Half a War

Another Kind of Steel

Raith was throwing up his arm to block that gilded spear when the shield of the man who held it was ripped apart, the iron rim flopping. He was flung back as if by a giant’s hammer, his fine green-dyed cloak on fire and his broken spear tumbling away end over end.

Then came the thunder.

A noise like the Breaking of God, a rattling boom fast as a woodpecker strikes. Mother Scaer’s elf-weapon jerked in her grip like a thing alive, her whole body shaking with its mad fury, her scream turned to a jagged warble, shards of metal showering from its top and fire spitting from its mouth.

Before Raith’s smarting eyes Bright Yilling’s Companions, storied warriors every one, were in the space of a snatched breath all smashed like beetles on an anvil, mown down like corn before the scythe, blood and splinters and mail-rings showering and their bent and shattered weapons spinning and their ruined limbs flying one from another like straw in a mad gale.

Even as his jaw was dropping Raith heard more cracks behind them, fire stabbing from the walls of the fortress. He flinched at a flash in the High King’s lines, a monstrous blooming of fire, broken stakes and earth and armour and men and the parts of men thrown high into the air. The ground shook, Father Earth himself trembling at the power of the elves released.

His axe seemed a pointless little thing now and Raith let it fall, caught Skara’s arm and dragged her down behind his shield, Blue Jenner locking with him on one side and Rulf on the other to form a feeble little wall, huddling in terror while the ministers sent Death across the ruined fields before Bail’s Point.

There was a great thud as the weapon jolted in Skifr’s hands again, a trail of fog curving down through the air towards the High King’s lines. It touched the earth among some penned-up horses. Koll gasped as fire shot up in clawing fingers, clapped his hands over his ears at the shuddering boom.

Horses were flung into the air like the toys of a bad-tempered child, others reared on fire, or charged off, dragging burning wagons. Koll gave a kind of moan of horror and dismay. He hadn’t known what the elf-engines would do, but he hadn’t dared guess it might be this.

The gods knew he was no lover of fighting, but he could understand why bards sung of battles. The matching of warrior against warrior. Of skill against skill and courage against courage. There was no skill or courage here. Nothing noble in this blind destruction.

But Skifr wasn’t interested in nobility, only vengeance. She slapped the side of her weapon and the drum dropped out, tumbling down the outside of the wall to bounce in the ditch. She held out her hand.

‘More.’

Everywhere elf-relics clattered, stuttered, stabbed, battering Koll’s hearing so he could hardly think.

‘I …’ he stammered, ‘I …’

‘Pfft.’ Skifr dug her hand into his bag and pulled out another drum. ‘You told me once you wanted to see magic!’ She locked it into the smoking slot where the first had been.

‘I changed my mind.’ Wasn’t that what he did best, after all? But over the noise of screaming weapons, screaming men, screaming beasts, no one could have heard him, let alone taken the slightest notice.

He blinked out over the parapet, nose almost on the stone, trying to make sense of the chaos. Over to the north there seemed to be fighting. Steel glinting through drifting smoke. Signs of bone and hide bobbing over a seething throng.

Koll’s eyes widened even further. ‘The Shends have turned on the High King!’

‘Just as Father Yarvi told them to,’ said Skifr.

Koll stared at her. ‘He never told me.’

‘If you have not learned that Father Yarvi is a man who says as little as possible, there is no help for you.’

To the east the High King’s men were struggling to form a shield-wall. Koll saw a warrior running forward, holding up his sword. Great bravery, but it was a wall of cobwebs. There was a barking clatter from the little knot of shields around the South Wind’s prow-beast and the would-be hero fell, shields knocked from the line beyond him like coins flicked over.

‘That won’t do,’ said Skifr, pressing the elf-weapon to her cheek. Koll wanted to weep as he pushed his fingers into his ears. Another thud. Another trail of fog. One more earth-shaking boom, a vast hole ripped from the line. How many men gone in an instant? Burned away as though they had never been or flung ruined like sparks whirling from Rin’s forge?

They crumbled, of course. How could men fight the power that broke God? Swords and bows were useless. Mail and shields were useless. Courage and fame were useless. The High King’s invincible army streamed down the road and across the fields in a mad confusion, not caring where they ran as long as it was away from Bail’s Point, trampling through their camps and flinging away their gear, driven by the screaming Shends and the merciless elf-weapons, turned from men with one purpose to animals with none in their panic.

Squinting into the dawn haze, Koll saw moremovement beyond them — horses spilling from the trees near the abandoned village.

‘Riders,’ he said, pointing.

Skifr lowered the elf-weapon and snapped out a laugh. ‘Hah! Unless my eye for portents deceives me, that is my finest pupil at work. Thorn never was one to miss out on a fight.’

‘It’s not a fight,’ murmured Koll. ‘It’s a slaughter.’

‘Thorn never was one to miss out on a slaughter either.’

