Chapter Twenty-One : Landfall
The next two weeks passed with an itching sense of waiting for Elizabeth. As soon as the ships slipped away from Surfhaven with the morning tide it was clear that something was different; the next time they touched land would be as crusaders and conquistadors. It was a role she had never played or entertained playing. The endless hours on board the ship – for there was nothing for her to do save sit in her cabin or pace the deck nervously – allowed her the so-called luxury of introspection; she found herself turning this concept over in her mind and mulling it from every angle.
Her reaction to what she was doing and was part of – namely armed imperialism against a non-aggressor nation for the fixed purpose of removing a form of government she herself found abhorrent – was not perhaps what she might have expected, or even liked. The fact that she was making this choice herself made it easier in some ways – she had a personal hatred for the concept of slavery and dominance by the Witch's forces; she was not simply obeying the words of her masters. Yet, in others, it made the situation decidedly uncomfortable. She was acting as an invader – she did not have the luxury of being able to say that she was "just following orders", she was as guilty as any. The self-appointed mission of her conscience in those long fourteen days became determining if such a thing constituted a crime.
What did she know of the power that ruled the Lone Islands? Nothing – save that which Edmund and Hedera had told her. And neither of them could really be considered neutral in this matter; one was the Emperor of these islands. Despite everything she knew about the Lone Islands – the fact its society was, or had been, a mirror of Narnia's – she found herself imagining a backward country, its natives struggling against complex colonial rules and masters; a sort of Narnian Raj. What was to say the Lone Islanders, tiring of their unfair masters, had not simply taken advantage of the rise of the Witch in order to achieve a degree of independence? At that stage, was she not guilty of the worst sort of colonial imperialism – smashing into a small island nation with a terrible, overwhelming military force? (She had seen maps of the Lone Islands; five hundred swords would practically cover them.) She leaned on the rail and buried her face in her hands, feeling like and thinking she was a combination of Alexander the Great, Cecil Rhodes and Hernan Cortez.
These people might just be trying to have some form of self-determinism, and wasn't she part of the saber of imperial Narnia riding roughshod over their own government? What right did Edmund really have to claim to be Emperor? Aslan? Aslan didn't really strike her as the sort to hand out countries like that – his was a more personal contact.
And then Edmund himself came and stood beside her as the lookout shouted, "Land ho!" She looked up, feeling the presence of the boy-king beside her – and the moment passed.
This was Kingship, this was justice. This, standing next to her in the slim form of the gray-eyed monarch, was rulership personified. To suggest, even for a second, that a country which had been gifted to him by election or conquest should ever slip away – should ever even want to slip away – was nonsensical. Edmund was not making this crusade to expand his empire, nor for his personal gain and imperialistic ambitions. He was making it, quite simply and utterly honestly, for the people he was going to set free.
And what of the fact that none of this was really real? The creatures against which the crusade would be fought would be removed from her – which she still arrogantly thought of as reality despite her efforts to the contrary – by at least two stages. They were elements of a parable told to a man who was a story to her. At that stage, wasn't it the case that those who died – even the violence itself – were simply a symbol and emblematic of something else? Of course, she mused, such a hypothesis could only really be entertained when she was not being slammed around by wolves.
Dimly, she recalled lessons from her childhood – Sunday school that lasted all week – of the legends of the Fall, the Archangel casting down the Great Red Dragon at the dawn of time. Liberal Biblical scholarship – an academic discipline the University of Notre Dame had strongly advocated when she was there – maintained this was a legend, a tale to illustrate a wider truth. There was no real physical conflict . . . but now she had to wonder.
Perhaps there had been a real battle, a real war, between the Archangel and the Dragon. Perhaps the War in Heaven had been just that; perhaps the legendary worlds where heroes defeated monsters – where St. George slew the Dragon and Bellerophon killed the Chimera – were not simply metaphors. Perhaps they were – while still representing humanity's struggle with the dark powers of temptation and weakness and our own fallen nature – on some level actual battles.
