The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  C. F. Iggulden

  * * *

  THE SWORD SAINT

  Empire of Salt: Book Three

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  1: Canis

  2: Council

  3: Tellius

  4: Deeds

  5: To Lose

  6: Ambassador

  7: Kingdom

  8: Memory

  9: Parole

  10: Gamble

  11: Fall

  12: Old Wounds

  13: Hunter

  14: Killer

  15: Shield

  16: Spear

  17: Leader

  18: Assault

  19: Armour

  20: Dawn

  21: Chains

  22: River Gate

  23: Armour

  24: Tellius

  25: Broken

  26: Patient

  Read More

  Copyright

  About the Author

  C. F. Iggulden is one of the most successful authors of historical fiction writing today. He has written three previous bestselling historical series and two stand alone novels: Dunstan and The Falcon of Sparta. The Sword Saint is the final novel in his epic fantasy series, Empire of Salt.

  Also by C. F. Iggulden

  THE EMPIRE OF SALT SERIES

  Darien

  Shiang

  BY CONN IGGULDEN

  Dunstan

  The Falcon of Sparta

  THE WARS OF THE ROSES SERIES

  Stormbird

  Trinity

  Bloodline

  Ravenspur

  THE EMPEROR SERIES

  The Gates of Rome

  The Death of Kings

  The Field of Swords

  The Gods of War

  The Blood of Gods

  THE CONQUEROR SERIES

  Wolf of the Plains

  Lords of the Bow

  Bones of the Hills

  Empire of Silver

  Conqueror

  Blackwater

  Quantum of Tweed

  BY CONN IGGULDEN AND HAL IGGULDEN

  The Dangerous Book for Boys

  The Pocket Dangerous Book for Boys: Things to Do

  The Pocket Dangerous Book for Boys: Things to Know

  The Dangerous Book for Boys Yearbook

  BY CONN IGGULDEN AND DAVID IGGULDEN

  The Dangerous Book of Heroes

  BY CONN IGGULDEN AND

  ILLUSTRATED BY LIZZY DUNCAN

  Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children

  Tollins 2: Dynamite Tales

  To all those who work in bookshops and libraries. Thank you for your patience – and for keeping me safe and warm, when I should have been in school.

  Acknowledgements

  I have always loved stories. I used to write them in a sort of wild state, flinging words into the air from an old PC and golfball printer. Those around me were patient, though I spent years tapping away on my own, lost in chaotic imaginings.

  I acknowledged some of the authors I’ve revered in the first book. To those, I should add the people who turned all that phantom-of-the-opera madness into actual printed books. Victoria Hobbs was the first to say yes. Nick Sayers was the first editor to accept. Katie Espiner and Susan Watt and Amanda Ridout and Victoria Barnsley all played vital roles. Tim Waller copy-edited my first book and just about every one since, including The Dangerous Book for Boys. He is a shadow of his former self as a result. In Penguin Random House, Alex Clarke, Louise Moore, Jillian Taylor and Tom Weldon nurtured, allowed, championed – just made things happen. I could keep going with names. It takes a village to put a book in your hand – and you, of course, to pick it up. Thank you.

  Conn Iggulden

  Prologue

  The boy crouched on a ledge, resting his chin on his knees, eyes bright as he watched the old priest pass below. His mother had told him not to visit the little temple on the hill. She’d made him swear he would never set foot in the place. He’d nodded and mumbled his oath, but all the time he’d known he would. Rules were wonderful things, Jean had discovered. Boys, girls, adult men and women, even priests seemed bound by them. They called them laws or traditions and then they raised them up to holy writ. For fear of being caught, Jean supposed. So if he wasn’t caught, he could do anything. He loved rules, as many as possible. He could argue in his persuasive way that people needed them – to fend off the ache of having to make their own decisions, for example. Or because when they really needed to rebel, to roar and shake their fists at the stars, they could break some petty little law about not defacing coins, rather than running amok with an axe.

  Jean smiled as the priest muttered something to himself, utterly unaware of the fourteen-year-old perched high above him. He’d watched the cleric go through his late service over a dozen evenings, peering in from the door. Jean knew his mother would hardly have been able to believe his patience, but he didn’t want to rush in, not for this. She still thought of him as a child, but he had a man’s growth on him and he could see the way other men looked away as he passed, for all his youth. There was something in his eyes, in the challenge they saw there, that made them drop their gaze. Each time it happened was a little triumph. He hoped it hurt when older men felt their nerve fail. It would never happen to him. He would die first.

  His mind filled again with dreams of gold. The old priest may have served some dark god to frighten Jean’s mother – and all mothers like her – but the smell of blood was rich and not unpleasant, not noticeably worse than a butcher’s shop. And what did it matter really, if some sheep was thrown alive onto a fire rather than being slaughtered and cut into chops first? No, Jean Brieland was not afraid of a skinny priest, half-deaf and milky-eyed. If there was a treasure in that little temple, he would have it. Perhaps he would buy his mother a house. She’d look at him then without the pity and fear he always saw in her. Her disappointment was like acid in that way. It burned him and made him jut his jaw. It made him determined to prove her wrong. He was not his father.

