The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  Elias waited until they were all on their feet. He reached out and took hold of coats and jackets, pulling them in so his voice didn’t have to carry further.

  ‘Stay away from light as best you can. I will take the guards on the gate. Hondo and Bosin will clear any watchers on the crest. If they are there. When we get inside, two groups. Taeshin, Bosin, Hondo with me. Nancy and Deeds a dozen paces behind, moving with us.’ He exchanged a glance with Nancy as she nodded. ‘Be prepared to change plan, depending on what we face. I want quick thinking, understood? Good. Limited communication when we’re inside, unless it’s a low whistle – and then only in an emergency. Kill silently, or not at all.’ Elias recalled the command tent of the old Aeris legion and frowned in memory. ‘We’re looking for any large structure, one that is well guarded. If it goes wrong, if the alarm goes up, be ready to get out – over the embankment, or cut your way past a gate. Then scatter. You all know where the horses are waiting. Keep the North Star behind you and head south. Don’t try and fight when you can cut and run. Understood?’

  ‘I have a question,’ Deeds said.

  ‘He did not ask for questions,’ Taeshin snapped.

  Deeds looked at the swordsman in surprise.

  ‘Oh, really? Well, you know what you …’

  Elias clapped Deeds on the shoulder, interrupting whatever he had been about to say. The group broke up as if that was the signal, spreading out as they stalked down the slight slope, the sleeping camp before them.

  Elias reached as he went, catching shadows of movement in the darkness. He remembered how he’d found it calming to close his eyes in Darien, to move without distractions. There were parts of him that flinched from the violence of that day, but to his surprise, he felt a great peace settle. There was no ambiguity in him that night, no sense of doing evil because a madman had his daughters. The king of Féal was marching a huge army south towards Darien. Peace was not his aim. Elias felt a building surge of excitement, then anger at himself. By the Goddess, he should have been able to resist the young man’s call to war! He was no guiltless maniac, not like Deeds. Yet as he ran, he thought perhaps, just perhaps, he had been made for bloody work. It was said no one knew his fate, but if the Goddess had ever worked through Elias, it would be as an instrument of vengeance. Elias dipped his chin as he ran, like a boxer avoiding the knockout punch. He could be a destroyer, for one more night.

  It was strange to use the tricks of hunting as he approached the gate, hunched low to make himself small. The torches cast a pool of light perhaps two dozen paces from one side to the other. Beyond that wind-blown light lay darkness and those coming in fast. To reach the pair standing on guard, shifting lightly from foot to foot, Elias had to sprint.

  Nancy timed it well, he saw. Tellius had said to rely on her and there she was. She and Deeds had looped around, making noise that subtly drew the attention of the guards. Elias saw one nudge the other alert, then both soldiers stiffened at the sight of a woman dragging what seemed to be an unconscious man.

  Nancy waved them over, looking desperate. It was a weak ploy, but it didn’t have to work. All that mattered was that both men were watching Nancy as Elias came out of the darkness and crossed the pool of light. They sensed him and began to turn, but it was far too late by then. Nancy saw Elias held only a small skinning knife, but the guards seemed to deflate as he passed, sagging forward.

  Elias lowered them to the ground, reaching hard as he looked for the first alarm, or some shout of warning. At the same time, Hondo leaped at the slope. The angle was designed to be too steep for anyone to climb, but the sword saint was like a mountain goat and gained the top in a skittering sideways movement. There was the muffled sound of a struggle and the body of a stranger came sliding down the outer slope, wedging against one of the basket outlines.

  Elias gestured to Bosin and Taeshin. Neither of them had tried to get up the outer slope, not when they were close enough to see it. Bosin had diverted to stand beside Elias instead and Taeshin had gone with him. The gate was still shut, but Elias heard the soft clunk of levers and Hondo appeared. For all its appearance of massive strength, a marching camp was not secure. They stepped through a narrow gap, while behind them, Deeds leaped up. He and Nancy followed them in, all nervous as cats. Deeds had his guns out, Elias saw. He could not curse him when silence was the difference between success and failure.

