Chapter Twenty-Eight : Knight Falls, Mourning Breaks
Dawn poured itself like a glacier over the mountainous heartland of Avra and revealed the extent of the foes Michael's forces would have to face. Crouched in the rocky hillsides of the bowl-like valley in which the hamlet of the islanders was located and with the birds perched on the crags high above, the Warlord and his Captains looked down on the scene below them.
It had taken Michael a few moments – in clipped, decisive tones that brooked no nonsense, could have only come from a general and treated the man as a soldier first and foremost – to both explain his purpose there and gain obedience from Eldwin, the man who had met them on the eastern coast of Avra. It had taken Brocklewine, Pearl and Silvius longer to win his trust, but Michael needed obeisance before he needed loyalty – although both were essential.
What Eldwin – who was a young man by any standards, probably still sustained on this storm-lashed chunk of rock by the legends of freedom fighters as much as the thin gruel of stolen oats and scraggly roots and poor strips of mutton that was his and his fellows' usual diet – had made of Tullibardine and Eryn and the rest was anyone's guess, for Michael had not allowed conversation or debate. He had made it clear he wanted to speak with the leader of the resistance before the night was very much older and – persuaded by the reassurance of Silvius and the commanding presence of the Warlord – Eldwin had acquiesced to the Warlord's demand for speed.
The resistance consisted of some three-dozen men and women – tough and stringy but diminished by their diet and constant stress and rough-living – dwelling in hidden caves. They had no clear pattern, no clear strategy – beyond a desire to live away from the influence of the Governor, to lead their own lives. Here, as the Narnians gathered around fires lit under rock chimneys and warmed themselves and roasted food and drank ale they themselves had brought, sharing it with the awestruck humans, they heard the history of their land presented as legends for the first time. Tales of King Gale and his slaying of the Dragon that plagued the Islands, the deliverance that began the imperial Narnian rule of these Islands. The tales of Queen Swanwhite, of King Frank and Queen Helen. It had taken a great deal of persuasion before the fighters stopped calling Michael "Sire", or accepted he was not King Gale returned to deliver them again.
"Have you ever killed a Dragon?" the fighters had asked, disappointed perhaps and wanting to find some point of legendary connection. Michael shook his head.
"Killed one?" he had answered. "No."
Awed and hushed tales of animals that talked like Men, and of trees that walked and talked and sang, and half-human, half-animal creatures quickly faltered to nothing in the presence of the bulk of Michael's army. And in the shocked silence as the resistance realized the legends that had sustained them were actually true and the day of deliverance might actually be here and now Fauns had reached for harps and Dwarfs for pipes and Dryads had lifted up their voices in song.
Brocklewine's Dwarfs had unslung bundles of weapons – superior by far to the fire-hardened spears and slack-strung bows of the humans – and distributed them while Michael and Tullibardine spoke with their leader, a tall gaunt woman with gray hair and a scar which ran over one stitched-closed eye. How many and who and where and armed with what? the stag had asked as Michael unfolded his plan to the resistance leader and asked if her men would follow him.
And now – as Michael saw with his own eyes what Magdala had told him the night before as his soldiery billeted down for the night, to rise a few short hours later before dawn and march across the island in the gleaming darkness for an assault that would break with the morning – he reflected that the survival of these thirty-six warriors was a testament to their determination and guile.
The majority of the island was rocky and mountainous, with only a few patches at the shores open enough for the construction of villages and the farming of crops. Below them, several acres of cultivated land were spread out like a furrowed blanket, here and there scattered with low, primitive buildings. Agricultural communities were always desolate and grim in the Winter – nothing that was supposed to grow was growing, and the fields and furrows were clogged and choked with weeds – but this was by far the worse the Narnians had seen. Large-scale farming was unknown in Narnia – the population was, in the main, hunters or grazers or small enough to be supported by a few fields behind a village – and so the sight of the thin naked soil churned into a brown morass by the freezing rain that was threatening to build to a storm as dawn came up like thunder behind them was depressing on a wholly new scale.
