The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  ‘The snowfield between here and the Blues,’ Leona went on, ‘is treacherous, waist-deep in some parts, scoured clear by the wind in others. Also the snow will hide many bodies, ours and theirs, from the last battle. We need speed, but most of all we need silence. No clattering of arms or armour. Hopefully all their attention will be in the other direction, towards the Imperials. Tell your people to wear their cloaks until we engage.’

  There were some frowns at this. ‘To muffle any sounds,’ she explained.

  And, she thought, to keep us warm and flexible and battle-ready, although she could not say that to these heroes, who laughed at the cold and spat in the face of discomfort. She smiled to herself.

  Dismissing them, she rolled up the parchment and handed it to Loomis, then stood and looked east. No sign of dawn yet.

  ‘What’s the watchword, commander?’ Loomis asked her formally.

  She thought about it. ‘The watchword is Rubin,’ she said.

  As he trudged across the snowfield, Rubin kept looking east. He knew it would be hours before the first pale fingers of light appeared, but he was acutely aware of how much he must accomplish before then.

  He was as cold as he had ever been in his life. He could see the breath clouding in front of him, feel his unshaven face going numb. He was weighed down with damp, ragged blankets and his clothes were stiff with blood – not his, that of other men who had died that day. And the going was hard. At times he waded through hip-high fresh snow, at others he hurried across windswept rock impeded only by corpses. He could hear and smell the enemy encampment so he headed towards it with accuracy, but he could not see it yet. The sound of an army camp of a night was a low roar, like the sound of sea at a distance, continuous but rising and falling on the night air. It was the sound of soldiers arguing, joking, lying, complaining, farting, coughing, snoring, belching and just breathing. Even at dead of night it was impossible to keep an army of more than a few hundred quiet.

  This army of Blues was stronger than most. He was constantly surprised by how much they could do despite their reverses, despite the strength of the City forces they faced. They fought doggedly on. They were half-starved, short of supplies and sometimes deployed without arms and dependent on seizing those of the dead. They lost two casualties for every City soldier killed. Yet their armies survived and clung to their positions, sometimes even making headway.

  For the City was hampered by the sheer size of the territory it was trying to defend. Immense as was the circumference of its walls – encompassing an area which made the mightiest foreign city look like a village – the length of the boundary more than trebled if one included the surrounding plains and hills and forests the emperor chose to consider the City’s demesne. City warriors were constantly in the field and their supplies too were running low. The sea blockade by Blueskin ships had now lasted more than ten years and was becoming tighter with each passing season, depriving City folk of food, but also of metal ore and leather for making weapons and armour. There was hardly a soldier with a complete supply of kit: swords blunted and broke, arrows ran out, belts and straps tore, helms cracked. And the supply of young horses, now their breeding meadows had disappeared, was a major concern for Marcellus and his generals.

  Rubin tried to cheer himself with an Odrysian marching song as he struggled along, but the words kept failing him, his brain frozen by cold. He had learned the tongue from Gillard the weapons master, a man of Odrysian blood who had fought on both sides in his long life. He had taught Rubin the words of the song, no doubt amused to hear a small boy mouth the ribald verses. Rubin had picked up the language quickly, his prodigious memory soaking up the alien words like a sponge. And when Marcellus discovered he spoke the language as a native, well, Rubin’s future was set in stone. He ended up spending two years in the Odrysian heartlands, and in the temporary capital of the deposed king, worming his way deep into Matthus’ court, sending back information to Marcellus. Then, forewarned by his lord, he had escaped the court shortly before it fell to the sharp swords of the veteran City regiment the Fourth Imperial.

  At last he could make out the campfires of the Odrysians’ night watch. As he hurried towards them, slipping on packed snow, he could not help but glance eastwards again. No sign of light.

  ‘Who goes there?’

  The guards were further out than he had expected. He slithered abruptly to a halt and raised his arms high in the air, shedding the blankets from his shoulders.

