to leave the Mages’ fleet, and their soldiers, open to attack as soon as they touched Noreelan soil.

The great creatures were seen over a mile out. As they drew nearer, Lenora heard shouts of panic from the village and saw people running through the streets. She veered her hawk away from the initial hail of arrows and bolts, and then she gave the order to return fire. The invaders let loose with their own crossbows and the air was thick with screams of the dying. Several hawks circled back and landed at the harbor, disgorging Krote warriors, who immediately went into battle, screeching in delight as their swords found flesh and bone.

Most of the hawks could barely move from where they had landed, such was their exhaustion, and they became targets of the villagers’ fury and terror. One was trapped in a net and hauled into the sea to drown; another had its limbs and tentacles hacked off until it bled to death, whining pitifully for its master to come and save it. But the warrior it had carried into the fray was already streets away, busy with his killing.

Lenora and the remaining hawks flew over the village, circling to disgorge perfectly aimed bolts and arrows before flying on. They passed the outskirts of Conbarma and kept going over the low hills and shallow valleys, until there were no signs of habitation below. They spread out, flying left and right and curving back toward the coast, forming a wide perimeter.

They landed. Solid ground felt good beneath Lenora’s feet, and she staggered slightly as she found her land legs. It did not take long. You feel so strong, a voice said in her mind, but perhaps she had thought, I feel so strong. “Yes,” she said, agreeing, whatever the case. “Strong, and ready for a fight.” She called to those Krotes to her left and right. “This is just the beginning! Weeks of this to come. Weeks!” They cheered and raised their unsheathed swords. And then, Lenora thought, I can fly on to fight my own battle.

Your own battle, the shade in her mind echoed. And Lenora decided then that, whether it was her daughter’s shade or her own mad voice, she would listen to it until the end.

Lenora and the dismounted Krotes waited in a curve around the village’s outskirts, counting the seconds and minutes until they were sure that their comrades would have completed the entrapment. It was peaceful this far inland-no screams or sounds of fighting reached them from the harbor-and Lenora listened to the sounds of nature. Birds sung in a nearby swatch of bushes. Gulls cried overhead, and a moor hawk circled way up high, spying on these new invaders without fear. Her warriors had fallen silent, and she thought perhaps they too were listening to these new, pure sounds. Back on Dana’Man there was little wildlife, and what did exist was unpleasant and often dangerous. The normal noises back there were cracks and groans as the glacier rumbled its timeless way seaward, and the solitary cries of the snow wraiths they had never, ever seen in three hundred years.

Now, on Noreela, it felt as though they were in the real world at last.

At Lenora’s call the Krotes checked their weapons and hefted extra arrows, bolts, throwing stars and other killing tools from the saddle bags on their exhausted mounts. The fishing village was hidden by a few low hills and some sparse woodland, but now the signs of battle were beginning to show. A smudge of smoke rose into the sky, and as the battle intensified, so the first sounds of clashing metal and dying screams reached them. The stench of smoke and burning flesh drifted inland, carried by gentle sea breezes to those eager to join in.

“They’re playing our tune!” Lenora called. “Let’s not disappoint.” The Krotes encircling the village commenced their march. The noose began to tighten.

Only a minute later Lenora saw the first of the fleeing villagers. Several men and women on horses came around a curve in the road ahead. Most of them did not see the arrows that killed them, nor the Krote warriors that fired them. One rider rolled into the ditch and stood, drawing his sword and staring wide-eyed at the Krote woman bearing down on him. Lenora acknowledged his bravery, at least.

You feel so real! a voice said in her head, and she smiled and agreed as one of the dead villager’s horses ran at her. She stepped aside and sliced the animal’s throat. So real!

The warriors broke into a run, the smell of blood and battle too much to ignore. The circle would be closing, and villagers fleeing the slaughter of Conbarma ran into the killers out in the countryside. Lenora saw a few fight bravely, willingly taking on the Krotes for the sake of their families, but no fights lasted for long. These were fishing folk, not warriors, and any sword skills they possessed came of a sport or hobby rather than a way of life.

For the Krotes-born, living and dying as warriors-these were the enemy. Their hatred of Noreelans was drummed in from birth. It was easy for them.

