Nightrise (27 page)

As they left the city and emerged onto the plain, Jamie turned to Scar. "That was quite a speech," he said.

"You have to make a speech before a battle," Scar said. She looked down guiltily, then back up again.

"Actually, if you must know, Finn wrote it for me. He made me learn it last night."

"Well, I think it worked."

"I hope so."

They were circling the City of Canals, traveling in the opposite direction to Scathack Hill. Ahead of them, the landscape was flat and open, a tabletop covered with wild grass and a few flowers. But the flowers were strange, unnatural colors and the grass was sharp and leathery. They rode under the branches of a fruit tree and Jamie reached up to pick what looked like a mauve-colored peach with a hard, prickly skin. Scar stopped him.

"Don't!" she called out. "It's poisonous."

They continued into the fields, and for the first time, Jamie saw animals — or their remains. A herd of cows had died here. They were lying, bloated and stiff, their tongues lolling out, their eye sockets buzzing with black flies. As he rode past, Jamie smelled the sweet, decaying flesh and felt his stomach churn. He was glad that he hadn't been offered breakfast.

Ahead of them, less than a mile away, the ground rose up, with a wood that became thicker the farther it went. The trees looked like pines with branches that were so straight they could have been artificial.

They were covered in dark green needles like splinters of broken glass. Jamie could hear something now, a strange, unnerving sound. It was a rhythmic hammering of metal against metal. Boom, boom…

boom.

Boom, boom…

boom.

Each time the third beat was the loudest. It was as if there were some kind of huge machine still out of sight on the other side of the hill.

Scar was moving ahead of him, so he urged his own horse on. He didn't need to kick it or snap with the reins. Somehow, the horse seemed to understand him. He jolted forward and caught up. They reached the first of the trees and began to weave their way through the trunks, climbing steeply toward the top of the hill. Jamie felt a growing nervousness in the pit of his stomach. Just a few weeks ago, he had been walking onto the stage at the Reno Playhouse to perform a magic act with newspapers and playing cards.

And here he was now, riding to war.

He should have been terrified. He should have been hollowed out by the horror of it all. But the strange thing was that he felt nothing but a sense of elation. They were still scrambling up the slope, surrounded by the soaring, hostile trees and he knew that there could be no going back. This was it. The drumbeat was still calling to him. Boom, boom…

boom.

Boom, boom…

boom.

And he was being carried forward willingly with the soft thunder of hooves all around and the smell of the horses' sweat in his nostrils. He had discovered the secret of war, the moment when soldiers cast aside their fear and become part of a machine that is so much bigger than themselves. For only then are they prepared to die.

They were moving faster and faster. As they arrived at the last reaches of the hill, the trees thinned out and the riders broke into a gallop. But then Scar raised a hand and they slowed down to a stop. They had arrived. The fighters who had hitched a lift with the riders were dismounting and preparing their weapons. The wagons were emptying and Jamie saw children as young as eleven and twelve, flexing their bows, their faces set in grim concentration.

"How are you feeling?" Scar asked.

It took Jamie a moment to realize that she was talking to him. He nodded. "I'm all right."

"It'll be over very quickly," she said.

"How do you know?"

"Matt has a plan."

"Do you know what it is?"

Scar smiled. "He told me last night."

To his surprise, Jamie felt a little annoyed. Matt must have spoken to Scar in her dreams. Why had he been excluded? But there was no point in arguing about it now. "Are you scared?" he asked.

Scar shook her head. "Not really. What's the worst that can happen?"

Jamie could think of all sorts of things but decided not to answer.

Scar looked behind her. The rest of her forces had finally assembled and were looking upward, awaiting her command. Finn was leaning forward on his horse as if he were listening for something. He looked even older than he had that morning, and Jamie saw that he was close to exhaustion. Not just tired after a bad night's sleep but worn out from years of fighting. "Finn is scared," Scar muttered, making sure that Finn couldn't hear her. "He's trying not to show it but he always is. He's scared for me."

