Paul Kearney - Ships from the West

The discipline of the Torunnans mastered even the Himer shy;ians' Dweomer-fed rage, and indeed that rage caused many of the enemy to leave themselves open as they neglected to defend themselves in their haste to kill. They pulled down many of the tall Torunnans, three and four of them attacking a single soldier at a time, but Olba's Fimbrians strode forward to fill the gaps and the line remained unbroken.

Corfe felt the moment when all was poised, and the initiative began its slip away from the enemy, like the moment when a wave crests the beach and must begin to ebb.

'Sound the advance!' he shouted at Astan, and the horn call blew loud and clear over the tumult of battle. A hoarse animal roar came from the throats of the Torunnans, and they surged forward. The spell broke under the strain, and the Himerians began to fall back.

'Come with me,' Corfe said to those around him, and a group of men clustered under his banner and began cutting a path through the retreating enemy to where Aruan and Bardolin stood on the steps of the Library of St Garaso with a crowd of soldiery about them. Baraz was with Corfe, and Felorin, and Golophin, and Astan and Alarin and two dozen more. They held together with the compact might of a mailed fist and when their foes saw the light in Corfe's eye they blenched and fell back.

The Torunnans poured across the square in the wake of their King. Before them the enemy retreat degenerated into a rout. The Himerians had fought Hebrians and Astarans; they had cowed the petty kingdoms and principalities of the north and they had set their stamp across two thirds of the known world. But faced by the elite of Torunna's warriors and their soldier-king, they were hopelessly outmatched, and not even the wizardry of Aruan could make them stand fast.

Corfe and his followers strode across the corpse-choked square until they were scant yards from Aruan and Bardolin and their last bodyguards crowded on the library steps. Aruan looked like a man exhausted, but there was a deadly light in his eyes and he stood straight and arrogant. At his shoulder was Bardolin, his armour covered in other men's gore, a short-bladed broadsword in his fist. The darkness of the day was deepening, for Charibon was on fire all about them now, and shrouds of smoke hid the sky. The rain poured down in shining rods and leapt up bloody from the cobbles. Across the square a quiet fell, though all around them in the distance they could hear the battle raging on beyond, as though Charibon were groaning in its death throes.

Corfe pointed at Aruan with the tip of the Answerer's blade.

'It ends here.'

Astonishingly, the Arch-Mage laughed. 'Does it, indeed? Thank you for the warning, but I fear, little King, that you are misinformed. Golophin, be a good fellow and tell him. You know the truth of it. You have seen it with your farsight.'

Golophin frowned, and Corfe spun on him. 'What does he mean?'

'Sire, the Cathedrallers and the Orphans are defeated and surrounded upon the field. They are gathering for a last stand. This thing's flying legions have broken their lines, and more troops are on their way from the west, a great army. The battle is lost.'

Corfe turned to Aruan again, and to the astonishment of all, he smiled. 'So be it. They have done their job, and now I must do mine.'

He raised the Answerer and kissed the dark blade, then began to march forward.

His men came with him, and the tribesmen among them began singing. Not a battle paean this time, but the mournful song raised by hunters at the place of the kill.

Aruan's mouth opened and closed. Then he shut his eyes and his body shimmered and appeared to grow transparent. Just when it seemed he would disappear entirely, a bolt of blue light came lancing across the heads of his men and smote him to the ground. He grew solid again in the blink of an eye and fell to his hands and knees, gasping.

Golophin lowered his still-smoking fist. 'No one runs away’ he said. 'Not today.'

A last, bitter fight took place on the steps of Charibon's ancient library, wherein long before Albrec had once dis shy;covered the document which united the great religions of the world. The Himerians fought with a savagery hitherto unseen, the Torunnans like dreadful machines of slaughter. The bodies tumbled down the steps and built up at their foot, but all the while Corfe cut his way ever closer to Aruan and Bardolin. As the last of their defenders fell, the doors of the library opened behind them, and a fresh wave of their troops poured out, yelling madly. But they could not drown out the sombre death hymn of the tribes, and these too were pushed back by a black hedge of flailing iron blades, until the melee had moved and retreated into the tall dimness of the library itself. There it opened out, and by lamplight and torchlight amid the tall shelves and stacks of books and the ash-grey pillars of the building the fighting went on, and men scattered trying to flee or trying to kill. But Corfe and his companions held together and followed the gleam of Aruan's bright armour, and pursued him back through the shadows of the library until he stood at bay with few about him, his eyes glaring hatred and a kind of madness, and the stench of the beast rising in him.

Bardolin strode forward then and clashed swords with Corfe himself, but the Torunnan King seemed to have grown in the shadows of the ancient building until he loomed like some giant warrior out of legend. He knocked Bardolin aside with one mailed fist, and kept going with his eyes fixed on Aruan.

The beast erupted out of the Arch-Mage, uncontrollable and baying. The armour it wore burst its straps and fell from its body and it became a huge monolithic darkness within which two yellow eyes gleamed and long fangs clashed in its slaver shy;ing muzzle. It lunged forward and careered into a tall shelf full of books, sending it tumbling over. The heavy wood caught Corfe on his left side and knocked him off his feet. The Answerer skittered across the stone floor. The wolf Aruan towered over him, and then bent to bite out his throat.

But two more shapes sprang forwards, their swords stabb shy;ing out above their prone King. Baraz and Felorin, charging like champions at the huge shifter, yelling defiance. The wolf leaped back with preternatural speed and ripped free a heavy shelf from the wall. This it swung in a great arc that caught Baraz across the side of the head and broke his neck. It raised the heavy wood again, but Felorin ducked under the swing and stabbed upwards. He missed, but the wolf fell back swiftly, holding the shelf before it like a shield. Then Felorin's mouth opened and he dropped his sword to the floor with a clatter. He half turned but something smote him deep once again, and he sank to his knees.

Bardolin pulled his sword free and stepped back as Felorin collapsed face up on the floor. There was a haziness to his outline, as if he possessed more than one shadow, and indeed as he turned back to the King it could be seen that a second shadow detached itself from him and left to be lost in the gloom of the library. He strode forward, and behind him the wolf followed.

Corfe's left arm was broken, and the ribs on that side had been cracked and displaced. He tasted blood in his mouth and a harsh gasp of pain left his lips as he struggled to his feet, then bent to retrieve his sword. His bugler and colour-bearer were dead behind him, at whose hand he knew not, and though fighting could be heard all through the library, here at this end he stood alone.

Bardolin faced him while the wolf padded off to one side, circling. Corfe stood swaying and the Answerer seemed im shy;possibly heavy in his good fist. He pointed the sword into the floor like a staff to steady himself and stared at the man who had been Golophin's protege, his apprentice, his friend. He had, as the wizard had said, a soldier's face, and Corfe knew looking at him that at another time or in another world they would have been friends. He smiled. That other world awaited him now, and was not so far away.