And maybe she stood on that actual level now. Suddenly, a new way of looking at her adventures here swam into view – she saw it not as a story about real events or something that was happening to her, but rather a legend spun around emotional struggles. Whatever happened here was of such a nature humans in England would call it mythological. This crusade – where men would die and islands would be invaded – was not akin to le Coeur de Lion smashing into Tyre; this was a man coming to spread the Word. This was the struggle of good men against the forces of temptation and ignorance and tendency to Sin.
Right here, right now, everything could be solved with a sword. Enemies were clear and objectives obvious. There was a simplicity here, the simplicity of legends. St. George's Dragon did not need to be thought of as a part of a living eco-system, it was not extermination of bio-diversity in order to allow the expansion of the Naked Ape – it was a spiritual flaw that needed to be excised.
God had handed this clarity to her – not with an awareness of her own flaws and weaknesses, for she had those in her hands and mind – but with a shift in the method of dealing with them. When all was said and done, she mused, it was easier to die than use your head. It was easier to kill someone than to proclaim the Word of God. Susan had taught her how to do the former in a fortnight; she had no real idea where to begin with the second.
Because she was here, she could do the second by the first. Right here and now, she was an evangelist. Dimly remembered verses from the Bible drifted back to her – put on the full armor of God, for we fight not against flesh and blood . . . against you the gates of Hell will not prevail . . . Church militant.
Always, she had assumed that these verses were used to justify the violence of the Crusades, of the Inquisition, of the Witch Hunts. And now she realized that wasn't the case – there had been no real attempt to justify these things; there had been a half-hearted effort to hide it, but the real motive had been blatantly political. Church leaders leading what they should not. Men drunk on power.
The real struggle had been spiritual, and had not the Church always fought that war, in one form or another? A vision of a war without battles but with legions of white-robed casualties appeared before her – a war that the Church Militant had fought unceasingly for two-thousand years.
Here and now, in Narnia, she was going to get to see this war fought with metaphors made flesh. Here, she was going to be a Holy Warrior for Christ, with the armor of God on her soul and the sword of Truth in her fist. Here and now, she was part of the Church that marched through history, terrible as an army with banners.
Oh, Hell, she mused to herself, Did I just become Catholic again?
That reflection drew Elizabeth back to reality enough that she noticed her surroundings for the first time in minutes. She saw the dolphins who had paced the ship and breached and dived, breached and dived, leaping like stitches out of the water before their bows, had turned and swum away. She shielded her eyes and gazed south under the flat surface of the low-hanging cloud.
A peculiarity of Narnia – of the whole world of which Narnia was a part, she corrected herself – was that it was flat. She remembered that much from her reading, but had never really considered what that might mean in practical terms. In her own world, the curvature of the earth limited the horizon artificially – the surface of the world fell away beneath itself and soon nothing could be seen but the sky; itself falling away and down. But here, the world was flat and nothing limited sight but the blurring effect of the air and the sea mists. The sky hung low, pregnant with storm clouds that whirled in a lazy spiral above her, its center somewhere off towards Terebinthia, and under it the sea ran in crashing waves, reflecting the dull gray of the roof above. At the very limit of sight, an indistinct hump in the waveforms that did not pitch and heave like the rest of them was visible. It might just possibly have been green.
Commodore Pearl was by her side now, her eyeglass raised. "Felimath," she said after a few seconds. She turned to Edmund, "We'll be within' hailin' range in a few hours – yer orders?"
Edmund whistled sharply through pursed lips, a fluttering note that spiraled upward clean and pure. From a spar above, something fluttered down – a raven larger than a hawk with a bright and startlingly intelligent eye. It settled on Edmund's mailed fist as the King said, "I want some scouting done – I'm not putting five hundred swords ashore without knowing where we need them." He turned to the raven. "Cornelius, bring me a report."
The bird, glimmering green-black in the sunlight, squawked a reply and spread his wings and took off, his hard primary feathers battering Elizabeth in the cheek as his wings spread more than she had expected. For a second or two, the bird was visible winging off southwards, but then the salt-spray engulfed him and hid him from sight.
"What do you think he'll find?" asked Elizabeth. "And what's the general plan of campaign?" Edmund faced her.
