If any of the lions began to advance towards the men, Helen realised – or, indeed, if a rider began to draw nearer towards one of the lions – the scene would immediately dissolve into chaos once more.
She looked over yet again towards the calm, almost motionless hind. The knot whirled within its antlers, a tormenting reminder that she still had much to learn.
Yet like the hind, weren’t the lions hers to control?
‘The lions are our friends!’ she blurted out, hiding the lack of certainty she naturally felt, hoping to pre-empt any assault unwittingly taking place between them.
There were many relieved sighs from the surrounding men, even a few gnarled chuckles. Despite this, some were visibly startled when the lions at last began to edge forwards. Fortunately, no matter how tempted they were to raise a sword, they held back from doing so.
The lions leapt – but not towards the men.
They leapt in amongst the scavenging wolves, ferociously snarling at them, snapping with their great jaws, lashing out with powerful limbs and sharp claws.
The wolves made only a brief show of fighting back, with their own snarls and snapping of maws; only for them to beginning backing off one by one with whimpers and pained howls.
They turned and ran, the first to flee soon being joined by all the others. They rushed back towards the mount, from where they had first come from, their dark shapes slinking over the white sheen of snow like elusive shadows,
The men roared their appreciation, even scornfully guffawing at the rapidly retreating wolves.
Helen spun around in her saddle.
There wasn’t really anything to laugh at.
As she had feared earlier, the much greater mass of wolves sent to attack her father and his men were not to be defeated so easily.
Their superior numbers had effortlessly overwhelmed the riders. Her father’s men were rapidly disappearing under the fluidly black mass, as if being overrun by the inexorable spreading of hurriedly growing, dark ivy.
*
Chapter 51
Who should she help?
Who could she help?
Helen was well aware that her own force, even with the support of the lions, was miniscule. Irrelevant even, when pitted against such vast numbers.
If she rushed to aid her father, then the old empress would undoubtedly be swiftly overwhelmed by the rapidly approaching Roman cavalry.
What’s more, a large section of lighter clad and therefore swifter Roman riders had already slipped away from the main attack and were now heading up the more gentle rise leading up towards Helen and her men. Fausta was undoubtedly ensuring that no one would relieve the attack on the beleaguered king’s men, perhaps falsely assuming that Helen had worked out how to transform all the wolves into lions.
Helen, however, recognised that it would be nigh impossible to command hundreds of men to lay down their swords in the midst of such a fearsome battle.
‘It’s death for us either way,’ the goblin seated behind her grimly stated, recognising Helen’s dilemma.
‘You can dismount if you want,’ Helen replied sternly over her shoulder.
‘Life’s short,’ the goblin replied frankly, withdrawing from a hidden scabbard a short bladed sword Helen had never realised was there. ‘But it’s always got to end at some point, I suppose.’
‘Towards the mount!’ Helen decided, spurring her horse into a hurried dash down the slope, the disturbed snow rising up around her in great white clouds.
The men followed, forcing their own horses to match her speed. The lions took up their positions alongside, their fiery manes glowing, such that they rushed through the falling snow like gracefully flowing suns.
The white hind was ahead of Helen once more, charging down the slope.
And still, within its clasping, golden antlers, it held the whirling Gordian Knot.
*
The hind.
The lions.
The centaurs.
What connected them all?
Why were these the creatures lying under Helen’s control?
As they all rushed down the snow covered hill, Helen was almost blinded by the chaotic mass of whiling flakes constantly striking her eyes. She struggled to keep control of her horse, for it, too, was having to struggle to keep on its feet, its pounding hooves striking loose snow and hidden, rocky ground.
Helen’s gaze was fixed, however, upon the mount’s summit.
The old empress had managed to bring her carriage and her men to the very top, dark shapes against the white of the still heavily falling snow. Some of the men were forming into a shield wall, but even from this distance Helen couldn’t fail to recognise that it would be far too thin and weak to resist the massed charge of the swiftly approaching Romans.
Behind the men on the hill, the Hunter continued his effortless, unstoppable rising as he gradually rose to his feet.
His head, Helen realised, was formed from a cluster of three stars; the same sparkling formation she had seen hovering above the hind, above the centaurs, when they had appeared to her as pieces upon a board.
It was a pyramid shape, albeit one with an angled base. A sloping base that exactly matched the angled top of the trapezium formed from the four ‘pillar’ stars lying directly below it.
It looked for all the world as if the very top of a great pyramid had been sheered off. And now that peak of the pyramid was soaring heavenwards, its shape of a glowing eye nestling between two horns reminiscent of an ethereally glowing bird.
About her, the rapidly falling, iridescently sparkling flakes also abruptly swirled, also suddenly took shape.
It was a mounted Roman, his lance lowered, and close to riding her down.
*
Chapter 52
The Roman came hurtling out of the swirling snow as if conjured up from it.
