The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) (3 page)

‘Just give me a moment to catch my breath,’ he muttered. Still holding on to Edmund’s arm, he took a step, winced and stood still until his breathing subsided before trying another. The next step seemed easier.

‘I’ll do well enough now,’ he told them. ‘My sword’s over there, if you’ll fetch it for me. And take the wood; we’ll have need of it later.’

Elspeth led the way back out of the forest, following their footprints in the patches of snow and the shafts of sunlight, slanting now and growing paler. Cathbar and Edmund followed haltingly. Edmund wished they could go faster, but the captain’s weight dragged at him: the man made no sound of complaint, but he was sweating despite the cold and his face was still pale. Edmund cast his sight back as often as he felt he could risk it, feeling his way over the uneven ground. The creatures behind them were spreading out, hoping to
surround them before they left the trees. He felt their confidence as they tracked their slow, blundering prey: they were not even really hurrying. Only the hungriest one, the old male whose eyes he had borrowed first, was creeping closer than the rest, eager to get in early at the kill…

Edmund stumbled painfully on a root, his eyes snapping back to his own surroundings; he had been trying to break into a run, dragging Cathbar with him.

‘I can see the snow ahead,’ Elspeth called back to them.

Edmund felt the sweat break out on his face. But it was true: the trunks were thinning out ahead of them, and through the trees he could see sunlight, an expanse of snow, and in the distance, jagged grey mountains. Elspeth was almost there already.

Behind them, faintly at first, the wolves began to howl.

I was already an old man: how could I save the world? I make ploughs now, and cooking pots – not swords, I said. Let me stay with my wife and son: they’ll have long enough without me. The Fay do not age, it’s said, and my wife seemed no older to me than when she had left her people, though our boy was near eighteen. His light heart, and his mother’s beauty, were all my joy. Was I to leave them? For the sword must be taken to the cold lands, my visitors told me. Without it, all would be lost.

Cluaran closed the door swiftly behind him. He had little time before the summoning, and no wish to be disturbed.

He raised his lantern and looked around the chamber with grim satisfaction. In the flickering yellow light it seemed larger than it was, extending into darkness at the back where the walls gave way to the bare rock of the hillside. The great iron frame with its straps of leather still stood there, but Orgrim, the man who had used it on his victims, lay now in
prison, mad and blinded. Cluaran was not given to shuddering, but he turned his head and would not look at the thing again.

It was an evil place, Orgrim’s hidden chamber under the hill. The king had declared it forbidden territory, but Cluaran was not of this kingdom; he went where he pleased. He turned to the shelf of books, scanning the spines in the light of the lantern. When he was last here, he had taken Orgrim’s spell books, evidence for the king of his chief minister’s treachery. But there was one other book here, one that Orgrim should never have seen; that
no one
else would see, now.

There it was: a thin cloth-bound volume, its cover stained the dull red of old blood. Cluaran opened the first page to look at the familiar words again. They rang in his mind in a voice long unheard, a voice he would never hear again however long he journeyed.

He snapped the book shut and stowed it deep in his pack. Now, at least, he had all he needed for the journey ahead.

The great hall of King Beotrich was full of old men in red. It was only two days since the King’s Rede had been recalled, and Cluaran pictured the flurry across the kingdom as the faded robes were hastily recalled from the bottoms of chests, or from their four years’ duty as blankets. The sons and brothers of the Redesmen executed by Orgrim had yet to return from exile, and old Aagard, by rights their leader, would still
be journeying to the town from the far west – but still, the Rede had been restored.

Cluaran felt every eye on him as he entered the hall. He was the only beardless man present; to all appearances the youngest man in the room by far. He was certainly the drabbest, with his slight build and plain brown tunic, but the voices stilled as he made his bow to the throne, and the king looked deeply relieved to see him.

‘Master Cluaran, you’re welcome here,’ Beotrich said quietly. Turning to the assembled thanes, he raised his voice: ‘I here open the King’s Rede, and I call on it for counsel.’ The formal words sounded awkward, as well they might, Cluaran thought, after four years of neglect and misrule. But Beotrich went on more strongly, his eyes steady as he recalled his past folly.

