THEGAN ARRIVED BEFORE sunset, with a small body of men — all sergeants, except for his personal groom. Leof smiled to himself. Any old campaigner knew that when you used oath men in battle, you’d better have some good sergeants keeping them in line and making sure they didn’t break and run for it.
“My lord,” Leof said as Thegan sprang down from his horse.
Thegan clapped him on the back and looked out over the landscape, which glowed golden and rose from the setting sun. It was a scene of perfect peace: dairy cattle wound their accustomed way to the milking sheds, birds settled to their nests, a sheepdog barked in warning at an errant ewe as it herded her into the fold for the night, and down the street mothers called their children in. Bonhill was full of the best possible reasons for resisting the enchanter.
“Where is he?” Thegan asked.
Leof pointed out the hill and described the work the enchanter was doing. “I’d say he’ll be there several days, if he wants to make sure he gets all the buried bones. It’s a big area for one man to cover.”
“The bones . . .” Thegan brooded. “You think that’s what he’s using to raise the ghosts?”
“What else would he want them for?”
Thegan nodded, his face dark. “Is it the enchanter you met?”
“No. He’s a young man, under thirty, I’d say. Not a warrior.”
“Hmph. If he were a warrior he wouldn’t have resorted to tricks and spells.” Thegan nodded in decision. “Well done. When will the Sendat troops arrive, do you think?”
“Depends if they march through the night. If they do, we might be in place before sunrise. If not, then midday.”
Thegan called his groom. “Sandy, take the road to Sendat and tell whatever officer you find leading my troops that I want them to take no more than two hours’ rest tonight. Tell them we have to be in position before it gets light.”
The groom nodded and ran for the stables.
“There’s no guarantee that the wind wraiths won’t smell us out anyway,” Leof cautioned.
“We’ll deal with that if it happens,” Thegan said. “Come, let’s eat and rest while we can.”
It was good advice, and Leof took it. He and the sergeants ate and lay on the inn benches, jackets under their heads for pillows. Thegan lay more comfortably in the innkeeper’s bedroom. They were all experienced men, so they slept, waking quickly as Thegan’s groom barged in through the inn doors.
“They’re almost here!” he called. “My lord! My lord! They’re coming!”
Leof sprang up and pulled his jacket on, feeling the familiar sense of tension and excitement he always felt before battle. This time, there was no unease. These were no innocents, like the Lake People; this was a monster aided by monsters, and he would hew the enchanter’s head off with great satisfaction, if Thegan didn’t get to him first.
Thegan appeared from the bedroom looking, as always, pristine. Leof retied the combination of leather thong and brown velvet ribbon that kept his hair back and pulled his jacket into shape over his hips, then followed Thegan out into the dark. On the eastern horizon, the sky was just beginning to gray.
The road leading to Bonhill curved around a series of hills, so that they could make out glimpses of movement and shadow, and hear the sound of horses hooves and harnesses clinking. Wil and Gard were at the head of the column, with Alston behind leading the first group.
“Privy break!” Alston called as they came to a halt two lengths away from the first village house, near an orchard. It was a well-practiced routine. The men swung down from their horses and helped their pillion passengers, the pikemen, off. Then three out of four riders handed their reins to the fourth and disappeared into the coppice, followed by their passengers. When they emerged the fourth man went, too. Then they stood by their horses, waiting for orders. Leof could smell the piss from the inn door, and the nervous sweat. Thegan always ordered a privy break before a battle; the men knew they would be fighting soon.
While the men relieved themselves, Wil and Gard dismounted and came for orders.
“The enchanter is on the hill, over there,” Thegan said. “There’s no chance that we will completely surround him before he hears us, but I want to get a small force up close and hidden before the main charge starts, so that if he sets a spell loose we have a surprise up our sleeve.” They nodded, nervous as the men. Neither of them liked the idea of fighting an enchanter.
Leof put an arm around Wil’s shoulders, and shook him slightly. “I’ve seen him. He’s a scrawny bastard, and he doesn’t look too brave to me. He’ll probably run when he sees us, and then we’ll have him!”
Thegan nodded approval at him. “Twenty pikemen, Leof, under your command. Take them to your observation post and keep them there until you get my order. Use your own judgment if he sees us and starts to fight. I’ll give you a count of three hundred to get into position before we move.”
Leof nodded. He went to Alston and relayed the order. Alston gathered the twenty men and gave them a brief speech about keeping low and staying silent. He had chosen experienced men, not the oath men. Leof paused. He knew Alston liked to pray before he went into battle, but this time he just motioned the men to start moving.
“No prayers?” Leof asked curiously.
“No need to ask for forgiveness from the one we are about to kill,” Alston said. “He has forfeited any rights to life or to rebirth.” His voice was flat with a kind of hatred that Leof had never heard from him before. “This is a blasphemer of the worst kind,” he added. “He will rot in the cold hell for eternity.”
The words sounded so unlike his normal sensible self that Leof was troubled. Could anyone forfeit their right to life or to rebirth? That was one of those questions that had never worried him before he knew Sorn. Her belief had made an impression on him without him realizing it, just as she had herself. He felt a quick, aching yearning for her; to be sitting calmly with her, gazing quietly at her beauty. Although he knew that if he were there, there would be no quiet inside him, only raging desire and desperation. He shook off the thought and concentrated on leading his men quietly through the convoluted path that led to the willow coppice.
They only just made it within the count of three hundred. Once there, Leof led the men under the trailing curtain of willow boughs, to the hard task of waiting. They heard nothing from the hill of bones except the wuthering of the wind, which might have been wind wraiths or might have been merely air. From beneath the trailing willow branches they could judge the quiet onset of day. The light grew brighter until they could see each other’s faces, then eyes. The men listened hard, pikes clutched in sweaty hands.
