Destroyer of Worlds by Mark Chadbourn

Author:Mark Chadbourn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780575084803
Publisher: Victor Gollancz Limited
Published: 2010-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

6

When night fell across the Great Plain before the Court of the Soaring Spirit, the Enemy began its advance. Lost to the gloom, the first sign that Decebalus had of their movement was mounting vibrations in the ground, growing stronger, like the first tremors of an earthquake. The weather had worsened - something to do with the abilities of the remaining Riot-Beast, he guessed - and now torrential rain lashed their ranks and turned the ground around them to a sea of mud.

‘They will try to overwhelm us by sheer numbers,’ he said as he peered into the dark. ‘I am surprised they did not try it before.’

‘Perhaps they wisely fear your ultimate deterrent,’ Lugh responded. Behind him the silent, unmoving ranks of Tuatha Dé Danaan warriors glowed a dull gold.

Decebalus eyed him askance. ‘You know of that?’

‘I am a master tactician, after all. It is what I would have done.’

‘But would you have been prepared to use it?’

‘Thankfully, I will never have to find out. That is now your burden, Brother of Dragons.’

As a low, mournful call rolled out across the great plain from somewhere in the vicinity of the city walls, Lugh started and looked around hopefully. ‘My brother, one of the most powerful of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. Missing for so long. Is he joining the fray?’ When he saw Decebalus’s puzzled look, he added, ‘In the time of the tribes, he was known as Cernunnos, but your kind have a great many names for him, as befits his status. The Green Man. Jack o’ the Green. He walks in the beating heart of nature, and pulses with the lifeblood of Existence.’

‘Of course I have heard of him,’ Decebalus said. ‘He has helped the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons many times. Though, I must say, he has never seemed quite like you Golden Ones.’

‘My brother is like us, and is also greater than us. His influence straddles many Great Dominions, as befits one of the Oldest Things in the Land.’

‘He is one of those strange creatures, and also one of you?’

‘The Oldest Things in the Land are a higher force, and they draw to them those who can help shepherd the ways of Existence.’

‘A force for good, then.’

‘A force for a plan that transcends the concepts of good and evil that Fragile Creatures love to clutch to their breasts for comfort. The universe is not simple, Brother of Dragons, and its pattern is lost to all of us.’

The mournful howl rolled out again, but was subsumed by the rising tramp of thousands of feet and the pounding of the downpour.

Rain sluicing from his head, Decebalus said, ‘Nearly here now.’ Flickering lights could now be made out in the dark - the torches of the enemy - stretching as far as Decebalus could see in a horseshoe formation from foothill to foothill around the city. ‘Closing in. Nowhere to run.’

‘You are a strange being. You sound as if you are almost enjoying this desperate situation,’ Lugh said.

‘We only truly find out what it means to be Fragile Creatures when we are closest to death.

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