The Chalk Giants (37 page)

A great time he stood, in his armour that was battered and stained. He saw the light that flooded the place, pouring through shattered walls. He saw the piled dead, the blood that marked the flags, the women who wailed and crouched. He smelled the fresh, raw stink, perhaps smelled the fear. He spoke then, to his followers. His words were few; but those that heard them grew paler than before.

It was Thoma who, in an upper chamber of the place, came on the Jokeman. In his arms, still stained from the morning’s work, Usk gripped a great bundle of spoil. His tongue-tip ran across his lips; and his eyes flickered nervously, past Thoma to the stairhead. For a time neither spoke; then the seneschal latched the door closed behind him, and set down the basket he carried. ‘Now, friend Jokeman,’ he said, ‘we have a reckoning to make, you and I.’

‘Reckoning?’ said Usk. ‘Art thou mad?’ He licked his mouth again; then with a return to something like his former manner, ‘Thoma, thou bladder, warm work and a very little exercise have cooked thy remaining wits. Let me pass...’

But the other caught him, hurling him back. The bundle dropped and spilled; Usk groaned, and the stout wall shook. Silence fell; a silence in which both heard, mixed with the crackle of flames from the outer court, the wails of the condemned.

‘Old friend,’ said Usk, ‘for that I used thee haughtily, I confess my fault...’

‘Used me, turd?’ snarled Thoma. ‘What care I for the bearing of a Jokeman, good or ill? It is not for that you answer.’

‘Thoma,’ said the other, ‘by all the Gods ...’ But the seneschal raised an arm, striking backhanded. ‘Who,’ he said, ‘against all use, prompted our King to wooing? Turning his wits with rubbish, and talk of Gods?’ He struck again, and Usk fell and grovelled. ‘Who brought to the Gate, of all he might have wed, a Great Plain whore?’ said Thoma. ‘For Crab and Wolf were ever enemies, as well you knew. And who then brought the tale all others kept from him?
Answer...’

‘What I told, I told in love,’ whimpered Usk. ‘Desiring that no shame come to his House. And see how I was requited. Banned from his sight...’

‘No shame?’ said Thoma. ‘But for you we might be sitting at the gate this hour, and King Marck with us. And all this work undone.’ Then as the Jokeman gripped his knees, ‘Off me, I say ...’

But the other clung with the strength of desperation. ‘Thoma, hear me,’ he said. ‘I ever loved the King. And thee ...’

The seneschal flung him away. ‘Stop your mouth,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Your foolishness will not avail you now.’

‘Foolishness?’ said Usk He glared up, panting. ‘The Towers of the Plain were few,’ he said. ‘Now they are fewer. Who burned them? A God, with his thunderbolts; or Usk, the Jokeman? Now the Long Creek Kings will come, they who were bound by treaty to Odann. And Morwenton, great Atha ... now these Kings of ours will waste themselves. And you, a Horseman, wish a tithe undone ...’

Thoma said, frowning, ‘You are mad.’

‘Aye,’ said Usk. ‘Mad to serve a Sealander; I, whose fathers owned this country. And you are mad, we are all mad. But now the wild pigs fight, now we will live on bacon ...’

Thoma heard no more but closed with him, gripping his jerkin front. ‘But my last jest was the greatest,’ shouted Usk. ‘Who made the rumours fly? Who wound his skein, for a Sealand Queen? Perhaps she was unfaithful, perhaps a certain Captain went to her by night. Perhaps the King was just to take revenge.
Even as I
...’ His hand flashed up, gripping the jewelled dagger. He drove the blade with all his force at the seneschal’s side, into the crack where breastplate and backplate met.

A silence, that lengthened. Thoma stared down, amazed; then he put his fingers to his side; and then he smiled. He took the other’s wrist, squeezing; a crack, and Usk once more began to shriek. Then Thoma raised his mailed fist, striking down; then stamped, once and again, with his booted feet. He raised the sagging body to the sill of the one tall window, heaved, leaned out to see it fall. He saw the arms flail, heard the great thud as it struck the courtyard flags. Dizziness came then, and flickerings across his sight. He leaned against the chamber wall, hand to his side, and groaned. He said between his teeth, ‘Now he will never know ...’

He took up the basket he had carried, heavily. On the stairs, he staggered; and a flicker of movement shot past his feet. He closed his eyes, breathing harshly; then he shook his head. ‘A vow is a vow,’ he said. ‘That we should come to this ...’ He moved forward painfully, gripping the basket. ‘Kitty,’ he called. ‘Name of the Gods... here, kitty. Kitty-kit-kit...’

