Revelyn: 1st Chronicles - When the last arrow falls (82 page)

Rema took the last arrow and quickly smeared it with the wizard’s paste.

He felt then that the battle teetered on an edge, and so called back to Reigin.

‘We are in need of Sylvion’s blade my friend. The
Shadow Hunters
must surely be ready to pounce. I have one arrow left.

He did not turn and see what Reigin might do, but once more with Scion’s guidance he moved about the rocky shelf and with great skill so that he did not endanger this last arrow he felled three more
Wolvers
and then suddenly the battle seemed to stall. The highlanders up high upon the rocky ledges could see no further movement in the grasses. They waited and in the silence Rema heard Reigin pleading gently with Sylvion to return to them.

‘She stirred Rema,’ he called but he had no time to think upon what this might mean for suddenly the giant Leander was almost upon them. He was so huge a man that Rema knew he could absorb horrendous injury before defeat. He held a huge shield before him and so the target was not clear.

Rema knew he must keep this last arrow safe for there were two more
Wolvers
yet to fall upon them.

He drew his bow and aimed at the giant soldier who approached in a furious anger. He had seen the
Wolvers
fall and still did not believe it possible. He stormed on, driven by the warrior’s need to die with honour, for he now felt that the battle was lost. He cursed Zelfos and his king who had promised that these fell creatures would turn the tide, but they had not appeared. And the king had disappeared. For the first time he thought that perhaps their cause was not as just as he had believed. But he had no time to dwell on such a distraction.

Rema tracked his movements and fired when almost too late. The arrow clipped the edge of the mighty shield and deflected down passing right through the soldier’s lower leg and burying itself deep in the earth.

Leander felt a burning tear all along his leg and found he could no longer walk. He crashed to the ground and in an instant a huge and powerfully lithe woman stood above him.

‘I am Cordia of the
Edenwhood
, and your death is at my hand,’ she cried.

As her sword descended Leander cried out in humiliation.

‘I yield!’ and none too soon did his words cleave the air, for her blade pierced his tunic and drew blood all down his mighty chest before hitting rock below. She took it up and swung it hard and hit him around the head. He lay dazed but conscious enough to see the end of what was to come.

Rema felt a panic rise within him.

 His last arrow was lost.
The last arrow has fallen
, he thought, and the words of the prophecy came back then for he had committed it to memory long before.
I have no other arrow.

Scion called, ‘two more Rema!’

He looked up and saw they were coming fast, almost together, but one a little further back.

He desperately looked about in case he had miscounted, and another arrow lay where he had been standing, but there was none. He knew he had only a few moments. Suddenly he spied the sword of the man who had come against him and who had been felled by Reigin’s tumbling blade, and several things happened, almost faster than thoughts can travel.

He recognised the man lying there so hatefully in death. He was the one whom he had injured long before on Gymble’s barge and left upon the river bank without his thumb and his head tied sightless in a leather bag. And then he saw that along the shaft of this dead man’s sword was fastened an arrow. His arrow. The man must have carried it as a spur to this final revenge which had failed him in the end.

An arrow
! The thought exploded upon his brain and in a flash he had it, and taking up his bow he sprang with this last of all his shafts so miraculously provided, down the rocks and out into the grasses to the left side for he knew what he must now do.

Two
Wolvers
, one arrow; he had to get it right. He ran at an angle from the rocky shelf toward the trees drawing the bow as he went until he judged that the moment was just right, when the two fast approaching lethal soldiers were about to fall into a line. He fired then, and by the conjunction of all he had momentarily foreseen, the arrow hit the first Wolver in the heart and passing on took down the one behind a single heart beat later. They fell without a sound and Rema halted, his breath coming now in deep gasps, for he had forced it to be calm and steady to take the shot, but now he needed to breath, deep and long.

Twelve Wolvers down with just six arrows.
He shook his head and smiled a little; but then looking up a new and deadly horror overtook him.

