The Wicked Day (51 page)

“Straight at the horseman now,” said the fish butcher quietly. “Beware the horse. Go for the rider. Take him down to earth, you hear me? Down to the earth. The fire’ll burn you, but water’s yours. Don’t be forgetting that. Every man here’ll spend their lives to get you there. To the last drop of blood.” He turned and shouted. “Ready, mates! Let’s have another go!”

A roar went up at his words. Declan shivered. The scent of the sea grew stronger around them, and again, he heard the pounding of the surf in his ears, louder and angrier. It was surging toward the shore. The mob drew in a breath as if one single creature, breathing in the smell of the salt waves, of seaweed and brine, of fish and the cold and silent things of the deep. Then they roared again with one voice, a great booming sound that was more like the waves crashing against the stony cliffs than something from human throats. They charged back down the street. A contingent of Thulish soldiers gave way for them in weary surprise and Declan found himself fighting alongside the fish butcher again. Black helms fell before them, cloven and bright with blood. Boathooks jabbed past his shoulders, busily gaffing the foe as if they were fish to be caught and gutted. A toothless old costermonger fought on his other side, swinging a stone mallet with both hands. For a moment, the enemy line broke before them, but then it hardened into renewed fury. They were a strange foe, those black-armored soldiers, for they fought in complete silence. They did not speak and they did not cry out in death. They had no officers yelling commands or cursing them on to greater fervor. The few faces that Declan saw, invariably of dead men who had lost their helms, were staring and slack, blank faces as expressionless as stone under the falling snow.

The wave of the fishermen and the dockworkers, the costermongers and fishbutchers—all those who made their lives on the edge of the sea—crashed again and again on the enemy line. And like the land that is worn away by the sea, their foe gave way in grudging blood, inch by inch and dead man by dead man. They were closer to the black horseman now. But new ranks of the black-armored foe marched with ringing step through the ruined walls. They pressed forward, trampling their own dead. They closed in around the horseman and pushed the attacking wedge of fishermen back, back, and further back until they were fighting under the eaves of the nearby houses.

Where’s Jute? thought Declan in desperation. His sword was heavy in his grip. Far off to the left, he glimpsed Owain Gawinn fighting at the front of a flank of Guardsmen. Past them, the men of Harlech fought alongside their southern neighbors of Thule. The tall figures of Lannaslech and his son Rane were visible in the shifting shadows. The leaping flames burning along the wall and in the sprawled wreckage of the city gates cast a flickering light on the scene. Other than the fires, the day was as dark as a night without stars.

Where’s Jute?

It was a question on the mind of many at that moment. It was a question that was about to be answered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE STRUGGLE IN THE HEIGHTS

Jute had been about twenty feet up in the air above the wall when it blew apart. The blast sent him cartwheeling up through the air. Shards of stone whistled past him in vicious, singing tones. He grabbed hold of the wind, wove it around him, and steadied himself. Fury flooded through him. He angled down. The horseman below him was all that existed.

“Stop!”

The hawk flew past him.

“Deal with that son of perdition later. For now, you have a more important task.”

“What’s more important than killing him?” said Jute.

“The darkness covering the city. Sorcery draws the storm clouds here. It weaves them together to banish the sunlight. And in this growing darkness the evil feeds and grows strong. He’ll prove your master if you bring him to battle. The darkness is his element. It isn’t yours. It must be dispelled or you shall be defeated. If you are defeated, then all of Tormay will fall.”

Jute stared at the hawk for a moment and then flung himself up into the sky, up toward the gathering storm. The wind howled around him in delight. The hawk followed them on swift wings. The earth was forgotten. The battle raging below them was forgotten. The storm clouds grew closer and snowflakes lashed down at them. Light quaked within the clouds, as hot as molten metal, brimming with a deadly, flickering radiance. And then the lightning flashed down. It lanced down with purpose in its strike. The air cracked. Jute’s eyes went blind. He spun out of the way. He was unable to see anything except the red glow of the lightning flashing before his eyes. He could smell the hot metal odor of it. The air was on fire. Another bolt struck down, and then another. They were all aimed at him. It was as if some giant archer stood above the clouds, loosing arrow after arrow.