Leof alone peered out, trying to make out any movement from the hill. He fancied he could hear the soft noises of Thegan’s approach, but he knew how easily imagination magnified every sound before a battle. Thegan would not have had time to get everyone into position yet.
Then, as the highest leaves of the willow trees were lit into bright yellow green, they heard the wind wraiths crying, “Ware! Ware! Master, beware of men with iron!”
Leof looked out to see Thegan still some way away, and the enchanter springing up from sleep. Frantically, he grabbed the bags of bones and poured them out in a circle around him. Leof realized it was the first step in making a spell, and he charged out of the screen of leaves, yelling, “For Thegan!”
“Thegan! Thegan!” his men shouted. The enchanter faltered as he saw them, then he grabbed his knife and gabbled some words, holding the knife over his palm.
Leof ran up the slope at full pelt, but he was too late. The enchanter drew the knife down as Leof grabbed for it, scattering blood over the bones around him. He spun around, showering as many bones as he could before Leof grabbed him and pressed his hand against his own jacket to stop the bleeding. But it was too late. Around them, a circle of ghosts was forming. The first one, a short man with hair in beaded plaits, was the leader. The ghost aimed a sword at Leof’s head. Leof let go of the enchanter and brought up his own sword in defense. He was stunned by the strength of the blow. For the first time, he understood to his marrow how dangerous the ghosts were.
The enchanter was backing away, terrified, protected by a phalanx of ghosts. The ground shook as Thegan’s men charged the hill, horns blowing the attack. Leof’s men had reached the hill just as the ghosts appeared and were now engaging them as they had been taught.
“Aim for the arms!” he heard Alston shout, and the men shouted acknowledgment.
Leof was fighting bitterly. The ghost wasn’t a warrior, that was clear, but it didn’t have to be when it didn’t have to guard against death. It attacked furiously but without trying to defend, so that for a moment Leof had to put all his energies into protecting himself. The strangest thing was that the ghost was not breathing. Leof had often fought at close quarters, and he knew the interplay of gasp and breath and grunt as each man gave or took blows. This time only he breathed and gasped; it was disconcerting; strangely impersonal. Yet the hatred in the ghost’s eyes was very personal. After a flurry of blows he maneuvered the ghost around until he could take the blow he wanted. As he raised his sword for the cut, he was aware of Thegan’s horse arriving, of the riders bringing axes down on ghost after ghost, targeting the shoulders and arms and legs, as they had been instructed.
He grinned and brought his sword down on the shoulder of the ghost’s sword arm. He had done this before, to one of the Ice King’s men. He knew how much effort was needed to actually cut someone’s arm off. But he did it. The ghost’s arm fell to the ground. Astonished, the ghost looked down at it and Leof used the moment to bring his sword around and up for a backstroke that cut off its head. The head tumbled to the ground.
The ghost itself did not fall. The body swayed and then, sickeningly, the head and arm disappeared from the ground, and reappeared on the ghost’s body. Complete with sword in hand. Leof stood watching in shock, his mind racing, his hands trembling. He and his men were all going to die. The Domains were going to die. There was no way to fight this — none at all.
The ghost twisted its head slightly, as if testing the surety of its neck, then looked down at its sword hand. It looked slowly up at Leof and smiled mockingly, then raised its sword again and struck. Leof blocked it but it drove him to his knees.
“Regroup!” Thegan shouted. “Withdraw!” He spurred his horse closer to the hill and reached down to hoist Leof up behind him just in time to avoid the ghost’s killing blow. Thegan wheeled the horse and hacked with his own sword at a group of ghosts, giving his men time to get away. Leof spun from side to side, guarding their backs.
All around them, men were screaming and running as they realized that the ghosts were not being harmed by even their worst strokes. The horns sounded the retreat, a pattern of notes Leof had only ever heard in training. Thegan had never retreated before.
“Abandon it!” Thegan yelled to the remaining men. “Barricade yourselves in the houses.” He pulled his horse away.
A few of the men were down, lying dead or dying, and as the horns rang out the wind wraiths appeared as though summoned by them. They descended toward the battlefield with shrieks of joy, like enormous ravens. The ghosts stopped still to watch them, their faces distorted by fear.
“Feed us!” the wraiths shouted. Thegan checked his horse as the wraiths hovered over the enchanter, safe in his circle of ghosts.
“You may feed,” the enchanter cried and the wraiths dived on the dying. The men screamed, long bubbling screams that made Leof’s gorge rise. The ghosts backed away, except for those around the enchanter, and then turned and ran, streaming down the hill, heading for the village and beyond. Leof blanched at the likely outcome; he hoped the inn had stout doors and a good strong bar. If the past pattern stayed true, they had all day before them. Sunset seemed a very long way away.
The ghost Leof had fought stood beside the enchanter now, and it raised its sword and shook it threateningly, grinning with satisfied malice.
“Archers!” Thegan shouted. A rain of arrows left the trees, where archers had been concealed, all aimed at the enchanter, who was just within bowshot. But as the shafts hissed through the air they were overtaken by the wind wraiths, who snatched them up in mid-flight and cast them down to the ground, shrieking with glee.
Thegan tensed and leaned forward, staring at the enchanter, clearly considering whether he could reach him and drag him out, or perhaps rescue some of the men.
“Don’t do it, my lord,” Leof said. He put a hand on Thegan’s rein, and dragged his horse’s head around, heading him back to Sendat. “It’s useless. No army alive could stand against them.”