The Giants' Dance (54 page)

‘It feels that way to me.'

‘Then we have one less worry for the moment. We should make the most of our chance while Maskull is fully occupied.'

Will shoved his face into the arrow-slit, and what he saw made him gasp. He seized the wizard and pointed towards the Hardingstones. ‘Look, there!'

‘Alas! What terrors has Maskull awakened with his meddling? Those are the undead who once fled the plague! With all the magic whirling uncontrolled here, their transformation has been undone.'

And Will saw that the Delamprey tombstones were indeed changing shape, twisting, moving, groping towards life. They were rising up after their long slumbers. Hundreds of ghastly human forms, shaking off the solitude of the grave to wander at the rear of the king's lines.

At first, they went unregarded by the king's soldiers for there was deadlier work to the fore. Now that the wyvern had been downed, Edward's cavalry was brought under control again. Dense squadrons of knights had formed up, line upon line, their harnesses glittering in the sun, banners of every colour flying above them. They advanced at the trot towards the king's army, and Will knew this was the attack against the king's left that he had advised Edward to make.

Will was unable to do other than watch the fruits of his efforts ripen. He put a hand to his temple; his head had begun to ache unbearably again. His gaze passed along the king's left and settled on Lord Dudlea's colours. The shouts and thundering of hooves grew to a roar. And as the armies clashed he turned, blinking into the darkness of the stair and saw an ageless fire burning in Gwydion's face.

‘I see you are returning to yourself at last. Do not turn away from the field,' the wizard told him. ‘Watch, and discover what happens when two poorly promised lords face one another because a Child of Destiny has told them they must do so. Watch!'

And Will did watch, as thousands of horsemen charged in upon the king's left, as a desperate attack gathered like a gigantic wave bursting upon a rocky shore. Will could see that without Lord Dudlea's help the attack would founder, just as Lord Warrewyk's attack had foundered. The big guns would belch forth, the day would be carried in the king's favour, and Edward would die upon the field.

Yet to Will's astonishment, and even as the foremost of Edward's cavalry came to grips with their enemy, there was uproar to the rear of Lord Dudlea's men. The soldiers
who held the king's left had seen an army of a different kind stealing upon them from behind. Men among the reserve swore that gravestones had come to life, and their fear had sent them fleeing in panic towards Dudlea's lines.

The movement soon came to the attention of their commander, who rode out with only his standard bearer as companion, to see for himself what was happening.

Gwydion hissed in Will's ear, ‘Do you see? Lord Dudlea has got the proof he craved. The proof that you so unwisely promised that those turned to stone might live again.'

‘But you told me those plaguestruck people would arise when three times three dozen and one years had passed – that's a hundred and nine years since the pestilence. That was two years ago!'

‘But “three dozen and one” is thirty-seven. And three times that is one hundred and
eleven
,' Gwydion said grimly. ‘
You
are the one who has in the end summoned the Hardingstones back to life.'

Will cringed to think how he had made so simple an error, and what had been its ghoulish consequence. The dancing dead had spread chaos and confusion across the field, wholly altering the outcome of the battle. He watched Lord Dudlea order his archers to fall back. No arrows were loosed at the onrushing enemy. Edward's horsemen mounted the earth bank unopposed. They wheeled. The centre of the king's army was outflanked at a stroke and came under a double blow as Lord Warrewyk's attack crashed into their wavering front.

After that, the resolve of the king's army broke. Thousands of terrified soldiers began to desert their lines. They threw down their weapons and ran for their lives. And, suddenly, the day that had seemed lost to Edward now belonged to him.

D
own below, the beating on the tower door stopped. But there began in its place a wailing ghostly enough to chill Will's heart.

His face was pained as he turned away once more from the arrow-slit. The wizard pulled him into the light and slapped him hard across the face. ‘It is time you woke up!'