Families were put to the sword. Women, children, babies… none could be left alive to provide warning of the attack. Any survivor would flee inland, spreading news and providing advance warning of the invasion to come. And although Lenora knew that the forthcoming invasion would likely go in their favor whatever preparations Noreela could muster, the Mages’ wishes were that the incursion should be quick and final. After no more than a week of fighting, they wanted Noreela City.

It did not take long for the tightening noose to close around the outskirts of Conbarma. When Lenora saw several of her warriors rushing out of the village in pursuit of fleeing residents, she knew that the fight was almost at an end. They had landed little more than an hour before. Most of the remaining villagers were trapped between those that had landed at the harbor and those moving in from outside, and in a mistaken belief in the idea of mercy, some of them surrendered. The Krotes-bloodied, raving, their pale skins flushed with the excesses of the hour-herded the people into a small vegetable garden and slaughtered them. The screams were of anger as much as pain. Lenora watched, and she felt nothing. After the slaughter she waded into the garden, reveling in the warm wash of blood across her sandaled feet. She drew a knife as long as her forearm, and a woman feigning death screamed as she cut her throat.

My daughter could have screamed like that had she been born, she thought. She could have fished or hunted, run and fucked. She could have breathed. She watched the woman’s final breath bubble from her slashed throat, and a voice said, So real!

She sent a dozen warriors back to bring in the hawks they had left around the village, or to destroy them should they already have died. A dozen more took up station at the village outskirts, watching for anyone who may be in hiding, awaiting a chance to flee. There would be no survivors.

The invaders remaining in Conbarma began a house-to-house search for survivors, killing them instantly when any were found. No amount of pleading, begging or offering did any good; the soldiers had their orders, and the mission was on the verge of complete success. Lenora was delighted, but celebration would come later. Later too, they would be able to take their spoils of war, from villages and towns and eventually Noreela City itself: the wealth of gold and jewels; the power over those that they captured and put into slavery; the drugs rhellim and fledge, able to sculpt their users’ minds and guide their desires.

The sounds of killing still echoed through the village.

The final part of the battle was more protracted than she had hoped for, and harder won. The few surviving militia had quickly retreated to the Conbarma moon temple, barricaded themselves inside and prepared for siege. There were maybe a dozen men and women in the building, and although the Krotes were comfortable with the fact that they could not escape and give warning, they wanted the remaining villagers dead. There was work to do, preparations to make for the army’s landing, and inconveniences such as this were troublesome. The Krotes attacked, and the besieged militia fought back with the ferocity of those knowing they were doomed.

The temple was a small building with small windows, and this aided those inside. They fired their arrows, and attacking Krotes fell with steel and wood ripping their flesh. Those that could tried to crawl back into cover, but they were shown as much mercy as they had themselves displayed. Krotes took up positions in buildings around the temple, letting their skill as bowmen come to the fore as they put arrows into gaps little wider than their forearms. The exchange continued, and while the Krotes had to send some of their number away to restock their quivers, those inside were being given an unending supply of ammunition. Soon, Krotes began to fall by their own poisoned arrows. The toll inside the temple could not be counted, and yet slowly, inexorably, the rate of fire from within dwindled.

After two hours of this continuous exchange Lenora ordered a change of tactics. They took the battle to the doors of the temple. Six Krotes carried a long boat from the harbor to use as a battering ram, running at the door under covering fire from their comrades. But the building was old and sturdy, dating from centuries before Krotes had last been driven from these shores, and the oak and iron door withheld the assault long enough for the attackers to be shot down or sent away to die with arrows in their flesh.

The besieged cheered and mocked their attackers, their bravado all the more frustrating because of their untenable position. Those inside the temple could never win. And though frustrated, Lenora and her warriors could not help but feel a grudging respect for these last few defenders.

They have their lives, and they revel in them, she thought. Until the last, they relish existence. She listened for the voice of her daughter, but the darkness inside her mind was silent. She thought that perhaps she really was mad. She was over three hundred years old, and whatever Angel had given her on the deck of that burning ship as they fled Noreela had been to preserve her for this very moment, this era in time. She was fulfilling the meaning of her life. She hoped she made her baby proud.

Bodies began to pile up. A dozen Krotes had died at the temple, their blood blackening the dust. The village stank of the dead, and half a day after the hawks had drifted in from the sea fresh blood was still being drawn.