  Ahead of him, the priest fiddled with the mechanism of the door to the inner sanctuary – or whatever it was that lay behind it. Jean had only caught a glimpse of the room on one previous occasion, when Father Cormac had been caught in a rainstorm, stumbling in with an armful of firewood, leaving the door open until he’d brought in all he needed.

  The room beyond went back into gloom – that was all Jean had been able to see. Each evening, old Cormac completed some ritual in the outer cave, with or without a blood sacrifice. A few of the older hill shepherds still made offerings to the little temple, so Jean supposed it depended on what they had left. He’d only seen a live lamb once and that had been a scrawny little thing, all eyes and legs. Another time, it had just been a packet of kidneys wrapped in cloth. The priest was thin enough for the offerings to be a rare thing. Too lazy to work for a living probably, the old bastard.

  When he’d finished his chanting and whispering, Father Cormac tossed a handful of incense on the metal brazier, gleaming beads of tree sap that spat as they melted. He sang then for a time, in a voice that was more like the hissing of geese. Jean had struggled not to laugh out loud when he’d heard the old boy sing for the first time. He’d had to press his hand across his own mouth as he’d peered in, hidden in the long grasses by the entrance.

  Little by little, Jean had learned the patterns the priest followed. It wasn’t hard when they were always the same. The service and the incense came first, then Cormac would bow so low it always looked like he might not make it back up, first in one direction, then another. After that, he w
ould nod to himself and turn to the back of the temple – and the only true door in the place, leading to who knew what.

  Today was the day for firewood, once again. With a sense of excitement, Jean had watched the old man opening up the turf-covered wood store before the service, giving the spiders a chance to escape. The priest had collected half a dozen armfuls and brought them through the temple, past the little altar, to the very rear, by the door.

  The old man sighed to himself as he came out for another load. Jean smiled above, hugging his knees in anticipation. It had taken the priest a count of forty to carry the first logs inside, to stack around some stove. That gap had given Jean the chance to get up onto the ledge, hidden from view in the gloom. He’d almost pressed in behind the open door, but it wasn’t always pushed right back and there was something glorious about sitting above the heads of others. He’d spent enough evenings on the roof of his mother’s building to know that. Up there, out of reach, he could be a king.

  Father Cormac filled his arms once more, moving slowly and steadily, stacking the pieces of wood on the crook of his right arm with his left. He passed through the door and Jean dropped down, light as a bird, following him in.

  The air was sour somehow, away from the scents of turf and charcoal. It smelled of a single man living on his own, his clothes too rarely washed. Jean knew the smell well enough from his own room and his mother’s complaints. It was dark too and as he padded forward, he almost ran into the shuffling priest. Only the man’s deafness saved him then as Jean leaned back against a rock wall and held his breath.

  His eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, in time to watch Father Cormac enter a side room further down a short tunnel cut into the rock. Jean heard the sound of logs being dropped into a basket and he realised even old Cormac couldn’t fail to see him on the way back. He had to get out, but he’d learned nothing. Fear made him angry. He darted forward instead, pattering down the corridor after the priest.

  Another door stood open, opposite and a little beyond the first. There was a sense of air and cold from it, with the faintest of lights far away. Jean glanced back at the room Father Cormac had gone into and firmed his jaw. He had spent too long planning this to turn back. He might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. That was what his mother said. Jean darted into the opening and felt his mouth drop open.

  There was a walkway of sorts, though it had no rail or anything to stop him falling. It was impossible to say how deep the pit went, perhaps all the way to the bottom of the mountain, like a shaft through the heart. Jean could feel depth as he peered over the edge. He fought a mad urge to shout, just to hear the echo.

  The tiny light across the pit helped him crush the impulse. He had not come for childish things, but to see why a temple would have been built in such a place and tended, so his mother said, all her life. And who knew how long before that? Temples meant gold cups, or gold coins. Everyone knew that.

  Fearing the edge, Jean made his way around the pit. The path was wide and flat, almost as if it had been paved. Even so, he went slowly, in case the floor was not as solid as it seemed. There were no surprises. When he reached the other side and looked back, he was awed at how far he had come. He could see the dim shape of the doorway he’d passed through, the one that led to the outside. He smiled in the darkness, feeling the life coursing in his limbs. He stood tall and wide-shouldered, confident in his own strength and speed. He was not afraid. There was nothing in the world he could not fight or outrun. Still, the silence was unnerving. He wondered if there had ever been more light falling in there than this eternal gloom.

  The gleam he’d seen from the far side of the pit was produced by a single lamp. He was obscurely disappointed at the ordinary sight of matches, spare wicks and a canister of oil on a rock shelf. It was easy to imagine the old man shuffling along there every evening to refill the reservoir, or to spark a new flame. If the pit turned out to be nothing more than his toilet, Jean had already wasted too long on it. He fought not to giggle at the idea, though it was more a release of tension than real humour.