''You mean a lot to him."

"I suppose so. I'm the daughter he never had, although he tells me he has nine sons." She turned to Jamie. "I've been hard on you, and I'm sorry. I'll try to be kinder if either of us survives."

Jamie didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter because Scar didn't give him a chance. She signaled, and at once they began to move forward, covering the last few yards to the top of the hill. They were very quiet now. Jamie could just hear the horses' hooves as they padded through the carpet of dead needles — otherwise, the animals made no sound. The rest of the attackers, tiptoeing with their weapons and shields, barely seemed to breathe. At the very top, a last line of trees provided shelter. Once again they stopped, and at last Jamie saw what was awaiting him on the other side.

The battleground.

It was like nothing he had ever seen before. It was more terrible than anything he could have imagined.

He was standing above a strip of very dark, almost black grass about a quarter of mile wide that flowed like a river between the hills on one side and a dense forest on the other. Below and in front of him, the last great army of humanity had been assembled, two thousand strong, united under the blue five-pointed star that he himself carried on his sword. It was on their banners and on their shields. It flew from the tents that slanted out of the bottom of the hill, tall and triangular, like the sails of a ship caught in the breeze. Had there been more light, it would have shone out, but the sky was gray and threatening and the shadow of imminent death was stretched across the entire scene.

The army was advancing in three blocks — a central phalanx and two wings — each one made up of so many people that, for Jamie high up on the hill, it was impossible to separate them. The horsemen were at the front, hundreds of them, leading the charge. Then came the foot soldiers. Behind them, a long line of men and women stood waiting, each one holding on to what looked like a length of copper pipe, almost the same height as themselves. Then came the archers and finally, just in front of the tents, a row of cannons with two soldiers kneeling beside each. Jamie was puzzled by the variety of weapons, for they seemed to belong to different times and different continents. But he realized there was nothing uniform about the people either. They had assembled here having traveled from all over the world.

Two boys were preparing't(J> lead them into battle. Jamie saw them at the very front, both of them riding on dappled gray horses. He didn't need to be told who they were. They were only fourteen years old and they commanded all these people. They had brought them here. Their strategy would either win or lose the day. Jamie couldn't see their faces, since they were looking at Matt and Flint, and he wished that they would turn around, if only for a moment. He wanted to look at their faces. He wanted to see his brother, Scott.

But the two of them were continuing forward and it was only when he looked past them and across to the other side of the field that Jamie understood the full horror of what they were about to face. The army of the blue star was hopelessly outnumbered. It was facing certain death. For every one of them, there were ten of the enemy. Human and nonhuman, they went on for as far as the eye could see.

Sometimes it was hard for Jamie to work out which was which.

In the front line were the most wretched of all, the human slaves who had put their trust in the Old Ones and stayed with them to the bitter end. This was their reward. They had all been chained together, either naked or covered with a last few rags, their names branded into their flesh as if they were the cattle.

They had been given wooden clubs and axes with which to defend themselves. Many of them had been disfigured, missing eyes or ears. Even worse than that, some of them had had the lower part of their arms cut off and replaced with jagged blades so that they and their weapons were one.

Behind them were more humans: surely the ruling classes. These were the people who Scar had referred to as overlords and advisors. They had swords and shields and — some of them, at least — odd pieces of armor. They were pale and sickly looking, for although they had been happy enough in their positions of power, they had no stomach for the fight. Even from a distance, the fear and cowardice could be seen in their faces.

Then came four lines of horsemen. Jamie could only think of them as knights, encased in black armor.

The first two were identical to the fly soldiers he had seen on the way to the City of Canals. But there were two more lines behind them and these were so ugly and grotesque that Jamie could barely bring himself to look at them.

Perhaps they were the officers. Perhaps they were human beneath the armor. It was impossible to know.