  ‘Help me,’ he cried, falling to his knees, his exhaustion unfeigned.

  Two figures disengaged themselves from the shadows.

  ‘Identify yourself.’

  ‘Adolfus Cort, of the Seventeenth. Help me,’ he repeated. ‘I’m injured.’

  The only real injury he had was a shallow cut on the forehead, but he had suffered fresh blood to be daubed on his face and neck, making it look serious enough for him to be dazed and disorientated.

  The guards loomed over him, swords ready. ‘Watchword?’ one asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rubin confessed. ‘But the last I knew, before the battle, was Fortitude.’

  ‘What happened to the Seventeenth?’

  ‘All dead.’

  The guards exchanged a glance and one grabbed Rubin by the shoulder and roughly helped him up. The other stood back in watchful attendance.

  ‘Papers.’

  He took out the grubby scrap of forged paper. It was much folded, soaked in sweat and stained with blood, but one guard looked it over carefully and nodded. Most City soldiers were illiterate and it never ceased to surprise Rubin that so many Blues, whom City folk considered barbarians, could read and write.

  He was taken into the Odrysian camp and left with a bleary-eyed sergeant who was uninterested in another ragged survivor. He told Rubin the captain of the night watch would want to speak to him, then he’d be deployed to a new unit. He offered him water but no food. Rubin stumbled through the camp, following the sergeant, watching the east. Still no sign of dawn.

  At the centre of the camp he was left outside the entrance to a lighted tent while the sergeant ducked inside. Rubin peered through a gap in the tent-flap and saw the sergeant standing stiffly to attention, waiting to be acknowledged. Senior soldiers were engrossed in conversation. Time passed. Rubin looked around idly. His eyes alighted on the coloured pennants rippling over his head and it dawned on him that this was the general’s command tent. He stepped closer, no longer frightened or hungry, but curious.

  There were a dozen people inside. Rubin recognized the Odrysian general Yannus and was surprised to see Pieter Arendt, one of the leaders of the Petrassi, the Odrysians’ main allies. This was an Odrysian engagement and he wondered what the senior Petrassi was doing here so far from his army. Rubin leaned closer, trying to hear, trying to see more. Other officers he knew by sight, but there were also two civilians. One was a fat old man dressed in the clothes of a farmer. He was red-faced and laughing. Rubin thought he looked drunk.

  The other civilian was a woman. Women were seldom seen in the armies of the Blues, even as camp-followers. They did not serve in the military, for the life was considered too hard for them. This woman was tall and thin, dressed in dusty riding leathers, and she was pacing the tent as if in irritation or impatience. She looked like a warrior, but could not be. She was not old, not young, and her whole appearance was grey – grey hair and pale skin, and as she walked towards Rubin he saw she had protuberant eyes the colour of pebbles. He knew he had seen her somewhere before.

  Then he caught a piece of her conversation, realizing with a shock that they were speaking the City tongue.

  ‘We are wasting time with this nonsense,’ the woman said irritably. ‘If Marcus is backing this plan you can be sure it is a good one. What have you got to lose? Nothing. Ours is all the risk, yours all the benefit.’

  Rubin wondered who Marcus was. It was a City name, but there were many Marcuses. He listened, avid for information he could pass to Marcellus once this battl
e was over. Who was she? It nagged at his memory. He knew he knew her.

  One of the officers argued, ‘It will be carnage. The brothers will destroy them all.’

  The woman shook her head, still with her back to them, as if her face would betray her if she turned and faced them.

  ‘I know Marcellus,’ she said. ‘He will not do that, not if his whore is there. And her sister. That is the crux of our plan. For all that has gone before, he still thinks of himself as a man of honour.’

  She was staring out into the blackness, straight at Rubin though he was clothed in darkness. For an instant her eyes seemed to look straight into his and her gaze sharpened. He wondered if she could see him. He stepped back silently. Had she seen him? Did it matter if she had? He was just a soldier, albeit a nosy one. But he felt anxious under her pebble stare.

