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Cade
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“THE TRUTH NOW,” CADE said, once Rhiann and the others had disappeared up the trail. “What do we face?”
“Two thousand demons,” Geraint said.
“That’s my count too,” Bedwyr said. “I caught up to them an hour out of Caer Dathyl. It was lucky that I had a horse to ride because I could never have kept up with them on foot.”
Cade looked beyond his companions to the oncoming march of the opposing force. He might be a sidhe—changed by Arianrhod into a creature out of legend—but these demons were no legend. He’d fought them for two years on his own and recently with friends, and he knew their strength. Arawn and Mabon would have had confidence that such an army could overpower twice that number of men, and Cade had a paltry eight hundred foot soldiers at his disposal. Cade gritted his teeth. He was just going to have to prove Arawn wrong. Again.
“The archers are well situated,” Geraint said. “Each have a dozen arrows to hand. I have confidence they can bring down a great number of the beasts.”
“From what I could see,” Bedwyr said, “the demons are not well armored.”
“It’s too bad we couldn’t have delayed them somehow,” Tudur said. “The dawn is too far off to count on its aid.”
“The dawn might slow them down some, but not as much as it will me,” Cade said. “Besides, it’s raining. There won’t be a sun today. The clouds will protect everyone.”
“Right.” Rhun rubbed his hands together. “Archers around the sides, foot soldiers to the front as the demons come on, and cavalry to flank them. It’s the old way, but the best way.”
“One thing they haven’t done is send out scouts,” Geraint said. “I don’t understand it. It’s almost as if they knew exactly where we’d be.”
“They were being aided by Arawn and who knows how many other gods,” Cade said. “Arawn may have been banished to the Underworld, but that doesn’t mean he’s impotent—that doesn’t mean we still can’t lose everything.”
“Or, if Arawn is otherwise occupied, we have Mabon to deal with again,” Goronwy said. “He isn’t in the Underworld with his father, right? Arianrhod was quite clear on that?”
Cade gave Goronwy a curt nod. His stomach roiled at the thought of what Mabon had done and could still do, loose in the world. Arawn hadn’t been able to control him, so Cade didn’t have much hope that Arianrhod could either.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rhun said. “Whoever it is, whomever we face, we have no more time.”
The companions’ horses had come to Arfon with Geraint. Cade was glad to see Cadfan again. The stallion whickered as Cade rubbed his nose. As one, the companions mounted and led the other horsed knights and men-at-arms away from the camp, circling into the trees to the north of the valley through which the demons marched. When the archers had expended their arrows and the foot soldiers had drawn the demons fully into the valley, Cade would lead his cavalry to slam the door behind them.
As they waited for that first flight of arrows, a hush descended on the human watchers, broken only by the muffled march of the demons’ feet. Cade had one hundred and fifty men on horseback. How could that be enough? They’d survive only if the archers were able to reduce the numbers of their opponents—and Cade’s men were able to catch them unawares.
“Half.” Goronwy leaned in to speak to Cade. “If the archers can reduce their numbers by half, that will make us nearly even.”
Cade nodded, although he wasn’t going to hope for such a positive outcome. Still, the demons had strength but no brains. Maybe that too could tip the balance in their favor.
Then the archers released the first rush of arrows, their passage sounding as much like a flight of birds as wooden shafts, except for the moment they hit. Demons didn’t scream their pain. Cade wasn’t sure they felt pain, but they felt something and the calls among them were guttural and wrenched the ear.
Goronwy stood in his stirrups, straining his eyes to see through the water-logged air. “What can you see, my lord? My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Cade didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t like the idea that any of his companions were growing older with increasing frailties. Not that Goronwy would be frail for a long time, but it highlighted the fact that they didn’t yet know if Cade would age alongside Rhiann. Perhaps that was the next gift Arianrhod could give him.
“Second flight ... third flight ... fourth flight ...” Cade counted them out as the shafts flew past them. “The arrows are finding targets. They’re hitting and demons are going down, but they’re not turning. They haven’t lost enough of their numbers yet.”
“That’s a side effect of not having a coherent thought,” Rhun said. “They don’t know when to run because they lack a sense of self-preservation.”
“I hoped for a while that returning Arawn to the Underworld would affect them,” Cade said, “that they’d lose their motivation to fight.”
“I guess not,” Goronwy said.
The demons continued to march up the valley, pushing through the flights of arrows and climbing over the fallen bodies of their companions. At one point, Cade thought he heard Rhiann’s cry aim for the neck or heart! over the rush of battle. He hoped he’d heard it, anyway.
He peered through the darkness, trying to make out what was happening. “They’re getting closer now. It’s almost time.” Fewer arrows barraged the demons now, but still they came on.
