Chapter 14

CHAP14

GAMRAY’S ESCAPE

Desperate minutes passed by and as a last resort Lilly took her dagger and tried to pick the lock. The padlock was so enormous that she had difficulty holding it still in one of her shaking hands; she just wasn’t getting anywhere. Just as Lilly was beginning to give up hope of ever getting the box open, she heard the sound of horse’s hooves from the other side of the wall. Lilly jumped up onto the box and shouted to King Litan and his knights who were milling around Leekan’s tent.

‘Help me, please help me, Leekan is locked in this box, I’m sure of it, I can’t get it open.’  Lilly was crying now, from relief that someone was here to help the Gamray as much as anything else.

Within moments, two of King Litan’s party had the box lifted onto the ground. Bathin, a huge bearded knight and body guard of the king, took his great battle axe from his saddle and swung it with one huge glancing blow, shattering the lock. King Litan threw open the lid and they all stared at the pitiful sight inside.

There was the tiny body of the Gamray all bound with rope and with a strange hood, made of small linked metal rings, over his head. While the others untied the ropes, Lilly carefully slide the hood off Gamray’s head. The minute it was off, Gamray came flooding back into her mind. He turned his face toward Lilly’s and thought ‘dear Lilly, I am unharmed, thank ye for rescuing me. Twas all so quick and once they had that hood over my head I could not communicate with ye’. Lilly stared in amazement. ‘Leekan, ye have yer eyes!’ she murmured. Leekan blinked his large dark eyes and smiled at Lilly. ‘Tis true Lilly’ he thought at her, ‘Leekan be glad tis the Lady Lilly that he does see before anything else.’ 

Lilly held out her arms and hugged Leekan-Gamray as tightly as she dared. Holding him this close made all her tiredness vanish, she felt renewed. King Litan suggested that they take Leekan back to the Kort and get him some refreshment.

‘What has become of Sarii, my aide?’ Leekan thought at Lilly. Lilly looked sadly at him, ‘I’m afraid he is dead’, she replied. Leekan stared out over the Kort garden and thought to Lilly ‘maybe tis time we put our plan into action’.

Just at that moment a fluttering overhead announced Tarns arrival.

Lilly looked up, ‘Tarn’ she called and held out her arm for him to perch.

Tarn flew down to Lilly, landing gently on her arm. ‘My Lady, King Litan’s knights did tell me ye were here, I trust the Gamray be safe now?’  Lilly smiled and nodded. Within a few moments Tarn had told Lilly of all Morii’s plans and movements. ‘Good, I’m glad they are safe so far and ye gave Morii the stone?’

Tarn nodded. ‘I placed it into his hand myself’ he assured Lilly. ‘Dear Tarn, please have ye a rest for a short while before ye begin yer flying’ Lilly told the exhausted looking bird.

‘I thank ye Lady Lilly. I will catch my breath for a few moments if it please ye. What message can I take to the Lord Morii?’ Tarn enquired.

Lilly told Tarn to rest first and them come and find her in the Kort upper hall, where they were taking the Gamray. Tarn nodded and flew off to find some water. Lilly and the others went into the Kort with the Gamray.

As Morii and his raiding party drew closer to Storbenn the worse the dreadful noise and smoke got. There were wails and shouts, huge crashes and bangs and all the time the relentless drum beat that accompanied Tarken battles. Boom…Boom…Boom… the drum sounded, the ground trembled and vibrated, every tree and leaf seemed to be shuddering.

They had come to a large bend in the road, surrounded by bushes and willows. ‘This be the best place to begin to put our plan into action’ Morii told the others. ‘Archers… into the carts and cover yourselves the best ye can. Mollin give the Tarkens their daggers and ye and Min take up yer positions inside Grodal‘s group. Keep yer sword handy Mollin in case the Tarken get tempted to use their daggers before they need to.’ He winked at Mollin and Mollin nodded in reply. ‘Wilf and I will be inside this group with Gruen. Ye other Tarken keep close around the carts so that ye hide us’.

Morii had decided to trust the Tarken to help him and his plan was fairly simple. He had placed half his archers in one large hand cart with Grodal and three other Tarken pushing on the handles. Hidden by the large Tarken, Min and Mollin were out of sight and ready with their bows. Likewise Morii and Wilf were hidden by the other half of the captured, and now compliant, Tarken pushing the other hand cart with the other half of Morii’s archers hidden inside it.

Morii had chosen Gruen from the captured Tarken to lead his cart as Gruen seemed to have at least some wits about him, for a Tarken that was. In this manner Morii hoped to be able to get very, very close to the catapult positions and thereby have some chance of disabling them before being discovered.