Skifr stood tall, burns creasing on her neck as she stretched up to look about her. Everywhere, Grandmother Wexen’s mighty host was being scattered like chaff on the wind, Thorn’s horsemen moving among them, steel flashing as they cut them down, harrying them through the blackened ruins of the village and off to the north.

‘Huh.’ She pulled the drum from her elf-weapon and tossed it back to Koll, made him juggle it in a panic before he clutched it desperately to his chest. ‘It seems the day is ours.’

Slowly, weakly, hesitantly as a moth breaking from its cocoon, Skara pushed Raith’s limp arm away and, using the rim of his shield like a crutch, wobbled to her feet.

The sounds all seemed strange. Screaming, and shouts, and the calls of birds. Now and again the stuttering bark of elf-weapons. But all far away, as though it happened in another time and place.

Mother Scaer stood rubbing her bruised shoulder. With a grimace of disgust she tossed her still-smoking relic to the ground.

‘Are you hurt, my queen?’ Blue Jenner’s voice. It took Skara a moment to realize he was talking to her. She looked stupidly down at herself. Her mailshirt was all twisted and she tried to drag it straight, brushed mud from her side.

‘Dirty,’ she mumbled, as though that mattered, her tongue clumsy in her dry mouth as she blinked across the battlefield. If it could be called a battle.

The line of stakes was buckled and torn, great pits dug from it and broken earth and broken gear and broken bodies flung into smouldering heaps. The High King’s army, so terrible a few moments before, was burned away like the morning fog before Mother Sun.

Father Yarvi gazed down at the shattered bodies of Yilling’s Companions, his elf-staff, his elf-weapon, tucked under one arm. Not frowning or smiling. Not weeping, or laughing. A studied calmness on his face. A craftsman well-satisfied with his morning’s work.

‘Up, Mother Adwyn,’ he said.

From among the corpses the minister lifted her head, red hair plastered to her scalp with clotted blood.

‘What have you done?’ She stared at Yarvi in slack disbelief, tear-streaks on her mud-spattered face. ‘What have you done?’

Yarvi twisted his withered hand in her coat and dragged her up by it. ‘Exactly what you accused me of!’ he snarled. ‘Where is your court for this? Where is the jury? Who will judge me now?’ And he rattled his elf-staff, his elf-weapon, in her face, and threw her down cringing among the bodies.

One of them had somehow staggered up, blinking about him like a man woken from a dream. Vorenhold, though Skara hardly recognized him now. His mail was as tattered as a beggar’s coat, his shield hanging in splinters from its bent rim, one earless side of his face all scored and bloody and the arm that had held a spear gone at the elbow.

He fumbled the horn from his belt, lifted it as though to give a blast, then saw the mouthpiece was broken off. ‘What happen?’ he mumbled.

‘Your death.’ Gorm put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently down to his knees, then with a sweep of his sword sent his head spinning away.

‘Where is Yilling?’ murmured Skara, tottering to the corpses. Gods, she could hardly tell one from another. Those who had stood so proud a few moments before, made butcher’s offal. Perhaps she should have felt triumph, but all she felt was terror.

‘This is the end of the world,’ she whispered. The end of the world she had known, anyway. What had been strong was strong no longer. What had been certain was wreathed in a fog of doubt.

‘Careful, my queen,’ Raith muttered, but she hardly heard him, let alone marked him.

She had seen Bright Yilling’s body, wedged among the others, arms flung wide, one leg folded beneath him, mail soaked dark with blood.

She crept closer. She saw the smooth cheek, the long scratch Uthil had given him.

Closer yet, fascinated, fearful. She saw the bland little smile on the plump lips, even in death.

She leaned down over him. The same blank eyes that had haunted her dreams ever since that night in the Forest. The night she had sworn vengeance.

Did his cheek twitch?

She gasped as his eyes flicked to hers, gave a squawk of shock as his hand clutched her mail and dragged her down. So her ear was pressed to his face. So she heard his rasping breath. But not just breath. Words too. And words can be weapons.

Her hand was on her dagger’s grip. She could have drawn it. Could have sent him through the Last Door with a flick of her wrist. She had dreamed of it often enough. But she thought of her grandfather, then. Be as generous to your enemies as your friends. Not for their sake, but for your own.

She heard Raith growl, felt his shadow fall across them, stabbed her palm out behind her to stop him. Bright Yilling’s hand fell, and she pulled away from him to see his red-spotted face.

He pressed something weakly into Skara’s palm. A leather pouch, and inside she saw slips of paper. Slips like the ones Mother Kyre used to unfold from the talons of Grandmother Wexen’s eagles.

She leaned down over Bright Yilling, the fear gone, and the hate gone too. She took his hand in hers, slipped her other around the back of his head and gently lifted it towards her.

‘Tell me the name,’ she murmured, and turned her ear to his lips. Close enough to hear his final breath. His final word.