Justice

by Ian Irvine

  Lyf stomped around the leaf-strewn forest clearing on his crutches, wincing with every step. Until the great quake, the clearing had been a natural cathedral and a sacred site to the Cythonian people, but many of the oldest and most magnificent trees had fallen, their wrenched-out roots creating humps and hollows in the soft earth. Others had snapped halfway up, revealing hollow trunks full of rotten wood.

  Just like the land itself. Just like the nation. Just like him.

  Long boots covered Lyf’s shin stumps where Axil Grandys had hacked off his feet in that treacherous attack two thousand years ago. In all the long centuries after his death, when he had existed as a bodiless wrythen driven by an all-consuming urge for vengeance, Lyf had never been without pain.

  But since he’d regained a body, the pain had been worse—it was a bone-deep throb that was there day and night, awake and asleep. An agony as much in the mind as the body, for the amputations had been done with Grandys’ accursed sword, Maloch. The sword had been thought destroyed, as Lyf had thought Grandys dead, because his wrythen had hunted Grandys and the other four Heroes down, turned them to solid opal and cast them into the Abysm, forever.

  Generals Hramm and Hillish watched in silence, waiting for Lyf to reply. His adjutant, Moley Gryle, held a pain-relieving posset in a platina mug. She had covered it with a metal lid to keep it hot, though a trickle of steam curled from the top. He eyed the mug longingly but held back. He needed all his wits right now.

  Unfortunately, Grandys had not died. The protective enchantment within Maloch had preserved him, and the other Heroes, in the petrified state. Maloch had been carefully hidden and lovingly guarded down the aeons, only to turn up six months ago in the hands of Rixium Ricinus.

  If only it had stayed there. But the great enchantment within Maloch was also designed to aid its master, and from the moment Rix took the sword in hand its secret purpose had been to find Grandys and raise him from stone. Finally it had, and now Grandys was back, stronger and more terrible than ever.

  “The plan, Lord King?” said squat General Hramm, Lyf’s supreme commander. He was a taciturn, acerbic, impatient man, weak on strategy but strong on tactics.

  Lyf limped to the centre of the clearing and with sweeps of his right hand sketched the land of Togl in the dirt. The so-called Plain of Reffering was terminated on the south by the linked lakes of Yizl and Rizum, on the west by the towering Crowbung Range and on the east by the vastness of Lake Fumerous. The land lay open to the north though the fast-flowing Rinkl River, the boundary between Togl and Nyrdly, could only be crossed by the bridge at Restin.

  “The playground is ten miles wide and eight miles long,” said Hramm. “I’d prefer it was smaller.”

  Moley Gryle’s black eyes were fixed on something to the south. Lyf focused on her lovely face—the unblemished skin, cream with a hint of blue-grey, the neat, regular features framed by twin arcs of hair the colour of polished anthracite—then shook his head. Concentrate! He followed her gaze and, through a gap in the trees, saw the top of a small tabular peak, Red Mesa. He felt an instinctive urge to hide.

  “So Grandys’ army could be almost anywhere,” said General Hillish.

  “At need, ten thousand men can be hidden in a square a hundred yards on a side,” said Hramm. “They could be lying behind any small hill, in any of dozens of patches of woodland, or any small stretch of a myriad of valleys. Though our scouts—”

  “Have found no sign of them or their supply chain within two miles of here,” said Lyf.

  “Grandys moves quickly and his men travel light,” said Moley Gryle. “They carry several days’ rations with them and don’t wait for the supply wagons. He can strike anywhere, without warning.”

  Grandys had appeared out of nowhere at Glimmering and shattered the peace conference in a few violent minutes. Lyf felt the blood rushing to his face, the rage rising at the contemptuous way Grandys had struck him with that cursed sword. Never again!

  “Only a fool would attack an army of fifty thousand with ten thousand,” said Hramm. “Grandys is reckless, but he’s no fool. So what’s he going to do?”

  “No one can predict him,” said Lyf. “That’s the problem.” He beckoned to Moley Gryle, who handed him the mug. He took a sip of the posset, just enough to warm his mouth. It had a floral taste, like violets, and left an aftertaste of bitter orange. “But I have a plan,” he said as he handed back the mug.