Built from rocks obviously hewn from the cliffs around – the mountains bore the scars of work carried out by hands that were brutish and primitive but possessed of terrible strength, or perhaps by those toiling under whips that gave them strength but not skill – a large fortress stood. It commanded a position which allowed it to survey the bay against which the cultivated land abutted – a bay in which a few ships were riding at anchor. Pearl's flinty eyes expertly sized them up.
"Those ships'll take the army – an' yon lassies' fighters," she added with a nod of her flame-haired head to Magdala, "ter Doorn wi'out any problems." Her eyes measured the distance between the two landmasses – it was less than six hundred yards to the wooded slopes of Doorn; six hundred yards of surging channel her years of experience told her would be swarming with dangerous riptides and unpredictable currents. "The ocean hersel' might pose a wee mite o' a problem, though, Warlord." Michael nodded.
Magdala sighted along a long arm clad in homespun wool, leather and scraps of rusting chainmail. "There, Warlord – it is as I told you. The fortress of the Governor, built with slave labor and by his monsters in the early days of the occupation." It was, perhaps, telling the resistance seemed to be aware of the illegitimacy of the Governor's rule – that awareness translating into a willingness to actually do something about it, even if that something was only to hide from and avoid his troops and forces, waiting for a day when a deliverer would come. "The number of troops there varies, perhaps as he needs his bullies elsewhere. But there is always one of the Governor's lieutenants there, and he has dark sorceries and enchantments at his command. For the rest, I believe there are maybe thirty of the great monsters there and some fifty troops."
Michael pointed at a low building to the east of the fortress. "Stables?" he asked. Magdala nodded.
"Aye – there are a few horses on the island. Few enough, for the terrain does not suit them, but there are mountain paths where they can be taken. Recently, the Governor seems to have increased the number of mounted troops here and the patrols have become more frequent – it is my belief that he has decided to find us and put an end to us." Michael glanced up at the sun, just peering over the mountain tops and throwing saw-toothed light onto the scene below them.
"The intelligence you provided me with last night is accurate – we will undertake the assault with no changes to the plan I outlined." He turned to face Pearl and Magdala, "You know your part in it?" Both of them nodded. "Very well." He turned to Silvius – a few meters away through the driving rain – and nodded. The shepherd raised his flute to his lips and piped a few short, clear notes.
Above him, from the crags where the Narnian birds crouched, cawing cries broke and the great eagles and hawks swooped down through the dawn light in deceptively-lazy spirals, sinking lower and lower as they came towards the gatehouse of the fortress. There was no way the Narnians – who, even now, were pouring down the dreary gray, rain-drenched hillside in a riot of color with Michael at their head – could possibly batter down the drawbridge of the fortress, even assuming they could leap the wide channel that separated the fortress from the rest of the plain, or scale the fortress walls, for they had no siege equipment with them. It looked, to the surprised defenders on the walls of the fortress, that Narnians would break like water against the walls of the castle. All eyes were riveted on them, the surprise at the sudden appearance of such a motley collection of warriors – for only a few seemed to be anything other than animals – and the amazement at their foolhardy assault kept attention on them and hands from alarm bells.
That cost them dear.
Down swooped Brightfeather the Eagle, with his cohort of hawks in his wake. Swift and as accurate as an arrow from Queen Susan's bow they swept into the gatehouse, beaks pecking and talons clawing and wings beating at the unprotected faces of the guards in there. Weapons were dropped as hands sprang upwards to defend their eyes, soldiers staggered around screaming and frantically smashing their fists against the feathered bodies that pressed against them, the air filled with flashes of vibrant color, shrieks of pain and the angry cries of birds.
Brightfeather swept through the melee with the graceful ease of his kind and settled with casual accuracy on the ratchet lever of the drawbridge mechanism, hooking his talons around it and sweeping his wings out and down. He rose into the air, the lever lifted and – with a great rattle and clatter of gears – the drawbridge fell smoothly outwards and away, crashing to the ground and bridging the chasm with a thunderous cloud of dust and splattering mud.
