Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

“Why?”

“I want to prove a point.”

Scar hesitated, then handed the bundle to him. Carefully, Finn unwrapped the cloth and took out a round shield made of dark and beaten metal with an intricate pattern of leaves around the side. It had no spike. Instead, there was a design right in the middle and Jamie gasped with surprise. He recognized it instantly. A spiral with a single straight line dividing it in two halves. It was exactly the same design that he’d been born with.

He was sure this was what Finn had wanted to show him. But Finn laid the shield aside.

Instead, he took out a sword and handed it to Jamie. The sword had a symbol too – a five-pointed star in the middle of the crosspiece, just above the blade. Jamie saw that it had been made out of some blue stone – lapis lazuli – set in silver. The blade was surprisingly thin and weighed almost nothing. He wouldn’t have thought it could cut through anything, but at the same time he could see that it had been sharpened with amazing precision, like a surgical instrument. He swung it a couple of times and felt the very air being cut in half.

“It was his,” Jamie said.

“Yes.” Finn’s gaze held his eyes. “Now tell me what is written on the blade. Don’t read the words. Just tell me.”

Standing next to the altar, Scar stiffened. But she said nothing.

“Frost,” Jamie muttered.

“You see?” Finn was talking to Scar. “He knew.”

Jamie looked down. There was a single word inscribed on the blade. The letters were foreign – like Hebrew or Greek -and should have meant nothing to him. But he understood them instantly.

FROST.

“It is the name of the sword,” Finn told him. “Sapling called it that because although it is cold, it brings with it the first light of day. That was his hope for it. And he carried it with him to Scathack Hill. We found it moments before we came upon you. He must have lost it in the fight. But now do you see?” He glanced at Scar. “Don’t you see, both of you? There’s something happening – some sort of magic – and maybe none of us understands it. But this boy is Sapling, there’s no doubt of it, even if he has forgotten.” He looked away, suddenly gruff again. “Let’s just hope he hasn’t forgotten how to fight.”

A few moments later, the five of them walked out onto the main square: Scar and Jamie first, then Erin and Corian with Finn behind. All of them were armed for battle with swords, daggers and shields. Jamie glanced at Erin and saw him touch the palm of his artificial hand. At once five blades sprang out of his fingers and thumb. At the same time, his left hand curled around a curved dagger that he had slipped into a belt around his waist.

Their army had assembled: a hundred men, women and children, waiting quietly for the order that would bring them to victory or death. Scar stepped forward. She also carried a shield with the same pattern of leaves as Sapling’s but hers had the image of a lizard – with slanting eyes and a spiky tail – curled around the centre. Three steps separated her from the crowd outside the temple. She walked to the very edge and lifted her sword. Jamie wondered if he should do the same but felt too awkward and shy. He realized that everyone’s eyes were on her. But they were watching him too.

“This is the day that we have been waiting for,” she called out and, although she was young and small, her voice echoed easily across the square. “I cannot say what happened to the world to make it the way it is. I do not know where the Old Ones came from or how they were allowed to take control. All I can tell you is that it’s over. After today, the world will belong once again to us and even if some of us must die, it will have been worth it. Matt and Flint are waiting for us. Inti will be riding in from the east. I am here and I am not alone. Sapling is with me. Yes! Sapling was not killed.”

The beginnings of a cheer broke out among the soldiers closest to the front, but Scar raised a hand for silence.

“The Five are coming together at last!” she exclaimed. “The Old Ones thought they’d beaten us, but they were wrong. And now we’re going to show them. We’re going to show them the power of Five.”

“Five!” The single word blasted out all around. Banners flew, swords were raised and from somewhere came the thunder of drums and a great fanfare. Jamie looked up and saw the musicians, three small boys, none of them older than ten, perched high up on one of the aqueducts. Their horns glittered in the daylight as they saluted the crowd below. Scar’s horse had been led forward and she leapt onto it. The grey horse had been brought out for Jamie and he did the same. This time he didn’t need help. A moment later, they were riding forward with Finn, Erin and Corian, leading their cheering army between the two pagodas and along the mosaic path that led to the city walls. There were people riding singly, others two to a horse. A few ran behind. With so many of them, it took several minutes simply to pass through the gate.

As they left the city and emerged onto the plain, Jamie turned to Scar. “That was quite a speech,” he said.

“You have to make a speech before a battle,” Scar said. She looked down guiltily, then back up again. “Actually, if you must know, Finn wrote it for me. He made me learn it last night.”

“Well, I think it worked.”

“I hope so.”

They were circling the City of Canals, travelling in the opposite direction to Scathack Hill. Ahead of them the landscape was flat and open, a table top covered with wild grass and a few flowers. But the flowers were strange, unnatural colours and the grass was sharp and leathery. They rode under the branches of a fruit tree and Jamie reached up to pick what looked like a mauve-coloured peach but with a hard prickly skin. Scar stopped him. “Don’t!” she called out. “It’s poisonous.”

They continued into the fields and for the first time Jamie saw animals – or their remains. A herd of cows had died here. They were lying, bloated and stiff, their tongues lolling out, their eye sockets buzzing with black flies. As he rode past, Jamie smelled the sweet decaying flesh and felt his stomach churn. He was glad he hadn’t been offered breakfast.

Ahead of them, less than a mile away, the ground rose up, covered by a wood. The trees looked like pines, with branches that were so straight they could have been artificial. They had dark green needles like splinters of broken glass. Jamie could hear something now, a strange unnerving sound. It was a rhythmic hammering of metal against metal. Boom, boom… boom. Boom, boom… boom. Each time, the third beat was the loudest. It was as if there was some kind of huge machine still out of sight on the other side of the hill.

Scar was moving ahead of him so Jamie urged his own horse on. He didn’t need to kick it or snap with the reins. Somehow, the horse seemed to understand him. He jolted forward and caught up. They reached the first of the trees and began to weave their way through the trunks, climbing steeply towards the top of the hill. Jamie felt a growing nervousness in the pit of his stomach. Just a few weeks ago he had been walking onto the stage at the Reno Playhouse to perform a magic act with newspapers and playing cards. And here he was now, riding to war.

He should have been terrified. He should have been hollowed out by the horror of it all. But the strange thing was that he felt nothing but a sense of elation. They were still scrambling up the slope, surrounded by the soaring, hostile trees and he knew that there could be no going back. This was it. The drumbeat was still calling to him. Boom, boom… boom. Boom, boom… boom. And he was being carried forward willingly with the soft thunder of hooves all around and the smell of the horses’ sweat in his nostrils. He had discovered the secret of war, the moment when soldiers cast aside their fear and become part of a machine that is so much bigger than themselves. For only then are they prepared to die.