Last Battle of the Icemark (36 page)

The night wore on and the werewolves continued their flight south. They covered huge distances, taking secret routes over wold and dale, and even below ground, through cave systems that led them quickly beneath hills standing between themselves and the border. Desperation increased their speed dramatically, and as the winter dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, the mountain range known as the Dancing Maidens came into view, the snows on its rounded peaks blushing pink in the glorious sunrise.

With their target, and safety, in sight, the werewolves spurred themselves on to even greater speed, and soon they began to climb the foothills that led to the pass. But the creatures were wily, and suspecting that the Polypontian border would be watched, they veered off the path and headed for the mountain peaks. They'd take the least suspected route into the empire, a route where blizzard and intense cold would kill any ordinary mortal. The evil witch Medea would never think of watching the heights.

Within two hours the Wolf-folk were nearing the tops of the mountains, and soon they'd be able to look down into the Polypontus itself. They whimpered with excitement and relief,
and allowed themselves a rest for the first time on their mission. The eldest of their number, a grey-pelted female who'd commanded the citadel guard in Frostmarris before it was destroyed, stretched and smiled.

“I think we've made it. We're sa—” Suddenly her words were cut off as she disappeared beneath a crushing fall of wing and scale, talon and fang.

Ice Demons were falling from the sky, their huge wings beating on the air and sending up a blinding fog of powdery snow. Immediately the werewolves formed themselves into a fighting phalanx and charged the creatures that were tearing their comrade to pieces. The fight was ferocious and swift; blood cascaded over the pristine brilliance of the snows as the demons immediately ripped two of the five remaining Wolf-folk to gory rags of flesh.

The werewolves fell back, snarling defiance, as the monstrous creatures beat their huge wings and screamed. Command of the messengers now fell to Garstang Flesh-eater and he quickly evaluated an almost hopeless situation.

“Right, youngster, slip down that way, through the boulders,” he said to the smallest and nimblest of the werewolves. “Me and Scar-muzzle here will keep them busy while you escape down into the Polypontus. Don't argue, just go, the message must get through!”

Without another word the youngest of the party scrambled off, and didn't turn to watch as his comrades attacked the Ice Demons again. He heard howling and snarling as the two werewolves fought with economy and intelligence, throwing huge boulders with a devastating accuracy that crippled one of the demons by breaking its wings. But not even the Wolf-folk could stand against the insane ferocity of the creatures of the
Darkness, and soon they fell in a welter of blood and smashed bone.

The youngster continued to tumble and scramble through the icy boulders towards the border with the Polypontus. All had gone quiet behind him, but he didn't dare stop to see what was happening. He could now see the empire below him, the snowy foothills bathed in brilliant sunshine that was almost blindingly bright. He could even make out herds of grazing beasts of some sort, moving across the land as they looked for food. He was almost there! In less than half an hour he'd be safe! He ran on, suppressing an almost unbearable need to whimper with excitement.

He was so distracted that when the strange thud in his back came he hardly noticed it. But at the same time two long and glittering talons seemed to grow from his chest, and he looked down at himself in puzzlement. It was only when the Ice-Demon lifted him from the ground and he was carried high into the air that the agony enveloped him in a raging fire. But it soon ended when he was torn apart.

The demon dropped his corpse and flew back into the Icemark, but the werewolf's head bounced down the mountainside in a wild careering journey that sent it soaring and rolling down the steep, snowy gradients, until it came to rest at last, a few metres inside the border of the Polypontus. For a moment, the young werewolf's eyes flickered open and the mouth worked, but then darkness descended and all movement stopped.

After another four hours of unbroken concentration Oskan finally stopped working. The wounded were still being brought in to lie in the ragged tatters of their own broken bodies, but
the Witchfather knew he could do no more to help. There was every possibility he'd do more harm than good if he continued trying, so he ordered his watch of healers to stand down, and a second shift of witches and a few of the better doctors took over.

His attempts to wash away the blood and filth of the operating theatre met, as usual, with only partial success. But he dressed in clean clothes and splashed himself with the cologne he kept for just such emergencies in his personal travelling chest. Smelling faintly of blood, and strongly of roses, he then set out for the palace.

The field infirmary was pitched beyond the walls of Romula, and the palace precinct was deep inside the governmental district of the city, but despite this he decided to walk. It may take him an hour or so, but he needed to blow away the stench and horror of the operating theatre. As usual, no one seemed to recognise or even see him as he made his way over the battlefield. Part of his mystery as a warlock that had its uses. He needed time to clear his mind and compose himself for the official victory feast in the palace.

By this time the moon was rising over the battlemented walls of the city, washing the hideous sight of so many broken corpses in the beauty of silver light. Oskan could also see looters systematically working their way through the dead, robbing them of anything of worth. Rings, coins, even boots and blood-soaked clothing would be taken by the poor of the city, who needed to seize every opportunity that came their way just to survive. To them, the battle was the biggest windfall they'd had in years, and thanks to the tragedy of such wholesale slaughter, many of their number could now hope to survive the Polypontian winter.