‘I declare before the Rede that I have been misled and deceived by the false counsellor Orgrim. The traitor is in prison, and those who were falsely accused by him are pardoned. I myself will pay the blood-price to the families of those who died, and their lands will be restored to their kin. But we now face a grave threat.’ He gazed around the room, his anxiety evident on his face. ‘The two children who revealed Orgrim’s treachery to me have been taken, carried off by a monster, and my loyal captain Cathbar along with them: an evil reward for such faithfulness.’ He was silent a moment, and when he went on his face was grim. ‘I have no doubt that the creature was sent by Orgrim or whatever demon he serves,
and designed to bring war on our kingdom. For the boy, Edmund, was the son of King Heored of Sussex.’

A murmur of shock and dismay swept the hall. ‘But, my lord – it was none of your doing!’ protested one greybeard. ‘The boy was your honoured guest.’

Beotrich shook his head impatiently. ‘For a few hours! And before that he was my prisoner. Heored is a hasty man – what will he think when he learns I had his son arrested? Or that he was dragged to his death from my own hall?’

‘He’s not dead.’

Cluaran’s voice was as sharp as he could make it. These wittering fools! ‘The one who sent the dragon wants his captives alive,’ he said, in the shocked hush that followed. ‘And, my lord, you have mistaken the danger you face. By the time Heored returns from his campaign, he and you, and every kingdom in this land, will be threatened by worse than dragons. And you must band together from this moment on, or die.’

The hall erupted into cries of outrage, scorn, even laughter. But Cluaran had spent half a lifetime dealing with unruly crowds. His voice slipped through the uproar like a knife blade.

‘The crystal sword has returned! Many of you have seen it, and the Rede, of all people, know what that means. It was bound to return only at the time of greatest need: when the Chained One was about to break his chains. It is our only hope of protection against him – and now it’s the source of our greatest danger.’

There was quiet now. Many of his hearers had gone pale. The old man who had spoken before ventured: ‘But Orgrim is in prison. If the sword was freed by his meddling –’

‘It was not,’ Cluaran told him. ‘He failed even to open the chest which held it. No, Orgrim was a distant and weak servant of our enemy. He has others, and stronger. How else do you think the dragon was unleashed again, with Orgrim crippled and blind?’ Now that he had their attention he spoke lower, making the old men by the door lean forward to catch his words. ‘The dragon has flown north to the Snowlands, where the Chained One lies. It is there that he was imprisoned, in the depths beneath his mountain – but he has learnt to reach beyond his prison, to bend others to his will again. It was he, or his servants, who sent the dragon – to bring him the girl, Elspeth, because she bears the sword. Oh, he wants Edmund for himself too; he thinks all Ripente belong to him, because their power is so much akin to his own. But the sword … the sword is the only thing on earth that can free him. If the girl is in his hands, we are lost.’

Now there was true silence, thick and heavy, while Cluaran looked a challenge at the king and every other man avoided his eye. At length Beotrich spoke.

‘I’ll give you an army,’ he said. ‘A hundred men. If you know where the dragon is taking the children, then follow it, and free them.’

There was murmuring among the Rede; one man called
out: ‘Would you leave the kingdom undefended?’ and others muttered agreement. But Cluaran was already on his feet.

‘No need for the men,’ he cried, almost light-hearted now that he had carried his point. ‘Give me a letter of passage, a swift horse, and money for a boat. I’ll be faster alone – and if I’m too late, a thousand men would make no difference.’

As the king shouted orders, Cluaran beckoned to the Redesman who had twice spoken before. ‘Godric, you can help me if you will.’ He turned and strode to the door, while the old man was still stumbling to his feet.

Outside, evening had fallen, and the square was lit by smoking torches to each side of the hall’s great door. Cluaran shrugged off his pack and slipped into the shadows to one side. He waited to be sure Godric came out alone before stepping forward, and the old man, blinking about him in the dimness, started as Cluaran said his name.

‘Godric, I know you as an honest man, and a friend of Aagard. You know he’s returning?’

Godric’s eyes brightened. ‘It’ll be a glad day when I see him again, master minstrel – for me and for all Wessex. He’ll set things to rights.’