  Disappointment touched him as he searched, running his hands along the edges of a dozen shelves cut into the rock – and right to the back of each one, though he feared the nip of some scaled thing. Nothing. No crowns, no bags of gold coins, no hoard to make him rich. A dusty leather belt hung on a nail and he reached for that as something moved in the gloom, rushing closer.

  He had not heard the priest creep up. Jean shrieked a high note as Cormac lunged at him. His hand scrabbled with the belt, yanking it free as he tried to lash out with it and drive him back. Jean could see something flash silver in the old man’s hands as he came at him, jabbing and slicing the air.

  He retreated and the priest howled when he saw Jean whipping the belt back and forth. In a frenzy, the old man lunged again. Jean felt the horror of an iron blade across his throat, but there was no pain, no hot blood coursing. He gaped at the priest and felt his neck. Father Cormac seemed to have lost his mind and continued to slash at him. Jean raised one arm to protect his face and saw a wicked little blade slide across his skin without leaving a mark. He held the belt in one hand and as he looked at it, something gleamed beneath the dust. Jean grabbed the priest’s arm.

  He was fourteen and strong. With the belt in one hand, he gripped the old man’s robe, shaking him back and forth in soundless rage. Father Cormac was gasping fit to burst his heart as Jean took his stick-like wrist and turned it, shoving the little blade into the old man’s chest.

  It was over in an instant. All the struggle died away and the priest looked at him.

  ‘You’re just … no. You don’t …’

  Father Cormac fought for breath, but the pit was huge and deep behind him and Jean could not resist the pull of it. He pushed the old man hard, watching him stumble against the edge and then fall, vanishing into blackness with a cry like a gull.

  Jean found himself on his knees by the edge, gasping hard. Without thinking, he took up the little lamp and tossed it down. It fell a long way and, at the bottom, he saw the splayed body of Father Cormac and around him a glimpse of black shapes, like statues standing guard.

  True darkness flooded in as the lamp winked out. It filled his mouth and eyes and ears like liquid and the silence was profound and eternal. Until something moved, a scrape of rock that filled Jean with horror. He still had the belt wrapped around his hand and he was up and shuffling, with the wall at his back, trying to guess how far away the door was. He thought he sensed something watching him, something that would cry out his guilt. His own breath was the loudest thing in the world. When he felt the door frame under his hands, he almost wept and clung to it in relief. He never saw the shadow detach from that much deeper darkness and follow him. It was no bigger than a cat, though it crept on more than four limbs.

  1

  Canis

  Lord Canis stepped down from his coach. Pale and thin, in a black suit with his hair oiled close to his head, he was as elegant as any undertaker. The new road shone blue and grey, like fish scales. It was good-quality work. Canis knew the roadmen’s costs to the last penny, but it looked both neat and hard-wearing, well worth the expense. In most parts of Darien, people still trudged through slop older than they were, a foul mixture of mud, hog blood and other things too noisome to consider. Here, the council building sat in a shining sea of flint. Lord Canis nodded to himself. A city needed good roads.

  His servant, Albert George, came round, holding a small brush in each hand. Albert George may have had a surname, but it was never used. The man was in his sixties, short, spry and neat in manner. Though his own hair had long ago retreated to a silver shore, he looked healthy, the dome of his head suntanned and slightly freckled. On that day, the bristles in his nose and ears had been trimmed right back to a mat of stubble. Nothing was out of place. Though Lord Canis was a head taller, the scene had an air of a father inspecting his son before sending him to be married, or to accept his degree.

  Canis stoo
d coolly while Albert George used the brushes in quick sweeps. If there was a glimmer of affection in the older man, it was not returned by the lord and council member. Nor did Albert George expect thanks. When he was finished, he stood back and bowed his head. Only one other coachman waited to be dismissed, ready for Albert George to swing up so he could take the carriage round to the stables.

  The flow of bustling people and carts had slowed as a crowd gathered, but no one called out, in greeting or insult. A sight of the Canis coach brought dread in that city. For most of them, it meant tragedy. If Lord Canis had looked up, he might have been interested to observe how many of the watchers turned their heads so as not to see him, as if they could banish his dark cloth and black coach from the reality of their lives. He did not look up, however. His mind was on the vote of that morning and the business still ahead in the afternoon.

  The huge door to the new council building stood before him, constructed with a tithe taken from every working citizen and subject in Darien. Canis had been involved in that vast undertaking, the fortification of the city two years before. A small piece of that funding had created an impressive building of six storeys, in brick and sandstone. Stone lions guarded the entrance. One was asleep, but the other had raised its head to observe the city, a symbol of eternal vigilance. Inside, the walls were panelled and floored in waxed oak, lighter and less oppressive than some of the older public buildings in Darien. Not cheap, however. Canis had seen the receipts and checked the accounts himself.

  ‘All done, my lord,’ Albert George said. ‘I hope the afternoon session goes well.’

  Canis nodded. As he’d risen before dawn, it had already been a long day, though he showed no sign of weariness. Albert George had known him for forty years, ever since the family stone had been used on a child so full of grins and pranks it had seemed he might burst. That laughing boy had died where he’d lain in the Canis gardens, robbed away by the wall that had crushed him – and the stone that saved his life.