Nightrise

THE FIRST CIRCLE

All too quickly, the killing started.

The army of the Old Ones came like a tidal wave rising up from a black and boiling sea. The slaves in the front line were the first to move, rushing forward with their axes and clubs as if they couldn’t wait for their own, inevitable deaths. Behind them the knights marched, one pace at a time, relentless, swords raised. The heads of the unicorn horses were writhing as if in pain, the metal horns stabbing at anyone who came close. Then came the man-creatures, tumbling across the field, lashing out with claws and teeth. And finally there were the monster animals. To Jamie, watching from the hilltop, they looked unstoppable. They were so huge, surely they would have been able to win this battle on their own.

The giant monkey had leapt forward into the middle of the opposing ranks. In the next few seconds, dozens of men and women were thrown aside as it swatted them with its paws, dashing them to pieces. Horses reared in terror, throwing their riders. Metal clashed against metal and in an instant the grass was splattered with blood as the first casualties fell. Jamie looked for Matt and Flint but already they had disappeared, folded into the confusion. For what had a few moments ago looked like a neat map, the forces lined up with mathematical precision, had now become a sprawling hideous mess.

Matt’s forces had begun to fight back.

The archers, positioned behind the main body of the troops, fired one volley after another, the sky darkening as hundreds of silver arrows curved overhead and fell, finding their targets. Twenty or thirty of them hit the monkey and although, in comparison to its own huge size, they were little more than needles, they stung its face and blinded one of its eyes. The monkey howled in pain, baring its teeth, but held its ground. Then there was an explosion and a white glowing missile shot past it, just missing its head. Jamie turned to see where it had come from. He had thought the cannons had opened fire, but in fact the shot had come from one of the copper pipes that he had noticed before. The pipes were a crude type of bazooka which the men had hoisted onto their shoulders and which they were aiming into the enemy forces. Jamie saw another one go off, the white-hot missile streaking through the air on a trail of smoke. This one found its target. One of the knights had broken through Matt’s lines. There was an explosion and he was gone, quite simply blown apart.

There was no way to tell where the line between the two armies had been drawn. It seemed as if both sides had abandoned any strategy as soon as the battle had begun and were now engaged in completely random, hand-to-hand combat. Matt’s soldiers were standing their ground, holding the man-creatures at bay. Yet the bodies were beginning to pile up. Medical teams were already rushing into the field with stretchers, somehow emerging again with the injured, carrying them to a makeshift hospital that had been set up among the tents. Even in these early stages, and as much as he hated to admit it, Jamie was sure he was on the losing side. The odds against them were too great.

And still Scar refused to move. Nobody had noticed her and her troops, high up on the hill overlooking the battlefield, partially concealed behind the pine trees. They were only a hundred strong – not enough to make any real difference. But Jamie couldn’t bear just standing there. He felt wretched, a coward.

“We have to go down!” he exclaimed.

“No!” Scar was furious. Her eyes were fixed on what was happening down below and her whole body seemed to be frozen.

“Why not? We’re not doing any good.”

“This is the way Matt wanted it.” Scar was clutching her sword so hard that her fist had turned white and Jamie wondered if she would even have attacked him if he had tried to advance. “They don’t know we’re here,” she explained. “That’s the whole point. They mustn’t see us. And we have to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“You’ll see!”

Jamie glanced at Finn as if he might say something different, but the big man shook his head slowly and continued to watch the progress of the battle. Jamie forced himself to look back at the field and at once the screams of the dying and the sickly smell of newly spilled blood rose up and consumed him. He had seen films. He had played computer games. But this was utterly different. There were no cameras, no artful arrangements. Here death was vicious, random, all around him.

And then the monkey fell. A great ball of orange flame had soared over the fighters. Once again, Jamie was unsure where it had come from. Then he saw an elaborate catapult, a strange construction of metal and wood, like something salvaged from a breakers’ yard. It had been hidden among the tents and had just fired a blazing missile at the creature, hitting it square on the shoulder. The huge animal exploded in flames that spread in seconds across its fur, its whole upper body disappearing in a red inferno. Jamie saw it trying to beat out the fire with its hands but then its arms caught alight too. The monkey screeched once – a hideous, piteous sound. Finally it plunged backwards, crushing several of its own soldiers, and lay still.