“The archers don’t have enough arrows.” Rhun urged his horse to the edge of the trees. “The demons’ numbers are too great, and the arrows they have left they’ll need to save for the end.”
“I know.” Cade met Goronwy’s eyes, and then Rhun’s.
Rhun nodded and straightened in his seat. What more was there to say?
Cade unsheathed his sword. He’d waited until this moment because as he raised it above his head, Caledfwlch blazed into a column of light. The air glittered around it, and the light shot into the trees above their heads, reflected off the raindrops, the branches, the burgeoning leaves, the water in the air, and onto the men. Even the demons couldn’t fail to notice.
Cade stood in his stirrups. “We ride!”
The knights and men-at-arms burst from the trees and rode down the slope in a rush, death a roar on their lips. They came out ten yards from the rear of the demon force and catapulted into it.
One demon after another fell before Cade. It took only a few heartbeats, which neither the demons nor Cade had, of course, for the demons to realize that they faced a greater enemy from behind them than from the front. Rhun kept to Cade’s left and Goronwy to his right, each chopping and hacking with him.
“By the Saints, they stink!” That was Rhun.
Cade glanced at him, noting the greenish liquid coating him and his shield, even as the rain washed it from his face. None of the blood was red. None of it was his.
Glad for Rhun’s dark humor, Cade returned his attention to the creatures in front of him. Horned, furred, bear-like, antlered, from brown to green, even some who looked more human than not. Cade met each one’s eyes as they fought, looking for some sign of humanity—some notion of what they were doing beyond mindless killing. He didn’t see it and Cade should have known better than to think that he ever would. Cade himself wanted to hold onto his own humanity as long as possible, but as he hacked and slashed at his foes, he admitted, yet again, that he would do better as a sidhe, that it was sheer stubbornness that kept him from releasing the demon that lived inside him.
Still, he hesitated.
Cade blocked the axe of a demon who was trying to behead Goronwy. His friend had been a hair’s-breadth from going down because of the creature, and Cade cursed himself for his stupidity. What was pride when his men’s lives were in danger? He needed that sidhe within him. It was why Arianrhod had changed him in the first place—not because he was evil like the demons, but because she knew that in order to defeat them, he needed the strength that the world of the sidhe gave him.
In the time it took to lift his sword and let it fall, he released his power. It flooded him as if he were standing under a waterfall in full spate, or drawing a deep breath after swimming underwater for too long. Except Cade hadn’t drawn breath in two years.
Goronwy spoke from beside Cade. “Mary, Mother of God!”
“What?” Cade plunged his sword into the mass of demons again while half-listening for Goronwy’s response.
“You—” Goronwy said.
“Leave it,” said Bedwyr from beyond them. “It doesn’t matter.”
The friends fought on, cutting a swath through the demon line. After the first rush of battle, Cade had led his men up the valley, heading around the perimeter of the demon force before turning into the central mass of bodies. He’d tried to cut off the bulk of the demons from the foot soldiers, hoping to alleviate the pressure on them and divide the demon force. In that, they’d been successful, to the point that some of the demons at the western end of the valley had finally turned to run away.
At the same time, a few had gathered on the far side of the field for a counter-attack. Once he saw the danger, Cade called to his men. “To me! To me!”
A dozen formed up and charged with him. Again, Cade’s arm rose and fell in a deadly monotony until he came out the other side and turned Cadfan, looking to renew the fight. Bedwyr pulled up in front of him, however, blocking his path back, and the red cleared from Cade’s vision.
“You’ve done enough, my lord,” Bedwyr said. “By the grace of the gods and your power, the demons are almost done.”
With that, Cade came completely to himself. Bedwyr was right. Cade pointed with his sword towards the demons who’d begun to flee, and Goronwy understood without him speaking.
“I’ll take them, my lord.” Goronwy stood in his stirrups and raised his voice. “After them!”
“Go with him, Bedwyr,” Cade said. “I’ll clean up here.” His friends spurred their horses away, leaving only Rhun beside him.
Cade let them go in favor of killing a few more demons. He urged his horse back across the field. But as he and Rhun rode forward, the remaining demons scrambled to get out of their way, tripping over each other in their haste and desperation. It was as if Cade had dropped boiling oil on an anthill. The demons streamed away in all directions, too quickly for Cade or Rhun to keep up, even on horseback—not with the piles of dead surrounding them on every side.
His shoulders sagging in relief, Cade pulled up in the center of the field and turned again to Rhun. “Do you know what Goronwy was talking about earlier?”
Rhun rested his sword in his shoulder and a smile hovered around his lips. “I couldn’t say.”
That clearly wasn’t the whole truth. “It isn’t as if Goronwy hasn’t seen me fight before—he’s seen what I become. You all have.”