Oskan entered the broken southern gates of Romula, and made his way quietly through the mounds of dead that marked the point where Cressida and the Allies had defended the barricade blocking the Eppian Way. Nearby, starving dogs were fighting noisily over the corpses, and huge packs of them swarmed around the massive bodies of the fallen Tri-Horns.

Oskan stared resolutely ahead, his mind refreshing itself in one of the gentler circles of the Spirit Realms as he walked. But even so, his senses were alert in the physical world too, and when one of the shadowy looters thought the slender, well-dressed figure would make better pickings than the dead, the man found himself hanging on a thread of nothing, his feet dangling a foot or so from the ground. He was then brought round to stare into the seemingly bottomless eyes of the Witchfather, who smiled with all the warmth of a glacier.

“Your dagger would look better in its sheath, friend,” he said quietly. And when the looter was foolish enough to try to stab him, even the icy smile disappeared, and the man was drawn in deeper to the black eternal eyes.

“Shall I show you something, friend? Shall I show you what forever without hope looks like?”

The man hung limply, and then began to shudder as his mind filled with an unending despair and limitless fear. Only when he began to scream did the Witchfather release him, and he fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and rags. For a moment, Oskan watched the man grovelling in the blood and filth of the battlefield, and then slowly his eyes refocused, and human compassion and warmth briefly returned.

“Here, buy yourself some amnesia,” he said, and dropped a gold coin into the hand that was convulsively clutching and flexing in the air.

He turned and walked away, but now the aura of his power swirled around him like a threat of storms, and the dogs and looters scrambled away as he approached. He reached the gates of the palace precinct without further incident, but when the palace guard tried to question his right to enter, Oskan found his temper wasn't up to explanations, and the gates burst open. The soldiers fell back before the creature that advanced across the lawns of the precinct, a black shadow seeming to gather about it as it walked.

A large figure that had been drawn by some instinct to take a breather from the victory feast watched the encroaching shadow and then loped down the marble steps of the palace and across the lawns, until it stood just behind the retreating line of the palace guard.

Suddenly it threw back its head and howled. The soldiers stopped dead, as did the advancing figure. “Oskan Witchfather, have you forgotten your allies and friends; have you forgotten those who love you and those you love?” Grishmak called into the night.

The slender figure of the Warlock stared at him without recognition, and the werewolf King strode forward and seized his shoulders in his giant paws. “Come back to us. We still need you.”

At last Oskan gasped and passed a hand over his eyes. “Grishmak, I . . . I'm sorry. It was the Darkness . . . my guard was down; it flooded in.”

The giant werewolf nodded. “By the smell of the blood on you, you've just come from the infirmary; you must be exhausted, not to mention traumatised by the sights you've seen.”

“Yes, but it wasn't that. I felt a . . . shift of some sort. As
though power was flooding in from somewhere. It knocked me off guard.” He frowned in confusion and puzzlement as his head cleared. “But it's gone now. No sign of anything unusual anywhere. It must have been some sort of . . . anomaly.”

Grishmak scrutinised him for a moment, then nodded sharply once. “No harm done. Come on in to the feast. The food's amazing. The beer's crap, admittedly; these southerners have no idea about brewing. Perhaps we can call a few beer-masters down here to set up a brewery.”

Oskan smiled, completely restored. “Directed by you and Tharaman, no doubt.”

“Eh? No fear, it's too warm down here for me and the giant pussycat.”

C
HAPTER
25

B
asilea Erinor had been shaking with rage ever since the messenger had arrived with the news of the Hordes' first and only defeat since they'd broken out of their homeland of Artemesion over a year and a half ago. Even so, she had controlled her actions with an icy precision, and instead of racing off to meet the remains of her army she had waited in the silent streets of the camp, knowing that they would soon return to face her. Of course, they could have deserted and run away to safety, but not one of the individual warriors in the vast military gathering that was the Hordes believed that there was anywhere in the entire world to hide from Erinor's wrath. Not even the highest mountain, nor the deepest forest; not the widest ocean, nor the most remote of valleys would conceal them from the unending power of the woman who was the Goddess's representative on earth.

Their defeat, they knew, was entirely due to the fact that she had not been in personal command of their attack upon the city of Romula. But the responsibility for their ignominy remained theirs and theirs alone; their faith in the Goddess had been somehow lacking, and knowing this, the Great Deity
had punished them for the towering blasphemy of their doubt. And now they must return and face the righteous wrath of Basilea Erinor, who, as a living nemesis, would complete the punishment they must bear.