But there was no time to celebrate this one small victory. The other giant animals were killing dozens of people, the condor and the hummingbird striking down again and again, the spider spitting poison or crushing its victims underfoot. The spiked knights were also continuing forward, more like robots than men, cutting down anyone who stood in their path. The cannons roared and two of the knights fell, their horses screaming as they came crashing down. The Old Ones had no heavy artillery – no cannons or catapults. But they didn’t need them.

For the first time, Jamie noticed the thirteen horsemen who had accompanied Chaos. These had to be the fire riders that Scar had mentioned the day before. They were dressed in grey, like monks or friars, their faces completely hidden by hoods. And they were unarmed. But now he saw one of them lean forward and touch one of Matt’s fighters almost gently, as if trying to get his attention. A single touch was death. The young man burst instantly into flame – turned into ashes before he could even scream. The fire rider straightened up then reached out and struck again. This time it was a woman, gone before she knew what had happened. The other horsemen were equally busy. It seemed to Jamie that Matt’s army was rapidly dwindling and the fighting was moving ever closer towards him as his own side was overwhelmed.

They were losing. It was as simple as that. And although he had never met Matt, although he hadn’t known anything about this world until now, he felt the bitterness of defeat and a sense of anger that it had been planned this way. Why had he and Scar been kept out of the fighting? As soon as they left the safety of the hilltop, they would die. But that didn’t matter. Jamie thought of the boy called Flint, who was somewhere down there, perhaps already wounded or even dead. With all his heart he wished he could have met him, if only briefly, before the end.

Suddenly, Scar shouted and stretched out a hand. “There!” She had spotted something. Finn, too, was looking in the same direction.

At first Jamie couldn’t see anything. Scar was pointing towards the very edge of the field, beyond the fighting, where the river of grass dipped down and disappeared. But there was something. The light seemed to be darkening. It was impossible, but the very clouds were being drawn together as if they had somehow become magnetized. Jamie felt a sudden heaviness, a thudding in his head that told him there was about to be a storm.

“It’s them,” Scar said and the next moment there was a great flash of lightning and a downpour so heavy that it was as if a screen had been drawn across the edge of the battlefield. The rain lashed down on the fighters. Thunder exploded above their heads. Jamie felt the water soaking through his clothes and running in rivulets down his skin. The change in the weather had been instantaneous – as if one of them had somehow controlled it.

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

Scar didn’t answer. She was gazing into the distance. Jamie followed her eyes and saw that a line of figures on horseback had appeared, riding at full gallop towards the edge of the battle. So far, nobody else had seen them. The rain had taken care of that. There were just six of them. Five men and a boy. It was difficult to make them out in the darkness and the confusion of the storm, but Jamie could just see the figure riding in the centre. Long dark hair. Dark skin. He too was carrying a shield. His was decorated with a blazing sun.

Inti had arrived.

And he wasn’t alone. Behind him, more soldiers – perhaps fifty of them – appeared, rising up over the edge of the field. They looked nothing like any of the other fighters, wearing tunics with headdresses made out of feathers and beaten gold. They carried outlandish weapons – slingshots, bolas and very small curved bows that they fired while still galloping, taking out some of the man-creatures that had strayed too close. They carried a banner with the blue star.

One of the fire riders turned, sensing them for the first time. Jamie saw Inti lean forward in his saddle. He had unsheathed a sword with a blade shaped like a crescent moon. Now he swung it. The rider’s head flew clear of its shoulders. The rest of the body fell to its knees and then toppled forward. Inti hadn’t so much as hesitated. If anything, his horse had sped up, carrying him straight to the very heart of the battle.

“It’s time!” Scar exclaimed. She turned to Finn. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve waited too long,” Finn growled.

“Then let’s finish it.” She steadied her horse. For a moment she was very close to Jamie. “Use your power,” she said. “Find Matt. That’s all we have to do.”

And at last Jamie understood Matt’s strategy. Chaos had joined the battle in the belief that only three of the Gatekeepers – Matt, Flint and Scar – would take part. Inti was supposed to be pinned down somewhere far away, unable to reach them. Sapling was dead. At least, that was what the king had thought when he had tried to get his enemies to surrender. He was confident that the fight was already over, that this was nothing more than a last encounter before humanity was made extinct. But he had been tricked. Inti had managed to fight his way through. And though Sapling had gone, he – Jamie – was here.

Jamie felt a rush of excitement. More than that. It was as if there were an electric current surging through him. He knew what had to happen next.

The Five had to meet.

Scar also knew. She smiled briefly at Jamie, then drew her sword. Jamie did the same.

Scar called out. A single word. “Forward!”