Lenora ordered her warriors back, leaving a handful to badger the defenders. The rest set about preparing the village for the main army’s arrival. Boats were floated out beyond the harbor, taken a little way along the coast and then scuppered. The mole and harbor were cleared of fishing equipment, and buildings throughout the village were made ready to house as many warriors as could fit inside. Wagons were pulled to the village’s extremes and toppled onto their sides, and dozens of quivers of arrows were placed at these defenses, ready in case of an attack from inland. Lenora was sure that not one person had escaped the slaughter-other than those still fighting in the temple-but there was always a chance, and she had to allow for any eventuality.

It was as they gathered the surviving hawks together at the harbor that one of the Krotes suggested how to defeat the temple defenders.

The hawks that could be saved were left with piles of the village dead to eat. Their strength would take days or weeks to return, but the Krotes saw no purpose in killing them yet. Those few that were beyond saving were hauled slowly through the streets to the temple.

Arrows flew. The hawks grumbled and cried out as they were holed a dozen times, two dozen, but being shoved from behind they finally heaved themselves against the walls of the temple, covering the firing holes, dying, far too heavy to be shifted from within.

Stomach gases swelled as they gasped their final breaths. Their hides stretched so thin that they became translucent, ready to burst and let loose the appalling smell that always accompanied a hawk’s slow decay. The Krotes withdrew, made flaming arrows and fired them at their dead mounts’ bodies from a safe distance.

Most of the small fires went out immediately. Others held on pitifully, and a few spread, crackling their way across the dead creatures’ fatty hides. It did not take long for the first hawk to burst, gushing dancing blue flames across the street. A second explosion followed, a third, and the flames became voracious.

The fire quickly took hold of the temple. Flaming gases from the dead hawks vented through the small windows and set the insides alight. The creatures’ fat melted and flowed. There were screams from the temple, but only a few, and they did not last for long.

The building burned on into dusk. The Krotes tried to extinguish the flames, afraid that the smoke would be seen from a distance, but they were forced back by the heat. The fires had ignited the hawks’ fatty flesh, and the stench of burnt meat permeated the air across the whole of Conbarma.

That made the warriors hungry. They found wine cellars and good, fresh seafood in some of the homes, and that night they spent a few hours celebrating their first victory on the shores of Noreela.

Lenora sat and celebrated with them, but all the while a part of her mind was farther south, imagining the village of Robenna as she had last seen it. And as she looked around at the Conbarma dead, smelled their insides, watched the hungry hawks crunching them into pulp, she sensed a shade sitting within her. It said nothing, but it was comfortable. It recognized her.

She knew then that she would see Robenna again. And this time, it would be on her terms.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, five specks appeared in the sky out to sea. Lenora ordered a dozen Krotes aloft, while she and the remaining warriors took up defensive positions. The specks grew slowly, their course unerring, finally resolving into hawks. The scouts moved out to intercept them, but at the last minute the Krotes’ mounts veered away, spinning seaward, their riders shouting in dismay, shock and fear. All twelve managed to rein in the frantic hawks and hobble back toward shore, but by then the five new hawks were hovering above the harbor, two of them slowly setting down, tentacles reaching out to make their landing as gentle and graceful as possible.

Lenora could not bring herself to walk along the harbor wall to meet them. Her warriors knelt and rested their foreheads on the ground, muttering words of greeting and reverence.

And the Mages were on Noreela for the first time in three centuries.

“Lieutenant!” the tall one called. “I have need of you!”

Lenora swallowed, smoothed her leather tunic and stepped out onto the harbor wall. She had been in the Mages’ presence many times before but never like this, never in combat.

“Mistress,” she said, approaching the tall, old woman. She called herself Angel, but few people felt comfortable using that name. It was too personal. “Mistress, what an unexpected pleasure.”

“Indeed,” Angel said, stretching her bony arms. She looked around at the harbor and the battle-scarred town. “They’ve done the place up since I was here last,” she said quietly. “A few new buildings. Quieter. They must have known we were coming.” She looked at Lenora then, her old eyes filled with a knowledge and power that Lenora could not meet for more than a second or two. “What news, Lieutenant?”