"Felimath should be all but deserted – it is a low, flat island populated by sheep and a few shepherds. Maybe one or two villages – but no large settlements. I do not plan to land there – it would be a military dead end. Our plan of campaign is to land on Doorn – the larger island to the south of Felimath and where the majority of the people dwell – and prosecute the campaign from there. Of course," he shrugged, "beyond those generalizations lie the details. The Warlord and I have a number of strategies, but they all depend on seeing the lay of the land."
"So, we double t'cape o' Felimath and lan' on Doorn?" asked Pearl. Edmund nodded.
"That's the general plan at this stage – it may change, but I doubt it. The army will disembark as swiftly as we may and off-load stores and supplies. We'll establish a camp near our landing site and – as agreed – you and your ships will stand off from the shore and await our signals. You have enough food?"
"Fer a month or more," Pearl said, "an' we can always plun'er some more. . . or we could buy some, I s'pose," she added as she took in Edmund's disapproving look. The King nodded and the pirate gave a flamboyant bow and left.
A few hours later, the line in the surf had resolved itself to the naked eye into a low green hill with white breakers crashing at its feet. Behind Felimath, the gray slopes of her sister Doorn reared. With a whirling of wings, Cornelius appeared with the suddenness of a conjuring trick, clattering like a mechanical thing made of jet and copper. The jerky movements of his head and bright button eyes did nothing to dispel that image.
"Your majesty," he croaked, his voice rough and somehow unfinished, "I beg to report. I have flown over the Lone Islands and see much that pains me – there are terrible crimes being perpetrated by humans against others."
"How surprising," hissed Hedera sarcastically. The dryad appeared to have come from simply nowhere, seeming to slink out of the cracks in the deck. Elizabeth started and then listened as Cornelius continued.
"There are monstrous creatures there – broods of the Witch; I have seen Minotaurs and Ogres, Hags and Black Dwarfs. It is they that provide the bulk of the armies suppressing the inhabitants, though it seems as if the Sons of Adam are in charge and behind the cruelty. Your majesty," continued the raven in a tone of greater urgency, "there is a dark presence lying over the islands – sorcery gathers in the towns and the woods, sire." Edmund nodded.
"It is as I feared, but true heart, steel and faith in Aslan will carry us through. What of the defenses of Narrowhaven? Can we stage an assault on the capital itself?" The raven clacked his beak a couple of times.
"Not by my council, sire – the harbor and city are well defended. And there are military outposts throughout the island of Doorn, connected by excellent roads and with a network of messengers riding fast horses. By my advice, you will maintain your original course and land near to the point of Doorn." Edmund nodded as Michael approached.
"Warlord?" Michael nodded once, conveying everything he needed to – the troops are ready, I await your orders, I agree – in a single movement. Edmund unrolled a map and spread it on a bench, Elizabeth holding the edges down for him. He gestured with his dagger. "We'll double the cape, coming around the west side of Felimath and then moving east up the straits." His dagger dallied around a point where the straits narrowed and then flared and then narrowed again just before Narrowhaven, forming a body of water the shape of an arrowhead and nearly a mile wide at the broadest point. "If I thought we could afford to get this close to Narrowhaven, I would land here." He looked up at Michael, who shook his head. "I thought not – here, then." He pointed to a point about three miles west of Narrowhaven and four from the end of the peninsular at the western end of the island and directly south of a shoal on Felimath "We will carry out our original plan – we can anchor in Crescent Bay." Crescent Bay had been mentioned often as a landing ground in their plans at the Cair. Pearl leaned over and looked at the map.
"Three fathoms clear," she said with satisfaction, "no danger o' grounding." Edmund looked around the faces above him and smiled with satisfaction.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let us put on armor and pledge ourselves to Aslan. Warlord, prepare the troops for embarkation."
oOo
It was late in the afternoon, the dying sunlight bleeding into evening, as they rounded the cape of Felimath. The sun was setting behind then, crimson light seeming to pour like liquid down through the straits. The choppy seas were gray with red-stained whitecaps, looking like a shifting field of cooling ash and roiling lava ahead of them.