And then, at once, they were chasing down the hill, heading right into the face of the enemy but completely unafraid, eager to join the fray. Jamie felt his horse almost flying beneath him but there was no chance of his falling – he and the horse were one. He had his shield in one hand and his sword in the other. Frost. When he had first taken hold of it, he had known that it had been made for him, forged to the very shape of his hand. Frost was more than a piece of inanimate metal. It was a friend.

The hillside was steep and his horse almost stumbled, but Jamie steadied it and raced on, round the tents, past the physicians with their bloody saws and bandages, between the archers, who parted to allow him through, cheering him as he went. The moment he had passed, they fired another volley to distract the enemy. Jamie saw the swarm of arrows take off, darkening the sky above his head, and gave his horse free rein as if he could leave the ground and fly with them. He felt the hooves hit soft earth. Seconds later, the battle had swallowed him.

On the hill he had been able to see the field in its entirety, to understand the lie of the land and the direction of the fighting. Now he became part of it. He couldn’t see Scar or Inti. If he stopped even for a few seconds to look or to take his bearings, he knew he would be killed. Some instinct told him that the only way to survive was to keep moving. But ahead of him the way was blocked. He reined in his horse and almost at once one of the creatures lunged at him. Jamie saw a cobra’s head, black eyes burning, a yellow fork spitting at him from a twisted mouth. At the same time, there was a crack and something flailed past, inches from his neck. The snake had a human body with human arms and legs – and it was holding a whip. It had attempted to knock him off his horse but Jamie had been lucky. It had missed. He swung his sword and severed the creature’s neck, feeling no resistance as the blade cut through. Blood sprayed out. The whip fell aside. The body crumpled.

The noise here was deafening. Very little of the sound of warfare had carried up to the hill but now it was all around him. There were the screams of men and horses and it was hard to say which were the more heart-rending. Sword clanged against sword and there was the terrible ripping sound of metal entering flesh. A body, one of his own men, pitched into the ground and lay still. Another man, blinded, with blood streaking his face, cried out for help and was only silenced when one of the fire riders touched him and he was instantly vaporized.

Down!

The warning wasn’t spoken. It was sent as a thought that slammed into Jamie, making him duck almost instinctively. A second spear, thrown by one of the knights, flew over his shoulder, missing him by inches. Somehow Flint had seen him. Flint was still alive and had been looking out for him in just the same way that Scott would have done. There was no sign of the other boy but now Jamie remembered what Scar had told him a few moments before. His power had returned to him. He had to use it.

The knight who had just tried to kill him had taken out a twin-bladed sword. He was already galloping forward, the horse aiming directly for him with its deadly spike slanting out of its head. Jamie didn’t move. He simply sent out an instruction.

You cannot move. You cannot hurt me.

The knight was almost on top of him but didn’t even try to swing his sword. Nor did he flinch when Jamie lifted Frost and drove it straight into his chest. He was helpless. Jamie felt the sword cut through and recoiled in horror as the entire body fell apart, becoming in an instant a buzzing cloud of flies. The hesitation almost cost him his life. He saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye and turned just as another man-scorpion began its strike. Its tail and stinger were already slashing down and he thought he was finished. But they never completed their journey. In front of his eyes they seemed to separate themselves from the man-scorpion’s body. The creature howled and died and Jamie saw Corian saluting him with his sword and realized that his life had just been saved for a second time.

Briefly, he caught sight of Scar – over to his left. She had disappeared but now she was back again, chopping and hacking with her own sword, keeping five or six half-human creatures at bay. Finn was close by. Jamie knew that the older man would never be far from her if he could help it. At the same moment he saw, with a jolt of alarm, that Finn had been wounded. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder that opened and closed like a bloody mouth as he moved: a blow from an axe that had almost taken off his arm. But he didn’t seem to have noticed it. He had transferred his sword to his left hand and swung his blade. Another of the knights disintegrated into a swarm of black flies.

Something slammed into Jamie’s shield and he looked down, afraid he might have been hit. It was an arrow, the tip laced with poison. He saw it just as it bounced off, leaving a slight dent in his shield. A man-alligator snatched up the arrow and twisted round, planning to drive it into Jamie’s leg.

Into yourself…

Jamie thought the two words and watched in satisfaction as the creature turned the arrow on itself, driving the point into its own neck. The man-alligator howled in protest and crumpled to the ground.