  The camp lay in neat lines ahead, like city streets. Hundreds of pale tent shapes could be seen before night and distance swallowed them. Carts and tethered draught animals had been made to form roads, ready for their owners to pack them up in the morning. The whole place was well ordered, but there was no sign of any general’s pavilion.

  Elias and the others moved silently, trying to stay close to the tents and aware of every snore and grumbling sleeper. Elias reached as he went, seeing a sleeping man come out to empty his bladder before they stumbled across him. The six of them waited in a line of shadow while he peed onto the ground. There were toilet pits along the edges of the camp and so the man was breaking a rule. Elias waited for him to go back inside and then a minute longer, until he had gone back to sleep. Silence and cold ached in the delay.

  The further they went from the gate and the outer perimeter, the more danger seemed to shriek in Elias’ ears. The camp was huge and he saw how easy it would be to get lost in the middle of thousands of tents. He began to count rows just to keep a sense of how far they had come. He had just passed forty when the landscape changed ahead. Elias dropped to a crouch once again and looked over his shoulder to see Nancy and Deeds were still back there. Plans changed and he hadn’t appreciated the sheer size of the camp on first approach. They were already a long way from the edges. Troubled, he reached out and collected a handful of dust, letting it trickle through his fingers and sending a prayer they would come through. His throat was dry and he wondered if any of them had brought a flask. Hondo or Taeshin, probably. Someone had to get out, obviously, to carry word back to Tellius. Elias waited for his heart and whirling thoughts to settle and grow calm. He was a hunter first – and he had learned to wait and listen on lonely hillsides. He’d been hunted himself once, when a female bear had caught his scent and tracked him for miles of deep forest. Elias remembered the feeling very well. Something was wrong and all his instincts kept him perfectly still.

  Elias could hear the sigh of leather and cloth as the other five shifted uncomfortably, waiting for him to move or give new orders. He could not make sense of what he was seeing, nor the sudden sense of dread that gripped him still. White tents were visible on both sides, seeming to run around the perimeter of a darker heart. It looked almost like open ground and he wondered if the army kept a space for meals, or weapons drill. If it was that last, he had to have reached the centre. Yet there was something odd about the ground ahead. Only the dull gleam of starlight lit the field as Elias slowly turned his head back and forth, using his peripheral vision to pick up details in the darkness. He could not smother the sense of panic that had flared in him. He imagined suddenly running in, straining his knack to see what would happen. The results made him pull in a sharp breath. Shaken, he turned to Hondo at his back.

  ‘We need to go around this dark patch. Tell the others. No one is to go near it. I will take a route left. Stay close.’

  ‘What if the king has his tent in the centre?’ Hondo whispered, his lips so close to Elias’ ear that they touched the cold skin.

  ‘Then we cannot reach him. Do you know the Sallet Greens?’ Elias had seen them defend the city, the armoured artefacts that were the most powerful defenders of the city.

  To his surprise, Hondo nodded.

  ‘There are more …’ Elias halted. ‘Oh, no …’

  Ahead of him, shapes had begun to move, unfolding in the darkness. Line by line, hundreds of black shells roused from stillness. They rose in creaking ranks, darker than night and gleaming under the stars. Elias swallowed. A dog barked nearby and a low horn wail began to sound over the camp. S
omeone had found the dead guards.

  ‘Fall back,’ Elias said aloud. His words stuttered as he reached, looking for threat all around. ‘These are Sallet Greens … blacks.’

  He saw Nancy coming forward and began to move to stop her.

  ‘Let me through,’ she said.

  He heard the snap of the slim box shutting and she was brimful of something that made the air crackle as she came past. Elias gaped at what would happen, in time to turn away before she lit the night with a huge ball of flame that cracked the air and vanished. Those who had been staring into the dark heart of the Féal camp were left reeling and blind.