The five ships edged forward under the slack breeze, turning to the south east to cover the half-league towards Crescent Bay. On their port side the low slopes of Felimath – green and soft and warm, dotted here and there with the gray blotches of shepherds' huts and the smaller dots of fluffy white sheep – slumbered while ahead of them the gray slopes of Doorn reared, stony and mountainous, with great pine forests sweeping upwards from the small bay that was their target. On the fo'c'sle of the lead ship, Edmund, Elizabeth, Michael, Hedera and Hylonome waited, the lean gray shapes of a few of the western wolves at their feet, headed by the muscular presence that was Rapine, their commander. The humans were gleaming in metallic armor and the Centauride was muted but beautiful in the green- and brown-stained leather and mottled woodland cloak of the scout. Hedera was, as ever, naked – but there seemed to be harder, woodier bunches of leaves and branches clustering around her vulnerable areas; dry and desiccated woody armor preventing her sap from being spilled. Save for a collar or two, the wolves were in ashen-gray fur from snout to tail.
A quarter of a league. The army was drawn up in ranks on the decks of the ships, standing at calm attention, awaiting the order to lower the boats and make for the shore. It would take time to disembark quite so many troops, not to mention stores and supplies, and at that moment the crusade would be vulnerable – over-extended with one foot on the land and one on the sea. Everyone scanned the shoreline for a sign of danger, but the overhanging cliffs and fading light made it difficult. Edmund narrowed his eyes as something caught them.
"Warlord," he asked slowly, as the distance closed to half a mile or less, "what is that?" Michael looked where the King was pointing.
At the top of the cliff there were a great number of pine logs – or, in truth, whole trees denuded of needles and branches – piled on top of each other, lying down horizontally and reaching a height of a dozen logs or more. They seemed to be held in place by great posts driven into the earth vertically.
"Logging?" asked Elizabeth, "There's a lot of trees around here – maybe it's a logging farm." Edmund turned to her, a whisper of fear touching his skin.
"At the top of a cliff? In winter?" he asked carefully. She shrugged, not yet feeling the danger. Edmund turned to call to Pearl, standing at the tiller, when Michael's voice snapped his head back.
"'Ware Giant!" he thundered. Elizabeth saw the whole thing – the huge, hideously ugly creature appearing from behind the pile of logs, pushing aside whole trees as it rose from where it had been hiding, the dark green pines swaying as if in a gale. It was humanoid – but a terrible parody of a human; great thick, brutish limbs and flabby skin, like a badly-made skin-sack stuffed with lumpy meat and gristle. Its jaw jutted forward like a bulldog's, great tusks snarling and drooling as if they fitted badly and the creature was trying to make itself more comfortable. Beneath a low, sloping brow that seemed to be studded with bony protrusions under the filthy and scared skin, piggish eyes glared malevolently at the ships below.
The distance between the ship and the shore was five hundred yards if it was an inch – too far for arrows, but not too far to hear the reverberating bellow as the creature threw back its hideous head and howled with rage and anger. It stooped down from its thirty feet of grim might and wrenched up a massive stone, dripping mud and soil and raised it above its head. Elizabeth could see grotesque veins writhing like worms on its lumpy, disproportionate arms as it drew its hands back for the throw.
"Hard a port!" thundered Pearl, hauling the wheel over as fast as she possibly could. Around her, her captains did the same and – agonizingly slowly – the bows of the ships began to turn.
It was nowhere near enough.
Spinning lazily in mid-air, the stone spun across the bay, fragments of soil and earth flying off it and splattering into the choppy sea. With a sickening crunch almost as bad as the realization, it struck one of the boats amidships just above the waterline. With a terrible yielding, shattering creaking-crash, the hull of the unfortunate ship simply exploded, fragments of wood careening in all directions and the hulk pitching into the heaving sea. A great fountain of water rose up, a plume of white spray as the stone sank to the bottom of the bay, carrying with it great timbers and planks. Edmund watched in horror as a fifth of his crusade force was flung into the sea, crashing into the water with bone-breaking impact, being sucked under by the floundering ship and the weight of their own armor
Pearl and her captains were expecting the Giant to hurl another stone and so were sailing as swiftly as they could north, trying to put as much distance between them and the hideous monster. Edmund was yelling orders, telling the army to get ready to disembark onto Felimath. Everyone was rushing to and fro, icy chaos taking hold of the army and fleet.