  Lyf moved across the clearing until Red Mesa could no longer be seen and lowered his voice.

  “I’m sending out battalions east and west, north and south. A thousand men in each, to lure him out, always mindful of the best battleground for us to fight on. Sooner or later he’ll take the bait—”

  “How can you be sure?” said Hillish.

  “He craves battle and bloodshed,” said Moley Gryle. “It’s an addiction.”

  “How do you know?” snapped Hramm.

  “I’ve read all the stories and dispatches about Grandys,” said Moley Gryle, “and talked to every surviving witness we could find. He has to prove himself, over and over, but it’s weeks since he took Bastion Cowly, and that fight didn’t satisfy him because they’d already surrendered. And afterwards—”

  “He fought Rixium of Garramide hand to hand,” said Lyf. “And Rixium brought him down; he almost defeated Grandys.”

  “I heard Grandys was drunk,” said Hramm.

  “He’s always drunk after a battle,” said Moley Gryle. “It doesn’t affect his ability to fight.”

  “Grandys tried to drown Rixium in a cistern,” said Lyf, smiling now, “but the men of Cowly counterattacked and Rixium’s maidservant, Glynnie, a slip of a girl, battered Grandys to his knees with a baulk of timber, and rescued Rix.”

  “She made Grandys a laughing stock and he’ll be aching to make up for it,” said Moley Gryle.

  “He’ll take my bait,” said Lyf. “When he does, we surround his army with our fifty thousand—”

  “He’s a ferocious fighter, hand to hand,” said Hramm. “A man who can destroy an enemy’s morale all by himself.”

  “I’m not planning on fighting him at close range. We’re going to attack from a distance with the greatest barrage of bombasts and grenadoes, shriek-arrows and fire-flitters the land has ever seen. Not even the Five Heroes can withstand a bombast blast at close range. Not even Grandys.

  “Only then, when his army has been reduced to pulp, will I send in our troops. We’ll collect the bodies of the Five Heroes, burn them and sift the ashes to make sure not a bone survives, not a grain of opal armour, nothing!”

  “Nor the sword,” said Moley Gryle.

  “I’ll have Maloch melted with thermitto to destroy the enchantment, then the residue ground to dust. Every speck will be cast into a different part of the ocean so it can never be recovered by accident… or by design.”

  Lyf wobbled on his crutches. His splintered shin bones ached worse than ever. Moley Gryle handed him the posset and he drained it.

  “Well?” said Lyf to his generals.

  “It’s a plan,” said Hramm. “Simple, brutal, effective. Just the way I like them.”

  After he had gone, Moley Gryle said quietly, “I’m afraid, Lord King. Grandys is coming for you. I know he is.”

  “I have fifty thousand soldiers to protect me.”

  “He always targets the leader when he gets the chance. It’ll be a contest between him and you, and the victory he craves is victory over you, not your army.”

  “But I’ll be in the middle of my army, Moley!” Lyf said in exasperation. “He can’t attack me unless he gets past them—and my King’s Guard as well. And with his small force that’s not possible.”

  “Even so,” she persisted, “I’d be happier if you had a defence against a personal attack by Grandys himself.”

  “All right,” said Lyf. “You’re my intuit. What’s his greatest weakness?”

  “I don’t have to be an intuit to know that he needs to prove himself over and again.
Which means he’s insecure in his own mind.”

  “He doesn’t show it.”

  “He’s a considerable actor,” said Moley Gryle. “How can you attack this weakness, I wonder?”

  Three messengers appeared, one after another. Lyf held up a hand and they stopped. “Not physically. He’s a foot taller and much heavier—and he has two good legs, the swine! Besides, with Maloch protecting Grandys it’s almost impossible to land a blow on him.”

  “All the more reason to have an extra defence. How did he come by the sword, Lord King? Why does Maloch protect him and only him?”

  “I don’t know,” Lyf said thoughtfully. “Where did it come from, originally?”

