Paul Kearney: Ships from the West

Bardolin nodded as if he had spoken his thought aloud, but there was something else in his eye. It looked beyond Corfe, behind him-

The wolf attacked. Corfe, warned by the movement of Bardolin's eye, wheeled round forgetting his pain. The Answerer jumped up light as a bird again in his hand and as the great beast's paws came raking down he stabbed inwards, felt the point break flesh and sink half a handspan, no more. The claws raked the flesh from his face and then fell away. There was a shrieking bellow, like the sound of an animal caught in a trap, and the wolf tumbled to the ground stiffly as a felled tree. Before it hit the flags of the floor it was no longer an animal, but a naked man in old age. And Aruan lay there with blood trickling from a wound over his heart, and he lifted up his head, hatred burning out of his eyes. He aged as Corfe stood there, his face becoming lined and withered, his muscles melting away, his skin darkening like old leather. He dwindled to bare, sinew-frapped bone and his stare was lost in the twin orbits of an empty skull.

Corfe staggered. His flesh hung in rags below his eyes and the blood was pouring in a black stream down his breastplate. Now Bardolin strode forward, and his broadsword came up. His expression had not changed, and his face wore still a mask of gentle grief.

Corfe managed to clang aside his first lunge. The second smote his breastplate and knocked him backwards. He came up against a scribe's angled desk and knocked aside a third.

'No!'

There was a sudden blazing radiance, and Golophin stepped between them with the werelight spilling out of his eyes and burning around his fists. He was breathing heavily, and even his breath seemed luminous. Bardolin retreated before him though there was no fear in his eyes. 'Get back, Golophin,' he said calmly.

'We did not agree to this!'

'No matter. It is necessary. He must die, or else it has all been for nothing.'

‘I will not let you do it, Bardolin.'

'Do not try to stop me. Not now, when we are so close. Aruan is gone – that was the bargain. But he must go too.'

'No,' Golophin said steadily, and the light in him increased.

Bardolin's cheeks were wet with tears. 'So be it, master.' He dropped his sword and out of him a light flooded to match Golophin's.

Corfe shielded his eyes. It seemed to him that there was stroke and counter-stroke in the midst of a storm of whirling and leaping brilliances. Books caught fire and blazed to ashes, the stone floor was blackened, but he felt no heat. The ground under him trembled and shook.

The light winked out, and when Corfe had blinked away the searing after-images he saw that Golophin was standing over a prostrate but conscious Bardolin, his chest moving in great heaves.

'I'm sorry, Bard,' he said, and cocked one fist upon which a globe of blue werelight shimmered like a broadhead trembl shy;ing at full draw.

But then a shadow flew out of the gloom of the wrecked library, and as it approached it took on shape and definition until it seemed to Corfe to be a young girl with a head of heavy bronze-coloured hair. He shouted at Golophin but his voice was no more than a harsh croak in his throat. The girl shadow sprang upon the old wizard's back and his head came back and he screamed shrilly. She seemed to melt into his body, and his werelight was sucked into a growing darkness near his heart. For a moment he metamorphosed into a writhing, grotesque pillar of wildly gyrating limbs and faces, and then there was a last, blinding flash of light, and the pillar crumpled to the floor like a bundle of tortured rags.

The only sound was the cutting rasp of Corfe's breathing. The air was heavy with the stink of the wolf and another reek, like old burning. Corfe grasped his sword and crawled one-handed over to Golophin's body, but there was nothing there except a shredded robe. The fighting in the library seemed to have ended, and though men's voices could be heard far down the aisle of book stacks none but the dead seemed to remain around him.

He crawled on, until he came across Bardolin's body in the gloom, and there he halted, utterly spent. It was done. It was over.

But Bardolin stirred beside him. He raised his head and Corfe saw his eyes glitter in the darkness, though no other part of him moved.

'Golophin?'

'He is dead.'

Bardolin's head fell back and Corfe heard him weeping. Moved by some feeling he could not explain, he released his grip on the Answerer and took the wizard's hand.

'He could not do it, in the end,' Bardolin whispered. 'He could not betray you.' Corfe said nothing, and Bardolin's fingers tightened about his own.

'There should have been a better way,' he said in the same, racked whisper. His eyes met Corfe's again. 'There must be a better way. It cannot always be like this.'

He turned his head, and Corfe thought he could almost feel the life slipping out of him. It was growing lighter. The darkness outside the tall windows of the library was clearing. Lifting his eyes, Corfe saw a shard of blue sky breaking through the clouds far above. From farther down the library came the sound of men approaching, Torunnans by their speech.

'It will be different now,' he told Bardolin. But the wizard was already dead.

Out on the fuming expanse of the battlefield, the remnants of the Torunnan army had come together in a great circle, and were beleaguered there by a sea of foes while behind them Charibon burned unchecked, its smoke hiding the light of the sun. Around them there piled up a monstrous mound of corpses, and the teeming regiments of the Himerians attacked with merciless persistence, men clambering over the bodies of the dead to come at each other. The Torunnan circle shrank inexorably as thousands upon thousands more of the enemy came up on all sides, and within it men cast away hope, and resolved to sell their lives dearly, and their discipline held firm despite their shrinking numbers. They would make an end worth a song, if nothing else.

Another army came marching over the horizon out of the west, and the Torunnans watched its advance with black despair while the Himerians were inspired to fresh heights of violence. But the keen-eyed on the battlefield paused as they watched it, and suddenly a rumour and a strange hope swept the struggling tercios and regiments that battled there.

The approaching army opened out and shook into battle-line with the smooth efficiency of a machine. And now all on the western edge of the field could see that it was clad in black, and its soldiers carried pikes on their shoulders. As they drew near, the Himerian attack faltered, and the rumours grew until they were being shouted from man to man, and the Torun shy;nans lifted their heads in wonder.

Thus the Fimbrian army, fifty thousand strong, came marching to the aid of their old foes the Torunnans, and the forces of the Second Empire took one look at that sable juggernaut, and began to flee.

The dreaming heights of the Jafrar Mountains were wrapped in everlasting snow, but down on their knees a summer evening was blue with the approaching dusk, and the first stars had begun to burn bright and clear in an empty sky.

About the campfire two old men sat warming their hands while behind them their mounts nosed at the fresh grass, one a common mule, the other a fine-limbed grey gelding such as the Merduks had bred upon the eastern steppes for genera shy;tions. The two men said nothing, but watched the approach of a third rider as he made his way up into the empty hills towards them. He was clad in a black cloak, and a circlet of silver was set on his head. He carried a sword of great lineage, and yet his face was ridged and scarred as by the claws of some beast. He halted at the limit of the firelight and dis shy;mounted, and as he walked towards them they saw that he was lame in one leg.