The bone fields, p.41
The Bone Fields, page 41
Every eye waited for her.
She raised her spear high and screamed into the rain, ‘Valhalla!’
Carried on a wave of roars, a hundred Vikings rushed across the soaking ground and tore into the Legion.
Praetorians turned in shock at the noise. They were in the back ranks and had been expecting an easy final few minutes of the Battle. Instead, they were faced by a raging, bellowing heathen army.
Calder used her momentum to smash into the first Romans. She left her spear embedded in one and unsheathed her longsword. Bjarke swung his axe just yards from her and she felt hot, bright Praetorian blood spray across her neck and hands. The Legionaries were tough, experienced soldiers, but they were dumbfounded by Valhalla’s attack and all around her, she felt the Roman ranks buckle.
Desperately, Xander reached for his leg and hauled at it, but it would not move. Boreas was still breathing and kicking, but the weight of his body pinned Xander. Something kicked his helmet hard and for a moment he saw nothing but sparks. There was fighting over him. He could hear the curses and feel boots knocking him as they tried to find purchase on the slippery ground. He sensed a blade thrust into the mud next to him and wondered if an unseen foe had just stabbed at him.
He forced his torso upright and wrenched his helmet back in place. The Battle came back to him. Rain and mud and blood. Bodies struggling. Iron and steel hacking. Hooves kicking. Poor, dear Boreas, raising his head and dropping it again. Xander pulled at his leg, but it was no use. It would not budge.
Then someone grabbed his cloak, wrapped it around their wrist and hauled him backwards. His leg sprung from the weight of Boreas and he was dragged unceremoniously across the trampled heather, his armour banging and his shield torn from his arm. The grip on his cloak was released and for startled seconds he panted up at the heavens.
Summoning his last strength, he struggled upright and spun to see who had pulled him free.
A figure in white and gold stood before him, scutum abandoned, gladius sword held casually by his side. The ostrich feathers were dirtied and bent, but the gold muscled cuirass still glistened.
Caesar Imperator.
The King of the Legion waited for Xander to right himself and gave him space to draw his own blade.
Then nodded in respect and raised his weapon.
The final Battle of the Twentieth Year reached its climax.
Ellac had fought with abandon since her pony perished beneath her, but she was never going to escape the flanking manoeuvre of the Legion. They punctured her with pilums as they closed around her Huns and harvested their lives.
Nicanor had been battling since the very start of the Hour and he had nothing left to give. His shoulder-shield was splintered and his sarissa long gone. Gore coated his cuirass, blood ran from a deep gash in his thigh and his lungs rattled beneath his armour. His precious Phalanx lay wrecked and those Heavies who still lived were deep in their own isolated struggles. He died surrounded by jostling Legionaries, steel piercing his side and his shoulder and his hip, and his last images were of Roman feet as he sank into the mud.
Menes too died amongst Romans. He had ploughed so far into their lines that he had lost touch with his own Companion shieldwall. Blades bounced off his cuirass and clanged on his helm, but a Legionary from further back had time enough to aim his pilum properly and ram two foot of iron through his throat. The force thrust his head up high enough to stare momentarily at the Eagle of the Second Cohort behind the rows of steel helmets, then his vision blackened and Menes knew no more.
The Praetorians taunted Ingvar before they killed him. They knew his swinging axe was certain death for anyone in its path, so they backed away in a circle and let him spin in wild abandon. But each time the huge blade swept round, the Romans took it in turns to step in behind it and thrust a pilum point into Ingvar’s kidneys. Finally, like a great bull elephant, he felt his strength escape and he stumbled to one knee. The axe bit into the ground and would not rise with him again. The Praetorians danced in close and finished him in a blur of jabs.
Ake was shoulder to shoulder with Stigr, howling her insults and scything her longsword when she was hamstrung by a low blow from behind. She collapsed onto Stigr and he grabbed her and held her so that he could look into her startled eyes. Her body jolted against him and he felt steel break through her and prick his abdomen. She tensed and stared wild-eyed at him. Then her delicate features broke into a single mad grin and she left this world.
