Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

They were moving faster and faster. As they arrived at the last reaches of the hill, the trees thinned out and they broke into a gallop. But then Scar raised a hand and they slowed down to a stop. They had arrived. The fighters who had hitched a lift with the riders were dismounting and preparing their weapons. The wagons were emptying and Jamie saw children as young as eleven and twelve flexing their bows, their faces set in grim concentration.

“How are you feeling?” Scar asked.

It took Jamie a moment to realize that she was talking to him. He nodded. “I’m all right.”

“It’ll be over very quickly,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Matt has a plan.”

“Do you know what it is?”

Scar smiled. “He told me last night.”

To his surprise, Jamie felt a little annoyed. Matt must have spoken to Scar in her dreams. Why had he been excluded? But there was no point in arguing about it now. “Are you scared?” he asked.

Scar shook her head. “Not really. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Jamie could think of all sorts of things but decided not to answer.

Scar looked behind her. The rest of her forces had finally assembled and were looking upwards, awaiting her command. Finn was leaning forward on his horse as if he were listening for something. He looked even older than he had that morning and Jamie saw that he was close to exhaustion. Not just tired after a bad night’s sleep but worn out from years of fighting. “Finn is scared,” Scar muttered, making sure that Finn couldn’t hear her. “He’s trying not to show it but he always is. He’s scared for me.”

“You mean a lot to him.”

“I suppose so. I’m the daughter he never had, although he tells me he has four sons.” She turned to Jamie. “I’ve been hard on you and I’m sorry. I’ll try to be kinder if either of us survives.”

Jamie didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter because Scar didn’t give him a chance. She signalled, and at once they began to move forward, covering the last few yards to the top of the hill. They were very quiet now. Jamie could just hear the horses’ hooves as they padded through the carpet of dead needles but otherwise the animals made no sound. The rest of the attackers, tiptoeing with their weapons and shields, barely seemed to breathe. At the very top, a last line of trees provided shelter. Once again they stopped and at last Jamie saw what was awaiting him on the other side.

The battleground.

It was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was more terrible than anything he could have imagined.

He was standing above a strip of very dark, almost black grass about a quarter of a mile wide that flowed like a river between the hills on one side and a dense forest on the other. Below and in front of him, the last great army of humanity had been assembled, two thousand strong, united under the blue five-pointed star that he himself carried on his sword. It was on their banners and on their shields. It flew from the tents which slanted out of the bottom of the hill, tall and triangular, like the sails of a ship caught in the breeze. Had there been more light it would have shone out, but the sky was grey and threatening and the shadow of imminent death stretched across the entire scene.

The army was advancing in three blocks – a central phalanx and two wings – each one made up of so many people that, for Jamie high up on the hill, it was impossible to separate them. The horsemen were at the front, hundreds of them, leading the charge. Then came the foot soldiers. Behind them a long line of men stood waiting, each one holding onto what looked like a length of copper pipe almost the same height as themselves. Then came the archers and finally, just in front of the tents, a row of cannons with two soldiers kneeling beside each. Jamie was puzzled by the variety of weapons, for they seemed to belong to different times and different continents. But he realized that there was nothing uniform about the people either. They had assembled here having travelled from all over the world.

Two boys were preparing to lead them into battle. Jamie saw them, at the very front, both of them riding on dapple-grey horses. He didn’t need to be told who they were. They were only fourteen years old and they commanded all these men; they had brought them here. Their strategy would either win or lose the day. Jamie couldn’t see their faces. They were riding with their backs to him. But he knew he was looking at Matt and Flint and he wished that they would turn round, if only for a moment. He wanted to look at their faces. He wanted to see his brother, Scott.

But the two of them were continuing forward, and it was only when he looked past them and across to the other side of the field that Jamie understood the full horror of what they were about to face. The army of the blue star was hopelessly outnumbered. It was facing certain death. For every one of them, there were ten of the enemy. Human and non-human, they went on for as far as the eye could see. Sometimes it was hard for Jamie to work out which was which.

In the front line were the most wretched of all, the human slaves who had put their trust in the Old Ones and stayed with them to the bitter end. This was their reward. They had all been chained together, either naked or covered with a last few rags, their names branded into their flesh as if they were cattle. They had been given wooden clubs and axes with which to defend themselves. Many of them had been disfigured, missing eyes or ears. Even worse than that, some of them had had the lower part of their arms cut off and replaced with jagged blades so that they and their weapons were one.

Behind them were more humans: surely the ruling classes. These were the people who Scar had referred to as overlords and advisors. They had swords and shields and – some of them, at least – odd pieces of armour. They were pale and sickly, for although they had been happy enough in their positions of power, they had no stomach for the fight. Even from a distance the fear and cowardice could be seen in their faces.

Then came four lines of horsemen – Jamie could only think of them as knights, encased in black armour. The first two were identical to the fly-soldiers he had seen on the way to the City of Canals. But there were two more lines behind them and these were so ugly and grotesque that Jamie could barely bring himself to look at them.

Perhaps they were the officers. Perhaps they were human beneath the armour. It was impossible to know. They had blades jutting out of their shoulders, their elbows and their knees. Their helmets were also surrounded by vicious black spikes so that, from the neck up, they were like porcupines. Their horses had been mutilated with silver bayonets jutting out of their foreheads, screwed into place just above their eyes, turning each of them into a grotesque version of a unicorn. The knights were standing rigidly to attention. How many of them were there? It was impossible to say. Each was the same height as his neighbour. In fact, they could have been the same man, replicated a thousand times. They were holding shields – also surrounded by spikes – and striking them rhythmically with the flats of their swords. That was the booming that Jamie had heard. Seeing them now and hearing the sound froze his blood.

The worst was still to come.

It was an infestation. Jamie couldn’t think of another word for it as it bled out of the forest, pouring into the field. Jamie had thought this would be a fight between two armies, but what he was seeing now was a horde with no shape or formation, just an oozing mess of nightmarish creatures desperate for the kill. They carried clubs studded with nails, huge axes, spears, nets and pitchforks. Some slithered. Some scuttled forward on three legs or more. They were half man, half animal, as if the two had been mixed up on purpose, to see what could produce the most hideous result. Some were part scorpion, like the creature that had attacked Jamie at Scathack Hill. But there were also man-dogs, man-crocodiles, man-eagles and even man-sharks, a crazy mixture of arms and teeth and beaks and scales and feathers and claws, all brought together to create unimaginable monsters.