  Men began shouting panicky questions all around them, while officers sprang up from their blankets and added swearing and orders to the sudden tumult. More alarm horns sounded. Elias watched in awe as Nancy poured out threads of light in a ball around her. They lit the lines of black-armoured figures moving like oil, spearing through them. She had spent whatever she’d taken from the Sallet Stone carefully before. He realised she was letting it roar out then, as if there was an infinite supply.

  On either side of her, more of the creatures lurched into life, revealed by flashes and strikes. They sighted on Nancy as the threat and clustered around her, bounding with extraordinary speed. The dark core of the camp stretched away into the night and Elias could not see any end to them. Yet as they reached Nancy, as she passed through them, they fell back like insect husks, drained and twitching. For all their fearsome strength and power, they were her perfect prey. She was a wasp to them and they strengthened her as she killed. Again and again the ball of light cracked into existence, incinerating anything caught within. Elias could smell burned meat and hair and he realised he had hesitated for too long. If he went in support of Nancy, he and the others would be lost in that maelstrom, with weapons that would have little effect against armoured warriors. Instead, he whistled for the others to follow and raced down a lane between tents.

  ‘Are we getting out? What about Nancy?’ Deeds said from just behind him. The three Shiang swordsmen were in his wake with swords drawn like an armoured charge.

  Elias felt completely out of his depth. The camp was waking up. Men were grabbing weapons and armour and he still had not seen … He caught a glimpse of a tent higher than those around it.

  ‘Over there!’ He pointed. ‘One chance and then we run. Nancy can catch up.’

  Even as he spoke, a wave of hot air passed over the five men. Nancy was still going forward, only slightly behind and to one side of them as she drove a molten line through the very centre of the camp. The enemy could not contain her if she kept moving, Elias told himself.

  Coming up alongside as they ran, Deeds began to shoot anyone in their path. Elias made no move to stop him, not when it was easier to send men leaping back from gunfire than to kill them one by one. His way was too slow and the truth was, men didn’t fear a lone hunter with a knife, not the way they should have.

  ‘Where is the closest gate?’ Deeds yelled over the sound of his own guns. They were still using the explosions of light to navigate through the camp, though a deeper darkness returned whenever Deeds reloaded or Nancy paused to draw from the armoured Féal blacks. With Deeds shooting two pistols, Elias felt blind and deafened.

  ‘We are not heading to the gate,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘That tent, there. It has to be the king. We’ve come too far and we’re too close not to try for it. Stay on my shoulder.’

  ‘You said we should get out if the alarm was raised,’ Deeds said. In the same moment, he picked off two soldiers coming at Hondo with raised swords.

  Elias heard only part of the words. He scowled.

  ‘One chance, Deeds, to end it all. Stay with me, or I will kill you myself.’

  Whatever Deeds said in reply was lost as Nancy lit the night in a crack of heat that shook the ground. Bosin and Taeshin had a slight edge over Hondo in speed as they raced forward, all of them heading for the single point of white canvas that had been revealed, looming above the rest. If it turned out to be a weapon store, Elias would curse himself for bad judgement, but he hadn’t come so far just to run. With his eyes closed, he looked into moments ahead, stepping through or over dying men. One thing about Hondo and Bosin, they were born killers. They made Taeshin look like a farmer with a family heirloom.

  Elias flinched.

  ‘Guns!’ he shouted, then cursed under his breath. He could step aside from shots he could see coming. The others could not. If the army of Féal included gun regiments, massed fire lay ahead – perhaps more than even he could avoid. Elias watched safe spaces appear and wink out as he moved. Hondo grunted as he was struck, spun round and slowed as his armour took the brunt. Taeshin gaped at him and swallowed.

  Darkness and the distraction Nancy had created saved them. Anyone aiming weapons was looking in the direction of the balls of white threads rolling through their armoured section, not at five men running in silence through the lines of tents, sprinting past before it was even clear who they were. More bullets flew, but without light to see, the Féal soldiers were too wary of shooting blind and hitting their own.

