over the cuts like hardening sap.
Kell fell into the woodland; only then did he hear the pursuit, the thump thump thump of a heavy pendulous charge, and the ground was shaking beneath him and fear filled him up like a jug. He realised he could not kill it… unless he gave control to Ilanna. He scowled. That would only happen over his dead body.
Run! If he could reach the horses, he could outrun the Stone Lion. Perhaps.
He charged on, branches slamming his face and arms, the Stone Lion in pursuit. He reached the crossroads where they’d tethered the horses, and for a second was flooded with relief, for Saark and the young women were nowhere to be seen; they had fled, were gone, were safe. His sacrifice had bought them time. Only, now…he frowned. All the horses were gone. Which meant he was…on foot.
“Saark, you dandy bastard!”
A roar echoed through the trees behind, and Kell cast about; Saark had headed south, as they’d discussed, to reach King Leanoric, warn him of events in Jalder. Kell sprinted down the trail but the recent fighting, lack of sleep, and the curse of age and inactivity hit him like a cobble. He faltered within a hundred yards, was streaming with sweat after two. The Stone Lion still pursued. It ceased its bestial roar, but Kell could hear the thump of heavy steps…how could he not? He grimaced.
“Horse-dung,” he muttered. He was going to die here.
Ahead, through heavy snow, the trees grew thinner and a fantasy entertained Kell; maybe he was by the edge of Stone Lion Woods? Maybe there was a boundary to the Stone Lion’s territory, beyond which it could not pursue? Blood-oil magick worked like that, sometimes…
But there was no guarantee.
Kell laboured on, and could hear the Stone Lion growing closer, and closer, a dark shadow behind, a black ghost in the trees. Kell stopped, wheezing, red lights dancing in his brain. He hawked, and spat a lump of phlegm to the woodland floor.
A high roar, bestial, like a choking woman, made him jump and surge forward…as growls up ahead made him skid to a halt, confused. Through the trees, Kell saw the shape of a canker. Something died inside him. He was trapped. By all the gods! Trapped!
“Not good.”
His eyes narrowed, as the first canker was joined by two more, all three different shapes and sizes, but each with a wide-open head showing cogs and gears clicking and moving. Kell glanced back. The Stone Lion was there, advancing on him. He could see its legs now, and no wounds were visible…it had completely healed.
Kell sprinted, axe tight in sweat-slippery hands, and the cankers saw him; with spastic jerks of deformed and bloated heads, they let out vicious, triumphant growls and howls and thuds of accelerating, deviated twisted clockwork with bunched muscles run through with lodes of silver-quartz, and with snarls they leapt to the attack… and in a whirling chaos of confusion, with the Stone Lion roaring behind, and the smell of hot canker oil in his nostrils, Kell narrowed his eyes and lifted his axe in the eerie snow-brightened woodland where snow flurries drifted and swirled, and as panic detonated around him he leapt at the cankers and brought the singing, glinting blades of Ilanna around in a savage downward sweep…
NINE
Army North
Leanoric sat his charger on the hill just outside the ruins of Old Valantrium, and thought about his father. To the northeast, he could see the distant gleaming spires of Valantrium, one of Falanor’s richest, most awe-inspiring cities, constructed by the finest architects and builders in the land, its streets paved with marble painstakingly hewn from the Black Pike Mines in the south-west of the staggering and awe-inspiring mountain range.
What would your father do? he thought, and despair settled over him like a cloak.
Leanoric turned his charger, gazing west. He could just make out the gleaming cobbles of the Great North Road, which some called his finest creation. A single, wide avenue, it ran for nearly sixty leagues through hills and valleys, through forests and moorland, dissecting the country and linking Falanor’s capital city Vor in the south, with the major northern university city of Jalder. The Great North Road was an artery of trade and guaranteed protection, patrolled by Leanoric’s soldiers. It had been successful in banishing thieves, solitary highwaymen and outlaw brigands, sending them either further north into the savage inhospitable hell of the Black Pike Mountains, or south, across the seas to worry other lands.
What would your father do?
Leanoric rubbed his stubble, evidence of three days in the saddle, and turned his charger again, scanning for his own scouts due back from Old Skulkra and Corleth.
The rumour, delivered by an old merchant on a half-dead horse, had sent prickles of fear lacerating Leanoric’s spine and scalp.
Invasion!
Jalder, invaded!
Leanoric smiled, a bitter careful smile, and placed his Eagle Divisions in his mind; he had twin regiments of eight hundred men each camped on Corlath Moor, three days march from Jalder; he had a further battalion of four hundred men stationed at the Black Pike Mines at the west of the range, maybe a week’s march, longer if the coming snows were heavy. Further north, he had a brigade of sixteen hundred infantry near Old Skulkra, and close to them a division of five thousand led by the wily old Division General, Terrakon. And another brigade to the east of Valantrium Moor, on manoeuvres.
Within two weeks he could muster another four brigades from the south of Vor, and descend on Jalder with nearly twenty thousand men-the entire Army of Falanor. Twenty thousand heavily armed, battle-trained soldiers, infantry, cavalry, pikemen. But…but what if this was nothing more than the ravings of some drunken, insane old merchant? Some bastard high on blue karissia, frothing at mouth and veins, and with his speculative fear putting into action the slow mechanical wheels of an entire army’s mobilisation?
It had not escaped Leanoric that winter was coming, and thousands of soldiers were looking to return to their homesteads. Leanoric had already delayed leave by three days; every hour, he felt their frustration growing, accelerating. If he didn’t release his northern armies soon, they could become trapped by snow as the Great North Road became more and more impassable. Then, Leanoric risked insubordination, desertion, and worse.
Leanoric ground his teeth, sighed, and tried to relax.
If only his scouts would bring news!
It was a bad joke, nothing more, he told himself. The garrison at Jalder was more than able to cope with raiding brigands from the Black Pike Mountains; with outlaws, rogue Blacklippers and the occasional band of forest thugs.
Leanoric considered the old merchant, who even now was being tended by Leanoric’s physicians in his own royal tent. The man could no longer speak, his skin burned and peeling as if half cooked over a fire. Eyes wide, the man-they still had not established a name-had ridden in on a horse which promptly collapsed and died, ridden to death, iron-shoes down to the hoof, foam ripe on mouth and nostrils. The tortured merchant had babbled, incoherently at first, then delivered his news in fits and starts between wails for mercy and cries for the king to spare his life. It had been…Leanoric searched for a word…he sighed, and ran a hand through his short, curled golden hair. It had been distressing, he thought.
So. What would his father have done?
Leanoric considered the former king, dead now the last fifteen years. After a lifetime as Battle King, a warrior without peer, huge and fast and fearless, a man to walk the mountains with, a man with whom to hunt lions, Searlan, King of Falanor, at the age of fifty six had been thrown from his horse and broke his neck and lower spine. He’d hung on grimly for three days as specialist physicians and the skilled University Surgeon, Malen-sa, tended him; but eventually the life-light, the will to live, had faded from his eyes as his paralysed limbs lay limp, unmoving, and understanding sank as if through a sponge to penetrate his brain. He would never walk again, never ride a horse, never hunt, dance, make love, fight. In those last few days, as realisation dawned, Searlan had lost the will to live; and had died. The physicians said, eventually, after much consultation, that death had occurred through