They had blades jutting out of their shoulders, their elbows, and their knees. Their helmets were also surrounded by vicious black spikes so that, from the neck up, they were like porcupines. Their horses had been mutilated, with silver bayonets jutting out of their foreheads, screwed into place just above their eyes. Each of them had been turned into a grotesque version of a unicorn. The knights were standing rigidly at attention. How many of them were there? It was impossible to say. Each one of them was the same height as his neighbor. In fact they could have been the same man, replicated a thousand times. They were holding shields — also surrounded by spikes — striking them rhythmically with the flats of their swords. That was the booming that Jamie had heard. Seeing them now, hearing the sound froze his blood.

The worst was still to come.

It was an infestation. Jamie couldn't think of another word for it as it bled out of the forest, pouring into the field. Jamie had thought this would be a fight between two armies, but what he was seeing now was a horde with no shape or formation, just an oozing mess of nightmarish creatures desperate for the kill.

They carried clubs studded with nails, huge axes, spears, nets, and pitchforks. Some slithered. Some scuttled forward on three legs or more. They were half man, half animal, as if the two had been mixed up on purpose, to see what could produce the most hideous result. Some were part scorpion, like the creature that had attacked Jamie at Scathack Hill. But there were also man-dogs, man-crocodiles, man-eagles, and even man-sharks, a crazy mixture of arms and teeth and beaks and scales and feathers and claws, all brought together to create unimaginable monsters.

And finally there were giant animals passing through the forest, high above the trees, looming up behind the army yet not quite part of it.

The first was a spider. It was about thirty feet high, standing on eight elongated legs with a fat poison sac hanging beneath its stomach. It had two feelers that twitched in front of it, as if testing the air, and great fangs dripping venom and saliva. As it turned its head, Jamie saw the army reflected many times in the glistening black mirrors that were its eyes. Once it attacked, it would be invincible. Swords and arrows would be useless against it. They might as well fight it with pins and needles.

A huge monkey had appeared next to it, jabbering and screaming with a hideous, high-pitched voice. It wasn't muscular like an ape but almost insectlike, with a long tail and filthy, matted hair. It had only four fingers on one of its hands. As it stood there, the trees suddenly parted and a gigantic hummingbird burst into the air, its wings beating so fast they were just a blur. The bird was creating a storm around itself, whipping up dust and dead branches. A

moment later, another bird appeared, soaring up into the sky. This one was a condor the size of a plane.

It flew overhead, its own wings thundering as they made the air shudder and vibrate.

And then, just when he thought he couldn't take any more, Jamie saw a single figure making his way through the middle of his army, advancing to take his place at the front. This was the commander…it had to be. He was riding on an animal that at first glance looked like a horse but which had horns, burning red eyes, and steam rising like smoke from its mouth and nostrils. Thirteen more riders surrounded him but he seemed not to notice them. His eyes were fixed on the two boys who were directly ahead.

"Chaos," Scar whispered.

"What?" Jamie couldn't move. He could barely breathe.

"He has no name. But that's what we call him. He is the King of the Old Ones."

Jamie had to look at him twice. Once to see him. Once to understand what he was seeing.

He was human size, but he seemed bigger. He seemed to swallow up everything around him, in the same way as a black hole in outer space. Jamie knew that he was looking at pure evil and that there was nothing more empty or more destructive in the universe. Chaos had no face. No features of any sort.

With his every movement, he destroyed the area around him. He didn't just move. Without even trying, he cut his way through the world.

Jamie had no idea how long he had been standing on the hill. He felt rooted there. Time seemed to have stopped.

The two opposing armies faced each other. Just for a moment, everything was still. The knights stopped beating their shields, and silence — somehow shocking — fell onto the battleground. There was a soft breeze. The grass bent and the banners fluttered. Somewhere, a horse snorted. There were about fifty feet between Matt and Flint and the forces they had come to fight.

Chaos had reached the front. He took out his sword. Jamie heard the metal grinding as it came out of its sheath. A moment later, a sound seemed to come from him like water rushing out of a pipe, and although it was not raised above a whisper, it echoed across the battlefield and reached them high up on the hill.