"Into them!" thundered Michael, sprinting through the morass of mud and water that was churned around him by the feet of the swifter Talking Beasts. "Tullibardine!" he roared at his Captain, "The gate!"
The pounding hooves and long legs of the mature stag had carried him ahead of the majority of the army and he clattered onto the drawbridge, swinging his antlered head left and right and disemboweling human soldiery with casual ease. Smashing his massive body through the few men fast enough to respond to him, sending no small number of them tumbling, winded and bruised, he leaped forward, thrusting his antlers towards the great links of the thick iron chain that would raise the drawbridge. Horn and bone lodged in the holes of one of the links and – with a gut-wrenching crack – Tullibardine twisted the massive muscles of his neck and sheared one of the antlers off at his skull.
It was, he reflected, a little early in the year for a stag as young as he was to shed his antlers – for he was not truly a hart yet – but he had found his hind this year and he had no need of them. Besides, he reflected, as he swept the remaining half of his rack down and across, deflecting the sweeping blow from a Minotaur's sword, such sacrifices were essential for the good of Narnia. He had no doubt that King Edmund would give up his antlers if he was old enough to grow them.
Seeing that the gate had fallen, soldiers leaped for alarm bells which reverberated with a great clanging noise around and against and off the high cliffs of the valley. Hulking monsters and men with eyes and faces puffy with sleep burst from the barracks inside the castle. A door high on the wall of the keep opened and a tall, broad, handsome human in richly decorated clothes took in the situation at a glance and sprinted down the stairs, running for the door to the stables.
In the gatehouse, the soldiers managed to drive the birds back enough to at least try to grab the great wheel and wind the drawbridge upright again. With a clatter and a clank, the bridge lifted a few inches towards the vertical, but the weight of stag and soldiers on it was too great and the antler jammed in place prevented the chain from rising smoothly through its aperture. Brightfeather and his cousins pecking and scratching did not make what was an impossible task any easier.
The swifter Talking-Beasts – dogs and the big cats from the South – were surging up to the drawbridge now, crashing into the growing melee with roars and growls of rage and anger. With a bellowed battlecry, Michael smashed into the center of the fight, his sword swinging in great gleaming arcs and two Ogres falling headless.
"To me, loyal Narnians and Islanders!" he roared, "To me Beasts and Dwarfs! To me Dryads and Fauns! Rise and fight! Now is the time of your deliverance! For Aslan and for Narnia! The Lion! The Lion!"
Above them, a great commotion broke out as two Minotaurs and a hulking monstrosity with two heads, three eyes and muscles like mountains gained the gatehouse, smashing around with huge clubs that shattered bones and shivered the walls. Feathers, blocks of stone and blood flew as the top of the building partially collapsed, the surviving remnants of the fight between the birds and the humans fleeing. The great monsters grabbed the chains in their bare hands and began to haul, muscles bulging obscenely and veins writhing like swallowing worms. Below, the drawbridge began to shift and rumble, the antler jammed in place cracking and snapping as the huge oaken platform tilted upwards, the fighters on it reeling from side to side and loosing their balance.
Eryn could see where this was heading – if the bridge closed then those on it and inside the bailey of the castle would be trapped, the majority of the army left outside and beyond offering any aid. She was under no illusions about what would happen to her if she did what she was contemplating – but that did not change the fact she had to do it. "King Edmund and Aslan!" she shrieked, scuttling forward with the rustling motion of a Dryad in her war aspect, her eyes gleaming dull red in the dawn light and her very touch a blade.
A single, impossibly agile, leap gained her the battlements and then she was among the ruins of the gatehouse – growing and budding and branching, tough, thorny branches and razor-sharp leaves twining around the three monsters, shallow cuts appearing in their fur and blubbery, wart-encrusted skin.
The drawbridge was stable now, the monsters having dropped it in order to fight the Dryad. Michael smashed a couple of soldiers aside and sprinted for the courtyard. The sound of drumming hooves drew his head to the left and he saw charging forward, scattering his infantry like pheasants before the beaters, a wedge of cavalry, headed by a fell-looking lord in translucent armor that gleamed like obsidian and stank of sorcery. He swept his dark-bladed sword in a grim arc, felling a Faun and a Dwarf with casual and terrible ease as his men lay about him with flails and axes.
