Arcanum (22 page)

“We had the initiative. Then we handed it back to them. We have to pull out, now.” She saw they were blocked in, front and rear, but at least it would be stalemate if they just stopped advancing.

“Are you going to tell him? He won’t listen anyway. And how did Allegretti know it would turn out like this?”

“Because he’s as good a scholar as he is a swordsman. Now, what do we do?”

Then the arrows started to fall again. But not from behind: from the front. Suddenly, the entrance to the town was blocked by men with bows who seemed to rise out of the ground. She should have noticed, but again she hadn’t been concentrating. The first volley was already in the air, and the second was following. Fifty, maybe even a hundred black shafts reached the top of their trajectory and started downwards.

“Shields!” screamed Reinhardt, and yes, that was good advice. She locked hers in place, but some of the others weren’t as quick.

The arrows clattered down. Some buried themselves in the sodden ground. Some bounced off hastily upturned shields or impaled themselves in the wood. Some hit the men behind them, and others still simply struck unprotected flesh, horse and man, and there was chaos. The second volley was already arcing down, and a third was on the way.

“Where did they come from?” yelled Büber. The arrows aimed at him and Nikoleta skittered harmlessly away, but that didn’t stop them from being terrifying.

“Because half those horsemen aren’t what they seem to be. They’ve swapped them with the women.”

The Carinthian line staggered, and, over the grunts and screams, Gerhard’s voice cut through. “Charge! Charge them!” He wheeled about and headed straight for the Teutons.

The attack was ragged. The earls were still trying to avoid the waves of falling arrows, and the infantry were broken. Time to recover was what they needed, and only Nikoleta could provide it.

She whipped her reins and charged with the Prince of Carinthia.

It wasn’t far. A stadia at most. She had to hit them hard, and try not to kill Gerhard at the same time. He was almost there, raising his sword out to his side and getting ready to strike.

No finesse, then. She raised a wall of fire across the Teuton line and let it burn for a moment. The flames scattered those who could still run, while others were ablaze.

Gerhard’s horse went down in a heap, legs splayed, head to one side. It started to roll, and the prince leapt clear. She could save him if she could get close to him, but she had spells to cast and a succession to preserve.

She collapsed the curtain of fire, and turned her attention to the half-dozen Teutons burning like candlewicks. A moment later, it became apparent that the human body contained enough fat to fuel a good-sized explosion, and that someone wearing armour could become a source of lethal shards of red-hot metal, able to scythe down anyone close by.

The solid air in front of her was plastered with red splashes that stuck in splatter patterns like spiders. Her stomach heaved, and she gagged. The gore dropped to the ground as her shield collapsed, and she was suddenly in the middle of a pitched battle, with smoke and fire and the ringing of swords, the shouts and curses of men trying to kill and to avoid being killed.

Büber was at her side. He had his sword, and its edge was already dripping. “Forward. Can’t go back.”

She turned and looked. The Teuton horse had charged the rear of the Carinthian spears. The earls were fighting back, but their colours were few among the barbarian black.

A figure lunged at her, and instinctively her shield came back, tight around her. A sword-point scraped the air in front of her face. Büber kicked the man away and plunged his fist downwards. The steel went all the way through, and he had to drag it back out.

It would be stupid to die now, and to keep on being revolted by the results of her own magic was even more stupid. A deep breath, and concentration: if forward was the only way, then they’d have to cut through the last of the Teutons ahead and go through the town.

Her horse. She didn’t even remember dismounting. It was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Büber’s. Or rather, it seemed there were riderless horses everywhere, and it was futile to try and pick out her own.

Very well, then. The tall buildings around the market square had their backs to her. The gap between them lay up a short cobbled road with wooden houses either side. It was a walk of no distance at all, and at a run, would take mere moments to reach.

She stretched out her arms and fire poured from her palms. Not at anyone in particular, though a Teuton did get in the way and fell before the onslaught, reeling away, wrapped in flame. Despite the relentless rain, she set the side of a house alight. The logs hissed and spat, and the roof of shingles started to smoke.