On the far side of the grassy plain, higher up in the trees he saw a sudden movement, and as he gazed, bent over to the knees and sucking air in great gasps, a figure emerged. He did not immediately recognise the distant man but he was well dressed for battle, with polished body armour and a helmet which well protected his head and neck. A great sword hung at his waist, but it was not the weapon he bore, for he held a bow. Rema squinted hard and saw the tip of an arrow shining silver as the man drew the string full to his cheek.

In a sudden shock he knew the target.

Sylvion!

She still lay unresponsive on the rocky shelf despite Reigin’s best efforts to rouse her. Rema could see he was kneeling by her side, his great back towards him; but she was unprotected and Reigin unaware of any danger. In that instant, as if the sun had burst through darkest night Rema understood the prophecy. It was this arrow which held the secret.

This was the final arrow to fall.

Instinctively he reached to his quiver to take an arrow and fell this new threat but he knew that it was empty. He had fired his last. He had no more.

And then he was running, as fast as fear can drive a man; back towards the rocky platform where she lay, and an agony of fear once more filled his heart. He could not call out for his mouth was dry and as he ran he had no plan but that he should somehow protect this woman upon whom so much depended.

Higher up in the trees, a fuming Zelfos was surprised to see the King, Lord Petros suddenly appear from behind a stout oak and take aim towards the rocky shelf upon which the prone form of Sylvion Greyfeld lay. He had been about to call up his three Shadow Hunters and finish the job which all others had now failed to do. He had watched in startled amazement as Rema Bowman had singlehandedly slain the
Wolvers
with such deadly skill and fearlessness that even he had found a small admiration in his strangled heart. But now he knew that she was helpless, and the deadly blade she wielded was no threat. It would take but an instant and they would be upon her, and all of the foolish enemy who wished to die in useless resistance.

And then the King has stepped out and taken aim with Aaraghant’s weapon. Zelfos paused. This was good. The arrow would surely find its mark for whatever the skill of the king with the bow, Zelfos knew that he too could bend an arrow just as he knew the archer Rema Bowman had done when a day before another deadly shaft had carried almost two leagues and landed at the king’s feet.

He waited in suspense for the King to fire. The bow was bent, the arrow aimed. He saw Rema start to run but even he was powerless now to change the course of fate, despite his mighty victory over the
Wolvers
just completed.

And then Lord Petros let fly the deadly shaft.

Rema ran as he had never run before, and as he did he kept an eye upon the figure with the bow, willing him to hold for just a moment longer. He reached the rocks and sprang like a startled Orax up and onto the shelf. Reigin turned at his sound and Rema saw him begin to frown and unsheathe his sword in alarm, but he could not see, he did not know. Rema ran on and glimpsed the arrow fly; a shining blur against the trees it came with lethal force and bent to its target by the sorcery unseen above, who willed it so.

Three paces short; so Rema judged his failure, but with one final effort and having lost sight of the arrow as it closed upon Sylvion, he dived headlong into its path.

The arrow hit Rema in the heart.

With no further thought, not flashing memories, not final breath, no whispered promises or regrets, no soulful cry and with no pain, Rema Bowman died.

 He fell like a lead weight to the rock and lay still, his eyes unseeing and with no flow of blood at all.

Zelfos gave a cry and then realised that
she
was still alive. In anger then, knowing that it was not yet finished he called in the strange tongue which no human understood and the three
Shadow Hunters
immediately sprang up from where they hid close by and leapt to his side. Together they bounded down from the shelter of the trees and out onto the grassy plain. All who saw them come stood frozen to the spot, for worse than death approached and no weapon known of man could stand against such evil, except the
Shadow Blade
.

Sylvion was near awake when Rema fell dead at her feet, the silver arrow in his heart. She felt the thud, and this at last roused her from the stupor which had held her captive so long. Her mind did not at first understand the world into which she woke. She saw a dead man at her feet and Reigin standing white and pale and motionless and looking off beyond to some terror which approached.

