Ross Lawhead (23 page)

“I had a sit-down with the wife, to work out what to do— we prayed long and hard, we listened for the Spirit to guide us, and you know what we heard Him say? Watch and pray. It was the hardest thing to hear at that time. But we set our shoulders to the task. ‘John,' my wife said. ‘John, go down to the kirk with this load of candles. Get down on your knees and I'll bring a pot of tea around directly.' I came down to open the kirk and I found three elderly ladies—parishioners—standing on the doorstep. I asked them what they were doing here and they said that they'd come to help me watch and pray. I nearly bawled like a bairn, I was so relieved. That was over a fortnight ago, and I've rarely left the building since. It's turned the church right upside down. Over two-thirds of my congregation has abandoned the building—won't even come in sight of the place. I go to visit them and their doors are barred. But there are those who previously wouldn't nod to me in the street, turning up every day, sitting and praying for hours on end. But praying for what? Watching for what?”

“For me,” Alex said solemnly. “For me, Reverend Maccanish— you're in the middle of a spiritual battle. You've been invaded. And being taken off-guard and ill-prepared, the only thing you
could
do was dig in, keep your heads down, and wait for reinforcement.”

“A spiritual battle,” Maccanish repeated, his eyes shining. He began nodding his head. “Aye—aye. So what are you? Are you the reinforcement? Are you like—a spiritual general or something?” he asked eagerly.

“Me?” said Alex. “A general? No, I'm not a general.”

He paused for dramatic effect—he couldn't help himself.

“I'm Black Ops.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Lifiendes

1

Before . . .

The yfelgóp laid perfectly still in a pool of its own blood.

As soon as Daniel and Freya felt able, they stood up, brushed themselves off, and then very cautiously opened the door and crept back downstairs. Modwyn was standing in the hall, talking to Frithfroth and two guards in an urgent and frantic manner. She looked up as Daniel and Freya descended and cried out, “There they are!” All eyes turned up to them.

They saw Freya holding the yfelgóp spear, saw the dark blood on Daniel's shirt and his own blood dripping from his hand to the stone floor, and gave a gasp of horror. Modwyn rushed forward, arms outstretched.

“Oh, my dear children! Where were you? What happened to you?”

Daniel and Freya felt hands on them, searching them for injuries. They heard questions that came so fast they could not answer them. They tried their best to give a short explanation of what had just happened.

“Frithfroth!” Modwyn called when they told her of the attack.

“Tell the guard to sweep the tower! The lifiendes have been attacked.” She turned back to them and examined the cuts on Daniel's face. Drawing herself up, she turned to Cnafa and Cnapa.

“Lead these two to the kitchens,” she instructed. “Then bring hot water, poultice, and bindings.”

Daniel and Freya allowed themselves to be led through the silent hall. The kitchen was a cold room with a high ceiling. There were several large ovens that looked very dusty and long stonetopped metal tables that did not appear to have been used recently.

Two metal stools were dragged before them, and they sat down gratefully. Cnapa placed a bowl of water and a cloth before him.

Modwyn entered and hurried over to them. Kneeling before Daniel and Freya, her green dresses flowing out around her, she cleaned Daniel's wounds as they explained what happened in more detail.

“My poor æðelingas,” she said when they had finished. “I was so worried when I did not see you with the others.” Daniel's wound had been cleaned of blood. “These are not deep. They will not scar.”

Modwyn cleaned the cloth in the bowl and pushed it away.

“The bell will sound again when the
geard
is cleared,” she said.

“Until then you must stay in the hall. I must go and find news of the battle. I will send Cnafa and Cnapa to bring you some food. I will return shortly.”

With that and a sweep of her long gown, she left them.

Daniel and Freya went back into the main hallway and found a bench out of the way of the terrified Niðergearders. In a few moments Cnafa brought them a tea-like spiced drink, and Cnapa brought them some more of the flatbread and dried meat.

They sat, sipping at the drink from warm clay bowls and chewing very small mouthfuls of food, which they did not taste. As they ate, they noticed the townspeople watching them. They wouldn't say anything to each other, just stared and looked away whenever Daniel or Freya made eye contact.

After a time they heard the tolling of a bell. Modwyn entered the hall again.

“The attack is over,” she announced. “The streets are clear. But be cautious in returning to your homes. Do not go alone.”

She stepped aside to allow the people out of the hall and made her way to Daniel and Freya.

“Come with me,” she said.

They left the Langtorr by the large double doors. Once outside she asked a guard at the gate whose arms and chest were covered with putrefying brown blood where the main force was gathered.

He had an odd look on his face—a kind of dazed, unbelieving look. He pointed with a wavering hand towards one end of the city. “Over—over there . . .”

“Is all well?” Modwyn asked the guard. “We were told that the city was clear.”

“And so have I been told,
idesweard
. And so it seems,” the guard replied. “But for my life I know not why.”

“What mean you by that?”

The guard paused, seemed to choke slightly, and then continued weakly, “The wall has been breached.”

“Yes, of course we know—”

“Nay,
niðercwen
. Not just the defenses, but the wall itself has been broken.”

Modwyn's eyes widened. “Where?”

The guard could only gesture weakly. Her eyes blazing, Modwyn spun on her heel and started off in the direction he had pointed. “Come, lifiendes,” she said. “Hurry.”

They rushed through the streets of the underground city alongside Modwyn, passing people returning to their homes and assessing damages. Everywhere they looked—alongside walls and heaped in the middle of the streets—lay bodies of yfelgópes, nearly all of them headless. Daniel wondered why this was, but soon saw that groups of knights and guards were systematically gathering corpses together and chopping the heads from the dead enemies' bodies. He shuddered and looked away.

