there were no arrows on the way, I dashed over intending to throw it back. I was no more than an arm’s length away when I heard an ear-piercing sound and was instantly doubled up in pain. All around me men dropped to the ground pulling their knees yest to their chest. I’m sure that like me they were howling in pain but nothing could be heard other than the screaming sound that was coming from the shell. I knew we had to get rid of it but every time I tried to straighten my legs, the pain, which was already unbearable, doubled. I had started dragging myself forward with my fingers in the dirt when I saw Essa, obviously in pain but on her feet, stagger over to the shell and then smash it with her banta stick. The sound and pain went as suddenly as they had come. Essa poked through the rubble of the shell and picked up a small gold amulet that was buzzing with a tinny sound. Then using her teeth and fingers she bit and twisted it until it stopped.
Dahy, who I am embarrassed to say was on his feet much faster than me, walked over and took the amulet from Essa. ‘It’s a gleem,’ he said.
Gleem, where had I heard that before? That was the thing that Cialtie had used on Dad to win the boat race. It inflicted the pain of childbirth.
‘Well, that settles it,’ I said. ‘I’m not ever getting pregnant.’
Someone shouted, ‘INCOMING!’ and we ran back to the ramparts for cover. Spideog kept his nose over the wall and then popped up to shoot a second shell out of the air like a Kentucky skeet shooter.
Essa ducked next to me. ‘Didn’t that gleem thing hurt?’ I asked her.
‘Of course it hurt but it was nothing I couldn’t take.’ She rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘Men.’
Cialtie’s first attack was small – designed to force us to show our strengths and weaknesses – it was also designed to fail. On strictly a tactical standpoint I guess it was sensible but using any other yardstick, especially a moral one, it was despicable. It was a suicide mission – that is if the attackers in the first wave volunteered. If they were ordered to go, then it was a death sentence and we were the executioners. About seventy Brownies dashed directly at the ramparts. The first thing they discovered was that Dahy and the Leprechauns had, for months, been hammering every flat rock or piece of shale that they could find into the ground in front of the stone defences. Running on it at any speed was almost impossible – it was a minefield for ankle twisting.
Many Brownies tripped and many more were mowed down by Spideog and his archers. Only four Brownies reached the wall and when they did they seemed not to know what to do. Several of their attacking comrades had been carrying siege ladders but they had been stopped by arrows. As our archers bore down on the four, Dahy ordered them not to fire.
‘Brownies,’ Dahy called down to them, ‘you have fought bravely but you have no chance to scale these walls. I offer you safe passage if you go back now.’
As I watched, I prayed that they would take his offer. They looked like lost cold orphans shivering in a big city alley. If they defiantly started to climb we would have no choice but to kill them. I can’t tell you how quickly I was getting tired of this war stuff. They huddled up and then accepted. With their heads held high, they marched back over the ankle-twisting stone field. About halfway across, a huge volley of arrows from Cialtie’s camp dropped all of them as one. It was my uncle’s way of showing the rest of his army how he felt about surrender.
Dahy made no comment, nor showed any emotion in regards to the slaughter, he just nodded like this was business as usual. ‘Cialtie and Turlow have learned all that they need to know,’ the general said. ‘The next attack will be all of them.’
I stepped off my post in hopes of getting to the wash tent so I could splash some water on my face and maybe wash away some of the horror that I had just seen – some of the horror that I had just been part of. I used a shortcut that brought me around the back of the tent and there I found Spideog sitting with his back to a low ruined wall, his knees up and his face in his hands. I hesitated before I disturbed him. I hoped that when he removed his hands that his eyes were not awash with tears. If Spideog broke under this pressure, what chance had the rest of us for surviving unscathed? But surviving unscathed was probably impossible anyway.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked, crouching down to his level.
He looked up. His eyes were clear but filled with a millennium’s worth of sadness. ‘May the gods damn your uncle.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘and they will have to get in line. There are a few of us around here who would like to damn him and do a bit more.’
‘Those Brownies…’ Spideog paused – on his face he wore the sorrow of a man searching through old, painful memories. ‘Those Brownies fought like the Fili. During that war, Maeve threw her Fili at us like they were toy soldiers that could later just be glued back together.’ He shook his head and looked down. ‘How do they do it? How do these madmen get their people to follow them with such suicidal abandon?’
‘I don’t know, Master,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we will ever know but isn’t that what makes us better than them?’
He looked up, smiled at me, then stood, instantly regaining his innate heroic stance. ‘You have your grandmother’s eyes, you know.’
‘You must tell me about her sometime.’
‘I will, when this is all over.’ He laughed to himself as he turned. ‘I might even do better than that.’
He jogged back to his post without giving me a chance to ask him what he meant.
Back on the battlements the sun rose to its zenith in a crystal-clear blue winter sky. The heat was welcome as it allowed us to believe that the sweat that was dripping down our backs was caused by the sun and not our jangling nerves.
In Cialtie’s camp there could be heard orders being barked and bugle-sounding things being played as the army of Banshees and Brownies readied for their main offensive. Essa dropped in next to me.
‘Dahy thinks that the attack will be soon,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Born ready,’ I said automatically. As I scanned the horizon I felt Essa reach down and entwine her fingers in mine. I looked at her, she was fierce and scared and oh so achingly beautiful – all at the same time. She leaned in and kissed me. I placed my hands gently on her shoulders and pushed her back.
‘We are not going to die,’ I said.
She turned away, looking out over the field and then I felt her tense up like the strings of a tennis racket. She pointed to the edge of the rise. I followed the line of her finger and saw hundreds of screaming soldiers charge into view.
‘Tell that to them,’ she said as she drew her sword.
Chapter Forty
What must have been a thousand Brownies and Banshees swarmed onto the stone plain. They looked like those red army ants that you see in old Tarzan movies. I was half expecting the fallen to end up as stone-white skeletons.
As soon as they got into range, our arrows flew. The fallen were not even considered by their comrades – if the arrows didn’t kill them then the trampling surely must have. The same fate awaited those that tripped on the stone field. Just behind the first wave were a line of siege ladders carried by teams of three. The ladders had shields strapped to the front so as to protect the carriers from all but the sharpest archers who aimed for their heads and legs. Spideog assigned his best bowmen for that task and they had a reasonably high measure of success. Still, any ladder bearer that was hit was instantly replaced by another. The ladders clambered closer.
All the while volleys of arrows came at us from the back of the enemy’s advance. Dahy’s ramparts were designed well, giving cover as well as enough gaps for the archers to continue shooting even while arrows were flying in. One gleem arrived during the first part of the attack but was swiftly taken care of by the special gleem- team that Nieve had equipped with gold earplugs.
The enemy soldiers that reached the ramparts huddled together under their shields in an arrow-proof phalanx. The ones that did this too close to the walls had boulders thrown at them by teams of very brawny Leprechaun miners. The huge rocks smashed into the shields then the archers finished them off.
I’d like to be able to say that I was appalled by all of this bloodshed but as those ladders drew closer and
