Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha (33 page)

‘They are coming,' she said.

The Pooka/hawk informed us that a division of Banshee and Brownie foot soldiers were making their way through the oaks and seemed to be converging on the north face of the castle. Dahy sent troops to all of the other battlements and ordered scouts to check the other approaches to make sure that this was not some sort of diversion.

Dad stood next to me on the battlements as I waited for the first of our attackers to appear.

‘We'll see now if your Irish stone minefield works.'

‘I guess.'

He placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Gosh, I almost forgot. How was The Choosing? I'm so sorry we all had to leave you in there.'

‘That's OK, Dad. War is pretty much as good an excuse as any.'

Dad didn't laugh like I had hoped he would. ‘I guess,' he said turning away, ‘but damn it, how much more of my life can my brother screw up? This has got to stop.' He paused and I could tell he was thinking about what it was going to take to stop my uncle. Then he shook his head as if to drive away the mood. ‘So can you tell me what you saw in the Third Muirbhrúcht?'

‘Well …'

‘Hey,' Dad said quickly, ‘you don't have to tell me.'

‘No it's not that. It's just I don't really know what it meant.'

‘Oh, that's not unusual, son. Ona once said that the visions of the Third Muirbhrúcht are like when you are trying to remember someone's name. You try and try but you can't remember it – so you give up. Then it comes to you.'

‘I saw the Druids I had met in Ireland – the descendants of the banished Fili. They seemed to want something from me but I don't know what.'

‘Well, maybe when this is all over we can go back together and find out. We'll probably need a holiday.'

It was nice pretending for that second that we were a normal father and son planning a summer holiday and not two soldiers about to spin the coin on our futures with the fortunes of war.

‘I'd like that, Dad.'

A sentry shouted, ‘Invaders north!'

We ran to the parapet as a row of Brownies stepped out of the treeline and set up long-range crossbows in the dirt. Unlike hand-held crossbows, these were the mortars of the arrow-shooting family. The strings had to be set while the archer was sitting, using his feet to steady the bow. Two hands were needed to pull back the bow strings, then they were aimed using a monopod. These guys were well trained and successfully got off almost a shot a minute. The arrows were big and had some sort of enchantment in them. As they approached their target they split into twenty or so smaller arrows, producing in the sky the same effect as an entire platoon of synchronised archers.

Still, we were behind a stone wall and it was just a matter of ducking to avoid getting struck. However, we soon found out that the shafts of the arrows were covered in poisonous thorns. Dahy quickly set up an arrow-sweeping team but it meant you had to watch your step. These things were everywhere.

Brendan set his best archers to the task of taking out the crossbows but they were pretty far away. Until we could come up with a plan it looked like we would have to live with incoming fire for a while.

Under the cover of the arrow artillery, about two hundred Banshees and Brownies advanced out of the forest. They walked behind siege ladders that had shields attached to them.

When Dahy saw the small size of the force he said, ‘Damn him.' There was no disguising the revulsion on his face. ‘Cialtie is doing it again. How can he send so many to slaughter just to test our defences?'

As he had done on the attack of the Hall of Knowledge, Cialtie sent a small group on a suicide mission, just to see what kind of defences we had. I wanted to shout at them to go back but I knew it would do no good. I remembered what Cialtie did to the survivors of his last suicide wave. As they marched back to their own lines, Cialtie mowed them down like blades of grass.

Brendan's elite archery team aimed arrows at the feet of the advancing soldiers. They were remarkably accurate. Don't get me wrong, most of them missed, but they hit about one in ten. Not bad going considering the size of the targets. I didn't feel bad for the ones that got hit – they were, in fact, the lucky ones. They wouldn't have to walk into my minefield.

Often the shields would drop when someone went down and I saw with a heavy heart that most of the attackers were Brownies. I scoured the field to see if Jesse was in the group. What lies had Cialtie told the Brownies to make them do such a foolish thing? How stupid could King Bwika be if he thought that an alliance with my uncle would be good for his people?

As they came closer the ladder-bearers got smarter and hunkered down behind their shields. Brendan stopped firing and we just watched as they approached the line were I had buried the Connemara marble. Some of the advancing soldiers noticed the lack of arrow fire and boldly stuck their heads above their shields so as to see what was going on. They looked nervous. They knew something was going to happen. A good soldier always knows that whenever war gets easy – that's the time to worry.

I was worried.

T
hey were behind their shield/ladders so I didn't see it happen. Half of the ladders just fell as if there had never been anyone carrying them. Almost all the rest of the shield/ladder teams had fatalities. The ones that survived were in shock after experiencing galloping old age.

