Full Circle (42 page)

“So. Can I join you?”

It was like a reprieve; she did not blame him. He nodded. “Welcome, Zel,” he said. She bobbed her head, as though she didn’t
know what to say but felt she should say something. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “Walk with me today,”
he said, “and I will explain our plans.”

She half-smiled at him; it was the best she could do, he surmised. Her grief ran deep, very deep. Freite had taught him how
to draw on the power of such emotions, but he didn’t need to. The ghosts were all the power he needed. That realisation made
him feel light, free of the past. He walked with Zel to the head of the army and took the front wagon.

They found Owl, Oak and his father waiting for him to lead.

“This is Zel,” he told them. “She has suffered greatly from the warlords, as we all have.” They nodded to her with respect,
and Oak smiled at her, stirring a flick of jealousy in Saker. He put a hand on her back, to guide her into place, and saw
that Oak registered the touch.

“Come,” he said, raising his voice so they could all hear. “Let us make Turvite our own.”

They drove off to the sound of human cheering and the deathly percussion of the ghosts banging their weapons together. Even
without the wind wraiths, they were invincible.

Saker and Zel talked, and he learnt that her brother had been a singer, and she a tumbler, as he had thought. She was so slight
that she made him feel stalwart, and he was determined that she should go to the back when the fighting began.

“Why should I?” she demanded. “I want to fight the blond bastards.”

“I understand. But it’s better if the ghosts can swing their weapons without worrying about hitting a living ally.” He dropped
his voice and leant closer confidentially, her scent suddenly warm in his nostrils, making him dizzy. “They’re not trained
soldiers, you know, and half the time they hit each other!” She turned surprised eyes to him and he chuckled a little. “It
doesn’t matter, of course, with them. But with you…” He shook his head magisterially. “It would hinder our fight, and
that cannot be allowed.”

She stared at her feet resentfully. Her boots were scuffed and worn, from long Travel. He would find her a cobbler to make
a new pair. All his people would have new boots, he amended hastily. Not just her.

On the outskirts of Turvite, they passed through a deserted village.

“This Sanctuary?” Zel asked, looking around intently.

“Aye,” Saker said. “They’ve all hidden in the city, but it won’t help them.”

Zel frowned, and kept frowning on the long slope up the hill towards the city. He tried to engage her again in conversation,
but she replied absently and he let it drop. She looked at him often, and he took comfort from that, although she never smiled,
just looked around at the ghosts and the city ahead. It was natural that she should be afraid. He said so.

“Not fear, cully,” she said.

“What, then?”

There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. “Just the past coming back to bite me,” she said. “I’m going to die.
I knew it when I found out about Flax. And I thought, if I’m going to die, I’d rather die fighting with my own kind.”

“You’re not going to die!” he protested. “I’ll look after you.”

“You’ll have enough trouble looking after yourself. D’you think they’ll just let you stroll in?”

“They can’t stop me! Us!” he said. “We’re invincible!”

She smiled at him then, but it was the smile of a mother to a young child who had said something foolish.

“No such thing in the world as invincible,” she said. “Not in this world or the next. Sorry.”

That was all she would say.

As they came through the houses and market gardens that surrounded the city, Saker could see that the road had been blocked
off. But this was no proper fortification, as there had been at Sendat. This was just a motley collection of carts and barrels
and boards. No one stood guard, although he noticed faces at windows nearby, watching. It was unnerving. Then, as they came
closer, he felt the hum of enchantment running through the barricade.

It seemed familiar to him, somehow, but he couldn’t place it. He called a halt a few hundred yards from the barricade and
got down from the cart. Owl, his father and Oak came to him with questions in their eyes.

“There’s a spell on the barricades,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want our living allies anywhere near it.
We’ll have to storm it and see.”

Owl nodded and hefted his battleaxe. He was hung with other weapons: knives, a short cudgel.

Oak stepped forward. “Are you sure you should send the ghosts against a spell?” he asked, and Alder nodded strongly, as though
he shared Oak’s doubts.