  Then suddenly, with a surge of misgiving, he remembered where he had seen her. It was in a meeting Marcellus had held with his palace administrators years before, a meeting to which Rubin had not been invited but which he had watched covertly, as now. Once he had placed where he had seen her he knew who she was. And he knew he was witnessing a gathering of critical importance, one around which the future of the City could turn.

  And he had to warn Marcellus.

  One of the senior officers in the tent became aware of the sergeant, still standing to attention as if his life depended on it, and walked over to him. The sergeant explained he had a survivor of the battle outside. The officer questioned him briefly, the sergeant shaking his head the whole time. Then he was dismissed and he rejoined Rubin. He pointed his charge at the mess tent then turned away. Rubin wandered in that direction, glancing back until the man was out of sight. Then he threw off his lacklustre demeanour and headed towards the front lines.

  It was easy to slip through sentries facing outwards, watching for incoming enemies. Rubin judged his moment as the guards paced, then ran silently behind a rocky outcrop, waited, peered, then ran again. He was soon out of their sight and with a sigh of relief headed for the Imperials’ camp – then he started worrying again about the dawn. He looked east for the hundredth time. Was it his imagination or was there a blur of light on the horizon, like a distant candle flame?

  He hurried on, urged by this new, crucial information, and by the imminent coming of daybreak. The first indication that he had arrived with the City forces was a knife at his throat.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE INSISTENT CHIRRUP of birds spoke of the coming dawn, and warriors quietly slid out their swords. Leona left hers in its scabbard. Swords were heavy, and she saw no reason to run across the treacherous snowfield wielding one until she had to. But she understood why many soldiers were unwilling to address the enemy, even at this distance, without the reassurance of a blade in hand.

  She was in the centre of the front line, which faced southwest, although she was watching the rear for the order to advance. Pink rays of dawn had begun punching through dark clouds low on the horizon. There was still starlight above, although fresh snow was promised in the smell of the air. Leona dreaded a heavy snowfall. It could kill them all. It would stop them retreating to lower ground once they had beaten the Blues, and it would stop supplies from reaching them. They were already getting short of food.

  She and her century were waiting in line of twenty-five, looking down on the snowfield they must cross before engaging the enemy hidden somewhere beyond. The snow was crisp and hard and she saw a small shape sprint across it and dive into an unseen burrow – a white hare or a fox in its winter coat. A light mist lay knee-deep and shimmered in the breeze from the north. It was very cold.

  Leona looked to either side of her. To her right was Valla, a tall, lean warrior whom Leona had trusted with her life for the past decade. She topped Leona by half a head and her hair, white as ice, was cropped short. Valla was muttering silently to herself, but Leona guessed what she was saying: ‘Bless us, Aduara, goddess of fierce women. Bless your warriors and bathe them in the blood of men. Bless your warriors and give them strength. Bless your warriors and see them safe home to your breast.’

  Followers of her cult believed women were of blood and men of meat, and the meat could not act without the blood. Then there was the spark, the gift of Aduara, which animated the blood and the meat and made it human.

  She saw Valla lift her face to the sky and she looked up too. It was snowing, tiny specks of ice drifting from the north. Valla grinned at her. Snow was a symbol of the spark, as was rain and the splash of water.

  On Leona’s other flank was Callanus. If she couldn’t have Loomis at her side then Callanus was as good a fighter as any. Loomis was far behind in the ranks of the halt and lame. He had lost a lower leg five years before and walked on a carved wooden peg strapped to the stump below the knee. He could wield a sword as well as any on the front line, but City protocol meant he had to fight at the rear. Still, it was good to know he was there, watching her back.

