Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

“What is it?” he shouted.

The Lord Roland said nothing. Stephen followed his gaze to the approaching horsemen riding Navarne’s wall.

Alongside the galloping steeds the snow swirled menacingly, the wind howling wild and shrill. From within the clouds of twisting white a staccato growling sound emerged, echoing over the field, in a thousand earsplitting barks.

The snow itself rose up, took form. The men of Roland watched in amazement as it slapped at the legs of the horses like a claw, snapped like a snout, growled.

First one, then a dozen, then a score, then a hundred of them, ephemeral wolves white as winter seemed to form from the snow itself, rise up and slash at the legs of the now-frightened horses. The wind screamed in deafening, feral howls; one of the Sorbold soldiers yanked back on the reins as his horse reared in fright.

A shattering blast of air blew through again, spinning the ice crystals of snow aloft. As it rose more lupine forms rose with it, rampant, angry, snapping, tearing at the Sorbold chargers. The frosty blanket of white that had cloaked the meadow swirled viciously into a thousand more feral wolves, clawing and savaging the horses and foot soldiers in a horrific chorus of snarling howls that matched the screaming wind. A contrapuntal cry of fear blazed up from the startled army, wailing discordantly in the wind. “Dearest All-God,” the Lord Roland whispered.

The Sorbold cavalry charge broke into chaos as the horses reared frantically, twisting and dodging to escape the phantom wolves. The prince and the duke stared as soldiers were thrown, some into the rampart itself, tossed on the boiling sea of confusion and trampling hooves.

On the eastern flank the neat lines of the column crumpled into jagged rows. Tristan laughed harshly in amazement as the oncoming infantry broke ranks, some ignoring the biting snow that tore at their heels, others succumbing to the Invoker’s magic and giving in to the frenzy around them, swatting and slashing at the swirling snow-devils in lupine form. Navarne’s cavalry charged in, slashing ferociously.

The Lord Roland squeezed Stephen’s arm tightly. “He’s done it! Stephen, he’s done it!! Llauron’s broken the charge!” The gruesome sound of ratcheting metal broke through the keening of the wind. A moment later the air was rent by the repeated noise of catapults firing, and the lines of defending bowmen and foot soldiers erupted in caustic fire. Stephen and Tristan were blown back by the impact as clouds of oily smoke exploded in front of them, followed immediately by shrieks of agony and the bright flash of fire as it consumed the impacted soldiers.

Tristan gripped Stephen’s arm violently as a scarlet shower of blood sprayed into the air. He struggled to his feet, coughing. “Hold the line!” he screamed at the peasants frantically rolling their burning comrades in the snow.

He turned toward the wall as shattering explosions tore through the air and into the rampart, the impact of the catapults sending shards of stone flying in all directions. His throat constricted in horror at the sight of Stephen desperately trying to extinguish the fire on a peasant woman who had stood with the defenders and was now being consumed in the pitch flames. The clothes on Stephen’s back were on fire as well.

“Stephen! Drop!”

As he lunged toward his cousin Tristan caught a glimmer of gold out of the corner of his eye. The wind screamed; with a howl a pocket of the storm broke loose, drenching him and those around him with icy rain. A blast of sleet in frozen sheets poured down from above. In a twinkling the flames all round them were snuffed, leaving behind no fire but roiling clouds of thick, oily smoke. Through his soaked hair and lashes Tristan looked behind him at the sledge arena, where Llauron stood. The Invoker was pointing the golden oak-leaf staff at Stephen; he stumbled forward slightly into Gavin and leaned on the forester’s shoulder, shaken, then lowered the staff, grasping it with both hands. The cloudburst abated as quickly as it had come.

A clarion call of retreat rang forth over Navarne’s wall; both Cymrian noblemen looked westward. The vast bulk of the crowd had been pulled within the walls of the keep, or shepherded around the rampart to the northern gate. The Master of the Wall was signaling that what people could be saved had been taken into shelter. The archers were in place.

“All right; horsemen, fall back!” Tristan called to his commander. The man raised a horn to his lips and blew the retreat. The horse soldiers of Navarne, locked in heated battle with the Sorbold cavalry, struggled to break free, leaving behind the bodies of their dead, the riderless horses, and the enemy dodging the snow wolves that tore at their mounts. As the horse soldiers galloped around the broken barricades and the common people standing in wait behind them, Stephen’s archers atop the wall let fly a windstorm of arrows into the Sorbold lines, covering their retreat.

The numbness that was giving Tristan clarity was starting to recede. “Fire!” he shouted at his broken line of crossbowmen. The soldiers loosed their bolts into the jagged lines of the Sorbold infantry, many of which whom were now writhing on the ground, battling the attacks of the wolf spectres. The wind picked up, fanning the heavy smoke and filling the air with stinging sleet that fell like needles.

“To the gate!” Stephen shouted. “Withdraw, Tristan! The archers will cover you!”

Ten score and five men now lined the top of the rampart, methodically raining arrows down at the two flanks of the Sorbold column. Tristan signaled frantically to the leaders, the calm of training beginning to give way to the horror of the reality around him.

“Fall back! Fall back! Get inside the wall!” he screamed. In the distance he could hear the sound of the catapults being reloaded.

Time became suspended; everything around him seemed to move with painful slowness. His limbs were suddenly heavy, his head thick with sound and a mad buzzing in his ears. Tristan shook his head to try to clear his mind.

All around him lay bodies of the dead and dying, soldiers, but more often mere citizens of Roland, and even of Sorbold, children and old people, men and women, moaning in agony or lying silent, their blood staining the snow a rosy pink, their flesh burned away. Tristan coughed, trying to clear the taste of pitch from his mouth, only to find that in his flight he had inhaled some poor dying bastard’s blood, and it was clotting in his throat. His stomach lurched, rushed into his mouth, and he retched, falling to his knees in the gory snow.

His head lurched as Stephen seized his arm and dragged him violently to his feet.

“Tristan, come! Come!

Behind them a high pile of haybales ripped into flame and torched fiery orange with thin lines of black withering straw, like mountains of burning birdcages. The heat sent waves of shock through the Lord Roland, and he felt a sudden burst of energy as his cousin dragged him toward the gate in the rampart. Distantly he was aware of the rhythmic twang of bowstrings in unison; he saw Gavin dragging the exhausted Invoker inside the rampart ahead of them. The last of the conscripted peasantry, the common folk who stood to defend the wall and let the others make their escape, were hurrying inside to safety now. Tristan felt a surge of fondness as he saw them go. Good people , he thought as Stephen pulled him around the battered barricades that had only a short time ago been the comfort of a reviewing stand for the nobility. My people .

The gates loomed before his eyes, large chunks of stone in the nearby walls missing from the impact of the catapults, but still sound. Tristan closed his eyes and pulled free of Stephen’s grasp.