The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  He’d have to kill some of the men, he realised. All those who had been on guard the night before would have to be hanged, while the rest looked on as witnesses. He and his legions had been complacent. That was clear enough. They’d grown used to lesser enemies, those who ran like sheep before them. He remembered the lone husband who’d come to kill him before. From Dalton? Dalston? It didn’t matter. A king made enemies, he knew that. He might even have admired their courage if it hadn’t been aimed at him.

  Will you weep, King of Féal? Do you care at all that I was burned in the foul witch-light, that I might have died? What would you have done then, without me?

  ‘Oh, I would have managed somehow,’ he muttered. A thought struck him and he frowned. ‘I did not know you could be hurt.’

  There was no reply for a time and he wondered how he actually would feel if the shadow perished. Bereft, or relieved? He could barely remember the first day he had heard her voice, whispering in his ear. He shuddered, caught by the memory of a time when he had still been frightened by her. He’d been little more than a child, he recalled, telling a friend that the shadow was there, pointing over and over. He’d learned she could kill then, no matter how he had pleaded.

  ‘More importantly, how was I hurt?’ he said aloud. ‘I thought the belt protected me? Is that not its purpose? You said the morning stones would seal my skin. How is it that I bleed, then? Did you lie to me? Answer!’

  Be silent, you fool! See how the servants look at you, standing on your own and ranting to nothingness – addressing an empty chair! Would you have them think you mad? How long do you think you will remain king if your army turns against you? There is your work, little Jean Brieland, if you have the wit to see it. Are you a child or a king? Go and speak to your men. Show them you are interested in their hurts and their lives.

  ‘You are angry with me, I understand,’ he said, more quietly. ‘I am sorry you were injured. I am sorry we both were. I would miss you, you know that. Does that satisfy you?’

  There was silence for a time, but it seemed less strained. He tried to see the shadow as she moved across the ground. There was definitely a hitch in her movement, as if she ached, or had been broken. He winced in sympathy.

  ‘Did the belt fail?’ he whispered.

  You were shot in the head and yet you stand here. The belt did not fail …

  He waited. In the first years, he had felt the little creature was his tormentor, that he could never be private or have a moment to himself. He thought she had even driven him to madness for a time, making him more savage and more vengeful than he might have been. Yet those qualities had served him well enough as he had formed a kingdom from hill villages and seen how to make them a true nation. He had learned many things from those days – not least that the shadow seemed to need him too. If he refused to speak, she would become frantic over time, as bonded to him as he was to her.

  He wondered when he had started to think of the shadow as female, but perhaps that was just what he preferred to imagine. Yet there was a wounded tone to her hurt that reminded him of his mother or his first wife, both in the grave many years past. He’d had little time for the gentle companionship of women after those failed attempts. Not when the shadow would bicker and berate all those he tried to love. She had not minded him breeding sons, however. He thought the way she doted on Louis was even close to a mother’s love. Perhaps that was why he thought of her as female, in her blackness and whispering. That, and the fact that she was a terrifying killer of men, at least when he asked nicely, or allowed her to be.

  Silence now? You will not drag my secrets from me, Jean Brieland.

  Still he said nothing, just waiting while the sun showed a line of gold wire and then a blade. It was a good omen, he thought.

  Oh, very well! Though I am weak and injured and you are cruel. One of the attackers drew magic. The belt is an artefact of old times, little Jean. Yet I overcame the bitch as she tried to hurt you, as she tried to steal you away from me. That is why you live. Because I saved you and kept you whole.

  ‘And you were burned …’ he said. ‘I am sorry. You said “she”, though? The one in the fire? I saw her coming.’

  Monster. Whore. Thief.

  Nothing more came, no matter how he pleaded. With the sun rising, King Jean throttled down his reluctance and went to see the destruction of the night before. Some of his twenty legions had not lost a single man. Those further north than his own tent had played little or no part and were untouched. They were working hard that morning in the camp, aware of their luck, and how it was judged by those who had faced fire and iron.

  The king walked past rows of bodies as they were sewn into shrouds for burial, or more likely a funeral pyre. It would have to be the latter with so many of them, as it was after a battle. He chafed at the thought of such a delay. Should he give Darien another day as a reward for their attack? Or rush upon them, on the heels of those they had sent to kill him?

  He had been frightened the night before, in the dark, feeling pain for the first time since childhood. That fear had gone. His army was in range of Darien. He wanted to have the men form up and just march, to expunge the shame of the night with action. He longed for it and it was an effort to walk slowly down the lines of the dead as they were arrayed, as if on a final inspection.

  Most of them had been killed defending him, he knew that. They’d run to save their king and died on the blades of no more than a few men. The attackers had been astonishingly skilful, that was clear enough. They would not have survived otherwise, nor vanished in the night like ghosts. King Jean remembered a report from his son that had described a ‘sword saint’ and a duel with Emil Cartagne. He wondered if the same man had stalked through his camp the night before.