Into the clouds
, said the hawk in his mind.
Get up into the clouds and tear them apart. The longer we delay, the stronger the horseman becomes.

Jute did not answer the hawk. All his concentration was spent on dodging the lightning bolts. They were like immense trees of searing light that grew in an instant between sky and earth, an ever-shifting forest of violence. The clouds burgeoned closer with each second as he mounted higher. But then, with a shiver of horror, he realized that the clouds were rushing down just as fast as he was flying up. They surged down in great swaths of black vapor, weaving and growing and churning. It looked to Jute as if the sky was made of stone—black stone, mottled here and there in dark gray—and that the entire mass was about to crush him to the earth. The gigantic slabs of stone slammed against each other. Lightning crashed down at him. Thunder shook the sky. He dodged and reeled, staggering up through the heights. The air around him alternately blazed with the lightning’s leaping heat and then froze in the driving swirls of snow. The clouds were dreadfully close now. Molten light bloomed above him in the darkness. It was a hideous flower of heat, promising death and destruction. A fraction of a second later, the lightning flashed down at him. It was birthed so near him that he was struck deaf and blind by the proximity. He had no time to react, but the wind had already blown him to one side. Below him, though, on the edge of his mind, he felt an abrupt exclamation of pain from the hawk.

Jute had no time to bother with him, however, for he was now in the clouds. Darkness surrounded him. He could not see with his eyes, not even his own hands in front of his face. Snowflakes battered against him like a hail of rocks. He could feel blood streaming on his skin, bleeding and then freezing into ice. The currents of air buffeted him this way and that. Heat trembled into sudden and blazing life nearby and he flung himself away, cringing and waiting for the roaring thunder. Something was in the darkness with him. He could feel it somewhere close by. It was insubstantial, almost nothing at all, a vapor of thought drifting on the edge of his consciousness. Perhaps it wasn’t even real. Perhaps it was only a construct of his imagination. Yet, even if it was less than real, Jute feared it more than all the lightning and thunder and the searing cold dark. The hawk was silent, and he was all alone in the storm.

Jute.

He knew the voice. It was a quiet voice, quieter than a whisper.

Little wing. Thou hast left the earth. Thou dost soar above the heights. Thou dost reach the sky, and rightly so, for all this is thine. It is thine alone and none may gainsay thee. But wither wilt thou go? Wilt thou ascend to the stars? Wilt thou ascend to the house of dreams and knock upon that silent door? No one will answer thee. No one. But I would offer thee another way. A path far from the realms of man. Set thy foot to it and thou wilt find the treasures hidden in darkness. Thou wilt find knowledge. Thou wilt find power and glory. Thou wilt set thyself on the heights of the world, and all shall bow down to thee.

The voice trailed off, quiet and patient. It waited for him in the storm. It had waited for so long. It understood patience better than the stones and the mountains, better even than the ocean that will return and return again to the shore, content to remove a single grain of sand in the certainty of its placid expectation.

The storm raged around Jute. Thunder rolled beside him, beneath him, above him, in the distance. He was no longer even sure where he was in relation to the sky. Was he flying up? Or was he hurtling straight toward the ground? Dizziness surged through him. Surely he was about to crash down into the valley below the city. The earth would shatter beneath the force of his impact. He would die. No. How do the anbeorun die?

This I can tell thee
, said the voice.
I can tell thee many secrets. What dost thou wish to know? I was there when the first star was set in the dark firmament. I was there when it blazed forth into wonder and life. I was there when time began in the house of dreams. Dost thou seek such knowledge, or wouldst thou hear of other things? I can tell thee how the wind was killed. Or wouldst thou know what happened to thy brother fire? It began in the quiet, in the silence of his mind, on the edge of his dreams.

“No!” said Jute aloud in great horror. “Don’t tell me anything. I will not learn from you. Besides, I think I know what happened to the fire. I know who you are.”