The Tarken had been sworn to loyalty in a very serious little ceremony an hour before and Morii felt sure he could rely on his Tarken to stick to the story he had concocted for them should they be asked what they were doing. In return he had promised them a fair hearing in Norsonia and his personal promise that they would keep their lives…if they all survived this battle of course.

The Tarken had told him that their lives were worthless to King Trock, especially as they had been captured by ‘younger Norsies’ and that Trock would have them flogged and hung up in the Drylands and left to die a miserable and slow death. Morii shuddered as he thought about it.

The carts trundled along the dusty road and Morii, from his hidden position in between the large Tarken, could just make out through the smoke and dust other Tarken rushing about carrying logs for the braziers, hauling large round stones for the catapults and teams of Tarken warriors pulling with all their might on the huge ropes that set the catapults to fire. There were three of them that Morii could see. The fire-giver over to the far left was partly hidden by a line of scrubby bushes and smoke, Morii only noticed it because it had just been fired and he could see the huge arm coming back down.

‘Make yer way over to the furthest fire-giver Gruen if ye will’ Morii instructed. Gruen called across to Grodal and nodded his head in the direction of the far catapult. Grodal followed the instruction and they edged their way across.

Suddenly a voice yelled, ‘Hey, what be ye a doin…tark…with them Norsie carts? A bad tempered looking Tarken guard came over to where they had halted. Morii held his sword up under Gruen’s armpit, just in case he had any ideas about reneging on their deal. He need not have worried. Gruen glared back at the guard and said, ‘Tark…I be under orders from King Trock himself…tark…to deliver theses supplies to yonder tower…tark…ye don’t want me to be botherin King Trock do ye?…tark’. The Tarken guard gave him a filthy look and said grudgingly, ‘Ye get on then…tark…I only be doin me job…tark…for all the thanks I get…tark’ and went of to annoy someone else.

‘Well done Gruen’ Morii hissed and took his sword out of Gruen’s armpit. Gruen suddenly felt the joy of being praised for something he had done, it had never happened to him before and he determined there and then to dedicate the rest of his life to Lord Morii of Norsonia, whatever the consequences might be.

At last they were alongside the furthest fire-giver and Morii knew he had one chance to make this part of the plan work. Gruen and Grodal, with the other Tarken helpers pretended to be leaning on the carts to get their breath. This was in fact Gruen’s idea and Morii thought, a pretty good one. Gruen, Grodal and their group looked about them until they were certain no one was paying any attention and quick as a flash, had their long Tarken daggers at the necks of the four Tarken warriors loading the fire-giver. Four quick slashes and there were four less Tarken to cause any problems. Morii whistled and all of the archers leaped from the carts and fired at the team of Tarken waiting to pull on the ropes of the firing mechanism at the far end of the fire-giver. The shots all hit their targets; the range was so short that they could hardly miss. Ten more Tarken soldiers hit the floor.

Like lightning the archers and their Tarken companions dashed over and dragged and pulled the dead Tarken into the bushes beside them, then they pulled out their arrows to be used again.. The small group then set about cutting the firing ropes and tipping the braziers that stood all around, over the floor. Grodal and his team used the giant ‘spoon like’ implements for moving the tar covered burning stones from the braziers, to do just that, only this time the burning stones and rocks were placed under and on the giant wooden arm of the catapult, in no time it started to catch fire and burn. Meanwhile, Gruen and his team had taken some of the burning stones to the bottom of the high wooden tower and dumped them underneath. That too soon started to catch and smoulder.

Miraculously, so far no one seemed to have noticed what was happening, this was partly due to the speed of Morii’s attack and partly due to the amount of smoke and flame now rising everywhere. Also Morii realised that there weren’t that many Tarken actually here. The rest of them must now be on the march into Storbenn he thought. There certainly was no sign of King Trock and Morii was hugely grateful for that.

Quickly they gathered themselves around Morii. ‘Let’s take out as many Tarken as ye can, I see there are no more than double our number here, so if we fire fast and attack before they realise what‘s happening we should succeed. Be ye still with us?’ Morii directed this last question to his Tarken friends. Gruen looked at his comrades; they all nodded back at him. ‘Yay…tark…Lord Morii…we be with ye…tark’.

With that Morii and his soldiers sprang from the bushes and took on the very shocked Tarken.

