been able to win this battle on their own.
The giant monkey had leapt forward into the middle of the opposing ranks. In the next few seconds, dozens of men and women were thrown aside as it swatted them with its paws, dashing them to pieces. Horses reared in terror, throwing their riders. Metal clashed against metal and in an instant the grass was splattered with blood as the first casualties fell. Jamie looked for Matt and Flint but already they had disappeared, folded into the confusion. For what had a few moments ago looked like a neat map, the forces lined up with mathematical precision, had now become a sprawling hideous mess.
Matt’s forces had begun to fight back.
The archers, positioned behind the main body of the troops, fired one volley after another, the sky darkening as hundreds of silver arrows curved overhead and fell, finding their targets. Twenty or thirty of them hit the monkey and although, in comparison to its own huge size, they were little more than needles, they stung its face and blinded one of its eyes. The monkey howled in pain, baring its teeth, but held its ground. Then there was an explosion and a white glowing missile shot past it, just missing its head. Jamie turned to see where it had come from. He had thought the cannons had opened fire, but in fact the shot had come from one of the copper pipes that he had noticed before. The pipes were a crude type of bazooka which the men had hoisted onto their shoulders and which they were aiming into the enemy forces. Jamie saw another one go off, the white-hot missile streaking through the air on a trail of smoke. This one found its target. One of the knights had broken through Matt’s lines. There was an explosion and he was gone, quite simply blown apart.
There was no way to tell where the line between the two armies had been drawn. It seemed as if both sides had abandoned any strategy as soon as the battle had begun and were now engaged in completely random, hand- to-hand combat. Matt’s soldiers were standing their ground, holding the man-creatures at bay. Yet the bodies were beginning to pile up. Medical teams were already rushing into the field with stretchers, somehow emerging again with the injured, carrying them to a makeshift hospital that had been set up among the tents. Even in these early stages, and as much as he hated to admit it, Jamie was sure he was on the losing side. The odds against them were too great.
And still Scar refused to move. Nobody had noticed her and her troops, high up on the hill overlooking the battlefield, partially concealed behind the pine trees. They were only a hundred strong – not enough to make any real difference. But Jamie couldn’t bear just standing there. He felt wretched, a coward.
“We have to go down!” he exclaimed.
“No!” Scar was furious. Her eyes were fixed on what was happening down below and her whole body seemed to be frozen.
“Why not? We’re not doing any good.”
“This is the way Matt wanted it.” Scar was clutching her sword so hard that her fist had turned white and Jamie wondered if she would even have attacked him if he had tried to advance. “They don’t know we’re here,” she explained. “That’s the whole point. They mustn’t see us. And we have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“You’ll see!”
Jamie glanced at Finn as if he might say something different, but the big man shook his head slowly and continued to watch the progress of the battle. Jamie forced himself to look back at the field and at once the screams of the dying and the sickly smell of newly spilled blood rose up and consumed him. He had seen films. He had played computer games. But this was utterly different. There were no cameras, no artful arrangements. Here death was vicious, random, all around him.
And then the monkey fell. A great ball of orange flame had soared over the fighters. Once again, Jamie was unsure where it had come from. Then he saw an elaborate catapult, a strange construction of metal and wood, like something salvaged from a breakers’ yard. It had been hidden among the tents and had just fired a blazing missile at the creature, hitting it square on the shoulder. The huge animal exploded in flames that spread in seconds across its fur, its whole upper body disappearing in a red inferno. Jamie saw it trying to beat out the fire with its hands but then its arms caught alight too. The monkey screeched once – a hideous, piteous sound. Finally it plunged backwards, crushing several of its own soldiers, and lay still.
But there was no time to celebrate this one small victory. The other giant animals were killing dozens of people, the condor and the hummingbird striking down again and again, the spider spitting poison or crushing its victims underfoot. The spiked knights were also continuing forward, more like robots than men, cutting down anyone who stood in their path. The cannons roared and two of the knights fell, their horses screaming as they came crashing down. The Old Ones had no heavy artillery – no cannons or catapults. But they didn’t need them.
For the first time, Jamie noticed the thirteen horsemen who had accompanied Chaos. These had to be the fire riders that Scar had mentioned the day before. They were dressed in grey, like monks or friars, their faces completely hidden by hoods. And they were unarmed. But now he saw one of them lean forward and touch one of Matt’s fighters almost gently, as if trying to get his attention. A single touch was death. The young man burst instantly into flame – turned into ashes before he could even scream. The fire rider straightened up then reached out and struck again. This time it was a woman, gone before she knew what had happened. The other horsemen were equally busy. It seemed to Jamie that Matt’s army was rapidly dwindling and the fighting was moving ever closer towards him as his own side was overwhelmed.
They were losing. It was as simple as that. And although he had never met Matt, although he hadn’t known anything about this world until now, he felt the bitterness of defeat and a sense of anger that it had been planned this way. Why had he and Scar been kept out of the fighting? As soon as they left the safety of the hilltop, they would die. But that didn’t matter. Jamie thought of the boy called Flint, who was somewhere down there, perhaps already wounded or even dead. With all his heart he wished he could have met him, if only briefly, before the end.
Suddenly, Scar shouted and stretched out a hand. “There!” She had spotted something. Finn, too, was looking in the same direction.
At first Jamie couldn’t see anything. Scar was pointing towards the very edge of the field, beyond the fighting, where the river of grass dipped down and disappeared. But there was something. The light seemed to be darkening. It was impossible, but the very clouds were being drawn together as if they had somehow become magnetized. Jamie felt a sudden heaviness, a thudding in his head that told him there was about to be a storm.
“It’s them,” Scar said and the next moment there was a great flash of lightning and a downpour so heavy that it was as if a screen had been drawn across the edge of the battlefield. The rain lashed down on the fighters. Thunder exploded above their heads. Jamie felt the water soaking through his clothes and running in rivulets down his skin. The change in the weather had been instantaneous – as if one of them had somehow controlled it.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
Scar didn’t answer. She was gazing into the distance. Jamie followed her eyes and saw that a line of figures on horseback had appeared, riding at full gallop towards the edge of the battle. So far, nobody else had seen them. The rain had taken care of that. There were just six of them. Five men and a boy. It was difficult to make them out in the darkness and the confusion of the storm, but Jamie could just see the figure riding in the centre. Long dark hair. Dark skin. He too was carrying a shield. His was decorated with a blazing sun.
Inti had arrived.
And he wasn’t alone. Behind him, more soldiers – perhaps fifty of them – appeared, rising up over the edge of the field. They looked nothing like any of the other fighters, wearing tunics with headdresses made out of feathers and beaten gold. They carried outlandish weapons – slingshots, bolas and very small curved bows that they fired while still galloping, taking out some of the man-creatures that had strayed too close. They carried a banner with the blue star.
One of the fire riders turned, sensing them for the first time. Jamie saw Inti lean forward in his saddle. He had unsheathed a sword with a blade shaped like a crescent moon. Now he swung it. The rider’s head flew clear of its shoulders. The rest of the body fell to its knees and then toppled forward. Inti hadn’t so much as hesitated. If anything, his horse had sped up, carrying him straight to the very heart of the battle.
“It’s time!” Scar exclaimed. She turned to Finn. “Are you ready?”
“I’ve waited too long,” Finn growled.
“Then let’s finish it.” She steadied her horse. For a moment she was very close to Jamie. “Use your power,” she said. “Find Matt. That’s all we have to do.”
