The Sword of the Spirits (15 page)

I put the question to their Bishop later, when he came to the feast at the palace. His name was Griffis and I had seen him at court before. For such visits he put off his Christian robes and his elegance outdid the majority of Cymru's nobles, a notable achievement. He spoke elegantly too; more slowly than was usual among the Wilsh and with what was thought to be great wit. I could not always see the jest myself, but the Wilsh nobles round him were quick to laugh.

He said: “Numbers do not of themselves give distinction.” From a tray proffered by a page he took a small roast bird and crunched it delicately. “It is sometimes an honor to be part of a minority.” He glanced sideways at me, smiling. “Did you not find yourself in this case with the Captains of your city?”

Someone tittered. I had heard this Bishop on other occasions dripping malice from his slightly twisted mouth. The Wilsh nobles were nearly all gossips, but he outdid them in that also. I said coldly:

“You have a merry wit, Bishop.” He inclined his head, smiling still. “I must tell the King that you find treachery a good subject for jesting. Maybe he will laugh with you.”

He looked at me quickly to see if I were jesting in my turn. When I stared heavily back at him he quickly changed his tune. I had misunderstood him, he said, but it was for him to apologize for the misunderstanding. From that he went on fulsomely in flattery of me. It was laid on like the grease which still rimmed his lips from the bird he had been eating, smooth and oily. After a moment or two I nodded, and turned my back. It was discourtesy, but I could stand no more of the man.

I thought of the Bishop of Winchester, talking boldly about forbidden things, speaking up to an Acolyte in the presence of his Prince. And thinking of it I thought of who else had been there that night, saw her again scolding me and then sweetly pleading as she told me whom she had asked to dine with us. And sickness filled my heart as the Wilsh nobles chattered and laughed and gorged themselves all round me. I left the room and went up to the quiet of my chamber. The double windows were shut. I opened them and stepped out onto the balcony. The river was frozen except where it tumbled down its horseshoe falls, barely visible in the darkness. Beyond it lights flickered from the hundred towers of Klan Gothlen, and whispers of music came in on the night air.

The cold was sharp against my skin and memory a knife in my mind. I clenched the freezing balustrade with my fingers. Soon, thanks be to the Great, the feasting days would be over and it would be time to work again.

•  •  •

At last winter ended, and the army could ride south. We set off with banners and pennants flying in a
stiff breeze that blew down from the mountains and still had ice in it. The citizens cheered us from their towers and balconies and thronged the streets to watch us pass. Apart from the scouts, Cymru rode in the van and I beside him.

It was a leisurely progress. We could not travel at any great pace because of the baggage train, which was enormous. I had been for reducing it to the minimum, but on this one point Cymru overrode me. So we went laden with gear of all kinds—tents for the nobles, a pavilion for Cymru himself—and a great store of food and drink. This at least we consumed as we made our way south. But we still took far more than an army in the field needed—and far more, as I pointed out to Cymru, than we should be able to take with us over the pass through the Burning Lands.

We were sitting in his pavilion which had been set up close by the river. Our camp stretched for half a mile along the valley. Had there been any possible enemy I would have wanted it more tightly disposed, but on this side of the Burning Lands there was none to challenge the might of Cymru's army.

Cymru laughed. “We shall travel lightly when we
need to, Luke, but until the need arises we Wilsh will have our comforts. Could Lewin have prepared a dinner such as we had tonight without his mountain of pots and pans and his own army of scullions?”

I said: “The contrast may come hard.”

He smiled at me strangely. “You do not understand us yet. We are a people of contrasts.” He looked across the river. “A people who smile and talk lightly, but our hearts are extreme.”

In love and hatred I thought, but did not say. We did not talk of her but her presence was between us.

“You do not understand us, Luke,” Cymru said, “but perhaps you are more like us than you think.”

Bats swooped low in the dusk over the hurrying waters. We sat in silence as the night came on.

