The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

prayer for the dead, feeling the echo of it in those accompanying her.
    Oh, great Spirit, do not judge what we cannot change and see only the places where we have tried to be what we should. May the spirit of this man rest in your one true Spirit.
    No time for anything else, though she knew later there would be a reckoning for what had happened here.
    She rose to her feet. “Come, then. Now we must fight.”
    As the group of them began to run towards the park, clutching the tales they hoped would help them, Annyeke had only one thought in her mind. If that was the First Elder, where was Iffenia?

    Simon
    Once again, the scribe was cast into the midst of a battle he had never sought and, once again, he found himself unprepared for the fray. When he’d consented to follow the executioner, he’d had no real choice. He’d wanted to live and, no matter what Gelahn said, Simon knew that refusal meant nothing but death. The thought had also flitted through his mind that if he stayed close to his enemy then he might be in a position to undermine him at some future point, something Ralph had said to him once, a lifetime ago. It had been the hope of a soldier and Simon was not a fighting man. He dropped to the ground and laid Ralph on the soil as gently as he could. As the Gathandrian parkland exploded round him into men and weapons, shouting and terror, he saw the green fire from Ralph’s emeralds surround the mind-executioner. Jagged determination drove him to do something, although he didn’t quite know what. Simon reached towards the fire and it snarled and spat at him so he fell back, almost knocking over the snow-raven.
    The bird opened his beak and let out a harsh cry. It could be heard even over the rising noise of bones and battle. The sound splintered through Simon’s head, leaving strange trails of white and orange in its wake. The snow-raven opened his wings and lunged upwards into snow-filled sky. The scribe leapt after him, heart pounding, his pulse tightening in his throat. His fingers met bright feather, but slid downwards as the bird continued to rise.
    “No,” he yelled upwards, snow spattering his hair and stinging his eyes. “Don’t leave me.”
    Too late. The raven was gone. The scribe was left alone with one man he could not trust and who had tricked him into doing what he did not wish to, another he could not bring to consciousness, and an army of the dead he could barely bring himself to look on. Not to mention the terrifying dogs, scrabbling to their feet around him. He wondered whether he, too, might die today and, then, how that might feel.
    A wave of Gathandrian men pounded across the grass towards them and he caught a glimpse of Johan and Talus at the very front of the onslaught. Gods and stars, how would this day end? The look in Johan’s eye, the sensations he could catch from his friend and cousin, even at this distance and in such circumstances, made him cry out in horror. Johan believed he had betrayed them. The truth of this was like the blackest of night against his face, a covering he could not claw through into the light, if any light remained.
    “ Run!” he cried out to them both, as if his feeble voice could lend wings to their feet when no escape was possible. At the last second, Johan stood in front of his young companion, but Simon had no hope that such an act was worth doing.
    Blood and bone and a deep abiding terror surrounded the battlefield. Green fire roared in his ears, and the bodies of the long-dead skeletons shone in the eerie light and clattered like rock on rock with every movement. As Simon looked on, Johan lifted a curved sword high into the air so that the last of the dying green fire made it gleam, and brought it crashing down on the bleak bones of the soldier nearest to him . The soldier simply brushed the sword away as if it was nothing but a feather on the wind and thrust the short knife he held into Johan’s side.
    The scribe cried out as Johan fell to his knees, blood oozing from the wound. The screams and shouts of people fighting and dying around him tore into his understanding, sent it spinning into a vacuum he could not seize hold of. For two heartbeats, he thought his cousin was lost, but then Johan staggered to his feet just as his undead enemy pulled back the knife. Johan leapt towards his other side and landed on the soldier’s left arm and the two of them fell grovelling to the snowy earth. The scribe saw where he twisted round and