He fell back on the stair, stunned by the unkind blow. Anger boiled up inside him. Things had turned out well, hadn't they? Far better than anyone had any right to expect! Far better than when Gwydion's efforts to carry a battlestone off into the north had caused the carnage on Blow Heath! Or when his foolish hesitations had led to the ruination of Ludford…

But the slap had been meant to help return Will to a proper understanding, and it did. The hubris went out of him and he fell to his knees. Gwydion raised him up again. The stone's grip was slackening now. Flashes of truth broke in on him, and he began to glimpse just how completely he had been taken over. He saw with dismay that he had not been the great prophet and hero of the hour, but a fool filled with false self-belief.

‘What have I done?' he cried. ‘Oh, Master Gwydion!'

‘You let yourself be used,' the wizard told him gravely. ‘In the end, things have gone as you said they would. What a pity you were not master of yourself and therefore able to force a more fortunate outcome.' Gwydion's grey eyes fixed once more on the field, where Edward's knights were riding down their broken enemy. ‘As you should know by now, Willand, bloodlust is no more than left-over cowardice. In battles the rout is always the deadliest of times.'

Will jammed his face once more into the arrow-slit. ‘But Edward promised he'd order common quarter once victory was won! I made him promise! Look!' And there, on the field below shouts were going up. ‘You see? They
are
calling mercy!' he said. Pride strutted briefly in him again. ‘Edward's been true to his word. I was right after all!'

‘You could not have been wrong, for though you acted in ignorance, still you are the Child of Destiny, and your presence forces the wheel of history to repeat itself. Yet, whatever the outcome today, I fear that we may have lost our fight in the long run. I have seen enough to know that Maskull's dread spark has fallen upon dry tinder here. Soon there will be a blaze hot enough to consume all that we know and love!'

‘It sounds to me as if some of the harm that poured from the broken link of your fetters has entered you and poisoned your thoughts, Gwydion. Can't you see that we've achieved our aim? The day has seen less blood than any of us might have hoped when we awoke this morning!'

‘The day is not yet ended.'

Gwydion leapt down the remaining turns of the stair. When he reached the bottom he wrenched the war-hammer away from the door and opened it. Outside, half a dozen Fellows were grovelling on the floor, their mouths open, their hands pressed to their bellies. They were wailing in agony. Then Will saw the redness on their gowns, and the dark, spreading pool under the nearest of them. A figure dressed
in tall boots and a suit of black hide came forward and stood over the body, a bloodied poleaxe in his hand. It was Chlu.

Gwydion threw the war-hammer to Will. ‘Beware, Willand! A deep urge to harm you drives him. Be ready to defend yourself.'

Will nodded. Chlu's murderously implacable nature was already clear to him. There was a foul desire in those too-familiar eyes, the more hideous for Will because it was like looking at himself in a weird's mirror, being forced to recognize the beast that dwelt within.

Chlu took stock warily. As ever, he moved deliberately on Will.

‘Begone, Dark Child!' Gwydion commanded, stepping between them. ‘
Eoist liomma
– apprentice of a loathsome master!
Deain huir!
'

But the fetters were still upon the wizard's wrists and the power of magic no longer swelled the true tongue in his mouth. Chlu's eyes, though, never wavered. He thrust Gwydion aside and snarled at Will. ‘You must die!'

When Will hefted the war-hammer, the iron felt heavy and dead in his hand. He whirled it in figures of eight before him, preparing a counterstrike for the moment when Chlu lunged. But there were footsteps beyond the cloister yard, and through the broken windows there could be glimpsed soldiers, dozens of them. They were wearing blue-and-white quartered colours – Edward's men! Will saw them running, weapons in hand, and he had no doubt what their mission was. They had been sent here under special orders, sent to hunt down men of rank. Two or three had come to the very threshold of sanctuary, but they quailed before it, suddenly assailed by superstitious terror, and afraid to cross.

Still Chlu sought a way past the whirling war-hammer. He jabbed and jabbed again, but dared not step closer for fear the wizard would slip past him and attack his exposed back. But Gwydion had other ideas.