It didn’t take long, the Tarken were so taken by surprise that they hardly fought back. Gruen, Grodal and the rest of Morii’s Tarkens did themselves proud. They protected the archers and threw themselves into the attack with great vigour. Within a few moments it was all over, not one Tarken enemy lived and Morii’s small band of warriors set about destroying the fire-givers so that they would never be used again.

During the time that Morii had been fighting and Lilly had been rescuing the Gamray, Ulfwin and the other skirmish parties had done as Lilly asked and snuck up on the invading Tarken army. At first, they were very successful in shooting dead at least fifty Tarken warriors, but then the tables had turned and the warriors had pursued them all the way back to Storbenn. Ulfwin and most of the skirmishers had fled into the small bushes and wood to the left of Storbenn, while Tryp’s group just made it back through the gate and into the outskirts of Storbenn.

From the wood, Ulfwin could see that someone had been downed by a Tarken spear, but he couldn’t make out who. His first instinct was to run and help the stricken Norsonian, but quickly realised that it was impossible to do so without risking his own life and giving away their exact position in the trees to the Tarken, who were now swarming all over the fields in front of him.

Just as the Tarken arrived, the Tisks came streaming out of the town gate and rushed into the Tarken hoards, tusking and gnawing on Tarken legs and although there was great consternation and rage among the Tarken ranks at the turning in allegiance of the Tisks; not one Tarken warrior supposed it had anything to do with the way they had treated the Tisks over the last few months. They could not see their own cruelty for what it was.

Ulfwin and his archers let wave after wave of arrows fly from their position in the woods and Tryp had somehow managed to get his archers up onto the roof of one of the buildings by the town gate and were also firing on the Tarken army.

Around a hundred Norsonian men, fed up with fire fighting and cart pulling, had come out of the town armed with axes and pitch forks, joined King Litan’s thirty older knights and proceeded to do battle with the approaching Tarken.

King Trock was proving himself to be a terrible adversary, he roared and struck blows from every possible angle. His senior warriors dealing a few death strokes and injuries themselves, fought in a circle around their king; this was where the fighting was most bloody. The Norsonians were no match for the Tarken king and there were dead and injured folk everywhere. The battle for Storbenn was far from over.

Lilly returned to Storbenn as soon as she was able, after giving promises to the Gamray that she would keep herself out of harms way. She did not do this lightly, for she felt she needed to fight with the others, but Gamray had explained to her that he needed her beside him above all others and that her tasks in Norsonia were far from over if she were to fulfil the sagas.

Lilly now had tears in her eyes as she looked at the devastation on the approach to Storbenn. There were buildings burning and ruine. Injured and dying Tisks and Norsonians waited on the sides of the road to be taken back to the hospitalers tents and, to her horror, she realised that Pel was one of them. Lilly rushed to where he lay next to a very distraught Gleryn.

‘Oh my Lady’ Gleryn wailed, ‘We was just going back to the camp when this fireball hit the school and several bricks from the wall did fall on Pel, I been tryin to soothe him best I could…now he have passed on’. Gleryn collapsed in floods of tears. Lilly knelt beside Pel and put her face to his, she could feel a very small, light breath coming from him. ‘No Gleryn… quick get help, he still lives’. Gleryn jumped up and ran to fetch one of the hospitalers. She returned with Sardor almost immediately.

‘Oh Sardor, thank goodness it’s ye’ Lilly gasped. Sardor explained that he had come to sort out the casualties in order of priority.

Lilly wanted to say that she didn’t care about priorities, but thought better of it. ‘Please Sardor do all ye can for our dear friend Pel, he has been crushed by falling bricks but still lives’ Lilly pleaded. The old man gently felt Pel’s legs, arms and neck and then summoned a carrier for the poor creature. ‘I will deal with this personally Lady Lilly’ he said, ‘leave him with me and ask for Gamray’s blessing. Lilly nodded, hugged Gleryn, told her to stay with Pel and rushed off to see what other horrors were taking place.

The sounds of steel clanking on steel came from the area of the road beyond Storbenn gate and Lilly carefully picked her way through blasted out and burning buildings until she came to the edge of the town. At first she could see only a few of King Litan’s older knights doing battle with great axes and swords, the Norsonians were fighting off the huge bird-headed creatures with all their might. Then Lilly realised that an enormous battle was raging on the edge of the marsh to the south. Arrows were flying through the air from the woods and bushes along the road and Tarken were responding by making assaults into the woods where the sounds of terrible shrieks then followed. Tisks were running between the Tarken, who howled in pain as the Tisks tusks found an ankle or leg. Lilly saw at least two Tisks speared by Tarkens and flung into the bushes. Arrows were also flying from somewhere above her. It looked to Lilly, who had never seen any kind of battle or fighting in her entire life, sheer chaos and very bloody.