The heights of the Plain rose vague and sweeping in the early light; and the endless wind blew, shivering the manes of horses, stirring the many flags. The Tower of Odann, and the stockades that surrounded it, stood silhouetted and stark. Round about, from where the army had encamped, rose the smoke of many cooking fires. Oxen grumbled in the baggage lines; but from the great dim flock of men who stood with upturned faces came no sound at all.

From point after point on the Tower projected the massive arms of gallows. Now a signal was given; and on the nearest, ropes and pulleys creaked to tautness. An animal bellowed, in fear and pain; then the carcass, huge and misshapen, swayed swiftly up the Tower wall, hung black and twisting. Another followed it, and another. First they hung the stockade cattle, then what horses remained; then the remnants of the garrison, then every living creature within the walls. And of them all, the tiny furry things on their gibbets of twigs took longest to die.

Later, when all was still, fire was brought. The flames ran swiftly, small at first but spreading and brightening, till the whole great place roared like a furnace, a beacon visible for twenty miles. The fire burned for two days fed by sweating men who tumbled into the glowing embers all that remained of gatehouse and gantries, bridges and palisades. At the end of that time the hillock stood bare, and the Tower and all it had contained were gone; but Marck’s vengeance was not ended. Waggons were drawn forward and back over the still-hot ash while others toiled in long lines across the Plain, each with a glistening load. Only when their cargoes had been spread, and the hill and its surroundings coated ankle-deep with salt, did the King retire, to his Tower in the pass.

In the spring of the following year, a small party of horsemen rode swiftly along a lane bordered with hawthorn and elder. The day was bright and warm, puffy clouds chasing each other across a sky of deepest blue. Birds sang from the bushes fringing the rutted path; once a magpie started up and winged away, in dipping flashes of white and black.

The leader of the little group seemed by no means unaware of the sweetness of the morning. He glanced round him as he rode, at the Heath that stretched shimmering in the distance, the pines lifting their dark heads above the rhododendron thickets. Once he sniffed, appreciatively, the rich scent of the may; but at a bend of the track he reined.

Ahead, in its chalk gap, stood the Tower. Even from distance, its aspect was unwelcoming. He saw the stained walls, weather-worn and grim; marked the shuttered face of the keep, with its strapwork of timbering, the heavy outer works that fronted it, the village that straggled at the foot of the Mound. He glanced back to his escort, but gave no further sign; instead he touched heels to his horse, rode jingling down the narrow way between the dusty houses. Children ran from their scrabbling in the dirt, women stared up open-mouthed at the party and the devices it bore; the pennants with their white horses and the gilded staves, each topped by a four-spoked wheel.

The Tower gates stood open; the traveller had half expected them barred. He rode beneath the portal with its massive wooden groins, nodded curtly to the men within. A page ran to take his reins; he dismounted stiffly, walked forward. To the stout knight who confronted him he said, ‘The lord of this place, the greatvassal Mark of the Gate; has he been informed.

‘My Lord,’ said the other, fidgeting under his keen stare, ‘your message was passed.’

‘Good. Then bring me to him.’

‘My Lord,’ said the knight uncomfortably, ‘I am Thoma, seneschal of the Gate. Will you take wine?’

The Great Hall, airy and cool, belied to some extent the grim exterior of the place. Cups and a mixing bowl were set out on a low table; a serving maid in green and yellow hurried forward, but the newcomer waved her aside. ‘Present me to King Marck, I pray you,’ he said. ‘And make no delay. I have journeyed far, and have many miles to travel before nightfall.’

Thoma wiped his face. He said, ‘It is not possible.’ The other’s voice rang sharply. ‘What? Am I denied?’ ‘You are not denied,’ said the seneschal. ‘He . . sees no one.’

The herald drew a sealed packet from his riding tunic. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘I will see
him.
I am charged by Atha King to deliver this into his hand. His, and no other. Where is his chamber?’

He turned for the curtained stairway; and Thoma stepped before him, arms spread. He said pleadingly, ‘My Lord. . .’ Then he stopped; for the other had raised his knuckles level with his eyes. On the middle finger, carved in a dull-green stone, he saw the prancing horse.

‘Yes,’ said the herald sharply. ‘His great Seal. Who denies me, denies him. Now, take me to your lord.’

