The Sword of Feimhin (21 page)

Straightening his back, Alan clung to the saddle that was perched between the powerful shoulder humps of the onkkh. The Garg king rode beside him, having taken Alan by surprise earlier when he offered to accompany him to the outer reaches of the city. Zelnesakkk was similarly mounted, but even with his wings folded, he still crouched like a tensed spring, ready to launch himself at a foe. Alan couldn't imagine the High Shaman, Mahteman, suffering the heaving and rolling of the ugly bird for the sake of etiquette. The King was gazing out to his right, to where the last battalions of the Shee army were pouring out of the transport ships into a choppy ocean, grey as slate.

‘Never have I witnessed such a war fleet, in all my years of existence,' Zelnesakkk said.

Carpeting the waves as far as the horizon, the accumulated fleet appeared to fill the ocean. A good third of the fleet comprised carriers, already preparing to set sail, with
the objective of rejoining the war at the walls of Ghork Mega after disgorging themselves of the food and provisions that would be needed for a hungry army on the march. Those provisions were now packaged and strapped onto the backs of thousands of onkkh. Other ships in the fleet were cannon-bedecked fighting craft that would come into play when they laid siege to the city. It was an army calculated to bring an end to a war that had devastated Tír for more than two thousand years. Alan had learned much from his time in Tír and he now knew when to withhold his opinions and listen. He turned to the Garg king. ‘You have wisdom, and its equal in experience. Do you have any advice for me in the war to come, Sir?'

‘Can you imagine how irksome it might be that one who has brought such grief to my heart would now ask my counsel?' The king's words emerged with a ratchety rattling of the gill-like openings on either side of his lengthy throat.

Alan stared ahead in silence.

‘You were cunning with the eclipse. Did my son assist you?'

‘We had warning, but not from Iyezzz. We have adepts of our own.'

‘If Mahteman spies are to be believed, even the queen has been assisting you.'

‘You are mistaken, Sir. The queen allowed me to witness a beautiful ceremony – but nothing more than that.'

It was hard to concentrate when the retching induced by the rise and fall of the beast was worse than the rocking
of a boat at sea. The onkkh were the most ungainly animals Alan had ever seen, like a cross between an ostrich and a camel, if twice as big as either animal. How long was it going to take him to get used to this rocking and pitching? He dreaded riding the beast for the nine-hundred miles that lay ahead of them. In any case, he was far from sure it was truly a bird, in spite of the feathers; the scaly skin of its neck and head and the thick muscular legs with their flared three-toed feet more resembled a lizard. And no ostrich sported the retractable claws that sprang out of those toes when the beasts became riled – or took to their poisonous spitting. And the onkkh riled and spat very readily.

Thankfully, those enormous claws, retracted to suit the sandy beach surface, would be handy in the ascent of the Flamestruck Mountains that lay, like crouching predators, across the landward horizon. He also had to admit that the onkkhs' muscular shoulders – like the humps of a camel back home – made excellent baggage carriers, with many baskets made of whalebone and webbing hanging from them. It was an amusing thought that Qwenqwo, Mo and Turkeya – and maybe Magtokk too, although currently invisible – were similarly mounted within this ungainly baggage train.

Zelnesakkk growled, ‘I am not sure I believe you. For reasons that escape me, my son has befriended you. I cannot fathom how one properly learned and devoted to Eyrie lore and traditions could bear to be close to your
human stink. Yet I must remind myself that your companion, Greeneyes, made fertile the land and restored hope to my kingdom. It is in recognition of this alone that I help you.'

Alan was too nauseated to reply immediately. As if to add insult to his silence, the onkkh chose this moment to fart long and loudly.

The king turned his head to confront Alan eye to eye. ‘This war you undertake would daunt the most adventuresome of warriors. Do you consider yourself invincible?'

Alan said, quietly, ‘The Tyrant of the Wastelands killed my parents.'

‘Ah.' Those reptilian eyes widened. ‘It is comforting to know that you, too, suffer inconsolable loss.'

‘Sir – I respect your grief and I regret the part I played in it, yet your son died in battle fighting for my enemy, and you know, in your heart, that he is your enemy too. Do you have any more helpful counsel?'