  She walked back and forth for a minute or two, thinking. “Old enemy records say it was made back in Thanneron, on the other side of the world, for Envoy Urtiga. To protect her and further her quest.”

  “Urtiga?” said Lyf. “I haven’t heard that name before.”

  “She was originally in charge of the search for the Herovian Promised Realm—she carried Maloch and the Immortal Text. But she died suddenly on the First Fleet and Grandys took her place.”

  “I don’t see how this helps me,” said Lyf.

  Moley Gryle sat down, cross-legged, rubbing her forehead. “It’s said that Maloch’s enchantment protects the ‘true master of the sword’. But is Grandys the true master, if it wasn’t made for him?”

  A fourth messenger appeared behind the others.

  “I’ve no idea,” Lyf said impatiently. “Moley, I’ve a hundred things to do. If you do have an idea, make it quick.”

  “Maloch protects Grandys, always; it’s why he’s proved invincible in battle. So if you could make it abandon him—or seem to—it would undermine his confidence.”

  Lyf beckoned the first of the messengers. “Unfortunately, Maloch is impervious to all known forms of magery. Forget it, Moley. If Grandys does attack me, that idea’s not going to help.”

  Lyf lay in a blue, silken hammock stretched between two poles of his tent, taking the weight off his legs, though it did little to ease the pain. Moley Gryle entered with a tray of delicacies. He waved her away.

  “Not now, Moley.”

  “Is something troubling you, Lord King?”

  “The great quake. I don’t know what to do.”

  “It probably has to do with the Vomits erupting.”

  “I know it does, but the quakes are getting worse. As are the eruptions, the landslides, the tidal waves and the ice sheets that have covered every land except this one. But is the land rising up against our enemies, or ourselves?”

  “I don’t know, Lord King.”

  “The first duty of the king is to use king-magery to heal the land. To prevent the balance tipping towards the Engine’s natural tendency: destruction. But the balance has tilted too far, and if the Engine passes the point of no return—” He covered his eyes with his fingers.

  “Surely, now you’ve got your body back…” Moley Gryle faltered. “At least, now you’ve got a body back, surely you can heal the land?”

  “Without king-magery I’m a eunuch,” said Lyf. “And to recover it I must have the master pearl. I need advice.”

  “Anything,” she said fervently.

  “Not from you! I must consult with the ancestors. Leave me, and make sure I’m not disturbed.”

  Moley Gryle was hurt, but did her best to disguise it. “Lord King.” She bowed and withdrew.

  Lyf conjured his ancestor gallery into being—his spirit versions of the one hundred and six most important kings and ruling queens of old Cythe. He had created them long ago to advise him on complex or contentious matters, though latterly they were more inclined to browbeat him and lecture him on morality—and his failures in that regard.

  They weren’t real spirits; raising even a handful of such ancient beings would have overtaxed his dwindling magery. And as his creations, they could know nothing that he did not know. Nonetheless, their advice had proven useful on occasion, so he told them his plans for war.

  “Your obsession with vengeance created this mess in the first place,” said the red-faced, red-throated shade of Bloody Herrie, a king who had been an expert on vengeance, and had died from it.

  “What are you talking about?” cried Lyf. “Grandys started it when he hacked—”

  “The Five Heroes were mortal men and women. Had not your wrythen, out of black, unforgiving hatred, petrified them and cast them into the Abysm they would have died of old age within fifty years of your death. You preserved them, Lyf. You provided the means for them to come back, stronger than ever, in this present time.”

  “Leaving that aside—” Lyf began coldly.

  “He’s right,” said Errek First-King, the oldest and most faded of all the shades. “For months now you’ve been wallowing in your lust for vengeance. Indulging your baser side and neglecting your primary duty.”

  “Without king-magery I can’t heal the land.”

  “Leave war to your generals. Get the master pearl, then do your duty.”

  Lyf dismissed the ancestors, all save Errek First-King.

  “Yes?” said Errek.

  “The great quake this morning was the worst we’ve seen in a thousand years. It tells me that the Engine is hanging on the brink.”

