opened them again, she would see Arn somewhere along the ranks, his long hair blowing back from his shoulders, his glowing bare skin and eyes alight with laughter. He would do something that would make her laugh, even now.
She opened her eyes, and the dread remained. She used all her strength to stop herself fleeing immediately to find him, to be with him — torn between her sense of duty and her desire to see him, just once more. She hoped that he and Grimson were safe.
Eilif reined in her horse as the tremors intensified. She had been trained since birth for battle, and practised most days in the art of the sword and bow, and even unarmed combat, but the approach of the massive creatures, bristling with spikes, and covered in Panterran and Lygon warriors, made her doubt her abilities and sapped her confidence.
She swallowed with difficulty and held her head high. I am the daughter of the king, a Wolfen princess, she thought. I will not fail this day.
The king roared once again, ‘Hold!’
And then, ‘Pull!’
Thick, buried ropes, trailing out onto the plain, and hidden in the dark, were lifted and pulled by dozens of Wolfen warriors. Straining at first, and then picking up speed, as if whatever held them, was ripped away.
In the dim light Eilif watched in bewilderment, and then felt her heart soar — huge areas of the flattened and churned land in front of the castle were sliding away as logs bound together and covered in soil were dragged from the top of deep pits.
Of course — the Wolfen with shovels, she remembered.
To the sides, Karnak and Lon’s warriors had done their jobs, and kept the mighty beasts funneled up the centre of the plain. The Panterran screamed warnings, but the speed and mass of the creatures was too much to allow them to slow or even turn, and their enormous bodies fell into the pits. Of the fifty monstrous beings bearing down on the Wolfen, more than forty tumbled into the voids.
Use an enemy’s strength against it, and make that strength its weakness, Sorenson had said. She caught his eye, and he threw back his head and laughed.
‘And now their weight will do the rest,’ he roared.
The bottoms of the pits were filled with sharpened spikes and the weight of the gravilents forced them deeper into the impaling traps. Lygon and Panterran could be seen climbing out of the pits, and the king held up one arm, and then swung it down. ‘Fire!’
The Wolfen archers fired a deadly volley of arrows onto the plain. Some Panterran tried to run back to their ranks, but the Lygon charged ahead. It didn’t matter — the plain was too long, too open. As arrows rained down, it became their burial ground.
The archers fired their next volley at the remaining gravilents who were nearly upon them. Their target was not the charging giants, but their riders.
In took only seconds for the last few moving mountains to be at the Wolfen front lines. Once again, the king’s arm came down, and ranks of Wolfen stepped to the sides, revealing the tips of sharpened tree trunks. Each of the shaped logs was forty feet long and mounted on a simple slide, with ropes tied off and straining at their base — in effect they were giant arrows.
Axe blades fell, and ropes were cut, flinging the thick trunks forward, like the mighty bolts of Odin himself.
Few of the giant spears found the soft flesh between their armour plates, and many were simply trampled to kindling beneath their tree-trunk legs.
The far killing was now at an end. This time, when the king’s arm came down, it was to draw forth his sword.
The war was here.
The gravilents were pulled by the chains linked to metal rings embedded in either side of their head, and though they roared in frustration, anger and pain, they were forced to follow their rider’s commands. Their broad heads swung back and forth, the huge spikes and blades cutting a swathe through the warriors not fast enough to leap out of the way. Giant Lygon leapt from the backs of the creatures into the melee, and Panterran fired volley after volley of poison-tipped arrows into the seething mass of Wolfen.
Though the Lygon were enormously powerful, they were few in number and no match for the front ranks of the Wolfen elite. They were soon brought down, and the Panterran, after firing their arrows, slipped from the backs of the beasts and sprinted in retreat across the plain.
A cheer went up along the Wolfen ranks. Though dozens had been crushed and cut down by the blades and spikes of the gravilents, they had managed to withstand this first wave.
The Wolfen whoops of bravado fell silent, as the drumming of Panterran resumed, and with it the more sinister rhythm of giant axes and maces banging against armour. The signal for the next attack had been given; even in the darkness, the wave of bristling orange-and-black shapes could be seen flooding across the plain. This time it was the turn of the Lygon — and this time there would not be dozens, but hundreds upon hundreds… thirsting for Wolfen blood.
Eilif had seen the Lygon in the camp when they had freed Arn, but in their battle armour they seemed twice as large and frightening. She felt her heart beating like the wings of a small bird trying to escape her rib cage.
The challenging roars of her kin tore through the air, and Sorenson’s voice rose above all others.
‘For Valkeryn! For Grimvaldr!’ He drew his sword. ‘And for the mightiest Wolfen who ever lived — for Strom!’ He charged, and was followed by the hundreds of Wolfen horsemen down onto the now bloody plain.
When the two sides came together, the sound rolled across the kingdom of Valkeryn like thunder in the midst of a great storm. The clang of steel and the roars and shouts of the Wolfen and Lygon, and the frightened screams of the horses, was shockingly loud.
Eilif spurred her horse forward, her fear beginning to dull and her training taking over. As she approached the battle, one of the charging Lygon swung a club as wide as she was, at her head. She dragged on her reins, swerving her horse as she lay back nearly flat in her saddle, the club passing harmlessly over her. Lightning quick, she was upright again, slicing her sword down the creature’s back, opening a long, deep wound in the orange-and-black fur.
The infuriated beast screamed, and wheeled, but she was already moving on through the dense press of bodies and flashing steel. All around her, Wolfen and Lygon battled; bloody bits of both littered the ground, and the air was dank with the spray of blood.
She moved closer to Grimvaldr, who was still on horseback, and now ringed by a circle of his best warriors. Sorenson was among them, and she marvelled at his skill and strength, delivering mortal blows that severed snarling heads and removed limbs from brutish bodies.
She became aware of a whistling sound, and then what she thought was the fall of a heavy rain. But then it became clear: it was rain, but of a more deadly kind — Panterran arrows. Thousands were loosed, and of those, hundreds penetrated deep into the bodies of Lygon and Wolfen alike.
At shouts from the generals, the Wolfen dismounted. The horses galloped back to the rear Wolfen line, and each time the deathly whistle heralded the approach of the Panterran’s arrows, the Wolfen raised their shields above their heads, forming a protective roof of steel.
More Wolfen now joined the fray, and the king and the generals quickly organised them into their fighting ranks. Solid walls of Wolfen, five deep, fought in waves.
The first line fought until fatigued, and then fell back behind the next line, and on it went. The generals yelled commands, the arrows continued to fall, and the Lygon kept coming. Then there was more drumming, and the arrow fall ceased. Immediately, in among the tree-trunk legs of the Lygon, the smaller bodies of the Panterran swordsmen whipped through like wisps of smoke, slicing at the Wolfen with their curved blades.
For every Lygon, or dozen Panterran, the Wolfen cut down, twice that many seemed to take their place.
The storm of battle raged for hours, and those Wolfen who paused to draw breath and look to the far hills of the Panterran camps, saw nothing to raise their spirits — the dark tide of bodies continued to pour down towards the Wolfen front lines.
Eilif’s arm was a leaden weight, and as she drove her sword into the chest of one Panterran, another caught