  It was an act of war, of course. No ruler of men had ever been given a better reason to blow the horns than this. Jean Brieland no longer needed the excuse of his son’s injuries. Darien had attacked his camp and slaughtered hundreds of his men. In response, he would burn their city down around their ears and perhaps he would not spare even the women and children. The thought both darkened his mood and pleased him. There would be other battles to follow, other territories that might refuse his treaties, or the presence of his army on their borders. There was a satrap kingdom that began leagues to the west. Perhaps that man would benefit from a tale of the mighty Darien burned to ash and bone. Fire made all corruptions clean – and it would be seen for miles and miles. The hub of the region would fall – and all the small kings would know. He would make his nation then, carved in stone for eternity.

  He stopped when he reached the end of the row. He wasn’t sure if it was right that their faces were hidden beneath cloth. Dead eyes cried out for vengeance and they seemed almost peaceful lying there, far removed from the horror of death in the dark.

  A group of senior officers had taken up position around him as he walked, so that the king led them in quiet reverie, all the way to the end of the dead. Jean knew it was a moment of performance, but he owed them something. A nation needed stories, to inspire the generations to come. When they told the tale of Darien, it would include his anger at seeing his men killed by filthy traitors.

  Jean stood with his head bowed and his generals did the same, standing as if in prayer.

  ‘These men have gone on, though they watch us still. They cry out, though they lie silent. So I give you my word as king, to those alive and those who sleep: you were loyal and you gave your lives for us. We will not fail. We will not let you down.’

  One of his clerks scribbled the words with pencil and a scrap of paper as he spoke. King Jean nodded his approval. He’d look over the exact wording later. He thought the ending could be improved before it went into the formal record.

  With that done, Jean walked on into the centre of the camp, where his Black Guards had settled into their unnatural stillness the night before. They too had terrified him once, until he understood them. He’d learned to love them since. Deep in that moun
tain tomb, with the body of Father Cormac gone to withered skin and bone, he’d climbed down ropes to see what strange things lay there in the darkness of millennia.

  The memories were strong in Jean Brieland as he looked upon devastation. For every battle he’d known, his Black Guards had been with him. He’d marched them into villages and recruited with them standing at his back, unmoving and silent. To see grey pieces lying, or worse, perfectly preserved Guards curled up like dead insects, gloss and colour gone, was disturbing, like nightmares come to life. They looked like statues of themselves, the dead ones, with life and magic torn out of them. He’d thought them immortal, his changeless warriors.

  In all the years since he’d climbed down into that tomb as a young man, determined to learn what the old priest had been guarding, Jean Brieland had seen only two of them fail. They’d stood still for who knew how many thousands of years, yet when he’d called them, when he’d said ‘Follow’, they had climbed out of the shaft through the heart of a mountain and they had made him a king. Everything he was had come from that tomb and the courage it had taken to enter. It struck him to the marrow to see them broken and tossed aside, burned like traitors and unwanted things.

  ‘How many have we lost?’ Jean asked his most senior general. He was not sure then if General Petraeus would be one of those he was forced to hang before moving on. That was in the lap of the gods, if the general had been in charge of the sentries the night before. Until that decision was made, the man could still serve a purpose and answer his damned question.

  ‘Of the six hundred, we have twenty shy of four hundred remaining. Two hundred and twenty lost, Your Majesty. I’m sorry.’

  King Jean closed his eyes for a moment. His beloved Guards, torn apart. His six hundred with a third of their number ripped away. It felt like a knife in his chest and his eyes snapped open at the thought it might be his heart breaking. While General Petraeus waited for orders and a dozen other men stood with their heads bowed, or looking out over the field of the dead, he took deep breaths and calmed his racing pulse.

  He could see the path the witch had taken. It was a furrow in the ground, burned in the turf and marked by bodies. His guards. Already, there were teams putting ropes on them. As the king watched, one of the grey husks was dragged away by two straining soldiers, leaning low against the weight.

  ‘Are they to be buried, Your Majesty?’ General Petraeus asked.

  Jean recalled the man had been some sort of mercenary before swearing his oaths in blood to Féal. Petraeus had never let him down before. He knew it wasn’t fair to fix the blame on one of his loyal officers and he struggled to keep his voice steady and not let anger spill out. There had to be blood. The men had to see the blame lay not with their king, but with those who had failed him. They had to know there was always a price.

  He had no idea what to do with the broken ones. For the two he had seen fail over thirty years, he had gathered a group of engineers and watched while they levered the dead suits apart. None of them had understood the workings within, not even with them broken into levers of shining metal and rippled blocks like cubes of black clay. There was no space for men in that black armour, for which he was thankful. If there had been, Jean knew he would have been tempted to wear one himself, though the thought of being trapped inside had chilled him. Even more so, now that he saw them curled like moths touched by flame.

  General Petraeus waited for a reply with infinite patience, Jean saw. It would be a shame to kill such a fine officer, no matter the lesson. He made his decision.

  ‘Yes, they are to be buried. Give the task to the camp followers. Have them dig a mass grave – well marked, so we can find it again, when this is done. I will not stay to see the burial. They are not men, Petraeus.’