Now, Rhun laughed, and it was an incongruous sound given the rain and the battle. He lifted his sword and gestured to the fleeing demons with it. “This time, even I have to admit that you look different. You can’t tell yourself?”
“Tell what—?” Cade said and then stopped, finally taking a good look at himself and seeing what everyone else couldn’t help but notice. In the past, when he’d allowed the power to flow through him, he’d looked different from his normal self, he knew. His eyes shimmered green, and he emitted an aura that was just short of tangible—at least according to Rhiann. Now, however, he glowed with a white light. He glanced at Rhun. “How—”
Rhun shrugged. “Arianrhod’s doing, I imagine. I’m sure Taliesin will have something compelling to say about it. For now, it seems you’ve driven the demons mad.”
And it was true. The demons who remained were running in circles, falling either upon their own blades or that of Cade’s men, whom they’d ceased trying to avoid or even fight. Watching them, Cade held the door to his power open even farther. It flooded through him. He was light itself, fire itself, and like Caledfwlch, shot sparks and diamonds in every direction.
Rhun gave him a long look and then urged his horse towards their own lines. Once Cade was sure no demon remained alive within two hundred yards, he followed. Although he couldn’t help those who’d already died, of which there would be far too many, Caledfwlch could heal the injured.
Next would come the part of battle that men usually didn’t talk about. After a fight, it wasn’t horror or fear or revulsion that a man felt, but utter joy at having survived another day: I am alive! And my enemy is not! Against all odds, I will live to see another sunrise! At the same time, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that he’d known from the start that the fight was going to go his way. It always had. He believed it always would. That probably wasn’t something he should share with Rhiann. Cade almost guffawed along with Rhun, mocking himself for his pretensions to grandeur.
This post-battle optimistic and joyful feeling was generally followed, in Cade’s case, by chills—purely emotional now, for his physical body no longer reflected what went on inside his mind. In the past too, the final stage was exhaustion. Even though he no longer felt it, it was important to remember that his men did and make allowances. Cade lifted his eyes to the heavens. The fat drops of rain hadn’t let up for a single heartbeat during the battle. Now, they washed the grime from his face, a loathsome mix of mud and demon blood.
And that was when he saw it. At first the demon didn’t register as a demon: it was a boar, and far bigger than any he’d seen in all the years of hunting and stalking the woods at night. It was far larger than the hounds they’d defeated outside the walls of Caer Dathyl. The boar’s red eyes glowed as they stared at each other—and then the creature coiled itself like a cat and leapt at Cade.
His first thought was: boars don’t leap!
Cade brought up his shield to block the attack, but the boar had moved so quickly, even Cade’s reflexes couldn’t deflect him. He barreled into Cade and brought him off Cadfan. It was a move Cade had used many times himself because it was an effective means of disabling an opponent. Cade shouldn’t have been surprised. Just last night, Dafydd had brought down one of the humans at Caer Dathyl with the same technique. It was just the timing, force, and speed that he’d failed to predict.
Cade fell to the ground, the boar on top of him. If Cade had breath, it would have been knocked from him. As it was, the back of his head snapped into the ground, and with a tangible whoosh, the power that had fed him over the last half hour sucked back into his center as if a whirlpool had replaced the flame. The boar’s front hooves rested on Cade’s chest, and it brought its snout and horns to within inches of Cade’s flesh. Cade stared at the demon and tried to gather his wits. “Who are you?”
The boar grunted, but then spoke as no boar could. “Silence! Do not bother me with trivialities.”
“My men—”
The beast barked what could only have been a laugh. “Only you can see me.”
“But—”
The boar snarled again. “I have a message for you. You may have spoiled Mabon’s plans. You may have closed the black cauldron, but he is still among us. Mabon walks the earth, and I with him. I will always be here. Give me what I seek, and I may let your friends live.”
“What is it you seek?” Cade spoke clearly now that he didn’t have to force the words through a constricted throat. He understood that the boar wouldn’t kill him, and perhaps didn’t have the power to kill him.
“Someone will come,” the boar said. “Be ready.”
Then he vanished.
Cade tried to lift his head to rise, but his body wouldn’t respond. He lay back, confused and exhausted.
“My lord!” Rhun’s uncharacteristic use of his title scared Cade almost more than the boar had, and then his brother’s concerned face appeared above him. He leaned down from the saddle, his face a mask of worry.
Cade blinked again, and the battlefield came into focus. All was as he’d left it. “Did you see it?”
Rhun dismounted and fell to his knees beside Cade. “See what? Are you all right?” He patted Cade down, looking for wounds.
Cade brushed his hands away. “I’m fine. But I’ve had another visit from the sidhe.”