•  •  •

We passed the place where the polyhounds had surrounded Hans and me, and the valley of the Tribe. I wondered if Jok and the others were watching our progress from cover; I saw no sign of them. We passed the village of the building rats, deserted still and almost overgrown with weeds and saplings, and that other village from which I had been taken, as a sacrificial victim, to the Eyrie of the Sky People.
We skirted the forest in which Edmund and I, in an upper room of a crumbling palace, had found a skeleton dressed in the moldering clothes of the past, and a gold box, and a painting of an old man, done with a skill no painter of our time could equal. And so we came at last to the black desolation where trees and plants withered in the heat, where there were only rocks and steaming pools, and the air was choked with dust from the clouds of smoke that hung over the jagged peaks of the Burning Lands.

We left the baggage train there, along with Lewin and his scullions. The horses' legs were wrapped about with asbestos cloth, and we took nothing with us but our weapons. Cymru himself put aside his velvet cloaks and wore a leather jerkin, armored with slats of steel. I was surprised by the difference it made in him: he looked a warrior now.

I went across the pass first, leading the scouts. I had decided to bring the army over in units of twenty, to avoid confusion. It made it a long business. We had started in early morning but at nightfall a quarter of the army was still on the other side.

If we had been attacked during this maneuver we
would have been massacred; but I had no fear of it. There was no dwelling within five miles of the pass; no blade of grass on which a wandering shepherd might feed his flock. There was only a barren desert with the Burning Lands between. The next day the rest of the army came over. We lost one horse that fell and threw its rider and had to be destroyed, having broken a leg. But another warrior picked up the horseman and got him across with nothing worse than a few burns.

When we had gathered our forces, we rode south. Kluellan had been in favor of taking the nearest town to use as a base, but I had vetoed it. That town was Marlborough. It was part of Oxford's kingdom and for more reasons than one I did not want to get embroiled with Oxford. So we bypassed it and made for Salisbury.

We had brought little in the way of provisions, ammunition for the guns being the more important consideration, and so we had to live off the land. The villages through which we passed were forced to give us food. In return we did them no harm. At one place there was a scuffle between one of the Wilsh soldiers and a girl. I do not know what caused it—the soldier
swore his innocence—but Kluellan had him flogged on the spot.

From the moment of first contact, of course, pigeons had taken word of our presence, and it had spread far and wide by now. I knew they would have heard of it in Winchester, and wondered what Blodwen would think of my return at the head of her father's army. She and her lover might have had many laughs together during the winter, over poor banished Luke. This news would not give them much to laugh at.

We followed the Avon valley and so passed within a few miles of Sanctuary. I did not try to contact the High Seers. They had given me a weapon but I had won an army myself. I no longer needed either them or their Science.

•  •  •

It was while we were camped between Sanctuary and the town of Amesbury that the scouts brought word of an enemy. The army of Salisbury had ridden north to challenge us. So we prepared for battle, and the next morning fought it.

Our army numbered more than a thousand, of which three hundred were armed with Sten guns.
These left their horses tethered and advanced on foot. I watched it from high ground, west of the river. They looked like peasants as they walked across the green fields, specked white and gold with buttercups and daisies. In front of them, holding a slight rise, the men of Salisbury sat their horses, whose occasional snorts and whinnies came thinly through the air. Their banners of red and black blew bravely in a breeze from the north. It was a fine sight. I felt my blood thrill to it. The men on foot seemed puny in comparison.

The horsemen were preparing themselves for the charge. I saw the bugler lift his instrument to his lips and heard the harsh notes blare out, my horse twitching under me at the distant sound. For a moment, despite all I knew of the weapon I had armed them with, I did not believe the Wilsh footmen could withstand their onslaught.

They moved, slowly at first but gathering speed and momentum. I watched my own troops and anxiously waited. The Captains had been told to let them come to fifty yards and then, on the command of one Captain, fire together. They had practiced this against their own horsemen, firing the bullets
into the ground in front of them; but practice, as any warrior knew, was not the same as battle. If they fired prematurely and raggedly, it was possible that all might be lost.

