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.