  Her soldiers’ faces were stone, but their bodies betrayed them. Their fingers were constantly checking the straps of breastplates, or finding the greaves protecting their lower legs a little too tight, or too loose. These were elite warriors, the best the City had to offer, but, as such, they had seen over and over again all the many horrible varieties of injury, mutilation and death, and they would not be human if they were not nervous at this crucial moment. She was proud of them all.

  ‘It’s dawn,’ Callanus muttered impatiently, rolling his shoulders. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Quiet,’ she whispered back.

  But she understood his feelings. It was getting perceptibly lighter. She knew Marcellus was waiting for some indication that the messenger had achieved his mission and the Imperials were attacking. They would hear them, even with the muffling effect of the snow. She knew it would be a hard call to make. If they attacked too soon they might beat themselves to death on the main strength of the Blues. If they left it too late it could lessen the value of the two-pronged attack.

  She listened hard for sounds of battle but could hear nothing. Then, on the north wind, she caught an unexpected sound and swivelled her neck to identify it. It was a faint tinkling of bells. Other warriors were looking around.

  From out of the misty north dark figures emerged. More soldiers unsheathed their swords, but unspoken orders stayed their hands.

  Three tiny, graceful goats, their sides thin and ridged with ribs, the bells round their necks jingling in a mockery of jollity, led a small band of refugees. After them came children holding on to their goats’ leads, then two men armed only with cudgels, frightened and tight-faced, and finally women with babes in arms and the old folk trailing, struggling. Their baggage was carried by a lone old mule.

  There were twelve of them, Leona counted. They were dark and small – the tallest of the men only came up to the shoulder of the shortest City warrior, and their faces were gaunt and haggard. They were clothed in rags. She guessed the beasts were the only things of value they owned. She stepped forward, hand on the hilt of her sword. They all shuffled away, gazing off, except one young woman. She wore rags like the others, but she had tied a strip of garish ribbon around her goat-hide hat. She glared up at Leona and stood her ground. Leona saw she had one useless eye, a pale opal, seeing nothing. One of the menfolk muttered to the woman, pleading, but she refused to budge. Valiant, Leona thought, but unwise.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she asked softly, aware of how sound could travel in this sterile landscape.

  They said nothing. One old woman sank to her knees in the snow, overcome perhaps by fear or cold, and a child started to cry weakly.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Leona asked the young woman.

  But either they didn’t understand her or they were too terrified to speak.

  A grizzled veteran called Aurelius came forward. ‘They are Fsaan, commander,’ he said. ‘They won’t understand you.’

  ‘Fsaan?’

  ‘These high valleys were once theirs. They were a mi
ghty people once, powerful and educated. But they dwindled over the centuries, became herders. They used to pasture their goats here in summer. Then they retreated when the warriors came.’

  ‘Where are they going?’

  He shrugged. ‘Anywhere away from us.’

  ‘Let them pass,’ she ordered, and stepped back. The refugees, unable to believe their fortune, hurried past, eyes down, the old woman half carried by the men. The tinkling of bells receded behind them and the City army stared forward again, waiting.

  ‘Those goats would have made a good meal,’ Callanus said regretfully.

  Leona grunted. ‘Among all of us? Now they can slaughter them themselves.’ It might make the difference between life and death for them one night, she thought. The warm blood of the goats might keep them alive for another day or two, though there was little meat on them. How could such frail beings survive in the midst of this war? She whispered a few words to Aduara, asking her to watch over the women and girls. Then she forgot about them.

  She waited for the order to advance.

  For the second time that night Rubin was dragged and pushed, manhandled like a criminal, into his own army’s camp. He proffered the message given to him by Marcellus but the City guards, unlettered men, regarded the written word as tantamount to witchcraft and it was all he could do to stop them trampling the paper underfoot. Desperation clawing at him, he repeated, ‘Marcellus sent me!’ finally convincing them not to kill him, and he was taken first to the captain of the guard then, at long last, to the Imperials’ general. Meanwhile the eastern sky was lightening fast and Rubin was terrified he was too late.