There were too few Narnians in the courtyard – what was never a retreat might very well become a rout if this charge could not be stemmed before their greater numbers could be brought to bear. Michael smashed the brace of Ogres and the Minotaur that stood between him and his foe – they were just chaff, get through them and move on – to the ground, dead before they hit. He leveled his sword and thundered a challenge, one which the Governor's lieutenant was only too happy to accept. He hefted his sword and spurred his horse towards the Warlord.
Outside the castle, the Narnian maxim that numbers do not win battles was being proven as thousands of pounds of armored beef flung itself from the battlements, jumping the chasm to land on great cloven hooves amid the Narnian army. Minotaurs and Ogres flung back their heads and bellowed with rage and anger, smashing and slashing with axes, flails, clubs and great barbed scimitars. Armour split and bones shattered as the Narnians were driven back, a dozen or more falling in fewer heartbeats.
With bellows of pain and rage, the monsters fighting Eryn in the gatehouse lashed out, their hands grabbing at the Dryad's barbed and spiky form even as she sliced off fingers. A hundred raking leaves tore open the throat of one of the Minotaurs and ripped the eyes from one of the Ettin's heads. With a roar, the two surviving monsters grabbed at her, grasping her body around the waist and shoulders, and wrenching apart with a great snapping and tearing of fibrous sinews and muscles. Dry, desiccating, withered leaves and branches fell to the ground mingled with a rain of sap and shower of bright red berries as – far away in Narnia – a holly tree that had stood since the time of King Gale died.
In the churned soup of mud and blood before the gates of the castle, a Minotaur raised its ax to slice a stunned Dwarf in twain. From out of nowhere a hurled spear took it through the throat and it toppled like a stricken oak as Magdala leaped onto its corpse and wrenched her weapon free. "For Narnia and the Islands! Up and fight, you cowards!" she screamed at the villagers watching in horrified huddles in their doorways, "Die on your feet rather than live on your knees!"
The dark knight drove his steed with cruel goading from his spurs towards the Warlord, who reached for the dagger tucked into his boot and threw it with unerring accuracy at his enemy's left calf. The blade pierced armor with the shattering tinkle of breaking glass and lodged in bone and flesh with the thick, meaty sound of butcher work. With a howl of pain, the lieutenant instinctively yanked his leg back, his foot leaving the stirrup, even as the Warlord sprang forward.
Michael's jump put his left foot in the stirrup the knight had just vacated, his left hand on the saddle horn hauling him upright. He drove his forehead into the bridge of his enemy's nose with a disgusting snapping noise. It might have been that blow that killed the man – snapped the neck or jellied the brain – but it was certain he was dead shortly after he hit the ground. Michael swung his body into the saddle, smashing the man out of the way with a brutal pommel strike that shattered his armor like a flawed goblet. As the Warlord's right leg swung over the saddle, the unconscious body of the lieutenant tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs that was swiftly trampled by the horses following him.
"Oh . . ." began the knight riding to the right of Michael. He got no further as the Warlord lashed out with a backhanded stroke that tore his head from his shoulders in a welter of blood. A surgical stab to the left and a horse tumbled, its ribcage pierced, and the left flank collapsed and tripped into a tangled pile of impotent horses and riders. Michael twitched his body in the saddle slightly and the horse obeyed by veering to the right and – as the Warlord jabbed it firmly in the ribs with his heels – galloped through the following ranks of its fellows, its rider lashing out with his blood-slick sword left and right.
Pearl and her crew sprinted clumsily forward, unused to the lack of rolling movement of the deck perhaps, and swung at Minotaurs and Ogres with boarding gaffs and heavy axes. Pearl's scimitar painted crimson lines in the air as she hacked the muscle from the calf of an Ogre. Its return stroke caught her under the chin and sent her unconscious form flying backwards, trailing blood from her broken nose.
