Gresse shook his bald head. ‘You know better than to believe it will last. You’ve had the visions and you’ve heard the voices. I can see it in your eyes.’
There was no hint of age or his illness diminishing his mind. Indeed Gresse seemed particularly sharp this morning.
Blackthorne studied the vines growing along the valley to the south of the lodge.
‘I have nightmares, not premonitions,’ he said.
‘It comes to the same thing,’ said Gresse. He coughed and put a hand to his lips. Blood stained the back of his index finger. ‘And I can’t fight any more. I just don’t have the energy. Nor the passion.’
‘So what is this smell in the air then?’ asked Blackthorne.
‘It is the start of whatever is to come. We’ll know soon enough.’
Blackthorne drained his coffee, set down his mug and leaned on the veranda.
‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people being mysterious and oblique. Do you know something or not?’
‘It’s just a feeling, Blackthorne. I’ve had them before and I’ve always been right. This is just worse than all the others and I don’t have the will to face it.’
Blackthorne rounded on him. ‘So you’re just going to sit and rot in your rocking chair, is that it? You think any mage will rethink their morals and ethics merely because you choose to die rather than let them heal you?’
Gresse was staring right past him though, not hearing him.
‘Told you,’ he said.
Blackthorne followed his outstretched hand. Miles to the east, towards the mountains of the Burrs and away across rolling acres of vineyards and rich arable farmland, there was a shimmering in the air. Accompanying it was a very slight vibration beneath the feet as if the Earth itself was trembling. Up in the sky above the shimmering, cloud spewed to brief life and then burned away. A bleak foreboding settled on Blackthorne.
‘We just never get a break, do we?’ he whispered.
‘I may not want to fight it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it,’ said Gresse. ‘Care to ride with me?’
Blackthorne nodded. ‘Why not? Sight of the enemy brings with it the comfort of knowledge, so they say.’
‘They, whoever they are, must be idiots. It’s always struck me with dread.’ Gresse clicked his finger at a servant. ‘Have our horses saddled and ready at the north paddock on the instant. And we’ll be needing a guard too. Half a dozen or so.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
‘More coffee, Blackthorne? It might be a while till your next one.’
‘Don’t mind if I do.’
The riding was easy and would have been pleasant but for the dark thoughts Blackthorne could not keep from his mind. There was a noise in the back of his head too. Like a distant voice, familiar yet disconcerting. It became a persistent itch as they trotted and cantered up and down slope over Gresse’s well-maintained vineyard trails.
It was a shame the glorious smells of sweet vine and young grape were obscured by the strengthening odour blowing over them from the east. Gresse was right. It did taste like old magic and more particularly like the product of something violent.
‘It’s a particularly painful way to go,’ said Blackthorne. ‘And before the end you won’t even be able to eat, or drink your best reds and whites. Imagine that.’
The two men were some way ahead of Gresse’s guard. Both barons wore light trail clothes and had cloaks tied to their saddles. Gresse hadn’t even bothered with a weapon. Blackthorne couldn’t face leaving a place of sanctuary without one even now.
‘Trust me, it won’t come to that. I shall sit in my rocking chair with a glass of the decade vintage and salute our enemies as they torch my vines.’
Blackthorne shook his head. ‘Balaia never lies down.’
‘Ah, but back then we had The Raven. Now what do we have? A grumpy man with an arthritic hip who is still unsure if he should be king or innkeeper. And a Lord of the Mount who has become far too deeply embroiled in college politics to see what is in front of his face. I’ve nothing against either of them personally. Sol has done some great work but the responsibility weighs too heavy on him. And he doesn’t like the attention. “King” is too grand a term and Sol was right when he refused to adopt it. It’s just a shame the populace didn’t accept his decision. Whatever, the two of them are hardly saviour material. Not that it would matter if they were. Nothing can stop what is coming.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Blackthorne. ‘You don’t even know there is an enemy. All we’ve got so far is a heat haze and a rumble in the earth.’
But that was not entirely true and he knew it. Gresse had heard, just as he had, the clank and thud of machinery. It sounded much like someone perpetually raising and dropping a portcullis, though there was a wheezing undertone, like ten thousand Gresses drawing in pained breath as one.
‘I’ve had the visions and the voices. And, deny it all you like, you have too. I just paid attention.’
They were riding up a steep valley side into which terraces had been cut for red grapevines. The path wound through the terraces, ascending gently. The morning was hot and the vibration under hoof combined with the shimmering air and the clanking of chain and metal to bring unease.
Beyond the valley edge, the land swept steeply down to rough grassland and, further east, fine farming territory. If whatever was coming was on the fields or open ground, they would be afforded a peerless view. Blackthorne was not convinced he wanted one. Looking to his left, he could see that Gresse was nervous. His tongue flickered over his front teeth and licked his top lip. His hands were white on the reins.
‘We’ll be plenty far enough back,’ said Blackthorne.
‘I do not share your confidence,’ said Gresse.
They crested the rise.
‘What in all of mighty fuck is that?’ breathed Blackthorne.
Gresse would normally have chastised him for the use of language he attributed to Blackthorne’s friendship with the lower classes. This time he was mute, merely shaking his head in reply.
Two miles away and advancing across the farmland, came, well… men, beasts and a machine, if such terms could be applied in this instance. Blackthorne had seen interesting plans for machines before, wine presses and the like. And Denser had once shown him the drawings for a machine designed to trap and hold demons. But they were nothing like this, whatever it was. Those had been relatively small devices. This was more akin to a ship on a sled being pulled across the land by beasts of burden. And whatever the beasts were, they weren’t oxen or mules.
It was a while before they could see absolutely clearly, until the figures and their contraption had materialised from the shimmering in the air. Blackthorne wished they had remained indistinct. The machine was simply incomprehensible. The size of an ocean-going trader, it was principally a long, slender oval from which jutted multiple funnels, each angled differently from the next, over thirty of them and yet maintaining a sculpted poetry. From a raised spine, what looked like five masts fled skywards. Each held four spars and from these spars drifted dozens of lines that probed at the air as if seeking something.
It was a striking piece of work, and while Blackthorne had no idea what it was actually doing, the effects of its passage were as clear as they were devastating. The land in its wake was burned and ruined. Buildings were levelled and trees torched such that only broken blackened stumps remained. Flora and fauna were simply smoothed from existence as easily as Blackthorne might blow dust from a book. Man and animal eliminated without a cry. And for what purpose?
‘It isn’t the only one,’ said Blackthorne. He pointed away to the north where more cloud smudged the sky, dark and filled with lightning. ‘And see how the damage spreads in the wake of the thing. If it continues and if there are enough of these machines…’
‘… then the whole land will be consumed,’ breathed Gresse. ‘Who are these people?’
The machine was being pulled along by a pair of massive brown hairless beasts with tiny heads, barrel bodies and enormously powerful legs. Blackthorne switched his gaze onto the figures walking ahead of them.
They were three in number, walking at a languorous pace. Deliberate, a plodding speed more like shire horse than man. Yet they ate up the ground. Behind them, the machine rumbled. Heat swept out from it in waves, creating the shimmer in the air. A cloud formed above it, shot through with flames of green, blue, yellow and orange.
The outlines of the figures distorted in the force of the inferno at their backs. They had come quite close