Only Elizabeth remained standing at the bow, a horrible freezing sense of dread taking hold of her. Slowly, something made her turn – there should have been another stone by now.
The Giant had a great chain in his hands and was pulling on it with all his might. With a flash of horror Elizabeth realized what it was wrapped around.
The upright stakes supporting those hundreds of logs.
And not just logs, she realized as they came loose and the avalanche of wood bounded off the cliff top and came crashing down into the sea with a rumble of thunder and a terrible crashing and booming of water – the logs had merely been a layer resting against the stakes, supporting great masses of rock and stone; tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of ground that fell from the high cliff and into the three fathoms of water at the bottom, sending up a huge boom of spray and echoing noise that left her deafened and stunned. The water rose like a tidal wave, rushing from the cliff and rising as high as the poop deck. Elizabeth screamed an inarticulate warning as she braced herself and the wave hit the stern of the ships.
It was like being shunted in a car, but ten times worse. Her teeth jarred in her head, snapping down on her tongue and filling her mouth with blood. The deck flexed and creaked, nails being torn from their mountings and flying like shrapnel to ping off armor and lodge in flesh. The mast trembled as the ship rose in the water, creaking as it was subjected to stresses it was never meant to handle. As she – and everyone else on board – was knocked sprawling, her bones loosening, the wave passed under the ship, catching it up and all but lifting it out of the water. The ships spun, all control gone, careening towards the shoals at the northern side of the straits. Here and there, soldiers fell overboard and disappeared into the churning waters.
Elizabeth looked back, seeing the Giant leap off the cliff and land in the waters of the bay. The three fathoms of water that their proud ships had easily sailed in came up to his lower chest and as he bullied through the water with bellows of rage and hatred, her blood ran cold.
Any sense of control of the ships was gone now – the sailors that were needed to man the rigging and the tillers were overboard or knocked flat. The force of the water was carrying the ships inexorably towards the shoreline to be beached and grounded in the shallows.
For one, Edmund was relatively pleased by this – at least comparatively. If he could get his army on land, he was sure he could regroup and defeat the Giant coming after them. Regroup on Felimath, establish a base of operations and . . .
His head snapped to the left as he heard a rattling clatter and wood-on-wood boom from behind him and the low-pitched whistle of something scything through the air. With a massive splintering crash, a huge trebuchet-hurled rock smashed through spars, mast and rigging of one of the ships, crashing down on the deck and punching through to the keel. Crew and soldiers went flying like dolls as Edmund realized, with a sinking heart, that this was as sophisticated an ambush as any he had ever planned.
He spun around to face Felimath, taking in the wheeled war engine pushed into firing position by a great crowd of Minotaurs and Ogres. With the speed born of long practice and harsh masters, they were cocking it again and dropping a massive stone into place. A minute, maybe more. A small group of black-haired Dwarfs stood near the front of the engine, sighting with bronze instruments and scribbling notes on slates.
Somehow, Michael was still standing, thundering orders across the deck and over the terrible crash of timber, ripping of cloth and ever-present skirl of the screaming ocean. Edmund yelled at him, "We have to get ashore – this is a damn coconut shy!" As he spoke, the engine cocked with an ominous click he knew he could not hear but felt in his soul. The Dwarfs hurried back to bronze wheels and began to spin them, moving pegs and re-setting levers.
Behind him, the Giant was closing, no more hampered by the water than a human wading a river. A few arrows came from the Narnian ships, but the pitching of the water and the terror of the monster threw most of them wide of the mark and those that hit troubled him no more than a fly from the marshes. They wobbled obscenely in his quivering, flabby flesh like cactus spines.
With a great grinding noise and the horrible violating sound of hulls being torn open, the three remaining ships crashed into the shoals, the rushing of water into holds adding to the cacophony of noise. Edmund leaped to his feet and drew his sword.