But the months of drilling and discipline brought their reward now. They stood like rocks while the line of horsemen thundered down. I guessed the distance separating them as best I could. Two hundred yards, a hundred, seventy-five . . . Then the single cry: “Fire!”—and after that not one tongueless stammering giant but hundreds of them. The valley rocked with the noise.

And as though they had crashed into a steel rope, drawn across their front, the line of horsemen stumbled and fell. Maybe a score rode on a few more yards, ten, even twenty, and were picked off one by one. None reached the soldiers with the guns.

I raised my arm. From behind, the Wilsh horsemen charged in their turn, the footmen giving way to let them through. Their swords flashed as they rode down on those men of Salisbury who had risen from their dead or dying horses. Some did their best to fight, but their case was helpless. They were cut down with scarcely more trouble
than a girl might take to pluck a flower. Soon they dropped their swords in surrender. From the bugle call to this instant, no more than ten minutes had passed.

•  •  •

Within an hour I had a visitor. He came from the north with a single troop of horse, no more than thirty men. His standard bearer carried the white flag of truce. It was Eric of Oxford.

He dismounted and gave me greeting, and I returned it.

He said: “I had news of your coming, Luke. And news earlier of what happened in Winchester. Why did you not come to me? I would have helped you.”

“Your father might not have made me welcome.”

“He would have known nothing.” I looked at him in inquiry. “He was gravely ill even then and confined to bed. He died in November.”

“And you are Prince of Oxford? I have failed in duty.”

I gave him the formal bow which a Captain should make to a ruler. He laughed.

“Enough of that! If what I hear is true you command a greater army than mine. But you may still
welcome help to win back your city. I told you once: when I can help, I will. I can do so now.”

“It is an army of barbarians,” I said, “from beyond the Burning Lands. Have you heard that also?”

“All the more need for the support of friends! Then no one can say you required barbarians to regain your own. It looks better if you have an ally close to home. I can bring my army here within a week. Can you hold off from battle till then?”

“You are too late, Eric. The battle has been fought.”

“Fought, you say?”

He looked at the bustle of the Wilsh camp around us. I said:

“And won. Would you see the field?”

He rode in silence with me. I heard him draw breath as we came in sight of the ugly rampart that marked the scene of carnage. It was made up of the broken bodies of horses in their hundreds, mingled with the bodies of men. In among them moved those Wilsh I had detailed to end the sufferings of any horses that still lived. I think probably they had already finished that work for no horse moved or
cried. They were engaged on a more congenial occupation: stripping the dead warriors of Salisbury of their rings and ornaments.

Some ten yards from the wall of horror, Eric reined in.

“I have never seen slaughter approaching this,” he said. “What casualties did your Wilsh have?”

“None. None serious, at least. A few have minor wounds.”

He shook his head. “It is beyond believing. It is said the Spirits protect you. But do they rain death from the skies on armies that take the field against you?”

I told him of the Sten guns. I did not say where they came from, leaving him to think it was a device of the Wilsh. He said:

“They are machines, then.”

I asked: “Is that so hard a thing to hear, for one who told me he looked for change from old and stupid ways?”

“I looked for change; not for a rotting mountain of dead horses. Your enemies are men. Did you need to have your soldiers kill these poor beasts so mercilessly?”

“The horses are a bigger target, their riders helpless once they are brought down. The soldiers fired at them by my command. These are the right tactics for winning a battle with such a weapon.”

“I believe you. But is there honor in such a victory?”

“What is honor?” I said. “They stripped mine from me in Harding's house, sitting round an oak table. But I live, to take my revenge.”

Eric was silent, staring at the carnage. Directly opposite us a stallion, a magnificent bay, thrust its head upward to the sky, jaws open in a silent scream.

I said: “The old battles achieved nothing: you told me that in Winchester. They had horses and honor but they brought no resolution. Things will be different from now on. There will be no room for horses or honor in the battles we shall fight, but we shall have victories of a kind men have not known before.”