Then something blotted out the light. He just had time to see Scar staring at him in horror. Perhaps she was trying to warn him. But she was already too late. An enormous shape was hurtling towards him. Jamie looked up just as the hummingbird dive-bombed him, plummeting down at fantastic speed. Had it picked on him because it recognized who he was? Jamie knew there was no time to defend himself. His sword would be useless. The bird would split him in two before he had time to move. There was only one thing to do. He let go of the reins and threw himself backwards, onto the ground. The world turned upside down and, for a moment, the armies were above him, all the fighting had become a swirling mass of noise and colour and he was drowning in it. Then his shoulders slammed into the earth, his sword left his hand and all the breath was knocked out of him.

If he had waited another second, he would have been killed. As it was, the pointed beak of the hummingbird slammed into his horse, impaling it. The horse cried out – a terrible, deafening scream. Then the hummingbird pulled away. Jamie could feel the air being blasted by its wings as it hovered over them. The bird was searching for him, hoping to strike again. But then Erin appeared from nowhere and slashed at the bird’s face, using the five knives that were his thumb and fingers, aiming for its eyes. The bird reared back and flew off. The horse folded sideways and lay still.

Jamie had bitten his tongue when he fell and could taste his own blood in his mouth. Worse, he had lost his horse, his shield and his sword. He still wasn’t scared – there was no time for fear – but suddenly he wanted this to be over. Scar had been right about one thing. He had no idea how long he had been fighting. A few minutes or several hours? Either way, he was worn out. He’d had enough.

But he knew he had to find Frost. He was lost without it. He looked around – and there it was, lying undamaged on the ground. But as he leant to retrieve it, a man-pig holding a wicked-looking curved dagger scurried towards him. Jamie dived underneath it, grabbed Frost, then lunged upwards. The sword buried itself in the creature’s belly. Jamie jerked it out again, rolled over and got to his feet. There were bodies all around him. Men and creatures fighting. Knights and horsemen. Everything was a blur. His neck was hurting. He touched his fingers to it and saw red. The man-pig had managed to cut him but the wound couldn’t be too bad – there wasn’t enough blood. He let his hand fall. What now?

And right then it all became clear.

Ahead of him was an open space. It was as if the fighters had deliberately parted to create a circular arena. And in the middle of it, two figures stood facing each other. One was Matt. The other was the King of the Old Ones, the creature that had been given the name Chaos. Matt had a sword, but he wasn’t using it. Jamie could feel the power emanating from the first of the Five. Someone hurled a spear towards him but it never came anywhere near. The air shimmered around him. The spear shattered. The pieces were spun away.

“You cannot defeat me. Kneel before me and still I may let you live.” Chaos did not speak. Instead the words radiated from him, ice cold and poisonous. He towered over Matt. Was it Jamie’s imagination or had he grown since the fighting had begun, as if feeding on so much death?

Matt stood where he was. Jamie examined him properly for the first time. He was just a boy with square shoulders and short dark hair, but his face was much older than his fourteen years. He had the eyes of a man, full of wisdom and experience. He was dressed, like Jamie, in a coarsely woven grey shirt that hung down below his waist, crossed by a leather belt running diagonally across his chest. He had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The symbol that he had chosen was a fish.

Matt suddenly raised his hand, not attacking his opponent but pointing to the side. Two knights had been closing in but they were instantly thrown back, sent flying off their horses by an invisible force. Several humans – overlords and slaves – were hurled into the air. Matt had created a corridor in the fighting and a second boy stepped into it. Jamie looked across the clearing and saw what could have been a mirror image of himself. Or it could have been Scott. But he knew that it was Flint. Flint was bruised and exhausted from the battle, his clothes torn and his shield broken, but still quite obviously his identical twin.

Flint walked forward and at the same time Scar made her appearance, bringing down a man twice her size, stabbing a second and leaping over a third with her sword angled up in front of her, her eyes fixed on Chaos as if she planned to attack him all on her own. Now there were three of them surrounding the motionless figure, the black space at the centre of the conflict.

The King of the Old Ones was amused by the new arrivals. “Three of the Five. But not enough. Still not enough!” The words vibrated in the air. They made Jamie’s head ache. He felt sick.

He was about to step forward but before he could move, another boy ran past him, almost brushing his shoulder. It was Inti. He was soaking wet from the rainstorm and there was blood running from a wound on his cheek. He had lost his shield but he still had his sword.

“Four of you!” The words came hissing out of the darkness, full of contempt.

“Five,” Jamie said, and joined the circle.

Flint saw him and nodded, his face filled with delight. Inti and Scar smiled. Matt gave nothing away. He unsheathed his sword.