Rounding a corner, they saw the city wall with its massive carved trees rise up in front of them—but it wasn't as it had been.

A large U-shaped section had crumbled away, creating an avalanche of stone that engulfed the nearby houses. Modwyn gave a startled cry when she saw the gap and ran towards it.

There were many guards standing in the breach, their shoulders tense and weapons ready. Swiðgar and Ecgbryt were there, perched on a pile of dusty stones, gazing out into the blackness, cautious and tense. The wall looked as if it had just fallen apart, like the wall of a sand castle.

They were still a fair distance away when they came to the first bits of rubble from the wall. Blocks of stone had fallen against some of the houses, piling like a grey drift of snow. As they started to climb the pile, they were surprised to find that the rocks crumbled to a fine powder underfoot—it was like walking up a snow bank. Daniel knelt down and picked up a large clump of painted ivy. He was able to lift it quite easily. It was brittle and he found he could flake pieces away with his thumb. The sensation was like holding a compressed brick of fine sand.

As they neared the peak of the dusty heap, they became aware of a rhythmic pounding sound: dull, soft, and strong, like the pounding of blood. Modwyn and Freya climbed up to stand behind Swiðgar and Ecgbryt.

“What is it?” asked Freya. “What's that sound?”

“It is the 'gópes,” stated Swiðgar. “They are letting us know that they bide.”

They all stood and listened to the pounding, pounding, pounding of thousands of hands against the dirt—a steady, synchronized, patient beat. “Why aren't they attacking?” Daniel asked.

Swiðgar pointed into the darkness.

Standing at the edge of the circle of light thrown by the city's lanterns was a dim, reddish figure pacing back and forth, just in front of the gap in the wall. “Who's that?” he asked.

“It is Ealdstan,” said Ecgbryt.

“Ealdstan? But . . .” Freya remembered the figure falling out of the window as they raced to the Langtorr. She had forgotten about it until just now but remembered the fall replayed in her head, the swirling robes riffling like a falling flame. Ealdstan must have more power in him than he had given them reason to believe. The swaggering figure striding up and down the battle line in front of the haunting, pounding rhythm of the yfelgópes didn't act like the old man Daniel and Freya had met. He was strong and spry. Something about the way he held himself made him seem haughty—challenging.

Ealdstan turned and strode back the other way, his chest thrown forward, daring anyone to engage him. None did. Ealdstan made another pass and then spun on his heel and walked back towards the city.

Daniel and Freya shied away slightly as Ealdstan approached the group. Freya still had a bruise on her arm where Ealdstan had gripped her, and neither she nor Daniel had particularly wanted to see him again.

Ealdstan stood for a while, staring into the city, at the ruins of the wall and the bodies of the yfelgópes, lost in his own thoughts until Modwyn addressed him. “What is it that could accomplish this?” she said, raising a hand to indicate the wreckage.

“Gád did this. It is a spell of decay.”

“A magic to corrupt solid rock?”

“He must have been weaving it for some time. He would have had to build an entropic force and then push it along an enchanted wind. The spell would have looked like a black cloud. It blew centuries away from the stone in seconds and then nested inside of it. It is in it now, slowly eating away at it . . . our first, greatest defense . . .”

At his words, a chunk of stone the size of a small shed tumbled down from the top of the wall and crumbled into a mound of dust.

“Meotodes meahte!”
exclaimed Ecgbryt. “How can it be stopped?”

Ealdstan sighed like a professor answering an obvious question. “It cannot be stopped—not completely. I can slow it with my power, but it will not quit until Gád's life leaves him—at which time all spells that he has made will unravel.

“It cannot be doubted that he will strike again,” he continued.

“This is only one move in a game that he and I have begun to play.

There is no question that he has more schemes in mind, some of which are this very moment being put into effect.”

“He must be stopped and destroyed,” said Swiðgar.

“The other knights must be roused,” rumbled Godmund, tramping up the pile of rubble to join them. “They will arrive from all the corners of England and send the
yfelhost
into oblivion.”

“No,” moaned Ealdstan. “Not those sleeping, not yet. It is not their time.”

“What then?” Modwyn exclaimed passionately. Daniel and Freya glanced up at her and saw a face as harsh as a thunderstorm.

“A wall has been breached,” she rasped, “that has never failed since it was made over twelve hundred years ago. Enemies have had their way with the city for the first time in a thousand. There were
yfelmen
in the torr, Ealdstan—one of them attacked the lifiendes! If you were to act, t'would best be done soon, and best be done well!”

Ealdstan stood motionless as the silence left by the end of

Modwyn's rebuke hung in the air. Eventually the old wizard said, “Gád will not be defeated easily. He will not die by spear-thrust, or axe-blow, for his life is no longer in his body. He has hidden his mortality somewhere else—somewhere safe, somewhere unknown to anyone. Only if that mortality can be found and destroyed will Gád will be vulnerable to attack.”

The company took this in.

“What do you mean his mortality?” Daniel asked.

“His life,” Ealdstan answered. “His heart's soul. It is an object of his—a hand or a finger, perhaps his very heart—into which he has placed his mortal life and then removed from himself. As long as it is safe and secret, none can touch it.”

“How will it be guarded?” Ecgbryt asked.

“It will not be guarded,” Ealdstan replied. “At least, not by any guard aware of his purpose. There may be obstacles, but Gád would rely more on secrecy than force. No, not guarded—hidden . . .”

“I do not understand,” said Godmund. “How would he be terrified of his own weakness?”

“If he were to lose his power,” Ealdstan explained, “he would still want to reclaim his life and use it. The hiding place would be near, but still forgotten . . .” As Ealdstan talked, his eyes and voice drifted off. “He would have placed it on the other side of the Wild Caves, on the other side of the
Slæpismere
.”