The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

brought with her from a horror surely impossible to contain. She wanted to run. She did not. Her feet would not let her, her body seemingly responding to its own hidden purpose when her mind was telling her to go. Flee. Escape.
    This was what they had prepared and not prepared for. This battle. A war to end all wars and something they would always remember. Annyeke blinked and took a breath. It tasted iron, like blood. She scanned the field, trying to steady her limbs, and saw soldiers who were not soldiers but dead men—skeletons, even—dressed in the armour of the Lammas Lands. Lord Tregannon’s men. How dark had his life become that it had come to this? She saw her fellow Gathandrians, too, eyes wide and muscles straining, fighting against a tide of death they could not overcome. In her thoughts she acknowledged great waves of shuddering colour, black, red, green and orange that jarred together, making the sound of dying men and women even louder. Where were Talus and Johan? She had to get to them, save them if she could.
    They weren’t the only colours, though. A slow stream of blue edged its way into her realisation from the shadows. She recognised it. Couldn’t for a heartbeat tell who it might be…
    And then she saw him. The scribe, the Lost One, appeared from the midst of the scenes of clashing pain before her. He plunged to his knees as if an unknown hand pushed him towards the earth. His eyes were wild and staring, his tunic torn and his whole body shook as if he would never be able to stand again.
    She cried out, took a step in his direction, and a figure coalesced in front of her from amongst the white bones and fleshless teeth of the Tregannon soldiers. In one hand, he held the mind-cane, glittering black against the snow and, in the clasped palm of his other hand, he held something that gave out a green shifting pattern she did not comprehend.
    “Gelahn,” she whispered. “You’ve come at last.”
    “Did you think I would not?” he replied.
    And then he struck her with the cane. A shaft of agony hit her mind, exploding thought, desire and memory. She went down, slipping on snow and crying out sounds no one but she could hear. Wild fire played in her head and she couldn’t breathe. Didn’t know how to. She heard the Lost One call something to her, her name, but she couldn’t make out the words. She could have been lying in the snow forever, or it could only have been the space of a heartbeat. It was impossible to tell, but at last the pain seeped away and she knew her mind once more.
    She got up, faced the mind-executioner, brushing away a damp strand of hair from her forehead. His tunic was torn at the shoulder and his cloak was barely there, but the power that flowed from him meant that was as nothing. The heavy darkness of it surrounded them both. No, all three of them. A slight movement on her left told her the Lost One was also now on his feet and she no longer sensed the presence of the women she had brought with her, or the stories they carried. Her own tales, the ones she’d snatched from the Library, were dust between her fingers, the snow washing them away.
    Not turning round for fear of what Gelahn might do, she straightened her shoulders and tried to make herself taller. A thankless task.
    “What have you done with the women?” she asked him. “Those who came with me to this field of death? And what have you done with Iffenia?”
    The executioner smiled and gestured with his hand so Annyeke saw he held small emeralds in his grip that made the air around them a shifting green. “Some of your women are dead, and some are not. Either way, it is no matter. It is as the Spirit of us all decides. Iffenia is no longer here, but she will return in a time and a time for you, after a fashion. Her hatred and despair have been useful to me and it will not be forgotten. But even if all are dead, they could not reach us now, for the end of battle, the time talked of in all our legends, has begun.”
    She heard someone groan. She thought it was herself. A light touch on her arm and she glanced around to see the Lost One. His eyes were wide and he was panting as if he’d been running for a long, long time. Perhaps he had.
    I’m sorry.
    Annyeke didn’t know if he was sorry for what was happening or what was to come, but she nodded, anyway. Tears filled her eyes at the understanding that she had brought some of her companions here only to die, but still she did not turn round. She