“It’s not that type of a spell,” Saker said. He was sure of that. “Believe me. It feels quite different from a destruction
spell.” He looked at his father, who was still frowning. That annoyed him and put a sharper note into his voice. “Spells are
my business. This is
not
a destruction spell.”

Reluctantly, Alder nodded and moved back with Owl to the head of their forces. They exchanged glances and grinned at each
other. Saker, as he had before, felt suddenly excluded. Owl, he thought, was the kind of son Father really wanted. Warlike.
Fearless. He set his shoulders straighter. Well, it wasn’t Owl who had brought them to this moment of triumph. It was him.

“Attack!” he shouted.

The ghosts moved forward, men and women and youths armed with axes or swords, moving more quickly as they neared the flimsy
barricade.

A few yards away from it, Owl recoiled, pushing back against the men behind him. Alder flung up a hand and skidded to a stop,
putting out a hand for balance and pushing over the woman next to him. The line came to a standstill. Saker watched, puzzled.
What had happened?

Owl tried again, walking forward as if through deep water, thrusting his leg ahead at each step with visible effort. Then,
head down, pushing as hard as he could, he could go no further. Saker felt the spell’s power surge against him. It was very
strong.

Owl turned and walked back, and the power in the spell waned.

“I know what it is,” Saker said, turning to Zel. “It’s the spell stonecasters use in Turvite to keep ghosts out of their houses.”
He thought for a moment. “It will only work if the barriers go all the way around the city.”

Oak planted the handle of his axe in the dirt and smiled a little.

“Time for us to do some work, I reckon,” he said.

O
AK
?
SURELY
that was Oak, the stonemason from Sendat. Leof felt sick to his stomach. He was angry with Oak as though the man had betrayed
him personally, but he remembered that the last time he had seen Oak, Thegan’s men had been trying to kill him. It wasn’t
surprising that he had joined the enchanter’s army. Where else could he go? Who should he side with — the man who was trying
to take his country back for him, or the ones who had tried to murder him?

Merroc had given orders that the barricade should appear deserted. They had waited, sweating — in attics and bed chambers,
a rabble of safeguarders and huntsmen for archers — while the enemy sorted themselves into the dead and the living, and the
dead had advanced upon them. Behind them, in the city, Leof had heard the news of the ghost army’s approach spread. Shouts,
screams, weeping, running feet loud against the cobbles. He had hoped that Eolbert, down by the harbour, would realise that
he’d have to hold the barricade against the Turviters trying to get out, more than against the enemy.
Just let them through
, he thought,
let them run if they want, as long as the spell stays strong
.

And it stayed strong, but now the enchanter’s human allies were massing together — too close for proper fighting — and walking
up the road, led by Oak, axe in hand. There were women, too, but Leof was relieved to see the men kept them at the back out
of harm’s way. Except, of course, that would put them closer to his spearmen who were waiting for just this moment, when the
living enemy was between them and the archers.

Merroc was in the house across the road, with a sightline to Leof. He nocked his bow and looked at Merroc, who had his hand
raised, waiting for the Travellers to advance enough to be sure targets, but not so close that any could break through the
barricade. The others in the room found places at the windows, bows ready but not pulled.

Leof watched. They were within bowshot now.

He took aim, but not at Oak. He couldn’t bring himself to cut the man down. Two along from him were a pair of twins, tall
men with shiny black hair like raven’s wings.

Leof pulled back and aimed at the one on the left. He felt the familiar heart-stopping anticipation that built just before
battle — a mixture of dread and excitement, nausea and exhilaration.

Merroc’s hand dropped, and the archers let fly. The whir of arrows was loud, shouts and screams erupted from the enemy. Leof’s
man dropped. Oak reeled back with a shaft in the shoulder. He dropped his axe, picked it up again with his other hand and
tried to rush forward.

Leof took another arrow. This was where practice paid off.