‘Mahteman is right, you are insolent beyond endurance. Perhaps I should be content that you face certain death.'

Zelnesakkk was probably right, but how could Alan mitigate such a threat? Every time they had challenged the Tyrant he had responded in a way they had not anticipated.

The bitter king had fallen into silence.

Gazing out over the bay, with its sand dunes and protrusions of black volcanic rock, Alan saw that it was now dense with Shee, still humanoid in shape, but robed and uniformed to accommodate Garg sensibilities. Though the
Shee homeland of the Guhttan Mountains, in the far northeast of continental Monisle, remained unconquered, they had been preparing for this day for generations. He wondered if the martyred high architect, Ussha De Danaan, former ruler of that continent, had foreseen this final stage in a two-thousand-year war.

As the spiritual leader of the continent of Monisle, the De Danaan had been the nemesis of the Tyrant. Yet she had allowed the Tyrant's forces to take over great cities such as Isscan, on the confluence of the rivers Snowmelt and Tshis Cole, and prevented the Shee from opposing his army as it overwhelmed the spiritual capital, Ossierel. There, the Tyrant's forces had massacred her ruling council and sacrificed the De Danaan on the fabled silver gates. The high architect, from what Alan had come to understand, had developed a final desperate plan that went beyond her own death. For an ordinary guy like him, coming from Earth, the idea of having plans that went beyond death seemed bizarre, but this was no ordinary world where logic reigned. This was a world where magic was paramount. Here, there was a power that ruled above all – a power that could even destroy demigods – and De Danaan's plans had included Alan and his friends. It had been Ussha De Danaan, last high architect of Ossierel, who had brought the four friends here.

A discordant blaring, deep and plaintive, brought his attention back to the departure. A band of Gargs were performing a ceremony of farewell within a grove of trees.
Alan wondered whether it was in honour of the war ahead, or in relief that such an enormous force of former enemies would soon be leaving their capital city. He looked inland, across the shore with its dunes of sand as white as bleached bones, to the grove of strange trees with leaves of glittering silver. The fact that the Gargs were deeply spiritual had been a revelation – one that shamed him now when he looked back at how he had first regarded them. The foliage of the trees tinkled with a chime-like music that reminded him of the dream journey Qwenqwo had conjured up for them, taking them back to the fall of Ossierel. But unlike the musical trees he recalled from Ossierel, this was strange, discordant music. In the rising cliff of rocks that formed a crescent behind the trees, Gargs were opening up natural tunnels to capture the powerful inshore breezes. In the mouths of the tunnels they had set up a strange woodwind orchestra, a miscellany of interesting driftwood shapes: hollow logs with fibrous strings stretched across them, reminiscent of harps, or banks of gourds of varying sizes arranged like the pipes of organs. The assemblage captured the wind, amplifying the sounds of nature in a bizarre counterpoint to the tinkling of the leaves. Arriving at a suitable headland, Alan hauled back on the reins, arresting his beast. He looked around at the winding column of onkkh below him, four abreast and miles long, that led north along the Jourlanaaa River's valley. Then he turned to the sky where hundreds of high-flying Gargs were advancing with them; the proferred allies and scouts led
by Zelnesakkk's son, Iyezzz. He narrowed his eyes to pick out the Garg prince himself at the forward tip of the huge vee formation, almost invisible against the changing light where narrow strips of clouds captured the rising sun along their edges.

Zelnesakkk, who had also halted his beast, held his silence.

What a glorious sight the prince will behold in the march ahead
, Alan thought. The great bowl of calderas that, while impressive in themselves, were merely the foothills of the mighty Flamestrucks, reflected many shades of blue, grey and violet that enveloped the tidal estuary on which the city had evolved. He realised that the Garg orchestra was now humming – a wordless lament to be added to the natural sounds of the wind blowing through the caves and trees.

A mile wide at this point, the Jourlanaaa snaked down into the bay following the contours of the foothills. Perhaps the most amazing feature of all was the greening that proliferated over its banks, swarming over the surrounding foothills. Alan could see how Kate had impressed Zelnesakkk and his people: the whole area had recently been desert and was now a swarming density of vegetation.