Ulf was in the mud. He had tripped on a body and collapsed below the stabbing frenzy of the Praetorian battle-line. A Roman foot stamped on him, then stepped over as the soldier tried to find better purchase on the ground. For a moment it seemed as though Ulf had been forgotten and he lay between the boots and the trampled heather and abandoned weapons and cooling corpses. Anger bubbled in him. Outrage that his journey in the Pantheon should be this short. Years he had spent in the Valhalla Schola as a lost child, always training and hardening himself to become someone more respected in the Horde. But it had all gone awry when that bastard Punnr had changed Palatinates, then destroyed Valhalla and now, as King of the Titans, he had pitched them into an unwinnable fight on this godforsaken Field against Caesar’s Legion. It was not supposed to end like this. But even as he raged, Praetorian eyes inevitably spied him on the ground and Praetorian blades came for him. Two years. That was all the time he had spent in the Pantheon proper. And he would not see another Season.
It was First Spear who came for Agape beside the Eagle of the First Cohort. She recognised his Centurion’s plume, but not his senior rank. They fought hard, both determined to be the one owning the Eagle when the klaxon sounded. Around her, the Band was diminishing. They might be the best swordsmen and maidens in the Pantheon, but twenty of them could not hold against a Century of Romans.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Agape felt true exhaustion and the searing sting of flesh wounds, but she refused to give ground to this grizzled Centurion. He punched her with his scutum and she was taken backwards, but she dug her heels into the mud and spun under his sword thrust, then raked her own blade across his groin. She heard him grunt and falter and she called upon her last resources to wheel past him and cut into the small of his back. As First Spear collapsed, she took a moment to stare around the rain-lashed Field at the carnage unfolding.
When would the klaxon sound? So many lives must already be lost and so many more would flicker away in these fading moments. But she would stand. Agape, greatest of the Pantheon’s warriors, would live to see this Battle end.
‘My thanks,’ gasped Xander as he eyed Caesar Imperator. ‘You could have killed me while I was pinned beneath my horse.’
Around them, chaos reigned.
Caesar’s eyes widened in surprise behind his mask.
‘Why would I kill you?’ he protested. ‘You are the most glorious soldier I have ever witnessed.’
Xander did not know how to respond. He held his sword ready and Caesar still gripped his own, but the older man showed no inclination to attack. Xander wondered if it was a trick and he side-stepped warily, drawing Caesar in a circle.
‘But I am your enemy King. If you kill me, you can take over my Palatinate. Those are the Rules.’
Caesar seemed genuinely amused by this idea. ‘My lord, Alexander, I am already at the very top of the Pantheon structure. What good is your Palatinate to me?’
‘So why do we fight? Why all this death and misery, all this reaping of lives, if you don’t want to win?’
‘Because, my son, is this not the most glorious and beautiful thing? Here on this Field in Scotland, we have resurrected Roman, Greek, Hun and Viking. Never in history have these warrior races faced each other like this. It is why I first dreamed of the Pantheon and why I still love it. But I am aging now. I cannot be Imperator forever. The Pantheon needs a new prince. A leader every soldier from every Palatinate can look to in wonder.’
Xander peered at the man before him and tried to compute his words. Everywhere good people were killing each other, but this man spoke of glory and beauty.
‘So you will not fight me?’
Caesar smiled sadly and lowered his blade. ‘No, I will not fight you. Not now, with just seconds to go before the klaxon. You are too precious for that.’
‘Precious! What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means you’re the future, Tyler. You’re my future.’
Time stopped for Xander. The roar of the Battle quietened. The tang of blood and earth and rot eased. His sword arm dropped limply and he stared at the other King.
‘How do you know my name?’