A group of three newly made octogenarians dropped their shields and tried to hobble back to their own lines where they were reminded that retreat was not an option. Their own men filled them with arrows. The remaining men, some looking ancient, regrouped under a handful of shield/ladders. An archer shot one of them before Brendan could stop him. We did nothing as the old men found the base of the walls and set up their siege ladders. It was pathetic to watch the terrified and exhausted soldiers struggling up the ladders with swords drawn. No one lifted a bow or a blade to stop them.

A guy who looked like he was over a hundred crested the wall to my right, sword drawn. As I went to him he jabbed the blade at me, but I casually parried it to the right and grabbed his wrist with both of my hands. I shook the sword free of his grasp as he swung pathetic punches with his other hand. He was panting and out of breath as I pulled him from his ladder and onto the parapet.

‘It's OK,' I said to him, ‘we won't hurt you.'

The fall to the ground had obviously pained him. I wondered if he had broken his hip or something. I felt awful, like I had started a fight in an old folks' home. When he finally rolled onto his back he had tears in his eyes. ‘What happened to me?' he said.

When Cialtie realised that instead of fighting the attackers we were actually saving them, he ordered a resumption of the crossbow fire. In the end we saved about half who tried to scale the walls. A couple who were young and unaffected by the marble spell put up a fight but most, like any old man after climbing a fifty-foot ladder, appreciated the help.

Araf and I locked up our prisoners of war. I wondered if Tuan had enough blood in him to help all of the new Grey Ones that we would have after this thing was over. No, not this thing – this war. We were at war. I was at war – again – and it made me sick to my stomach. I watched in horror as people marched and died, as comrades took arrows and attackers fell screaming. I had been here before. I had been in battle and I knew that this was just the beginning. That it would get worse and worse until it was just me and someone else, toe to toe, swords drawn. Me and a stranger with whom I had no quarrel would be locked into the dance called kill or be killed. But the part I dreaded most was what would happen to me. What I would become when it was just me or him. That was the time when the primordial part of my brain would flood with those Neanderthal endorphins that would fool me into thinking I was enjoying this. Like some stupid junkie who thinks heroin is his friend, I would revel in the event. I had experienced that battle lust before and it had scared me, revolted me, but at the same time I had never felt so alive. I was afraid to experience that again. Right there and then I swore I wouldn't.

Dragon Tuan kept glancing over his shoulder and giving me that look.

‘Keep your eyes on the road … or the air,' I shouted to him. ‘I know what I'm doing.'

The Pooka turned his huge reptilian head back towards the open skies but not before he gave a smoky snort that I interpreted as, ‘Do you?'

The brimstone smoke made me tear up. As I rubbed my eyes I wondered,
Do I know what I'm doing?
I hadn't told anybody other than Tuan about this escapade. My dragon pal had wanted nothing to do with it until I blackmailed him. I wasn't proud of myself but it did tickle me that probably the most powerful creature in all of The Land could be so easily manipulated by threatening to tell his mom he had an Imp girlfriend.

I definitely hadn't told my mom where I was going. I didn't even have to wonder what her response would be. Hey, I knew what everyone's opinion of what I was about to do would be. They'd all say I was crazy and I'd be lying if I said a pretty big part of me didn't agree with them.

I shivered in my dragon saddle. Tuan had warned me that I would need a coat but as usual I hadn't listened. It was so warm at ground level I couldn't imagine that we would be flying high enough so as to see my breath. What else was I unprepared for?

It was easy to imagine how badly Dad was going to flip out when he heard about this. Tuan wasn't even supposed to be in dragon form let alone flying over enemy lines. I think maybe that was one of the reasons Tuan had agreed to help me – he was miffed that Dad had grounded him. Dad had said that they would be expecting us to use Dragon Tuan as a weapon and he was sure they had an anti-dragon defence waiting. Dad ordered Tuan to stay at ground level for his own safety but my Pooka buddy thought that maybe he should have had a say in this decision. Saying that, if Cialtie did have anti-dragon cannons, Tuan wanted to be out of range and that's why we were flying so high.

We were almost to the drop zone. I looked over the side of my magical mount and saw the tiny campfires below just beginning to be lit. They were pinpricks of light and I wondered if this is what the paratroopers on D-day felt like. But then I thought,
at least those guys jumped as a team – I am going in there all by myself with no real plan and no real parachute
. I came close to not going through with it, but then in my mind's eye I saw the bleeding and bloated corpses of my friends and family. Before I could chicken out I just pulled my feet out of the stirrups and slid off into the twilight sky.

I always thought that I would never have enough courage for skydiving, and now here I was jumping off a dragon without a parachute. I hoped my yew staff was up to the demands that I was about to put on it and, for that matter, I hoped I had enough command over the staff so as not to become a strain. I had tied some ropes around my waist and then attached them to the staff in case the G-forces were too much for my hands. After all, skydivers don't hang by their hands from parachutes.