“Get behind me,” she said to Büber, and, without waiting, she tore the structure apart.

The blizzard of splinters cleared their path, and she set off up the street. Büber grunted with the effort of sprinting uphill.

“Where are we going?”

“Not back.” She took a moment to look. “That would be bad.”

There were two Carinthian infantrymen behind them. Whether they were running towards them, or running away from something, was moot. There was a Teuton rider coming up on them, his sword-arm poised. They could have kept him at bay with their spears, but it was difficult to tell whether they’d even noticed him.

She willed burning light into her palm and hurled it. Death was more or less instantaneous, and of the three men who fell to the cobbles, only two got up.

“Stay with us,” she said, and the bloodied, battered soldiers fell in beside Büber, grateful they didn’t have to think any more.

The town square: the opening to it was narrow, as Büber had seen, and blocked with laden wagons parked across it. Some of the barbarians’ camp followers were at the barricades, women mostly, some boys not old enough to fight, some girls.

Behind them, the residents of Obernberg. Nailed to the timber-framed walls at a variety of angles, suspended by their necks from windows with their own bedsheets, impaled, butchered, every last one of them.

Nikoleta stopped, and Büber, and the two Carinthians, and simply stared.

What separated masters from adepts was a final surrender of pity. If a sorcerer could not put to death that part of them which made them feel sorry for their victims, then they were forever condemned to inhabit the lower orders. Great feats of magic, yes: true mastery of the art, never.

Looking up at the walls of Obernberg and seeing its inhabitants strewn across them in a grotesque display of inhumanity was enough to kill off any remaining shred of sympathy within Nikoleta Agana.

She marked stepping across the divide by shrugging off her heavy leather coat onto the wetly shining stones and throwing her hat to one side. Standing their, the rain beating down on her head, soaking the simple shift that she wore, she had never felt so powerful, so at peace, so certain as to what she should do.

The ground trembled in anticipation.

The women on the wagons, beforehand all catcalls and ululations, were suddenly silent.

Nikoleta’s tattoos shifted in new, unknown ways as she walked towards them and raised her hands.

In the end, Büber had to look away.

He’d passed from shock to rage, and then to calling for bloody vengeance for what they’d done to Nadel, nailed upside down and guts hanging out in a long, grey ribbon down the wall. Then it had gone beyond even that. There was an awful beauty about her and the way she went about the destruction of the Teutons. Inventive even, and he watched with a kind of horrid fascination as to quite how she would divide and slaughter.

When she had turned the square into a charnel house, and there were still the children to go; that was when he turned his back. His voice was ruined, his throat raw. Not from the smoke, but from the screaming.

The two infantrymen were huddled together, unselfconsciously crouching on the ground and holding each other. They were men, he and they, and yet they were all weeping like widows.

Büber bent down, dragged them both to their feet, and shoved them in the direction of the field of battle. They’d dropped their spears and shields in order to cover their heads better, and though he’d retrieved their weapons, he’d wondered if he should hand them back, or keep them well away.

He’d decided finally on the latter. They couldn’t kill themselves with them, even though they could swear a pact and kill each other. After what they’d witnessed, it would have been a mercy.

The burning building at the corner of the town swept dismal smoke across his view of what was beyond. Only when he pushed through could he see that they had actually won.

What was left of the Carinthian horse had captured what was left of the Teutons. The spearmen he’d helped to rescue made their number fourteen in all. A drift of corpses lay across the road, twisted and soaked. The trampled soil oozed red. All across the muddy field, there were knots of bodies, dying where they’d fought.

There was no sign of Allegretti or the boy Felix. And no sign of Gerhard in that fancy enchanted armour of his.

He remembered that he’d last seen him charging the Teuton line, off to his right, and recalled roughly where the prince’s horse had sunk to its knees. He threw the spears to the ground and went to search for the prince.

It was easy to find him, once he’d given it some thought. He just had to look for the largest pile of bodies, and in the centre there was the still-bright armour and the Sword of Carinthia.