He was accompanied by other equally well-equipped riders, their otherwise thunderous approach completely muffled by the snow.
With their lances already lowered, and their abrupt appearance only a few yards away taking every one of Helen’s men by surprise, they should have effortlessly carved their way through the small column.
And yet there was no panic amongst Helen’s men.
Although the swirling of the snow (and perhaps a little helpful magic of Fausta’s) had resulted in them being taken off-guard, they all smoothly swung into action.
She herself merely swung her horse off to one side as the Roman’s lance tried to bite home, leaving it to cleave nothing but air. She didn’t have to think about what she was doing, her moves entirely fluid and instinctive, as if she could guess the moves the Roman was about to make.
Her horse, too, moved with her as if a part of her, rather than something she was riding. Presented with the perfect opportunity, the goblin seated behind her brought his sword down hard upon the rider’s arm, the lance spinning uselessly up into the air as it was painfully released.
About her, the men were also moving with an effortless grace, the relatively slow and cumbersome strikes of the Romans suddenly appearing to be taking place within a totally different time frame. The lions leapt easily from ground to rider, bringing them down, ending lives with a swift, deft slash of either teeth or claws.
And as Helen herself brought down an attacking Roman with a harsh blow she would have at one time thought beyond her capabilities, she recognised, too, that she had no choice but to violently, even mercilessly fight back.
Sometimes, it seemed, brutality was the answer.
Her hind was calm and motionless once more.
But the knot held between her antlers had fully unravelled.
*
When it came to numbers, the Romans were by far the superior force.
Their equipment and relentless training, too, should have easily set them apart from Helen’s relatively more amateurish warriors.
And yet when it came to martial skills, the Romans were here completely lacking compared to the less subst
antially clad and armed warriors.
Helen’s men were displaying abilities she would never have deemed them capable of attaining. Just as she, too, was fighting with a previously undreamt of precision.
She was moving with a profoundly natural and thereby effortless grace.
She could predict what moves her opponents would make.
She could foresee how her own moves would progress from one to the other, as if already aware of and determining actions that would take place in the near future.
She and her men were her on a whole other level to the Romans.
A fourth level.
The level of lions!
*
Despite their fierceness, wolves would never be any match for lions.
Lions had a strength and regality completely lacking in mere wolves.
They possessed a mastery and confidence of self.
Helen’s men had somehow attained this fourth state of being.
Naturally, when Helen had persuaded her men to lay down their arms when confronted by the wolves, she had never contemplated that it would result in the men rising to a higher state.
It had just been the natural consequence of those actions.
They had acted differently to what was expected of them.
And that, of course, is exactly what Alexander had also done when he’d solved the supposed problem of the Gordian Knot.
He hadn’t fallen into the trap of utilising the accepted way of approaching and dealing with the problem.
He’d seen the ‘accepted way’ for what it was: the real problem.
Strip away the accepted way, the conventional way, and you have no problem at all.
It is an entirely false problem, one constructed from nothing but its own ridiculous constraints.
Just as the next stage for her men will be – like the centaurs – an acceptance rather than a denial that they are still part animal: thereby gaining control of those qualities, maybe even turning them into an advantage.
Next comes the hind, breaking free of and leaping forth from the protective but ultimately constricting tower of the world.
Helen’s hind was watching her thoughtfully. The Gordian Knot had vanished, replaced by a glowing orb clasped between what had become silvery horns.
The Romans lay dead around them.
Unfortunately, it had been necessary.
Helen looked up towards the mount, it being so close to them now that it loomed directly over them.
The wolves who had previously attacked Helen and her men had joined in with the cavalry’s massed assault on the peak.
The heavily armoured troops violently launched itself against the thin defensive line of shields: and already that narrow line of men was buckling, ready to give way at any moment.
*
Chapter 53
Behind that creaking shield wall, other men were working quickly under the directions of the old empress: opening up the carriage, putting supports in place.
Partially veiled and partly darkly silhouetted against the whirling snow, the men worked frenziedly on top of the carriage.
Helen wondered what they could be hoping to achieve as she led her men up the steep incline, hoping to aid the beleaguered defensive line.
She and her men crashed into the extended flank of the attacking wolves and Romans, their blades singing, the lions roaring.
Her hind ran on ahead, storming up the sides of the mount, heading for the summit. As Helen watched the glowing white hind leave her behind, she glimpsed through its rising horns, through the now diaphanous glittering orb, the True Cross being raised.
The rising cross sparkled in the frenzied squalls.
It rose gradually, even a little ponderously, such was its great weight. Yet the men pulled hard on the tackles and the ropes, hoisting it higher, straightening it, letting it find and rest upon its single foot.
Behind the rising cross, the Hunter, too, had fully regained his feet.
From the low angle of Helen’s viewpoint, the Hunter appeared to be directly behind the cross.