‘Bring the king here!' he shouted, guilefully feigning an Elder's voice. ‘The king's enemies are nigh! Hide the king away! Hide him, I say! Give him sanctuary in our House!'

The soldiers outside became suddenly like wolves scenting prey. Those who had entered the yard now approached the great oaken door. One began to jab at the brazen fist with a helm-axe. Their leader drew his dagger and kicked the never-locked door fully open.

The sanctuary bell began to toll. At the sound of it, muffled screams issued from the chamber where the bequines had been hidden.

Chlu lunged, lunged again, but as he swung a second time he clattered the blade of his poleaxe off the low wooden beam above his head. Will caught him off balance, forced him back.

‘Fly, Dark Child!' Gwydion hissed. He held up his arms and the golden bands on his wrists flashed with a baleful light. ‘Go while you may!'

Chlu hesitated. His garb was strange, unlike the plainweave of a common man's clothing – enemy soldiers would see a ransom to be had from taking him. He thrust the poleaxe furiously at Will, enraged to have come so close to his prey once again only to be forced to quit the fight. He let out a shout of such grotesque torment that the cry went through Will like a knife, but then he threw down his weapon, backed away, and finally he ran.

Will started after him, but Gwydion pulled him back. ‘Let him go, Willand! There will be time enough to fight with Chlu another day.'

Will turned, an echo of the madness still boiling his blood, and took a rough hold on the wizard.
‘Who is he, Gwydion? You must tell me! I have to know!'

‘I shall tell you once the battle is over. That much I lay my word to!'

He opened his fists, suddenly ashamed to have laid angry hands on so stalwart a friend, but his penance did not last long, for a peal of screams came from one of the inner chambers. Will spun, recognizing the voice.

‘Willow!'

He broke away and ran down the cloister, leaping over the writhing bodies that lay scattered in his path. But which of the chambers had the scream come from?

He stared around wildly. ‘
Willow?
'

When the scream came again, it was muffled, more distant, but it seemed to come from the stair. He ran up it, burst in through the nearest door, and found that it opened onto a gallery that overlooked a lower room. Down below a bald-headed bequine was being held down in a chair by two others wearing iron masks. They were binding her wrists in leather thongs while her feet lashed out at anything that came near. Her struggles were weakening, and when she turned her head and screamed out again, Will knew who it was. Like the bequines, she had been forced to wear a grey sackcloth robe, torn and in disarray now, and Will knew that once a bequine's robe had been accepted there was no return to the world.

Will's stunned eye took it all in in a moment. Blonde locks lay on the floor all around, freshly shorn from Willow's head, and a third bequine was picking them up and stuffing them into a bag. His wife's quiver of green-flighted arrows had also been scattered across the floor and her unstrung bow thrown into the corner. A large, robed Fellow stood guard nearby and a wizened Elder stood over the chair with the shears; then to Will's horror he saw they were not shears but a far crueller instrument.

‘No!' Willow shouted ‘Please, no! Not my eyes!'

The Elder leaned forward. There was no time to run back down the stair. Will jumped from the gallery rail. He crashed down onto the guard and brought him down like
a dead weight. In the same movement the iron hook was spun out of the Elder's hand.

When Will got to his feet, the Elder dropped to his knees and began to wail piteously. His empty sockets were painted with unblinking eyes that stared at Will. The bequines flung themselves down as Will cut the lashings and swept his wife up from the blinding chair.

‘They came out from the yard and took me!' she cried, white-faced and terrified. ‘Oh, Will, they were going to cut my eyes out!'

But already a new emergency had overtaken them. Edward's soldiers had found the gallery, and more now burst into the room. Will was driven back against the wall at blade-point. Magical power tingled in his spine as one of the men took Willow by the throat and another demanded to know where the king might be hidden.

‘You will not find King Hal here,' Gwydion told them from the doorway. ‘He sits some way distant, in a tent by the riverbank, awaiting the outcome of the battle.'

The soldier sneered, pushed a mailed hand in Gwydion's face. ‘And who might you be?'