Thoma turned with a gesture of despair, tramped before him up the broad wooden steps.

At the head of the third flight an open door gave a glimpse of a sparsely furnished chamber; but the seneschal did not check. The other followed, frowning. A further climb, and Thoma stooped to fiddle with a catch. A trap swung back, letting in a flood of air and light The messenger stepped through, and stared.

They had emerged on the roof of the Tower. Below him huddled the village. To either side the flanking hills rose clear in the bright air, crossed by their sheeptracks, dotted with clumps of scrub; while from the great height the sea was visible, an endless plain of cobalt stretching to the south. These things he saw at a glance; then his attention was concentrated on the sunlit space before him.

Everywhere, pinned to the steeply pitched central gable, on poles set above the breast-high parapets, meat lures swung and rotted in the wind. To one side, their feathers stirring idly, were heaped the fresh carcasses of a dozen crows, while in the far corner of the place stood a hide of weatherbeaten canvas. Slits in its sides provided loopholes; from one he saw the tip of a slim arrow withdrawn. ‘What is it?’ asked a thin voice querulously. ‘What is it now? You have spoiled my sport...’

Thoma stepped heavily to the door of the hide, and raised the flap. He said, ‘My lord, King Marck of the Gate.’

For days before the arrival of the army, the hill folk knew of its progress. By night its campfires glowed for many miles; by day the dust rose towering in its wake, a cloud visible from far off across the Plain. The foragers it sent before it scoured the country, paying good gold for grain; and the noise of its passing shook the ground. Here were infantry in rank on rank, bright-cuirassed with their pikes and spears; here cavalry in gaudy cloaks, each troop with its banners and pennants. Here were war engines of every shape and size; catapults and trebuchets, their great arms lashed, ballistas with their massive hempen skeins; mantlets and scaling towers, the Cat and the Tortoise, the Mouse and the Ram. And here too were Midsea weapons, the legendary firetubes no White Islanders had ever seen, the tubes that spit out thunder and bring the lightning down. They rumbled past on their squat, iron-bound wheels, each drawn by a dozen plodding oxen, each with its contingent of turbanned, white-robed engineers. Behind them came slingers and archers; and behind again rode Sealand chiefs with their war bands, massive men in bright-checked cloaks and leggings. At the head of each troop jolted the sign of the Wheel; and over all, cracking and rippling, reared the White Horse of Morwenton, the Mark of Atha’s house. .

The Gate heard of his coming, on a grey morning when the clouds rolled low over the seaward-facing hills and spatters of rain drove like slingshots across the empty Heath. Then was the faith of Thoma sorely tried; but after half a day the drums began their pounding, and once more the lines of men and horses crept out blackly from the fortress in the pass. A mile from the Tower the seneschal deployed, in a crescent straddling the road; and here the Royal vanguard found him. To his right, bogland stretched to saltings where the sea birds wheeled; to his left, half-seen behind veils of rain, were the hills.

From his position near the centre of the line, Thoma watched the King’s outriders fall back. The main body rolled on, to halt two hundred paces from his men. The cavalry checked, swinging to either flank; then the ranks of infantry parted. Between them lumbered the firetubes. The teams, unyoked, were herded to one side, and the pieces trained. Some were shaped like monstrous fish; others, the greatest, took the form of dragons. But all opened black mouths to gape at the opposing force; and beside each stood a dark-skinned man, a torch smoking in his hand. A silence fell, in which the sough and hiss of the rain could be clearly heard; and the seneschal glanced grim-lipped at the man beside him. ‘Flagbearer,’ he said briefly. ‘I will speak with them.’

A page rode forward with Mark of the House, the red crab on a field of yellow silk. Thoma nodded to his Captains of infantry and horse, and cantered forward. Halfway to the King’s ranks he halted, bareheaded in the rain. A stirring, among the infantry; and a man moved out alone. A gasp from beside the seneschal, a swift uncovering; and the other reined, sitting his horse coldly. Like Thoma, he wore no helmet. His mane of hair, once yellow, was badger-grey, and the years had marked his face with weariness; but he had held himself stiffly in the heavy war saddle, and he was armoured from neck to feet, ‘This is a sorry thing to see,’ he said at length. ‘My subjects come to war with me, breaking the fealty they owe.’

The seneschal swallowed. *We break no oaths, Lord Atha,’ he said. ‘Nor do we war, save with those who war on us. My Lord, why do you come? If it is to punish, then we must resist. For the word of each man here is given to the Gate.’