"To me, Narnia! The lion!" he thundered as he leaped into the sea, struggling through water that came up to his neck. The wolves were in the water in perfect synch with him, guarding his flanks and rear, protecting their master yet not denying him the honor that was his. Behind him, the shattered and sorry remnants of the army abandoned the boats and plunged into the water, floundering and struggling in armor, moving agonizingly slowly towards the beach.
Hylonome reared back, her hooves pawing the air, and cantered off the ship, crashing into the sea and plunging forward with equine grace, her hooves pounding through shingle and surf. Ahead of her, the engine fired with a great whirling elegance, chains rattling and ropes whistling. Another rock tumbled through the air and came down with a killing blow on the deck of a third ship, shattering it asunder and sending troops flying like splinters of the mast. Unable to reset the engine in the time they had left, the Minotaurs and Ogres ran forward, drawing huge curved axes and great spiked clubs.
Elizabeth had not leaped off the ship, she was frantically helping those stunned and wounded, trying to rouse those knocked unconscious before the ship sank. She was dimly aware of Michael leaping into the water with a bellowed prayer. She was so far from herself she did not even consider if she was hanging back from lack of physical courage. She noticed that the light – already dim – faded suddenly, and looked up to see the Giant looming over her.
The enemies on the shoreline were not expecting the Centauride – the furious gallop and her four-footed surety had allowed to her to reach their lines before the great monsters had drawn up into ranks. And so it was that Hylonome, with a screamed cry of, "King Edmund and Aslan!" barreled into the Dwarfish engineers. One of them lost his head to a sweep of her sword and two more were trampled to wet ruin on the dewy grass. She came up on her forelimbs, her rear hooves smashing out and cracking spine, ribs and armor of one of the little stunted freaks she had leaped over. "Narnia! Narnia!" she neighed, rearing back as the Dwarfs scattered and the Minotaurs charged her with bellowing roars.
Elizabeth dived to the side on the deck of the ship, drawing her sword as the shattered mast of one of the ruined ships came down like a club where she had been a second before. With a deafening roar, the Giant wrenched his splintered weapon from the deck, rocking the ship, and swept it sideways.
With a fluid grace she had no time to admire, Elizabeth simply leaped over it, even as it swept Dwarfs and Fauns into the sea with a hideous crackling of bone. The ship slewed backwards as the masts collided and she landed with an easy flex of her knees on the heaving deck. There was no thought in her mind, nothing crowded out anything except the now – her trying to survive and, if at all possible, defeat this creature. Her body responded to threats before her mind had recognized them, fighting with instinctual precision. Her muscles flexed easily, moving with an unknown grace and effortless ease. She was, her mind realized with a shock that didn't cause a single hitch in her movements, a warrior.
Queen Susan had done her work well.
On the shore, Hylonome was alone and over-extended, surrounded and being charged by dozens of rampaging Minotaurs, their stinking breath bellowing in condensing clouds of stench. She cantered to the side of the first blow as the second crashed into the crossed guard made of her two swords, the impact forcing her to her knees and jarring her arms. The Minotaur reversed his blade and made to hook her head from her shoulders with the reverse edge.
His head flew off as Michael crashed into the line like a thunderbolt. Beside him, Edmund flicked his sword upward and sliced off an Ogre's hand, sending it and the club it held tumbling to the grass. To their right, Hedera was standing with her arms spread, her hair writhing like floral snakes, roots extending from her thighs and calves and embedding her into the earth, vines and thorns erupting from the ground and pulling monsters down and apart. All around them, battle was joined.
Elizabeth rolled to the side and stabbed outwards, the blade of her silver sword stabbing into the back of the Giant's wrist and skewering it. With an enraged bellow of pain and anger, the Giant whipped its wounded hand back, dropping the club as it did so. Elizabeth simply let the sword go, drawing her dagger and leaping backwards into the surf. The Giant roared and shoved the ship aside, striding through the water to get towards the little thing that had hurt him, his right hand hanging useless and black-red blood dripping into the water. Moving with the grace of a mermaid, Elizabeth gained the shore with seconds to spare, snatching up the recurved bow of one of the fallen Black Dwarfs.