  The general chose his reply carefully. He had fought alongside the king’s black soldiers and he had formed an impression of awareness in them. If they were not men, they were not mere toys or statues either, he was certain. Many of them stood close by the fallen ones, waiting for orders. They seemed alert and jerky in their movements, as if they felt the loss of their own.

  ‘As you say, Your Majesty. They are not men – they are the Black Guards. I will ask for a stone to be carved for them, a formal tomb. We have craftsmen enough in the camp.’

  King Jean looked at the general, sensing the stubbornness in him. He did not always understand his senior officers. They had values and attitudes that were sometimes utterly confusing.

  ‘Who was responsible for the guard rotation last night, Petraeus?’

  This time the response was prompt.

  ‘There were ten senior captains responsible for manning the wall, Your Majesty. Under Generals Brown and Chivers. All twelve have been arrested and held pending your decision.’

  ‘I see. I am glad it was not you, Petraeus.’

  The general bowed his head slowly in reply. It hardly needed to be said that he was pleased as well.

  ‘They will have to be hanged, though twelve does not seem many. Select an additional centurion from each captain’s section, someone senior. They will share the responsibility and the punishment.’

  Looking over the field of broken guards, he was tempted to keep going. A couple of dozen men hardly seemed enough. Yet Petraeus seemed satisfied and Jean took his cue from the older man.

  ‘I will have the order given immediately, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Outside the camp, I think. Get the men into marching order, the cavalry ready. I will see Darien today and make camp before their walls. And they will see me. I don’t want any more delays, general. We’ll hang the men responsible and march.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘They sent their best to kill me, general. They broke into our camp as thieves and murderers. It is an act of war, of course. Let the men know they carry the honour of the kingdom of Féal with them. I will take down the walls of Darien. I will mix mortar and blood to rebuild them. Let us make a mark on the world, General Petraeus.’

  The man’s chest swelled as he drew in breath and pride at the same time. Petraeus nodded and dipped to one knee before the king dismissed him and his companions. The camp walls were already coming down now that the army was up and about. As the sun cleared the horizon, cooking vats bubbled with stew and the men ate quickly and messily, tossing down the cups and bowls. They knew there was every chance they would fight before they ate again.

  In normal times, there might have been excitement and laughter in those ranks, almost the sense of a fair. Not that morning, however. The men had walked along lines of dead friends and companions, waiting to be buried. They had seen the invincible Black Guards broken. They seethed with the dishonour done to them, but they were not downcast. They had broken cities before.

  21

  Chains

  With the boy-king of Darien, Tellius stood on the walls, just waiting. Both of them had to shield their eyes as the light turned to evening brass. The land around the city was a grassy plain for the most part, marked by roads and a few small taverns for the weary traveller. Tellius had horsemen too out there, waiting on mile markers beyond the limits of his vision, racing in as soon as each one sighted the army of Féal.

  The name did not amuse him any longer, not with scouts galloping back to Darien as if hell was on their heels. He acknowledged them with a raised hand and sinking heart, before turning to Arthur and exchanging a glance. Each rider returning meant another two miles covered. The king of Féal was moving quickly, his anger to be read in the relentless pace.

  Tellius looked left and right along the massive wall. The crest was a single-track road, wide and solid. Drainage had always been a problem and recent rains had made the trackway a little soft. He’d had a mixture of sawdust and dark sand sprinkled all the way round the city, collecting it from carpenters’ workshops and the black desert over previous days. He knew some of the rougher bars used just such a mixture on their floors to soak up blood.

  Regiments rested in the streets below, re
ady to march up and take their posts. Fully manned, it was hard to imagine anything able to breach those defences. Yet Prince Louis’ men had scouted the city. Tellius had done nothing while they’d wandered all over as visitors and partners – as guests of some of the noble families. No doubt the men of Féal had written entire books of gate mechanisms and maps.

  Tellius gripped the wall hard as he thought of the mistakes he’d made, then tried to put them behind him. No one had perfect foresight of what would come! Mistakes were always made – by both sides. Tellius almost smiled at the thought of the destruction Elias and Nancy had wrought in the Féal camp. Although they’d failed to kill this Jean Brieland and seemed only to have aggravated him, they’d brought back information that had been like water to a dry soul.

  Each of his little kill team had noticed different things. Exhausted as they’d been when they’d arrived back at the gates and been let in, Tellius had questioned them, learning everything he could. Only then had he left them to sleep like the dead. Basker at the Old Red Inn had offered up his best rooms for the war effort, though he seemed to think he would be repaid, at least at first. Tellius had listed instead some of the costs the city had incurred to keep that inn safe from invading armies. After quite a while, the old soldier had given up and gone back to polishing glasses.

  Tellius felt the breeze pick up. He breathed it in.

  ‘There is only so much you can do,’ Arthur said suddenly. ‘You are one man, Tellius.’

  ‘One Speaker for the Council,’ he replied, looking down. He knew Arthur’s origins better than anyone else in the city. As a rule, Tellius treated him like a young ruler, rather than a construct made for a grieving mother, goodness knew how many centuries ago. Arthur would not age and Tellius thought he would not change. In another thousand years, there was a chance Arthur would remain on those walls, or perhaps the ruins of them.