She glared now over the broken and ragged remains of the individual regiments that had failed to capture the capital city of the Polypontian Empire. But even now, in defeat, and after losing over a quarter of their number, the Hordes were so vast that no parade ground or square was big enough to hold them, and they'd been drawn up on the plain that surrounded the camp to silently await justice.

The regiments defined a space where the punishment would be meted out, and nervously eyed rows of gallows and scaffolding that waited neatly for their victims. Two separate sets of pits had also been dug, one set shallow and just large enough to accommodate individual soldiers, and the other set wide and deep, sending out great billowing waves of heat that shimmered in the cold winter air.

Erinor surveyed all from the height of her Tri-Horn, and her fury knew no limits. These were the soldiers, these were the warriors who'd not only been defeated in what should have been the crowning glory of their campaign against the empire, but who, in their insolence, had also made as nothing her great and supreme sacrifice of Alexandros, her Consort, the male she had condescended to love.

On the day that she'd made that most painful and bitter of all offerings to the Goddess, Erinor had known she'd finally secured the right to be the Empress of the regime that had conquered and ruled most of the known world. The horror and thrill of feeling the blade puncture her husband's heart had brought with it a certainty of her destiny, and yet her
army had failed in its simple task to fulfil that destiny.

The temptation to kill in a frenzy of revenge and retribution had been enormous, but gradually the conflagration of her rage had been replaced with the icy-cold and vengeful calculation of anger. Whatever punishment she inflicted must hurt the individual warriors of her army without reducing their effectiveness as a fighting unit. It must cut them to the soul, yet leave them thirsty for revenge against those responsible. Not Erinor, not a vengeful Goddess, but the Polypontians and the Queen of the Icemark with her ragged Alliance of monsters. So as the defeated Hordes had staggered back to camp, she'd sent out spies and informants who could watch them and tell her what she needed to know.

She sat now before the gathered remains of her defeated army and prepared to inflict the punishment that would pay only the smallest retribution for their failure. Without the need for any notes or lists, Erinor gave the endless roll call of names to her executioners. Soon death squads were passing between the ranks of the army and dragging out the victims to stand in neatly arranged rows before their Basilea's Tri-Horn.

Field marshals, commanding officers, battalion leaders, senior and junior officers from all regiments were chosen to stand before her, each and every one personally selected for their popularity with the soldiers they commanded. But Erinor's wrath didn't end there; soon even the petty commanders of individual units were taken, and then the youngest and most vulnerable of each regiment, whose deaths would touch the hearts of even the most hard-bitten of the warriors.

For a moment the Basilea paused and wondered if enough
had been selected. But then, with a supreme assertion of will, she decided to continue with the punishment that would strengthen the resolve of her army. She looked out over the vast gathering of warriors who waited in silent apprehension, and then she beckoned up her executioners and gave a further selection of names. Friends were then taken from friends who could only watch in hopeless horror as they were dragged away; lovers were parted from lovers who were left to stand in silent agony as they witnessed half their lives removed. Those who resisted and tried to fight for the lives of their friends were clubbed to the ground and then tied up, before being revived and made to stand and wait to watch the punishment.

All was almost ready, and Erinor gave the order. First the most senior officers were buried up to their necks in the specially prepared pits, after which the Basilea herself urged her Tri-Horn forward. A heavy pulsating silence now descended as all eyes turned to watch the figure standing as straight and rigid as a blade in the howdah. For fully five minutes she gazed out over the massed ranks, but then at last she drew breath to speak.

“Soldiers of the Hordes, these women have betrayed the trust of the Goddess! They have betrayed the trust of their Basilea! And they have betrayed the trust of every single individual warrior in our great and unstoppable army! Because of them our invincibility has been brought into question, and because of them you have suffered your first defeat since breaking out of the walls that once bound our homeland of Artemesion. Know then the wrath of the Goddess, and witness now the punishment that awaits all failure!”

And in full view of the army, she urged her Tri-Horn
forward towards where the heads of the officers emerged from the earth like small and vulnerable pumpkins. With slow deliberation the huge creature approached the nearest officer, and, on Erinor's command, raised a mighty foot and brought it slowly down to break open the head like an egg.

A great sigh and gasp rose up from the ranks, but then silence returned as the Tri-Horn approached each officer in turn and crushed her head with the same deliberate precision.

“So die all traitors!” Erinor screamed. At a frenzied nod of her head, all the rest of the officers, from section commanders down to the most junior, were hanged from the scaffolding and gallows that stood waiting in neat rows. For several long minutes the figures kicked and convulsed as they swung by their necks, but gradually their struggles slowed and finally ceased altogether.

Only the friends, lovers and youngsters taken from each regiment remained, and they were marched to the wide and deep pits, where fires had been lit earlier in the day. The flames had been fed with fuel throughout the morning, but then the fire had been allowed to slowly die down until a thick layer of red-hot coals glowed at the bottom of each pit that remained as hot as furnaces.