Edmund would have preferred to fight back to back with someone, but it was impossible – the movement in the press of battle was simply too fast and too furious for anyone except the wolves to keep pace with him; Rapine and those he lead remained defending him no matter how swiftly he moved. Hylonome was leaping here and there, using her height and weight to take the battle to the Ogres and Minotaurs. She alone among the Narnians could match them for sheer size, and in terms of skill she left them cold. Their ferocity might have told against her, had not her blood been up and her young eyes filled with tears and horror at such a cowardly ambush. An Ogre swung his club at her; she simply ducked out of the way and planted a hoof on his forehead. His spine snapped like a marrowbone and he toppled like a fallen tree. Around her, the ground was thick with dead Narnians and monsters.
Michael was in the center of the combat, standing atop a small mountain of dead Minotaurs. As he hacked down yet another, the rest seemed to come to a realization that this man's skill and strength was beyond them – they fell back, minds that could not know fear knowing terror. He was on them in a heartbeat; joining them like slabs of beef in a bloody orgy of butchery.
Around Edmund, Fauns and Dryads were falling – his heart ached as his imagination pictured the groves that were at this very moment dying as the tree-women fell, clearings appearing in the Lantern Waste that would be silent for years to come. His rage redoubled his efforts as he whirled and hacked, not feeling his exhaustion or wounds, his face tight-lipped and white, his sword painting bloody lines in the air. Baying howls and growls cut the air as Talking-Beasts leaped into the fray, dragging down their foes with claws and teeth. To his right, the Lantern Waste elite hauled down a Minotaur, it bellowing and mooing piteously like a bull in a bullring.
Thanks in no small part to Hylonome's frantic assault which had prevented the defenses from being organized and Michael's unstoppable valor, the Narnians were gaining the upper hand in the battle. No few had fallen, great or small, and there were few that were uninjured – but the numbers of their enemies were falling.
Of course, thought Edmund as he turned to see the Giant lumbering forwards, numbers do not win battles – and I'll bet being six times my height helps.
The Giant could still break the back of his army – what was left of it – with simple strength and terror. He knew that his army would kill it, but at what cost? The thing would drive half the force before it with plain unadorned fear, and crush the rest. It was to no avail if the Giant died and he did not have enough soldiers left to do the task he came here to do. He spun, hacking down his last foe. Michael had lost his sword and was grappling with a Minotaur, his hands locked around its neck.
Edmund was under no illusions about what he would have to do. As the Giant loomed closer, towering over Elizabeth and threatening to crush her to jelly, he sprinted towards it. Ignoring the fear that leeched the strength from his bones and the horrible aches in his muscles, he yelled inarticulate threats at it.
Elizabeth – coolly, calmly, as if she had all the time in the world – fitted an arrow to the string and drew the flights back to her ear. "Go get 'em, baby," she whispered and let go.
The arrow vanished – barb, shaft and feather – into the eye of the Giant with a wet squelch. For a second, the creature continued to lumber forwards as if nothing had happened. And then it stopped, slowed, took a tentative and unsure step forward. A bemused expression spread over its hideous face as its knees began to give way, tumbling and crashing forward like an avalanche. Like a shivering landslide of malodorous flesh it slumped and tumbled down, smashing onto its face in the surf, feebly trying to raise itself. Elizabeth ran forward, wrenched her sword free from the flailing arm and leaped onto its shoulders. A pig-sized hand flapped ineffectually at her as she reversed the sword and drove it with all her strength into the base of its skull.
The Giant convulsed, foaming the water and sand into great gushes of spray and mud. She twisted the sword savagely, stirring its brain to porridge, and it jerked once and lay still.
Edmund looked on, slack-jawed with wonder and amazement, as she tugged her sword free and charged into the melee.
But it was over. With a hideous snap, Michael broke the neck of the last Minotaur and threw its cooling corpse away. He reached down and picked up his sword as the Narnians dealt the coup-de-grace to their wounded foes. Edmund found his voice as he looked at the death-strewn beach, the sand slick with the blood of those he had lead there.
"Warlord," he croaked, "take stock of the army."