  Ahead, Elias saw a white tent three or four times the size of any of the others they had passed. He wondered if he and the others could still get out by then, even if they just raced for one of the edges. It was more than possible his orders had thrown their lives away.

  No, the camp was still in chaos, he told himself. He had not come so far to wonder for the rest of his life if he had missed the king of Féal by moments! He had to see, before they ran. If the six of them split up, if they scattered, they still had every chance of clambering over one of the earth banks and just vanishing. Or it was too late and they were already dead.

  Elias came to a halt, panting as if to burst his heart. Yet there he was, standing before a tent fit for a king, while white fire bloomed behind him and the night lit up in shades of gold and blood.

  19

  Armour

  King Jean Brieland slept lightly at the best of times. For all the relative luxury of his tent, his mattress was thin and the air was always damp, despite the braziers. He came awake from restless sleep at the first crack of sound.

  For a moment or two, he lay blinking up at the canvas, seeing it light in flashes. Then he rolled out of bed and shouted for his servants to move.

  They were slower than he had been to come fully awake. In the dull glow of a brazier, he buckled his own breastplate and yanked on leggings. He had slept with the belt against his skin, the pieces of gold stone as warm as a lover to the touch. His hand drifted to it as his servants finally appeared, hair tousled and faces creased from sleep. The king felt his heart settle. The camp was under attack, but he would not be seen panicking. Such things mattered to the men. He buckled on a sword by the entrance and walked out into the darkness.

  The night was frozen, so that mud and turf crunched underfoot. Shadows rushed everywhere and one of his officers was bellowing ‘Light!’ at intervals, desperate for some idea of what was going on. Jean tutted under his breath. No one had ever dared attack the camp before. It was a move of desperation, but because it was so unlikely, they had not prepared for it.

  He heard no enemy soldiers tramping, no thunder of hooves. Yet men ran everywhere and shouted. He would certainly have words with his officers about that in the morning. It was a shambles and unbecoming of the dignity of his legions. Were they children to be spooked on a dark night? Ridiculous. Whatever it was, there was no excuse to go running around like chickens squawking about a fox.

  King Jean narrowed his eyes as he tried to understand what he was seeing in front of him. He felt the blood drain from his face when he understood the sudden flashes of light in the centre were in the middle of his Black Guards, that something was actually attacking the heart of his army. And survived still! He would not have thought any force could face his Guards and live for more than moments.

  He began to step forward, peering into the distance. The king barely had
time to register someone running straight at him. He actually turned to shout an angry warning to whatever servant was about to bowl him over in their panic, when he saw the raised knife. There was no time to counter. As he scrabbled to draw his sword, he felt the chill of steel whipping across his neck. His belt was warm as he gripped it in his free hand, his fingers suddenly cold.

  His attacker froze as the king drew his sword and lunged with it. Somehow the man swayed aside from the blow, though King Jean thought he had cut him. He had no time to follow up as another came out of the darkness, over the bodies of a line of his men as they formed up. King Jean raised his blade once again, but the swordsman’s speed and certainty were shocking. He felt hit after hit: against his neck, thumping into his chest and then, horribly, testing every part of him. As the king roared for help and flailed, the enemy warrior cut his armour to ribbons, looking for weakness. The king’s head was rocked back by a cut across his nose that would have ruined him. That was followed by a kick to one of his ankles, so that he fell back onto the frozen ground. He saw stars blotted out above and then someone was leaning on the tip of a sword, pressing their full weight down. He gasped and yelled.

  At last his guards had worked out he was under attack. They swarmed in to help the king, without thought for their own safety. Perhaps they knew their lives were forfeit if they did not. King Jean was not thinking clearly. He thought he saw those trying to kill him sweep his best soldiers aside, cutting through them like a reaper at the harvest. Unless he fought gods from the old centuries, they would be brought down. He tried to lever himself up and one of them kicked him in the face, deliberately, still testing to see what could hurt him. He felt the belt grow hot on his waist.