And that was when the King of the Old Ones knew that he had been deceived. The boy who was dead was somehow alive again. Inti had arrived, unseen, on the battlefield. Chaos was surrounded by the Five, who had been born for this very moment and sent to defeat him. Four boys and a girl. Each of them armed. The battle, raging all around them, was almost forgotten.

“Go back where you came from,” Matt said.

He took a single step forward and stabbed with all his strength, burying his blade in the creature’s heart.

The others did the same. First Flint, then Inti. The King of the Old Ones writhed as each blade went into him. His shape was shimmering like ripples on a pool of water. But three blows was not enough to finish him. Scar went next, burying her own sword up to the hilt. And at last the creature cried out, feeling pain for the first time.

Jamie was the last to step forward. Gritting his teeth, he plunged his sword into the blackness in front of him. He felt his arm freeze and wondered if the blade had shattered. At the same moment, he was deafened by the terrible death scream of the defeated king.

The five points of the five swords had touched.

Chaos had never been a man and at that moment he lost the pretence. He seemed to explode outwards, completely losing his human shape, becoming nothing more than a huge shadow, a sort of living night that was at last being torn apart by the coming of the day. He screamed one last time and his servants knew, right then, that the battle was lost. The sound reached the furthest corners of the world and still it didn’t stop. Every evil being in the universe heard it and knew that the end had come.

Jamie was paralysed. If Frost was still in his hand he couldn’t move it. He could feel the power of the Five now that they were finally together and, although he had never been stronger, at the same time he was overwhelmed. The power was intensifying and he was sure that it would break him apart. It was more than he could bear. He tried to look for Finn or any of the others but it was as if nothing existed outside the circle they had formed. He was aware only of four faces. Matt, Flint, Inti, Scar. They were all strangely alike, all fixed in silent concentration and he knew that they were feeling exactly the same as he was.

The King of the Old Ones was no longer there. It was as if he had been turned into smoke that was already drifting away. The Five were standing in a circle, their blades still touching, but with an empty space between them. And nothing could reach them. Although the fighting still continued all around, it was as if they were inside a crystal jar. Swords flashed but the blades broke in mid-air. Spears and arrows rained down on them but bounced off uselessly. The condor plunged towards them in a last, desperate attempt to reach them but its outstretched claws suddenly shattered and it was sent spinning away, a shapeless ball of feathers and blood.

Jamie wondered if he had been more badly hurt than he’d thought. Was he dying? All the sounds of the combat were very distant. There was a great rushing in his ears and a sense of something flowing through him. The Five were cocooned, completely safe, at the very centre of the battle but apart from it.

And now something even stranger was happening.

The five of them seemed to be moving, turning slowly as if on a merry-go-round. But it wasn’t they who were moving. It was the world that was moving around them. The field and the forest and the hill were spinning faster and faster until they no longer existed. They had become a blur, nothing more than a streak of colour that swirled around them with no beginning and no end.

There was an ear-shattering crack. Jamie looked up.

The sky had opened. A chasm had appeared, the very fabric of the day peeling back to reveal a universe filled with stars. At the same time, the wind was howling. It had formed a tornado that was tearing up clumps of grass and pieces of earth. First, dead bodies and then living ones were being pulled into it and carried away through the vortex. With every second that passed, the process was becoming stronger and faster. One after another, the servants of the Old Ones were being taken, spinning helplessly as they were carried up. Jamie watched them as they were pulled into the void and knew that he was partly responsible for what was happening. It was his power that was doing this. He and the other four.

The remaining fire riders had gone, ripped off their horses and blown away like rags. The fly-soldiers had disintegrated. The spider and the hummingbird – all the giant animals – were no more than specks, spiralling ever further upwards. Finally, the dark shadow which was all that remained of Chaos was sucked in, following them into oblivion. And then at last it was over. The tunnel closed up behind them. The wind died down. There was a distant rumble of thunder and the sky rolled back, closing off the darkness, healing its own, self-inflicted wound.

The Five stood in silence.

“Sapling…” It was Flint who had spoken. But Matt raised a hand, holding him back. Not yet.

Scar stepped forward. She was staring at something high above her, shielding her eyes. Jamie looked up and saw that at last the clouds had parted and the sun had been allowed to show its face.

“So that’s what it looks like,” Scar muttered. “I always wondered.” She turned to Matt. “What does it mean?” she asked.

“It means that it’s over,” Matt said. “We’ve won.”