“We hold Conbarma, and it’s ready to receive the ships.” She paused, glanced across at S’Hivez where the old Mage sat slumped forward on his mount. He looked like a mummified corpse, something they would pull out of the glacier on Dana’Man.

“You’re talking to me, not him!” Angel said.

“Sorry, Mistress.”

Angel stared at her, then smiled. “You of all people need not apologize to me, Lenora. We’ve been through so many years together-a few good, a few hundred bad-and now it’s our time again. Do you feel that?” She drew close, her breath musty and filled with secrets of rage and time. “Can you really sense that, Lenora?”

“Yes,” Lenora whispered. And she could. All her memories of the Cataclysmic War and their terrible flight north, refreshed over the past few days, had been instantly wiped away by their first decisive victory. They were back on Noreela… and sometime soon, she would go home again. That would be her own personal reward, and not even the Mages need know of that.

“I want you to fly with me, Lieutenant.”

Lenora frowned, confused. Angel walked past her and headed along the harbor wall for land, true land, her hand already reaching out to touch the bones of Noreela laid bare for ages. She followed, glancing back at S’Hivez sitting astride his hawk. He showed no inclination to dismount.

“Don’t worry about him,” Angel said. “He knows we’re leaving soon, and he’s not one for symbolism. I’m the one who wants to touch this place again.”

Lenora followed her mistress, maintaining a respectful distance. They passed one of her men, pressing himself so close to the ground that it seemed he was trying his best to merge with the rock.

“Here we are,” Angel said, her voice soft and filled with a timeless grief. “Here we are.”

The Mage stepped forward into the first dusty street of Conbarma. She stood there for some time, looking down at her feet then up at the buildings before her, left and right at the shops and taverns that fronted the harbor, back down at her feet. Then she sank slowly to her knees, and from where Lenora watched she was nothing more than a sad old woman, her friends and family dead, kneeling in the dust and wishing to be taken back into it. She picked up a handful of sand and brought it to her face, inhaling, letting some slip between her fingers and drift away on the breeze.

Then Angel suddenly stood, spun around and strode back to Lenora. Any resemblance with that sad old woman had vanished. Here she was, the Mage, Angel, the woman whom in Lenora’s eyes had always ruled, the one with power and passion enough to keep going whatever the setbacks. She had built a community far to the north where breath froze on your lips in winter and your piss turned to ice as it left your body. Built an army, always certain that her time would come again. And S’Hivez, though he had withered and faded, had gladly watched Angel take control. Lovers once, now they were more like a monstrous mother and son.

“How many times have you dreamed of this, Lenora?” she asked.

“Hundreds, Mistress.”

“Is it anything as good as you imagined?”

Lenora smiled. “Better.”

“Good. That’s because this is a place to live, whereas Dana’Man was a place to die. Do you feel alive? Does the blood on your hands make you feel alive?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Come with me. The source of magic is far to the south. My shades have seen it, and it’s weak and ill protected, and now it has a name. We’ll fly there and take it for ourselves. There may even be Red Monks for us to fight! I’ll trust my army to land here and do what it was built for.”

“You can have full confidence in them,” Lenora said.

“I hope so.” Angel walked past Lenora and touched her shoulder briefly, squeezing, and she took that as gratitude. “S’Hivez!” Angel called.

Lenora turned in time to see the old Mage sitting up in his saddle.

“S’Hivez, it’s time to fly on. This place tastes as good as it ever did, and it’ll be ours. But do you want to feel young again? Do you want to feel better?”

S’Hivez mumbled and Angel laughed, and her voice sounded like that of a young girl about to slit her own mother’s throat. Sweet, poison.

“With us, Lenora, just you!” she shouted. “Tell your Krotes to hold this place for the next week until our army lands.”

Lenora turned and ran back to the harbor, heading for where one of her men had landed with his hawk, issuing orders even as she leaped into the saddle and urged the creature aloft.

They’re not supposed to be here so soon, she thought, but it was not bitter. The fact they had arrived illustrated that events were moving on apace, and she was glad that her mistress demanded her company. Now that they were back in Noreela, wherever the Mages went was where the action would be. New history being forged.

Lenora was more than happy to be along for the ride.

Tim Lebbon

Dusk