Caesar was about to answer when his eyes shifted over Xander’s shoulder. The world came back to Xander and he spun just in time to see Augustus leaping the corpse of a horse and bounding straight for him. The golden bastard had his blade arm drawn back ready to strike like a cobra and Xander’s own weapon still hung limply by his side. One more pace, one more split second, and Augustus would skewer the upstart King of the Titans and that would be an end of it. There was nothing Xander could do except ready himself for the coming of death.
But in the same moment, Caesar stepped beside him and drove his sword so hard into the gut of his onrushing stepson that the blade sunk up to the hilt and the point shattered spine and pelvic bone. Augustus was stopped in his tracks with his own sword just inches from Xander’s chest. He hung there like a puppet on Caesar’s blade and his lips drew back in a rictus of pain beneath his golden helmet. The eyes behind his mask were wide with shock, desperately trying to understand what had just happened.
He was Fabian. Son of Jupiter and heir apparent to the Pantheon. He was supposed to have a life ahead of untold riches and power and privilege.
So how could he be standing in this sodden, muddy, miserable field in Scotland with the steel of his stepfather’s sword sticking through his broken spine?
He tried to speak, but only blood came from his mouth. He wanted to curse the man he had always detested and to spit on the upstart King of the Titans, but his body would not obey him. His legs had already gone and he was only upright because his stepfather still held him impaled.
With a final surge of hatred, he lunged towards the object of his loathing and sliced the man’s throat with the tip of his sword.
Then Fabian’s energy deserted him, his sight clouded, and the last thing he knew was the cold clammy caress of the earth.
Diogenes was down.
His stallion had been hit by a thrown pilum and it reared so violently that even his enviable equestrian skills could not stop him from slipping backwards and hitting the earth hard. He convulsed as the air was expelled from his lungs and he lost his grip on his spear. He levered himself half up and was attempting to bring his shield round towards the advancing Legionaries, when a hoof cracked into his helmet and he blacked out.
It must have been only seconds that he was lost to the world, but when the sounds and the smells of the Battle came back to him, he realised there were Roman boots around him and Roman blades above. With a wild cry he lunged for his sheathed longsword, but the movement sharpened the attention of his foe. Someone shouted and stamped on his arm before he could grab the hilt of his blade. Someone else came above him and jerked a pilum back ready to plunge it through his cuirass.
It was the moment of his death and he roared defiance.
But the pilum never came.
There was a flurry of violence above him. Another boot stood on his chest, lighter than the others. Blood spattered from the heavens. There was a groan and a body fell heavily next to him. Then the boot was gone and in its place was a hand, delicate and warm, pulling him up.
He clambered to his feet and looked down at the iron-helmed face of his Viking friend.
‘Calder!’ he gasped. ‘You came.’
‘Where is the King?’
Dio unsheathed his blade and pointed. ‘I got separated from him. He’s over there.’
‘Then follow me.’
Xander held Caesar.
The Imperator had collapsed into his arms with blood leaking from his torn throat. Xander lowered him to the ground and cradled his head. He wanted to remove the King’s helmet, but the clip was too close to the ragged wound, so Xander tore his own helmet off and leaned close to the other man, so that their eyes could meet.
Caesar gurgled as he tried to speak.
‘Don’t,’ cautioned Xander. ‘Don’t tire yourself.’
Somewhere above him, he was aware of figures around him. Friends defending him, raging hard to protect him while he knelt over the fallen Imperator.
Caesar grimaced and attempted to speak again. He raised a hand and one finger touched Xander’s cheek delicately, as though tracing the line of his jaw.
‘You are…’ Caesar’s teeth clenched in pain and his eyes closed. Then he forced them open once last time and peered longingly into Xander’s eyes.
‘…my heir. My future.’
The wail of the klaxon broke across Abernethy.
Helmetless, Xander rose and stared unseeing at the slaughter. Limbs contorted. Horses shrieked. Humans cried. The Highland air stank of blood and the rain kept plastering his hair to his scalp.
Someone was near him. They were removing their helmet.
He tried to focus.
Iron mail. Viking mail. Skin so pale. Eyes deep and wide and far more caring than they should be in this place of death. A rope of blonde hair over her shoulder.