He was twice as fast as the others so it fell to him to stop Oak from reaching the barricade. There was no choice: a living
city depended on it. He pulled back and let fly, then nocked another arrow and shot again as Oak’s throat blossomed with blood.
The third arrow hit him in the side as he spun away; he fell.

Around him, his companions were panicking. They had been prepared for hand-to-hand fighting, Leof thought, not for death falling
from the sky. Just as his men at Bonhill had not been prepared for the wind wraiths. He hardened his heart and shot, and shot
again.

The line broke and ran back towards the ghosts, who had started advancing. But the spearmen emerged from hiding and spears
sliced through the air towards them. A few realised what was happening. Leof saw one young woman jump over a fence like an
acrobat and run between houses, away from both the spearmen and the ghosts. He followed her flight to avoid looking at the
slaughter; she ran, but she ran in a wide circle, coming up behind the ghosts and rejoining the enchanter, who stared, stricken,
calling his people back.

The ghosts turned on the spearmen, but Merroc waved and a horn sounded in warning. The spearmen turned and ran back into the
houses on either side; bespelled against ghosts, they were temporary havens.

The spearmen slammed the doors closed and the shutters were already nailed up. Outside, the ghosts couldn’t even reach the
walls; one strained to touch the door, but couldn’t make contact. He snarled frustration — even at such a distance, the expression
was clear.

In the street below him, people began to cheer. He should be happy, too, Leof thought, but he could see Oak’s body, and the
others he had killed, sprawled on the road. He could not quite feel the elation he had always felt before when a battle went
well.

They were retreating, all of them: the few remnants of the living, the dead, the enchanter. Leof thanked the gods that the
wind wraiths had not come; that had saved the spearmen.

He realised then, with a little shock, that they had not lost a single man; and at last a sense of achievement came to him.

S
HE WOULD
not let herself panic. She would not. “We need Ash,” Bramble said. Briskly, she began packing Acton’s bones back into the
bag. She refused to dwell on the feel of bone beneath her fingertips, the curve of his skull. “We’ll have to go into Turvite
and find him.”

She had to raise her voice. Baluch had walked away after their attempt to raise Acton had failed, and was looking down at
the city from the landward side of the boulders.

“That might be harder than it sounds,” he answered over his shoulder.

Bramble moved to stand beside him, gazing down at Turvite, which was spread out before them like a bowl, the tiers of houses
leading down to a harbour full of white caps from the night’s wind.

A thousand years ago a woman named Piper had looked down at what had been a simple fishing village. Bramble felt as though
she saw both places at the same time, as one sees frost on the windowpane and the scene outside, overlaid on one another.
She shook her head.
This
Turvite she could smell, a combination of old fish and spices, woodsmoke and cooking bacon. She was starving.

Then she saw, around the town, a continuous barrier blocking all the inward streets, with men behind it, guarding. “They’re
trying to keep the ghosts out,” she said.

“Doesn’t mean they’ll let us in,” Baluch said. “People from the countryside will be flooding in soon, when the ghosts advance.
Their only hope of survival is to keep everyone out except their own people.”

Bramble remembered when Baluch’s folk had made the same choice — to accept the people running from the Ice King or fight them
off. They had chosen to fight. It was the constant attacks from those pushed from their land that had led to Acton planning
the settlement over the mountains.

Instead of going down the slope to the harbour, they walked along the ridge that connected with the hill at the back of the
town. They found a well-worn track, and halfway along they understood why; they had to stand aside to let the milked cows
return to their pasture. They passed in stately file, their udders swinging loose, and their solid warmth was reassuring to
Bramble, their twice-daily trek seemed the only unchanging thing.

“I want to see what’s happening on the other side,” Baluch said. He was assessing the city with a warrior’s eye, as he had
once assessed River Bluff.

The barrier extended all the way around the city, but as they came closer it was clear that it was so flimsy it wouldn’t keep
anyone out.

“A spell,” Bramble said with surety. “They’re using enchantment to strengthen it.”

“Let’s hope they know what they’re doing.”