Lilly felt sick and sank back against the wall, closing her eyes to contact the Gamray. ‘This be worse than I feared Gamray. We must act now if we are to save the day’. Gamray’s calm little voice came back in her head straight away. ‘We begin dear Lilly, concentrate on the raining ring as we discussed’.

Lilly and Gamray’s minds combined as one, both made a picture of the clouds that made up the raining ring. They began to pull all of the clouds together into one giant mass and slowly they moved it closer and closer to Storbenn.

Morii and his party had come up to Storbenn from the south and were just in time to see King Trock’s warriors making a charge into the edge of Storbenn. Tisks ran at them howling and tusking and after their initial surprise the Tarken fought them back. There were already arrows flying from the bushes and scrub to Morii’s left and he guessed it was Ulfwin or one of the other skirmish parties in there. More arrows flew from one of the buildings still standing on the edge of Storbenn, but by now King Trock had organised his warriors and most of them had their shields held over their heads for protection.

Morii signalled to his group to keep low and approach the Tarken from the marshland on the right. They crawled on their bellies up to the rear of the Tarken line and with a great shout of ‘charge’ they rushed in with swords held over their heads. Wilf and Morii slashed at the legs of the last line of Tarken and downed several before the real sword fighting started. The Tarken friends, Gruen and Grodal fought especially hard with their daggers and axes, Morii saw at least twelve warriors fall beneath their blows, their dying faces showing sheer confusion at being attacked by one of their own.

Min was a small whirlwind of terror, she screamed as she ran at the Tarken and whirled her sword around her head, taking out at least two Tarken that Morii knew of. Everyone fought desperately hard, their lives depended upon it.

One of the Tarken friends had been speared in the chest and as Morii bent to see if he could help, the Tarken, who was named Gremick, told Morii he was proud to die under Morii’s command. Morii made a note in his head to remember the name of Gremick. He returned to fight beside Wilf and had only struck two blows when a Tarken spear pierced his leg. Morii fell to the ground and pulled out the spear tip, it had pierced the calf muscle and with the help of Gruen managed to get away from the main fight behind a tussock of marsh reed. Gruen returned to the fight and Morii could only watch as a searing pain shot through his leg. He ripped a piece from his shirt and tied it tightly around the wound but he could not bear his weight upon it. Morii hit the ground with his fist; he had never felt so useless. As he watched from that spot for a few moments he noticed a curious thing. A giant black cloud was slowly approaching from the west, Morii had never seen anything like it, he glanced around and realised the raining ring was no longer there.

Morii thought for a moment and then it struck him, this must be Lilly or Gamray’s doing, possibly both of them. He realised almost immediately what was going to happen and a slow smile started to appear on his face. Of course, it would rain on all of them. The Tarken would not have time to get away from it, they would be defeated. ‘By Gamray… no!’ Morii suddenly shouted out loud. That meant Gruen, Grodal and the other Tarkens who had fought so valiantly for Norsonia would be caught in it as well.

Morii pulled himself along using his arms until he could get near enough to shout above the noise of the battle, he saw Min just in front of him. ‘Min!..Min! Over here…quickly’. Min turned and ran to Morii. ‘What’s happened to ye Lord Morii’ she yelled. ‘Never mind that’ Morii yelled back, tell Gruen and the other Tarken friends that Morii says get under cover of the trees, for their lives get them under cover’. With that Morii passed out from the loss of blood.

Min stared at her Lord Morii for a small moment and looked around for help, she yelled at Gruen and once she had his attention waved him over. Gruen pulled Grodal’s sleeve and they left the battle and ran over to Min. ‘The Lord Morii be hurt bad and do need ye to take him under cover of them trees’ Min blurted out. ‘He do say to me for ye to get under cover for yer lives’. Gruen and Grodal exchanged a glance not really understanding what Min was talking about, but they did see that they needed to get the Lord Morii somewhere safer. They picked him up and took him into the shelter of the woods where they found a large willow tree with branches touching the ground; they carefully laid Morii down and had a look at his wound. As they could do no more they started to return to the battle.

Min had turned and charged back into the fray slashing away with her sword at anything in front of her, as she lifted her sword to deal a blow to a Tarkens back, another Tarken caught her with his axe and sliced into her shoulder. Min felt the blow and stared open mouthed at the Tarken; he was the last thing she ever saw. She fell to the ground as the Tarken dealt another blow.

