The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

throat was constricted and he could form no words, not even a scream.
    Gelahn pulled him closer. Now the scribe could see the glints of crimson in the darkness of his eyes. It was as if the Gathandrian was on fire from within, driven by a power Simon couldn’t begin to comprehend.
    Oh , yes, the executioner whispered in the scribe’s weakened mind. I hear all you think and all you are. Because you are mine and you can never break free from me.
    Then where are we going? If all I am is yours, then what harm can there be for me to know it?
    Simon didn’t know where the courage to fling those thoughts at his captor had come from, but then another flash of silver from the mind-cane held him and he felt its warmth pierce into his skin. The sudden small shaft of pain made him blink, but then it was gone. Even so, he could feel something in his mind had changed. He glanced at Gelahn but the executioner gave no sign of having seen anything unusual, but the emeralds at his belt glowed a deeper green for a moment or two before subsiding.
    Then the mind-executioner spoke, out loud.
    “We must get to the Gathandrian Library,” he said. “There all things will be made as one. There will all our journeys end.”

    Ralph
    The last thing he remembers is an explosion—in his courtyard. The mind-executioner has the emeralds he longed to keep from his enemy and Ralph cannot fight back. How that has galled him, not fighting back. But his mind is like water and he cannot stand within it.
    There is Simon, too. The scribe who reads him better than he’s ever been read. Ralph tried once to tear him apart, but he has not been destroyed. The Overlord does not know whether that truth brings him grief or joy. Still, he remembers the scribe and his touch upon Ralph’s arm as everything rushed away from him. A circle of fire, dead men wearing the insignia of Lammas soldiers, and the mind-cane in Gelahn’s hand tumble through his thoughts for a moment.
    Then, nothing.
    No, not quite nothing. A sense in his thoughts that everything he understood was vanishing and he was being swept away into a world he knew nothing about. Now the world is still again, but the air smells different. There is no longer the scents of stone and earth, but something sharper. Cedars, perhaps? And the clarity of snow. The noise is the same, however, as it was just before the world tilted. The noise of war and the beginning of war.
    Ralph opens his eyes. The first thing he sees is falling snow. The second thing is the dogs. A curse rises in his mind, but he wipes it away. No time. He clambers to his feet, surprised at how weak he is, but prepared to fend off all attackers, whether man or animal. None challenge him. In a moment, he understands why. Around him, his own soldiers are fighting an army of people he does not know and it takes him a moment or two to remember why—the executioner’s desire to make war with the Gathandrians. These must be that people though Ralph does not recognise the field they are in, not a field but more like a parkland of sorts. They have arrived here in a manner he cannot begin to fathom. For now, the soldiers, who fight with a frenzy of clashing as if their very bones are fighting, too, act as a barrier so no assailant can reach him. There are so many of his men he does not know how Gelahn has called them up so quickly. Is this another memory he has forgotten?
    As for the dogs, they are focused on something other than him. Their jaws drip with blood and if Ralph could hear them above the din of war he is sure they would be snarling. A flash of something long and white appears from within the shifting blackness of their bodies and he gasps.
    The sound of strange wings above his head and the glimpse of Simon’s snow-raven as it circles away and a sudden strength impels him forward, towards the mountain beasts. How he wishes for a sword at his belt, or at least a strong knife, but he possesses neither weapon, just the overarching desire to stop what it is they are doing, to stop them and tear them apart if he can. With a wild cry Ralph leaps at the nearest dog, the one holding in its jaws the severed remains of an arm. A woman’s. He seizes the limb and rips it from the dog’s devouring teeth. As he does so, he sees the rest of the dead girl’s body is already being divided by the pack and his gorge rises.
    He has been too late. Though, even as he leapt, he had known it. No time to retreat. The dog he has thwarted for no real