Read Online Ravensoul by James Barclay - Free Book Online Page A

battles to fight. Though I would have gained strength from your presence,’ said Blackthorne. He sighed. ‘You must do what you feel to be right. These are your lands.’
    Gresse nodded. ‘But all the same, should I fail, at least you have a plan, eh?’
    ‘Yep. Cast everything I have and run for it. Some plan.’
    ‘See you back at the lodge for that fine dry white I was talking to you about.’
    ‘Don’t die,’ said Blackthorne. ‘After all, I don’t know where you keep your best cut crystal.’
    Gresse took his twenty men and set off down the slope. So easy to be brave when you had the advantage of height and the buffer of distance. But this was like riding into the shadows of mountains. Gresse had not grasped quite how big the invaders were, how vast their machine or how immense their beasts.
    His horses, a quarter the size of the other animals, would not close further than a hundred yards. Gresse couldn’t blame them. Down here, on the flat and even, the reason for the invaders’ confidence was clear enough. They dwarfed everything else. The vibrations through his feet shook the vertebrae in his back. Each footfall of a beast rattled the earth under his boots. Each drag of the machine was like the thrum of a thousand horses. Each blast of the machine’s infernal workings was a rake of fear dragged across his heart.
    The stench was powerful, nauseating. It brought tears to the eyes and a turning of the gut. This close, the ambient heat of the machine brought sweat to his brow. But he walked as steadily as he could to within fifty yards and stopped outside the line of his first vines. His men gathered about him, some casting guiltily envious glances at the three left behind to keep hold of the horses.
    Watching the men and their machine approach, Gresse was acutely aware that, should they decide not to stop, there was little he could realistically do to save his party from being trampled underfoot. They might be able to bring down the walkers but halt the machine? Hardly.
    Gresse was too in awe of the scale of those approaching to be truly frightened. But the moment he realised the giants had taken notice of him, he began to shake. It wasn’t dramatic but it was there, in his heart and in the deeps of his courage. Anyone able to look into his soul would see his fear.
    Only ten yards from where he stood the central figure waved a hand, a languid gesture in keeping with their unhurried, strolling gait. The mighty beasts snorted, shook and bowed their heads, bellowing their displeasure. The sound startled man and horse alike. Gresse heard a shout and the thundering of hooves.
    ‘Looks like we’ll be walking back to the lodge then,’ muttered a guardsman.
    ‘The exercise will do us no end of good,’ said Gresse. ‘Face forward. Don’t flinch.’
    The machine halted and fell silent. The quiet was almost as shocking as the noise had been. Gresse could not hear a bird. But as the heat haze began to fade in the machine’s wake, he had his closest glimpse yet of what was being done to his country. The accompanying anger did nothing to quell his dread.
    The three figures approached. As Blackthorne had guessed, they were a good eight feet tall. Every stride ate up the space, the thud of their footfalls like tolling bells.
    Those boots, their leggings and breastplates were all like leather but not. Apparently flexible yet burnished the way only metal could be. The designs upon the armour, if such it was, were as alien as anything the Calaian elves might dredge from their long and isolated history. A homage to ancient Gods perhaps. There were supplicating hands, spears of fire and great open maws wrought in chaotic fashion across the centre of each wide chest. And surrounding the images were either letters of a language he could not begin to fathom or angular scrollwork.
    ‘They look like mathematical symbols,’ he said.
    ‘Beguiling, almost, my Lord,’ said his captain.
    The designs were picked out in a