She knew that dead man, she was sure of it, and then it all came back and the pain which rent her being in that moment had no equal in her life.

‘Rema!’ her cry of anguish echoed endlessly about the towering cliffs. She sprang to his side and in disbelief ran her hands over his body and touched his face so peaceful now and calm beyond her knowing. And then an evil scream tore her tormented sight away and she too saw the three great
Shadow Hunters
almost now upon them.

The anger and hate which then rose within her fragile frame was like some molten metal escaping from a forge. White hot it rose and one thought only possessed her very being.

Death to these fell creatures. This instant. Death.

Elder Anderlorn waiting and watching upon the ruined rampart of Fellonshead saw it first; a mighty flash of purist light which tore up into the heavens from within the
Vaudim
Mountain. It hit the clouds and lit them up and made them boil with lightning from within.

The plains about were for a moment bathed in  white light, and then it disappeared and sometime later a rolling thunder shook the earth beneath them.

Sylvion held her blade high and wove a deadly web and none who looked upon it could escape. All within the
Vaudim
who still drew breath fell in thrall to her
Shadow Blade.

The three
Shadow Hunters
moved as though trapped in thickest honey. They screamed and twisted back and forwards but could not tear their evil eyes away. Zelfos seemed frozen in terror like a statue. Sylvion approached her deadly foe with death in her heart and revenge pouring forth in deadly light. She cut the creatures into shreds and limbs and talons fell to earth as each tried desperately to escape; but she danced amongst them, cutting and stabbing until one by one they fell, and with an eerie shriek seemed to evapourate into the air, leaving nothing behind but a few severed body parts and a dreadful stench which lingered long upon the earth.

It was quickly done; such was the power of her weapon. And then she turned to Zelfos who slowly crumbled to the ground and held his hands above his head in meek submission and anticipation of the awful retribution which was to come.

She walked around him and felt his fear, and deeper things beside which words could not describe. But as she did her soul cried out that this was but a man, lost and evil beyond understanding, but once he had been human and perhaps a spark remained. She fought herself, for in her heart she had pronounced his fate. The blade crackled and sparked and the pure white light seared into the sorcerers eyes, for he could not pull his gaze away. He felt the greatest fear but something deep within his being was held to the dancing blade.

She raised it high and swung it fast and with the flat of it felled him with a single blow to the head. He fell unconscious to the ground and did not move. Sylvion lowered the Shadow Blade and the light snapped off, the spell broken. In a moment it was resheathed and slowly all those who remained alive shook their aching heads sand rubbed their burning eyes, and sought to make sense of what they had seen come to pass.

‘Tie him well,’ Sylvion ordered Reigin, who obeyed without a word, and in a trice the sorcerer was safely secured in a manner which would prevent any further acts of evil treachery.

And just as quickly she fell to her knees by Rema’s side and cried the tears of the desolate.

Two Hundred paces off, higher up and in the trees, the King, Lord Petros Luminos, Lord of Light regained his senses, and stood motionless surveying the scene which lay before him. Zelfos captured, the Shadow Hunters destroyed and Leander prisoner. He had seen it all; and the
Wolvers
lost. And worst, the woman still lived and now she had the upper hand.

At least I slew the archer,
he thought. It was some tiny consolation as he took another arrow and drew once more. Again he aimed for Sylvion now kneeling by the archer’s body. He smiled a smile which Zelfos might, and then just as he was about to release the shaft, a voice came from behind.

‘You are dead if that arrow flies. Put down the bow.’

King Petros stiffened in sudden shock but did as he was commanded. He slowly took the arrow and placed it over his shoulder into his quiver, and dropped the bow to the ground. With empty hands outstretched, he turned, and there not ten paces away stood a rough and rugged man holding a full drawn bow, the arrow aimed for his heart.

‘It seems you have the best of me my friend.’ The king spoke with an easy grace, but the man cut off his oily words.

‘We were friends once, but you can no longer call me that,’ said Ofeigr for it was he who stood there in so deadly a manner.