On the bridge, Tullibardine had been joined by Brocklewine and his bodyguards, stocky Dwarfs in finely wrought mail and with hair as red and soft as a fox's brush. Swords and axes danced in a movement as precise as any snow dance and the noise on the armor of the Governor's soldiers was like a thousand smithies all rolled into one. Out on the fields, Fauns and Dryads and great bears and badgers were ripping into monsters with weapons, leaves, teeth and claws.
Obeying an unspoken warning, Michael wheeled his horse as he lashed out at the last of the mounted troops, raising his sword to defend himself. He flexed his arms to take the terrible shock of the blow as a tonne of Minotaur dropped from the gatehouse, its sword smashing down onto his blade before its hooves hit the ground.
The Warlord heard and felt the terrible crack as – beneath him – the spine of the poor horse snapped and sheared and it began to topple. Michael wrestled his notched and rent blade aside, shouldering the Minotaur's weapon away with sheer brute force, and drove a fist into the orbit of its liquid eye. It gave a pained bellow and drew back, giving him enough time to leap clear as his horse crashed to the courtyard floor and the great two-headed Ettin landed on the ground with an impact that shook the walls.
Magdala lunged forwards with her spear, her foe – a lean Minotaur with its dark fur plastered red with the blood of half-a-dozen Narnians – whirled its blade and dashed her weapon aside, smashing her in her chest with a straight-armed punch that drove the breath from her lungs and her body into the wall of a nearby house with a ugly crash. It raised the sword again and made to strike her head from her shoulders.
A shower of hurled objects – stones, pots, pans, kitchen utensils – drove it back, puzzled and enraged, shielding its face with its massive taloned hands. A knot of villagers were striding forward, gathering themselves and their courage together, throwing whatever they could get their hands on at the monster. "Yar! Get away, you beast!" they yelled. Magdala shook her head to clear it, lifted her spear again, and drove it with both hands into the monster's barrel chest. It made a surprised noise as its heart was pierced and then slumped to the ground, its eyes glazing.
Michael stepped backwards, his calm eyes taking in the once-proud horse lying shattered on the ground and whinnying piteously, looking for all the world like some huge insect half-smashed into the floor by a cruel child. He whirled his blade double-handed and put it out of its misery, taking its head from its shoulders. His sword flew back to guard as he deflected a blow from the Minotaur that would have smashed onto his shoulder with bone-cracking force. Behind the enraged monster, the Ettin lumbered forward, one of its heads blinded by holly-strikes to the eyes, blood and puss seeping from great gouged wounds. Pig-like noses snuffled, trying to seek out where he was, as the beast's single remaining eye focused on him.
The Ettin's club swung at the Warlord – he raised his sword and knocked it aside. The force of the blow drove the edge of the metal into the wooden bludgeon, and when the Ettin wrenched the weapon back for a second blow and Michael brought his sword back to guard the blade snapped at the notch the Minotaur's strike had put in it.
The bull-headed horror's next blow swept sideways swifter than a striking snake. Michael – armed solely with an eighteen inch length of shattered steel – ducked under the blow and drove the splintered end of the blade into the flesh of the Minotaur's meaty forearm. It bellowed in pain and leaped backwards, dropping its own sword as it did so. Michael pressed his advantage, jumping forward and grabbing it by the horns.
Outside, the Islanders – both the villagers and Magdala's resistance – were in the thick of the fight, pressing with the Narnians against the monsters and the human soldiers of the Governor, driving them back into the courtyard and into the chasm the drawbridge spanned. Tullibardine was sweeping with his remaining antler, his foes too frightened to mock him. Dryads were writhing bastions of inhuman arboreal might. The bows of the Dwarfs – now that the lines were thinned enough for that sort of work – were singing.
Michael twisted the Minotaur's head down in his machine-tool hands, bearing it down with main strength and twisting with terrible force. With an impossible yielding snap as bones dislocated and sinews tore, muscles ripped and skin spit, the Warlord tore the bull-head from the giant body and wrenched it free in a geyser of blood.