‘Have a care!' Will growled. ‘Do you not know the Duke of Ebor's wizard?'

The man stepped back, turning on his men angrily. ‘You heard him! To the river! Do you want to catch a king or not?'

‘What about these?' a lone voice asked.

‘Since you've shown yourself willing, you can take them out and hold them in the yard!'

The three young troopers left to watch over them did not dare to touch the Elder or his bequines, but they seemed to have fewer scruples where wizards were concerned, and so Will, Willow and Gwydion were shoved out, first into the cloister walk and then into the yard, where they were put under an order of silence and made to face the wall, hands on heads.

‘You must do as you see fit,' Gwydion murmured, until the prod of a spear haft to his ribs shut him up.

‘I think we must do as they say, at least until they calm down,' Will said, thinking he had understood Gwydion's wisdom well enough. The magical power that stirred in his belly tempted him to act, for with its aid he could easily overcome Edward's three young troopers and work an escape, but now the battlestone had released him from its seductive grip and the shame of his recent actions hung over him. He decided he should refuse the power. To attempt magic now might compound the disaster, and for Willow and the now-defenceless Gwydion, there was greater safety here than outside – at least until the call for common quarter was generally heeded.

So it was that the battle of Delamprey was wholly done with. All around, Edward's victors ran amok, turning over the sequestering hall, looking for fugitive noblemen. Others tried to find hidden gold, though the Delamprey bullion had long since been carted off to the chapter house in Cordewan. When, some time later, the three captives were led out of the yard, they saw that the ground had been trampled and the bodies of men lay scattered upon it like leaves in autumn. But there were far fewer dead than had befouled the field of Blow Heath.

By now the chaos of battle had already begun to resolve itself after its usual fashion. Thousands of the common soldiery of the king's army had been disarmed and were sitting bound in sullen groups, watched over by knots of cavalrymen. But still Will could feel the stain of cold blood in this place, and he knew at once that there had been some hideous additional slaughter.

‘Oh!' Willow cried, turning away with pursed lips from the sudden horrific sight.

A score of heads lay on the grass – eyes open, mouths
agape. And a bloody piece of beech-trunk stood in pride of place in the grassy sward, weltered in gore.

Will recognized many of the ghastly faces from the king's court – maybe two dozen knights and nobles had been deliberately butchered here, including the Duke of Rockingham, the Earl of Shroppesburgh, Lords Bowmonde and Egremonde…broken swords and strapless spurs attested a grand public degradation.

Two carts were filled with naked bodies, their flesh the colour of finest Fellowship wax. They were headless, and all had their wrists roped together behind their backs. Nor was it over yet.

Disgust turned to rage in Will's heart.

‘Villains!'
he shouted at the sky. ‘
Murderers!
Where is Edward of Ebor? Take me to the Earl of the Marches!'

He struggled with the guards, then saw a head of unruly red-gold hair bowed near to the block. It was Jasper, and Lord Dudlea was next behind him. They were kneeling captives, stripped to their loins, heads bowed.

‘So, it's you, is it?' Dudlea called out in miserable disgust. ‘You unconscionable liar.'

Nearby, another nobleman strutted, helmless but in full armour and surrounded by lesser knights and men-at-arms, the latter all in red surcoats bearing the white badge of the bear and butchered tree on their breasts.

‘What is this bloody mess, my lord?' Will roared at Lord Warrewyk, pointing at the block. Warrewyk's guards seized him. His hands shook, overtaken by wrath, they itched to blast forth the power that remained in him. ‘Edward promised me common quarter!
He promised!
'

‘And common quarter was called.' Lord Warrewyk's voice cut like a shard of obsidian. He poked the point of his sabaton at the nearest head that lolled forlornly on the grass. ‘But as you see, none of these fine fellows were commoners.'

There was laughter at that. Will struggled against the guards until Willow feared he would be hurt, or the magic that was in him would burst forth uncontrolled. ‘You have betrayed me! You have betrayed Edward! And you have destroyed the cause of peace!'