She opened her arms and a tumult of emotions poured from him. He collapsed towards her and she enclosed him and pressed him to her and held him so tight.
Not even knowing why, he cried into her neck.
EPILOGUE
Agape was waiting for her outside Pella, wearing sandals and a floral summer dress.
‘I’ve never set foot in a Titan stronghold before, if you don’t include the abomination that was New Alexandria.’
Agape pulled a face and held the door open for her to enter. ‘I’m not sure we can call this a stronghold anymore.’
She led her up flights of stairs to the wide loft space five storeys above Brodie’s Close, where ladders still rose to hatches in the ceiling.
‘What do I call you?’ asked the taller woman.
‘Lana, I suppose. No Pantheon names now.’
‘No, indeed. And I am Kinsley.’
They shook hands hesitantly. Kinsley had padding beneath her dress and there were plasters on her hands and stitching on her calves. She pointed to the hatches. ‘He’s up there.’
Lana raised her head and imagined the Sacred Band flowing out onto the rooftops on Conflict Nights. ‘Are you joining us?’
Kinsley smiled. ‘No. I think he needs you to himself.’
She watched as Lana climbed a ladder, pushed open the skylight and hauled herself through, then Kinsley walked slowly back to her small office and continued sorting her belongings.
Lana raised herself cautiously upright and looked around at the city humming below. The clock on the Balmoral was nearing ten, but dusk was only just settling in these last days of May. The evening was warm and muggy, and the streets still filled with life. Laughter reached her. Vehicles revved and tooted. The scent of food and alcohol drifted on the currents and clouds hung solemnly above, pregnant with rain, but hesitant to spoil the revelry.
She stole across the slanted roof towards the edge that looked down on Lawnmarket and the Royal Mile. Hands out to clasp the stonework, she rounded a chimney stack and there he was, perched on a parapet, legs folded, peering at the final blushes of sunset on the Castle. She approached quietly and was almost upon him before he jolted round in surprise, then relaxed and smiled.
‘You found me.’
‘With a little help from Kinsley.’
Gingerly, she lowered herself next to him and curled her legs under her. ‘Wow, what a view.’
‘It’s pretty special, isn’t it?’
Lana did not answer immediately. She let the lights and the buildings and the sky seep into her, then said, ‘I’ve spent so much time embracing violence and horror that I’ve forgotten to see the beauty in things.’
Tyler sighed. ‘I’m still not sure I can. There’s been too much loss and I can’t accept it yet.’
It was a week since the Twentieth Year had formally ended and events were still raw. They had both lost friends and colleagues, while others lay in tortuous pain in Pantheon wards. Boreas was gone. Spyro too. Lenore might never walk again. Mighty Bjarke was attached to drips.
‘I keep asking myself, was all that suffering because of me? If I hadn’t kept pushing the limits, taking gambles, playing war games, would more of them be alive now? If I’d not even joined Valhalla in the first place, if I’d told Radspakr to go fuck himself that night on Fleshmarket Close, would the bloodshed have been less?’
Lana reached for his hand and squeezed it. ‘You weren’t to know.’
He laughed emptily. ‘You mean I wasn’t to know I was the son of Caesar? No, I suppose not. That was a little chestnut learned at the climax of Abernethy, then confirmed by Hera and Zeus last night. Seems the Maitlands were one hell of a dysfunctional family.’
He quietened and she felt his fingers curl around hers and squeeze back.
‘I miss my sister. Christ knows what she must have gone through to transform herself into that monster, and yet, despite it all, when I needed her most, she sacrificed everything for me. She wheeled a whole army, changed the course of a Battle, killed her King – and all to protect me, her little brother.’
He ran out of words and they sat in heavy silence, looking towards the Castle.
‘How was Zeus?’ Calder asked eventually, feeling it best to move him to easier ground.
He sighed and shifted. ‘He and Hera fed and watered me – or tried to – and plied me with compliments. They are desperate for me to lead a new Pantheon.’
