figures that shifted shape before attempting to tear out the throats of those nearby; and the Gehennis, shades flapping like sheets in the wind but with more devastating substance than they presented to the world. Towering giants swung clubs that reduced a man to a red mist, while other grotesqueries that he did not recognise ripped apart with claws and teeth.
The explosive bolt of lightning crashed into the Enemy ranks at the point he had planned, when overconfidence had taken the edge off their fighting skills. Body parts rained down from a blackened circle inside which everything had been incinerated. More bolts blasted down at random, bringing fear to the disrupted Enemy ranks.
Decebalus caught the briefest glimpse of Mjolnir smashing through bodies before returning to the hand of its owner, who brought down another lightning bolt before directing the storm towards the Enemy.
Decebalus grinned: the gods had arrived.
Laughing like a madman, his scarred, hairy body completely naked, Tyr waded through the ranks chopping down the Lament-Brood like saplings. Beside him, the Slavic god Perkunas wielded a throwing axe that sent heads flying in unison, while Ares, lost to his bloodlust, had to be continually redirected towards the Enemy so that he did not attack his own side. On a murderous rampage, the Aztecs' Huitzilopochtli tore out the hearts of the living Enemy by plunging his hands into their chests, and the Caribbean war god Ogoun concentrated on the Lament- Brood with his machete, reducing them to quivering chunks of decomposing flesh.
The gods were a whirlwind of fury and righteous vengeance, and every time Decebalus thought he had seen the last descend into the fray another dropped from the skies or drove a wide, bloody path through the ground troops.
Hundreds of the Enemy were falling by the minute, and despite their numbers they were in disarray and being driven back step by step. Lugh was at the forefront of the Tuatha De Danaan, serious and dedicated, and though covered in gore he still glowed like the sun. Behind him, the Army of all the Courts fought on, shoulder to shoulder, for the first time since they had left their four fabled homes.
About a third of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had fallen, but the rest drove on with renewed energy, faces alight with the Pendragon Spirit.
For the next half-hour, as the Enemy was decimated, Decebalus finally began to believe that despite the odds they could win.
The first sign that events had begun to change was a sudden retreat by the Enemy that left aV of unoccupied ground. Decebalus signalled for the Army of Dragons to proceed with caution; it looked to him as if the Enemy was encouraging them to pursue with abandon, and he never did anything any enemy wanted.
Silence fell across the Enemy ranks, the only sound the beating of the rain on the sea of mud.
'What are they doing?' Aula asked.
'Waiting,' Decebalus replied.
After a moment, the Enemy ranks parted and a ten-foot-tall figure stepped through, his identity at first cloaked by the storm. As he neared, Decebalus recognised him from the description Church had given during one of the numerous briefings: brutish features, part pig, part ass, added an incongruous aspect to the elegant clothes of the ancient Egyptian ruling class. Seth, god of evil and the desert, raised a staff mounted with a single golden eye and a flurry of snow swirled around him.
'Fragile Creatures!' His booming voice sounded like a boulder dragged across gravel. 'My people were great and wondrous, shining stars in the vast firmament of Existence. Yet you destroyed them, and in your arrogance you thought you could do it with impunity.'
'He is talking about the devastation wrought by Church and the others in the Great Pyramid,' Aula whispered.
Decebalus barely heard her. Already his tactician's mind was racing ahead, weighing potential options as he tried to evaluate what Seth would do.
'Get back,' he said loudly after a few seconds, before bellowing, 'Retreat!'
The word had barely left his mouth when Seth raised his other hand to reveal an object that radiated a brilliant white light. There was a second when all the sound appeared to have been drained from the world, and then a shimmering, glassy wave washed out from Seth and the entire battlefield lit up, growing brighter and brighter until it felt as if the sun had crashed to the ground.
And that was the last thing any of them saw.
7
In the Grim Lands there was little to mark the passage of time. Sometimes the quality of light would be a shade darker, sometimes it would have a silvery glint, as though night and day were coming and going beyond the constantly rolling mists. Everywhere was grey, all the time. It left the spirits dampened, and gradually leached the energy from both Mallory and Caitlin. Each incline became a little harder to climb, each graveyard navigated with an increasing number of rest stops, until they started to fear that the mood of the place would eventually bring a critical lethargy that would leave them drifting and aimless like the land's regular inhabitants.
Sitting on the dusty gravel with her back to a tomb marked with the legend Et In Arcadia Ego, Caitlin examined the flickering blue flame of the Wayfinder and tried to ignore the feeling that if she closed her eyes she would sleep for ever.
'I wonder if Hal is aware of what's happening,' she mused.
Sitting beneath a carved skull on an adjoining tomb, Mallory lazily drew a cross in the dust with the heel of his boot. 'That was quite a sacrifice he made. Imagine being a part of the Blue Fire — a part of everything there is and was — and then giving it all up to lock yourself in that little lantern to guide our way. It must have been like being God, and then quitting to become an ant.'
'You wouldn't expect anything less. He's always been one of us… of our Five.' She winced and corrected herself: 'Our Four. I wish we'd got a chance to know him better.'
'It's even more of a sacrifice than that,' Mallory continued. 'He can be destroyed while he's in the Wayfinder. He'd escaped from death, and now he's put himself back in the game. That's brave.'
The flame continued to point the way across the last few yards of the graveyard and out into the wilderness beyond, where Callow was on reconnaissance.
'Does this place make you think of your husband and boy?' Mallory asked.
'I've never stopped thinking of them. Not in a morbid way. I remember the good times, and what they meant to me, and I know we're going to be together again some day. Have you ever lost someone you love?'
'Yeah.' He paused before realising, 'I just don't know who.'
The thought clearly troubled him so much that Caitlin didn't press. Chewing on his lip absently, he slipped back into a deep reflection.
In the silence that followed, Caitlin became aware of the presence of her other selves deep in the back of her head. Their whispering always ebbed and flowed like the pulse of her blood, but now she could hear Brigid's voice growing more insistent. Listening intently, she absently spoke the words the second they came to her: 'He's coming! Run!'
Mallory started. 'Who's coming?'
'I… I don't know.'
They were surprised to see Callow watching them from the shelter of a nearby mausoleum. 'How long have you been there?' Mallory snapped.
'No time for that now,' Callow replied obsequiously. 'Listen carefully and I think you'll hear to whom the little miss is referring.'
Dimly, the scrape of feet on gravel filtered through the blanketing mist. Moving quickly and silently, Mallory and Caitlin kept low, using the tombs and mausoleums for cover. As the mist shifted across a wide expanse of statuary, they saw the Hortha stalking steadily in their direction.
'What does it take to stop him?' Mallory said incredulously.
'He doesn't look like he's been hurt at all. Yet that thing in the mausoleum was…' Caitlin's words dried up as she considered the implications of her notion. 'How are we going to stop him, Mallory?'