A murmur rose up from the army, and individual voices called out as friends and lovers were recognised. Erinor nodded, and the executioners took long poles and carefully raised the iron grids that covered each pit. Now over two hundred men and women were herded at spear-point towards the redhot craters that exhaled great gouts of searing heat into the cold winter's air.

Those at the back of the huddle and press of humanity pushed forward to escape the circle of spears that jabbed at
them, and their weight drove the mass towards the open pits. Soon the victims began to tumble into the red-hot depths and a great screaming and wailing rose up as flesh was seared and hair and clothing caught fire. The terrible stench of burning skin and muscle drifted across the army that now stood in silence.

For more than half an hour the massed ranks of the Hordes stood to attention, listening as the cries slowly died down to a tortured moaning and then at last ceased altogether. Then once again Erinor stood in her howdah and glared out over her army.

“Know you, then, that ignoble death and unending shame is the price of defeat. The souls of those here executed will wander endlessly in the twilight world, forever tormented by their failure, forever tortured by remorse. And know you, too, that such will be the fate of those who allow the army of the Goddess to know again the bitterness of defeat. Now return to your fires and to your yurts, return to your regiments and units and talk on the events of this day. And then decide that never again will a soldier of the Hordes die in retreat, never again will a warrior of the Great Mother fall to a victorious enemy! Bind your wounds and salve your injured pride, then sharpen your swords and prepare to fight! The hated Queen of the Icemark still lives, and with her stand the treacherous Hypolitan who left our homeland so many generations ago. Not until their pride has been levelled in the dust will I deem you free of the shame of your defeat; not until this alliance of monsters and broken empires has been reduced to blood and rotting flesh will I consider you worthy of my rule!”

In perfect silence the army now marched from the scene of carnage. Not one of the angry, embittered minds thought of
mutiny; they had failed and the Basilea had punished. Such was the order of life. Such was the decree of the Goddess.

Cressida waited quietly in her campaign tent and brushed her hair again until it shone. She could have requisitioned a comfortable room in the palace, just as her mother and the rest of the High Command could have done, but, like them, she preferred to remain in the camp the Allied army had set up beyond the city walls. The thought of actually living in Romula itself set her teeth on edge, and though she knew it was a stupid prejudice, she couldn't rid herself of the idea that the capital city of the Polypontus was the centre of all evil and depravity. Years of warfare and fear generated by the Polypontian Empire was ingrained in her soul, and though the Imperial Legions were now allies, she couldn't easily set aside her feelings.

She peered now into the polished bronze of the mirror that she'd borrowed from one of the amazing bathrooms in the palace, and was less than satisfied with her reflection. She'd tried to soften her usual military appearance and bearing by tying a pretty silk scarf around her mail-shirt and by letting down her hair, but she just looked like one of the male house-carles in a wig. She was glad Eodred and Howler couldn't see her, and with this thought she suddenly found herself scrambling out of her chain mail, until she stood in nothing but the long linen shirt every human soldier wore under their armour.

“You look about as feminine as Grishmak,” she snapped at her reflection, but then she had an idea. She was almost certain she'd brought a dress with her, and quickly she hurried over to the large chests that lined the canvas walls of her tent. After ransacking three of them, she found what she wanted
lying at the very bottom under several layers of mail gauntlets and spare surcoats.

She dragged it out and strode back to the mirror, where she held the dress against herself and surveyed the results. “Not too bad,” she conceded. “A little crumpled, perhaps, but most of that'll fall out after I've worn it for a while.”

She struggled into the yards of velvet and fine lambs' wool, and finally emerged through the neck-hole red-faced and gasping. Then had to struggle out of it again when she realised she'd left her shirt on. Rough linen didn't look good sticking out of a daringly plunging neckline.

Once she had the dress back on, she resisted looking in the mirror until she'd brushed her hair yet again and found the pretty tie-belt that went around the waist. Then, steeling herself, she took a deep breath and looked up. She almost gasped aloud as the reflection stared back at her. Who was that striking young woman in the mirror? She'd almost forgotten what she looked like in a dress, and in fact had only ever worn them once or twice, at her mother's insistence, for very special occasions like Yule. She didn't actually own a gown that had been especially made for her, but this wasn't a problem because she and Thirrin were exactly the same size and she just wore those her mother had finished with. The one she was wearing now had been Thirrin's favourite for years, and though it was a little worn around the cuffs and hem, it was still perfectly serviceable, even if it did smell strongly of the herbs that kept the moths at bay.

Cressida turned to the side, and then peered over her shoulder as she surveyed the back. Yes, it definitely made her look like a young woman. But when she turned to view the front again, she began to lose her nerve as the plunging
neckline met her gaze. She couldn't possibly be seen in public like that! She could just imagine what Grishmak would say!