All Kate's work.

It amazed Alan to witness her influence still operating here, changing things for the better. On a day of frantic preparation, this healing of a wounded land affected him deeply and made him love her all the more. Where was she? What the hell was keeping her from rejoining him on
the march? He was still thinking about Kate when Bétaald approached, her dark-skinned face aglow with anticipation. It was Bétaald who had bade the Kyra and her army delay the transformation of the Shee until they were beyond the city boundaries. Her bow was addressed to the silent Zelnesakkk, who did her the honour of alighting from his onkkh. Even then, the Garg king was a good two feet taller than Bétaald. He returned her bow, but did not speak – neither was fluent in the language of the other. Instead he turned his face to the sky where his wife and Iyezzz's mother, Queen Shah-nur-Kian, was swooping down to alight by her husband's side. Within minutes they were joined on the headland by their son.

‘I hope you have had sufficient instruction with the onkkh?'

Alan smiled somewhat ruefully at the Queen. He had had no more than an hour's instruction from Iyezzz, but even in so short a time he had discovered how different an onkkh was from a horse. One had to perch in the space between left and right humps, legs stretched out on either side of the creature's neck – and a scaly neck at that, as rough as the skin of an alligator.

A trumpeting from the river valley evoked an answering call from the Kyra, who was standing on a nearby headland.

Alan allowed himself a final glance out to sea at the extraordinary panorama of the great ships, many with sails unfurled, making ready to depart. The ceremony on shore
had been timed to take advantage of the tide. His attention moved back to the foreshore, as a new command, mind-to-mind, came through the oraculum of Bree on the Kyra's brow.

The huge army began to loosen ranks, fanning out to flank the onkkh columns, the shifting of so many heavy feet provoking a billowing storm of sand. The band of Gargs blew on conches while others among them were hurrying to and fro as if in anticipation. The aides, small, intense women who assisted the Shee in organising and planning, walked alongside. They were experienced with both the manufacture of weapons and all of the complex logistics that war involved.

The head of the column had reached the outskirts. The sight of a hundred thousand marching Shee was breathtaking – and for Alan, somewhat heartbreaking. He wondered how many of them would survive. What arrogance entitled him to expect such life-or-death loyalty from so many brave souls? If he had ever thought it, now he saw it before his eyes on this beach: they were heading into what, for Tír, was a world war.

Only when he could control his emotions was Alan able to turn back to express his gratitude and bid farewell to the king and queen. There was no question of an embrace, or even a handshake.

‘Sir – despite our differences, I would like to thank you on behalf of the Shee army for suffering our presence here in your beautiful capital city. And most respectfully and
humbly, I thank you with all my heart for providing the onkkh and the Garg scouts for our impending march.'

‘You can thank my son for all of it.'

‘Yet without your sanction, and that of your graceful lady queen, it would not have happened.'

The king spoke curtly. ‘You cost me my eldest son. If you would offer gratitude to myself and the queen, do so by returning our youngest son to us.'

The angry king looked to the skies, his gaze finding the Garg lookouts that now wheeled and soared high above, already watchful for danger or attack, even at this early stage of their adventure.

‘Sir, Madam – be assured that we'll keep you informed of our progress through messengers among your scouts.'

At a command from the Kyra's oraculum the metamorphosis began. Alan watched the thrilling spectacle unfold. The Shee flowed like a living stream, with its own powerful movements and rhythms, in a continuous undulation of massed muscles, sinew, claws and fangs. He saw huge columns of tigresses, lionesses, cheetahs, panthers, ocelots and many others, under a variety of coats and markings. Their movements were graceful, unhurried, their multitude so huge it seemed to take forever for the movement to ripple from the lead to the rear.

Alan reflected on how complex the task of the Kyra must be – to bring them all together in a battle situation. The Shee were aware of Alan's attention. He saw in their eyes
the clarity of intention, the coldness, the purposefulness, as, in passing him by, they found his own.

With a bow to their royal presences, Alan left the anxious king and queen on the headland and descended to take his place beside the Kyra, now in the form of a huge snow tigress. The march was underway.