They must have stuck him a dozen times through the joints where the plate gave way to broken-linked mail. He’d lost his helmet at some point, and still he’d gone down with his teeth clenched and his eyes open.

Büber waded into the circle, kicking away hacked limbs and ruined flesh until he could reach out and take the hilt of Gerhard’s sword. The prince was still holding on to it, and the huntsman had to pull hard to free it.

His skin, his face. So pale, it shone. The flecks of blood only made it whiter. Büber edged closer and pressed his fingertips on first one eyelid, then the other, dragging them down, closing them to the world. He left pink smears behind.

“My lord,” he said, and started to clamber back, up the bodies of the fallen Teutons and back down the other side. It was slippery.

He walked across to where the Carinthians had gathered.

“Master Büber,” said Reinhardt. He looked exhausted. They all did. And Reinhardt had lost almost the entire castle guard.

“I …” He held out the sword. It was instantly recognisable, and the meaning of his holding it was instantly understood. “Has anyone seen Master Allegretti or Felix?”

They’d all known that Gerhard had died. Not wanting to believe it before, they had no way of denying the fact now.

“It was chaos, man. We barely rallied in time.”

Büber understood. They’d been fighting for their lives, and a moment’s distraction, like looking for a kid who had no right to be on the battlefield, would have been one dangerous distraction too many.

They’d done what had needed to be done. They’d persevered with the impossible task of hacking away at Teuton after Teuton until their sword-arms grew as tight as bowstrings and as heavy as lead, only realising there were no more enemies left when there was no one left to attack them.

Eight horsemen. Four infantry. Himself, and …

He turned and Nikoleta strode out through the smoke. It trailed after her like it loved her. Her hair, rain-slick and pushed back away from her face made her look even younger. Her face was radiant, serene.

Büber shivered uncontrollably. Her shift was plastered to her body, holding to every lean curve, her breasts, her waist, her hips, her thighs. She looked like a goddess, Freyja herself. Behind her, Obernberg blazed wildly, the flames leaping above the level of the rooftops, and sooty smoke hissed in the wind and the rain.

“The Teuton shaman,” she asked. “Is he here?”

None of the Teutons would own up to being him, and none of the Carinthians knew enough to tell him from any other unkempt barbarian. Disarmed, unarmoured, kneeling in the mud, their hands on their heads, they looked wretched. Six of them, five men, one a woman disguised as a man: a deception that had so very nearly seen them overwhelmed and destroyed.

“I don’t know. Some of them might have got away,” replied Büber. The prisoners, if they hadn’t lost control of their bowels already, did so now at the sight of her and the flowing ink on her arms.

“Then we will have to find out.” She stopped next to Büber and inspected the prisoners one by one. “No. None of them. I hope he’s not dead already. You, man,” and she pointed, “stand up.”

Even if he didn’t understand her words, her gestures made it plain. He got to his feet, although his legs could barely support him. He barely breathed, and looked solidly at the ground, as if even catching her eye for a moment might lead to his death.

Not that they could expect a long life, not after what they’d done. Carinthia was civilised, but there was still the press if Nikoleta didn’t turn him into a candle.

“Your shaman,” she said slowly, emphasising every syllable.

The Teuton shook his head, all the time staring at his feet. He said something that could have been “no”, or “not here”, but it was difficult to tell.

She walked right up to the man and levered his chin up with her fingers. He resisted, briefly, but she was strong and he was terrified. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Where is he?”

He shook his head again – short, sharp movements, frantic and servile.

“Don’t you know?” She tutted. “Then I’ve no use for you.”

She let go of his chin only to press her palm against his forehead. Contact was only for a moment: it looked like she was gently pushing him away. It shouldn’t have sent him crashing backwards into the churned mud, but it did.

Smoke was coming from his all-white eyes, and hot blood was bubbling from his ears. He didn’t move again.

“Who’s next?” she said simply.

Büber blurted out, “Stop”, before he knew he was doing it.