The Ettin was unimpressed. It barely even broke stride, drawing back its club and snarling from its ten feet of towering grim might, "Time to die, human!"
Michael looked up at the dual-headed horror that was bearing down on him. "I am Michael!" he thundered, "Warlord of Narnia, Champion of the Church Militant, Holy Warrior for Aslan! I am the fist of the Emperor-Beyond-The-Sea here and I decide who dies!"
The Ettin's first blow swung wide as Michael dived to the side. The second smashed into the wall, tearing a supporting column free as the Warlord ducked. The third struck the wall again, masonry tumbling like autumn leaves and knocking the Ettin to its knees as its heads and shoulders were battered by foot-square chunks of stone.
The little thing in the tin suit isn't there anymore, it realized as the smoke and rock dust cleared. Where has it scurried off to? Well, it's not my fault – I can't see where it's gone. Shut up, you – you're always whining.
Slowly, the Ettin realized that something was wrong. It felt weak and wobbly. Its back and chest hurt and it was having trouble breathing. Almost incuriously, the sighted head lolled forward, drool spilling from its thick lips as it tried to take in what its dimming sight could not see.
The tips of two Minotaur horns pushed through the layers of fat, muscle and bone of its flabby chest, blood and air foaming as the lungs labored futilely, gradually filling with liquid. The monster slumped forward, wondering what had happened to it, as it drowned in its own blood.
Standing behind the dead Ettin, Michael straightened and set his armor more comfortably on his broad shoulders. Despite the effectiveness of his enemy's head as a weapon, he needed a new blade – one suited to his height and build. He reached down towards the trampled body of the lieutenant and his gleaming black sword. His hand recoiled instinctively as it brushed the hilt and dark sorcery crawled up his arm.
"Mighty and most merciful Aslan, array me in Your sight." He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer, grasping the hilt of the sword and kneeling. He reversed the blade before him, resting his wrists on the quillons and his forehead on the pommel, the tip of the broad blade balanced on the flags of the courtyard. "Unto Thee I offer my victories and my endeavors, poor though they may be. Though I am an unworthy reaver who wades through blood, I do so in Thy name. Look down with favor on me Your unworthy servant and let this instrument of Thine enemy serve me, Thy flawed weapon. This I ask through Thy sacrifice at the Table and Thy resurrection through the Deeper Magic."
A warm wind blew in Michael's face, a wind impregnated with the comforting smells of myrrh and cinnamon, scented reed and cassia, and a great wild, noble, deep voice said, "Arise, great Prince. Your plea has been heard. Be where you must be by noon tomorrow or all will be for naught." Michael's eyes opened and – for the briefest of seconds – the deep golden eyes of the great Lion looked into his, awash in an ocean of rough gold.
And then the moment passed, and Michael found himself standing alone holding a sword in his deadly hands. Where once it had been dull, almost-black metal with blasphemous runes carved down the length of the blade and with hilt and quillons fashioned of some evil green metal in the likeness of a writhing knot of snakes, now it shone and sparkled like silver in the dawn light. Steel-sheen blue metal lay light in his hand, framed and hilted in gleaming gold and shining sapphires. A tracery of thorns wove its way down the blade from quillons that were sprays of flowers wrought in gold and the gilded pommel at the end of the red-leather wrapped hilt was in the form of a roaring lion's head.
Tullibardine was entering the wrecked courtyard – strewn with the bodies of men and monsters, over half of which were the work of the dreadful Warlord standing before him. The stag shook his head and – finding the remaining antler loose – shoved it against a tumbled block of masonry until it shed. He straightened and then bent his massive head on his muscular neck.
"My Lord, the castle is ours. Our foes are dead." He paused, staring again in wonder at the destruction strewn in piles of cooling meat across the courtyard floor. "Your orders?" he trembled.
Michael hefted his new blade in his hand, gauging its balance and weight, and then sheathed it without pause or pretense "As ever – see to the wounded, bury the dead, give the army what rest and sleep we can afford. We must be at the walls of Narrowhaven by noon tomorrow. Aslan has spoken."