Wilf just caught all of this out of the corner of his eye as he swung a death blow to a Tarken head. He screamed a warning to Min, but he was too late. He rushed at the Tarken who had killed Min, swung his sword and off came another Tarken head. Wilf was swinging his blade and crying in rage and frustration; he could not see Morii and was terribly afraid that the same fate had befallen his friend and Lord. Then it started to rain.

Rain was not the right description, it poured. Great heavy droplets that stopped everything and everyone. The Norsonians had never experienced rain before and just stood and gaped. The Tarken knew that rain was water and that stopped them in their tracks too. They squawked and screamed, shuddered and spluttered. They stared stupidly in disbelief at the sky above them and then they started to sneeze. They sneezed and coughed and within a very few moments every feather covering their heads fell to the ground closely followed by the Tarken themselves. By sheer good fortune five of the twelve Tarken friends, who had fought very bravely for Morii, were on the very edge of the rainfall when it began and had managed to run to where Gruen and Grodal stood at the edge of the wood watching in disbelief. The remaining Norsonians stood, swords covered in dark Tarken blood, on the battlefield surrounded by Tarken corpses, their eyes and mouths wide open in shock. Nobody spoke. The sudden quiet was immense; all that could be heard was the sound of rain drops hitting the ground, a steady pattering all around them.

Through the rain a small figure appeared at the gate of the ruined town of Storbenn, it was Lilly. She walked slowly towards the dumbstruck Norsonians and as she did so the rain stopped. Ulfwin appeared at the edge of the wood and stared at the awful sight before him. The Tarken who had helped Morii also stared at the awful sight before them and Lilly, looking bedraggled and exhausted sunk to her knees.

Wilf was the first to speak; ‘Lady Lilly, ye are safe and well?’ he called to her. ‘Yay Wilf, I am well’ Lilly replied in a quiet voice. Then panic struck her like a storm wave. ‘Where’s Morii?’ she yelled, her fear filled eyes searching the battle site. ‘Has anyone seen Morii?’ Wilf looked around the body strewn battlefield; he too now had a look of panic on his face. Lilly struggled to her feet and ran across to Wilf. ‘What has become of Morii?’ she repeated with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Gruen shouted from the edge of the wood, ‘Tark…the Lord Morii be over here…tark.’ Lilly spun around on hearing the Tarken voice and Ulfwin drew his bow, aiming it at Gruen’s head.

Wilf shouted, ‘No! Ulfwin, these be the loyal Tarken that did fight alongside us in the battle, they did save many Norsonian lives’. Ulfwin slowly lowered his bow, but still looked at the Tarken with suspicion.

Lilly ran over to where Gruen and the others stood. Gruen, with some awkwardness because he had never done such a thing before, bowed to Lilly and said, ‘Tark…I be Gruen and I be sworn…tark… to help the Lord Morii, for he be…tark… a most brave and kindly Lord. We…tark… have laid him under yon willow…tark… for he be injured by a wound to his leg.’

Lilly said, ‘Thank ye Gruen’ and disappeared into the wood to find Morii.

She parted the long willow branches and saw her brave and wonderful friend lying still and unconscious on the ground. ‘Oh Morii, what has happened to ye’ she whispered as she knelt beside him. She felt his forehead, and then put her head to his chest to listen for a heartbeat, it was faint but there. ‘Morii, please don’t leave me now’ she said quietly to her friend. The others had followed her and now stood behind her looking sick with worry. ‘Quickly we must get him to the hospitalers’, Lilly called. Gruen stepped forward and picked Morii up. The strange procession hurried back toward Storbenn. Lilly had asked Ulfwin, Edie and Wilf to aid any other injured Norsonians while she went to fetch help for them. Then Gamray’s voice came into her head. ‘Fly Morii back to Sardor, I know ye be exhausted Lilly so I will add my strength to ye and all will be well’. Lilly gasped, ‘Of course, thank ye Gamray’

Lilly turned to Gruen and told him, ‘Ye will not understand what I am about to do Gruen, nor will ye others come to that, I will explain to ye all as soon as I can. Ye must stand Morii against me so that I may hold on to him and then stand back away from me. Go and help to bring the others to the hospitalers if it please ye’. Gruen did as he was asked and held Morii so that Lilly could place her arms around him with his head lying on her shoulder. ‘Gamray I be ready’ she thought to Gamray. Lilly closed her eyes and thought herself up in the air; she heard a gasp from the others below her as she raised them into the sky and flew Morii back to the camp and Sardor.