The triple star cluster of the Hunter’s head was hidden by the upright of the cross where the Saviour’s head would be, if he’d still been pinioned there.
Similarly, the stars of the shoulders were the pinioning points of the nails driven home into hands and wrists. The angled belt was the Saviour’s contorted waist, his curved spine rising up through what would be the spine of the Hunter.
To either side of the cross, the outer stars of the belt were the heads of those other two crucified with him, one looking up towards heaven, the other down, back towards earth.
As the snow furiously whirled about the crossed beams, the shapes forming within them writhed all the more, merging, solidifying.
The Saviour was once again upon his cross.
*
Around Helen, the clash of iron on iron, the yells of triumphant or dying men, was all gradually muting, ceasing.
It wasn’t that she was imagining this. For everywhere now, men were looking up towards the summit in awe.
Their swords fell by their sides.
Their shields fell to the ground.
Everyone, it seemed, was seeing what Helen was seeing.
Even the wolves had ceased their attack, their howling. The lions too.
All across the battlefield, everything was slowly grinding to a halt.
The Hunter’s rise hadn’t stopped.
It had accelerated, that most sparkling of eyes shining brightly yet veiled behind the upright. It was rising, as if being relentlessly drawn up through that tortured, curving spine.
The pinioning stars cleared the cross beam, unpinioning the Saviour, and glowing like torches: one with flames of red, one with a cool, celestial blue. And as they did so, the first of the brightest stars – The Shinning One, as Helen abruptly realised it was named – appeared above the upright; as if that all-knowing eye had erupted into new life there, as if spat from the mouth of the Hunter.
As the full set of triple stars of the head appeared above the upright, they briefly glowed like a full moon enclosed with the horns of a new moon; then they rose even higher, stretching out towards the heavens like a dove in flight, like an angel with spreading wings.
Reaching for the very highest positions.
Reaching up towards God himself.
With a strange mix of sadness and elation, Helen saw that her white hind had vanished; no, it had transformed.
It was now an angel.
*
Chapter 54
Glancing about her, Helen realised it was not the only transformation that had taken place.
Every wolf, it seemed, had vanished.
In their places there were lions, even a few centaurs. Here and there, although very rare, there were even white harts.
No one retained any inclination to fight.
Everyone there, no matter which side they had originally been fighting on, stood fixedly in place, awestruck, dumbfounded. They looked about themselves blankly at first, blissfully smiling.
Gradually, however, they became more aware of their surroundings, of the phenomenal changes they had been gifted.
They looked towards their new guardians – the lions, the centaurs, the harts – some of them at last and quite naturally sensing the connections flowing between them: some even sensing their renewed responsibilities, some the dawning of a new if not yet completely full understanding of life.
Now only a short distance from the mount, the legionnaires had halted their advance, the effects of the raising of the cross felt even here. Despite being farther away than even these men, the king’s riders had similarly undergone a transformation, the onslaught of wolves vanishing in an instant to be replaced by the languidly confident prowling of lions; none of whom, of course, felt they had anything to prove, or indeed anything to gain from foolish aggravation.
All these men, too, had all risen to a new life.
Yet amongst all this sense of s
urprise and joy, Helen sensed that something was still amiss.
A sleek, dark grey form, slinking through and past the heaving ranks of either celebrating or profoundly dazed men.
A wolf?
Then why hadn’t it transformed?
Helen’s own guardian angel had seen it too.
She spoke to Helen, and yet did so without speaking. For, of course, they were one and the same.
‘The child is still in danger.’
*
Chapter 55
The child!
Helen had forgotten all about Magnus, the old empress’s grandchild!
But why, after all this, would someone be seeking the death of a child, of a boy little more than a new born babe?
Fausta!
Fausta wanted him removed, of course. To ensure the inheritance of her own children.
Isn’t that what all this had always been about?
They were all so busy celebrating their supposed victory over the Romans, everyone had forgotten the real aim had been to protect the fledging emperor.
But Fausta hadn’t forgotten her primary purpose for instigating all these attacks; for attempting to ensure Helen either never realised her own powers, or remained estranged from the old empress.
Helen urgently urged her horse up the steep incline, hoping she would at least catch a glimpse of that sleek grey shape once again. The goblin had already leapt from the horse at some point, making the horse’s load lighter, the going easier: but they still weren’t moving fast enough for Helen’s liking.
‘Can’t you do anything, Meissa?’ Helen anxiously demanded of her angel, instinctively aware of her name and, yes, some of her capabilities too: and so even as she asked the question, she knew she was being unfair expecting help of this kind from her guardian.
‘No, not against someone as powerful as this,’ Meissa admitted, once again without using any normal means of communication.
Definitely Fasuta then! Helen thought grimly.
She must have arrived at the summit as part of the attack, perhaps at one point even leading her men. But now she had transformed into one of her own guardians: a wolf, a creature who can sneak silently through the chaos of all these unexpected and startling transformations.