There are so many things waiting for thee. The heights of the world are thine, Jute, if thou wilt take a step closer. One step closer to me. One step, and I will give you everything that is in your heart.

The voice paused for a moment and then spoke again, so quiet this time that Jute almost could not hear it.
The fire need not burn forever. I will even make thee the savior of the city and its people. They will bow before thee. Thou shalt be their bulwark in wisdom and justice.

But then Jute was no longer listening to the voice, for he had burst through the top of the clouds into sunlight. Blue sky spread out around him in an endless blaze of glory. It stretched away toward a horizon that defied even Jute’s keen eyes. It was that sort of deep blue found on perfect afternoon days, when all is right with the world. In the east, however, above the undulating surface of the clouds, the sky was darkening down into shades of purple. Stars gleamed there in the gathering darkness. But where Jute floated in the air, turning and turning as if he could not see enough of the sight around him, the sun shone down in serene and dazzling brilliance. He laughed out loud with delight. The warmth of the sunlight surged through his body. The wind blew by him and its voice was glad.

We could stay here forever, you and me.

I wish that would be so, but we live for others, do we not?

The wind did not answer him. Jute took a deep breath and then plunged down into the storm clouds. He flew faster than thought, nearly as fast as the reaching rays of sunlight. He blurred into the wind and the wind was him. The clouds unraveled around him as if he had punched through a rotten weave of cloth. They sprang away in shreds and tatters of gray. They shriveled under the blast of the wind, unpicked from their knots by the relentless fingers of its breath. And the sunlight flooded on through. The storm clouds fled away in a rolling bank of darkness, hurrying away into the west.

Sunlight shone on the city of Hearne far below. From so high in the sky, Jute could see everything from the Rennet Valley east of the city to the ocean shining beyond the docks and the breakwater. What he saw made his heart falter. Sunlight flashed on a sea of black armor. The army of Mizra stretched across the valley. They darkened the earth with their numbers. They marched toward the city like an endless horde of beetles, their shiny carapaces inching closer and closer to the ruined walls. Jute could smell smoke in the air, even as high as he was. Gray plumes drifted up from the edge of the city. The sky over the city was scarred with the smoke. Fire reached up underneath it in hungry and grasping red. He could see the battle line reeling back and forth across the rubble of the ruined city wall.

Well done.
The hawk soared alongside him. The bird’s voice sounded tired.
It is no easy thing to say no to the master of Daghoron.

He knows a great deal of what I wish to know. I think, now, I understand people like Severan more. The wizards and the scholars. Knowing the answer to a question is no little matter. I understand why they would be willing to devote their entire lives to such things.

Aye. Certain questions are worth dying for. The meaning of a single word could potentially change the world. But there are some questions that should never be answered.

He still sleeps, doesn’t he? He isn’t awake?

He sleeps and dreams.
The hawk nodded.

Good.
Jute shuddered.
I would not want him awake. Now, we have a battle to attend to, don’t we?

They dove down through the sky, falling to the earth like two spears. They fell faster and faster until the air flickered into color around them. Time slowed. The beams of sunlight were hard pressed to pass them by and only did so as something akin to slow, molten gold. There were people in Hearne that day who happened to look up at that moment. Some saw a great, flashing light falling from the sky. Some said it looked as if shards of stars were descending to the earth. Others claimed that the sky was ripped in two by the wind and that, far beyond the void, Anue bent his gaze upon the city from the house of dreams.

Hearne grew closer. Smoke slid around them in greasy columns. Fire leapt up from the ruins of the city wall. Jute could hear the clash of battle. It was an unending din of iron on iron, of screams and yells, of the whipping hiss of arrows slashing through the air. The sky trembled with the sound of it all. Black armor marched forward in quick and clockwork rows, over the ruined wall, through the flames, and into the weary swords of the defenders. The air stank of blood and iron. Jute clove through the air like a knife. The hawk fell beside him with wings furled and beak outstretched. The wind roared along behind them, laughing and joyous. It didn’t care where they went or what might happen. The wind only cared that they were blowing along at a tremendous pace. It was the wind.