‘I mean to help him do so,’ Cluaran said. He reached into the pack and drew out a cloth-wrapped bundle. ‘In here are Orgrim’s spell books. I need not tell you how powerful they are … or how dangerous.’ Indeed, the old man’s face had turned white at the words, and he hesitated to touch the parcel.

‘They must be kept under lock and key and no one but Aagard must see them,’ Cluaran went on. ‘
No one
. He will know how to use them wisely.’

Godric took the bundle gingerly, as if it were a live creature that might bite him. With sudden resolution, he thrust it into the breast of his robe. ‘I’m honoured by your trust, Master Cluaran,’ he said. ‘You’re right: Aagard is wise enough to use such things – and I’m wise enough not to. No one will see them but him.’ He took Cluaran’s hand for a moment, then turned and hobbled off into the shadows.

Left alone, Cluaran leant against the brick-built wall, for all the world as though it were a tree in his own forest, not the house of a king. He could hear men running to saddle him the fastest horse in Beotrich’s stables: before moonrise he would be on his way.

For the moment, though, no one paid him any heed. He delved in his pack once more and pulled out the slim book he had taken that day from the cave, running his hand over its spine almost in a caress. Its ox-blood cover was black in the torchlight; no other mark on it but a silver sword shape, gleaming in the smoky light. Cluaran opened it gently. He glanced around to be sure that he was alone, then looked at the first page.

‘Here begins
The Book of the Sword
…’

A sword made of all the substances of earth
, they had said;
fire and ice; wood, metal and stone
. Though I complained, their words had lit a fire in me, and it grew as I worked.

But I could not make it sharp enough. Blade after blade snapped or warped, while I built the fire ever higher, sought out purer ores. I neglected other work, my family, even when we went hungry. One night I slept at the forge while the latest blade cooled, and woke with a vision in my head. I must take the sword to the Snowlands. I would find the help I needed there – from a girl.

There were a dozen wolves circling them, while more emerged from the trees. Looking at them through his own eyes, Edmund thought of his father’s hunting dogs, surrounding a stag at bay. He had never liked watching the kill. And the grey-furred creatures closing in on them now were bigger than any hound kept at his father’s palace.

The crystal sword burned white in Elspeth’s hand, and the great beasts treated her warily, keeping their distance, with their haunches tucked under them. She whirled and stabbed as one of the wolves edged behind her and the creature leapt back, yowling, on three legs. But there were many more with four strong legs, and they ventured closer all the time. Cathbar was on his feet, slashing and lunging, but his blade was dulled from his attack on the dragon and his movements were uncertain; he had not so much as drawn blood. As for Edmund, he had no sword, only a short dagger, and the wolves seemed to be all around him. Already the boldest animals were snapping at his arms, their breath making a cloud about him in the icy air as he backed away. Their rank smell surrounded him on all sides.

The old male, the one whose eyes he had borrowed, lunged at Edmund’s left side, its teeth clashing shut a hair’s breadth from his thigh. He lunged in return, burying the dagger to the hilt in coarse grey fur. The wolf backed, but did not run howling. He’d barely wounded it! The blade in his hand was dark with blood, but the old wolf was not even slowed: it was coming at him again, and his answering strike was too slow. It took hold of his sleeve, the yellow eyes a hand’s span from his own as it bunched its muscles to spring.

Something barged into Edmund, knocking him sprawling. Through a faceful of snow he saw the blaze of Elspeth’s sword, and heard the old wolf’s yelps. He pulled himself groggily to his feet.
Must she always protect me?
he thought – but there
was no time for that now. He realised he had lost his knife; it lay in the snow several yards away, but before he could reach it a wolf bundled into his knees, making him stagger. Beside him, Elspeth spun in a ring of white fire, sending the wolves scrabbling frantically away in all directions. The one that had hit Edmund barely stopped to snap at him on its headlong dash towards the shelter of the trees. Next moment it had vanished into the wood, its tail down. The other wolves were still milling about the travellers, keeping a safe distance. Edmund tried to keep all of them in view at once as he edged towards his knife. But he froze again at a hoarse cry from Cathbar, his eyes following the man’s outstretched arm. From the trees behind him, not far from where the fleeing animal had disappeared, another wolf stepped out, its breath pluming ahead of it as its jaws gaped wide.