  “I daresay it is,” said Errek. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where it came from. How it got here. When it began to cause trouble.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “The founding tales say that there was no Engine in earliest times, but that it formed around the time of your reign, ten thousand years ago.”

  “I believe that to be the case,” said Errek. “But as a shade created by you, I know no more than you know, or can discover in your library.”

  “What if I raised your spirit?” said Lyf. “As a wrythen, say?”

  Errek frowned. “You have the power to do this?”

  “I believe so. At a cost.”

  “I do not wish it,” said Errek. “I see nothing but pain and unpleasantness in being wrenched from my final rest after such an age.”

  “But you do not forbid it?”

  “I’m your creation—I’m not allowed that luxury.”

  “What if you had it?”

  “Are you planning to raise me now?”

  “No. Though if I should need to—”

  “I expect I would forbid you to raise me,” said Errek. A wistful tone crept into his faded voice. “And yet… to have another chance at life… even the kind of life a wrythen has…”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Grandys is marching this way,” said Glynnie to Rix. “Marching to war.”

  Holm and his squad had gone looking for Tali and Rannilt yesterday morning. They had not returned and Rix, who was standing on a small rise in the middle of his demoralised army, had never felt more alone.

  He reminded himself of what was at stake—the very survival of his country. In the past months Hightspall had suffered defeat after defeat, first at Lyf’s hands, then at Grandys’. Hightspall’s armies had been crushed; its capital and heart, the great city of Caulderon, had been brutally occupied by the Cythonians for three months now. Its treasures had been ransacked and its greatest buildings toppled.

  At the same time, Grandys had been rampaging through the countryside at the head of an army of fanatical Herovians, slaughtering innocent people in droves and vandalising their towns and manors. He would not be satisfied until he had burned every library, smashed every statue and torn down every thing of beauty Hightspall had created in two thousand glorious years.

  Rix and his five thousand troops were all that stood between these two great enemies and the annihilation of the land he loved. If he could not save Hightspall, no one could. That was what he was fighting for.

  It focused his resolve. He mounted his great black warhorse and moved in beside Glynnie. “How far away?”

  “Two miles. He could be here in under an hour.”

 
; Rix had instructed his third-rate officers, relayed his orders and personally supervised the troops into battle formation. It was a simple one, since neither the men nor the officers had the skill or discipline to change formations in the middle of battle. Indeed, after half an hour with the signallers Rix realised that his troops would be on their own: even if his captains received his signals mid-battle, they were incapable of acting on them.

  “What if I’m leading them into a massacre?” he said quietly to Glynnie. “If I make one mistake… no, it’s not even a matter of mistakes. I have to match every move Grandys makes, with my very inferior force, and if I can’t, we die.”

  “Have you done all you can?”

  “Yes. I’ve checked everything twice.”

  “Then there’s no point agonising about it.”

  “I can’t stop agonising. I’ve fought with Grandys. I’ve seen what he does to his enemies. I’m afraid of him.”

  “So am I. I’ve been his prisoner, remember?” A shadow appeared in her eyes. She reached across and pressed her hand to his chest. “Your heart’s racing as if you’ve run up a mountain.”

  “I’m sweating like a pig. Practically sliding out of my saddle.”

  He stood up in the stirrups, staring at the dark mass in the south, then raised the field glasses hanging around his neck.

  “What’s he doing?” said Glynnie.

  “Coming straight at us. Not hurrying.”

  “At us? Not at Lyf’s army?”

  “He’s hardly going to attack an army of fifty thousand with a fifth of that number. I’d say he means to roll over us first to boost his army’s morale.”

  “And then?”

  “I can’t even guess.”

  “Can you see Grandys?”

  “He’s riding out in front as if he owns the world. I’ll say this much for the bastard—he’s no coward. He’s always where the fighting is fiercest and most deadly.”

  “I don’t see why the people who know no fear get the medals. True courage comes from those who are terrified, but still go on.”

  “I’m terrified.”

  “Anyway, it’s not as if Grandys likes an equal fight. He’s one of the biggest and brawniest men in the world. He’s got all-over body armour and a magic sword whose sole purpose is to protect him. I’d be surprised if he did as well fighting someone his own size.”