The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  The soldier was searching her body and found a wooden pendant attached to a thong round the woman’s neck. She tore it off and handed it to Em. It was a crudely carved tree with thick trunk and wide branches. Em showed it to Bruenna and the midwife recognized it.

  ‘It is a symbol of Vashta, guardian of the night.’

  The soldier snorted. ‘Perhaps if she had survived the day, Vashta would have protected her tonight. Perhaps it will protect the rest of us.’ She dragged the black arrow out of the woman’s throat and handed it to Emly too. For a moment the girl wondered why, then she realized: she’s giving me a weapon.

  ‘This won’t do much good,’ she grumbled, thinking a stout tree branch would be easier and more effective to wield.

  ‘It’s not for the enemy,’ the warrior said.

  She watched to see if Em understood, then she said fiercely, ‘You must not be captured by the Fkeni. A quick death at your own hand is best.’

  Then she looked at the midwife, who rummaged in a pocket of her clothing and brought out a short, sharp-looking knife. ‘I’ll see to it,’ Bruenna told her. ‘You can count on it.’

  The soldier said to Emly, ‘Keep the arrow. If you get the chance, it’ll gouge an eye out.’

  They took the officer first. And no one heard him go.

  Despite all the dry twigs and brush Stern had ordered his soldiers to spread around their shelter, despite the fact that all ears were tuned to the slightest movement in the night, the Fkeni tribesmen made no sound when they captured the man and took him back to their camp. Stern guessed afterwards it had happened when a slip of stones rattled down the cliff above them, startling them all and making them curse and grumble before settling again. Or, once, they all heard a scuffling sound, then smelled the pungent odour of fox as a skinny vixen ran through their warning line of brushwood. Or perhaps the fool had just walked away to piss – Stern wouldn’t have put it past him.

  As it was, they only realized the officer had been taken when Quora directed a question to the man and got no reply. Stern hissed, ‘Sir?’ into the darkness. He still didn’t know the man’s name. There was only silence. Benet, Gus and the brothers spoke up, confirming their presence. But the officer had gone.

  Stern tried to tell himself the man had crept away into the dark and run up the trail, hoping to spot the army’s campfires in the distance. This self-delusion only lasted until the first screams were brought to them on the night breeze, freezing their bones and chilling their souls. The first screams were of terror, of disbelief at what was to be done to him. Then they rose in pitch and desperation to an insane wailing.

  ‘We have to go after him?’ young Farren Cordover asked, fear trembling through his voice.

  ‘Yes, we have to,’ said his brother Cam, the older of the two. ‘He’s one of us.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Stern told them. ‘That’s why they’re doing this. To lure us out. And out there, blundering around in the dark, we’d get no further than a few paces before they picked us off. Then we’d get the same treatment.’

  The screams rose in intensity. Stern resisted the desire to hold his hands over his ears. They could hear words forming: ‘Help me. Help! Gods, help me!’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he repeated loudly, momentarily drowning out the sound at least to his own ears. ‘Quora?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was firm.

  ‘Talk to the women.’

  He heard her scrambling back to the rear of the shelter. He could not hear the words but he could hear her calm, reassuring tones, and the girl’s anxious high-pitched replies. He heard nothing from the midwife, and he wondered if the pregnant one was dead. He asked Quora when she came back.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, sitting down next to him. Then with some pride, ‘City woman. She’s strong.’

  As the night thickened the warriors kept trying to talk, to distract themselves from the awful sounds drifting in from the darkness, but their words would always falter to a halt, overwhelmed by horror and dread. Finally the thin moon appeared from behind the clouds and each could see the others’ faces, gaunt and haunted. Stern guessed he must have dozed off for a moment or two because he startled awake at a yell from the girl and suddenly the camp was alive.

  The Fkeni came screaming at them out of the night, black robes flapping like the wings of the death gods. They had blackened their faces with soot and, in their tradition, they had painted white spots representing eyes above their own eyes to baffle their enemy. They carried curved blades crusted with the blood of past victims.

  But the City soldiers were not dismayed. They were ready for them and they were glad of the chance to fight. They raised the tips of their spears, lying ready on the ground, stomped the haft ends into the ground with their boots, and the first few attackers were impaled on the needle-sharp points.

  There were only six Pigstickers against perhaps twenty tribesmen, and the Fkeni carried with them, alongside their long curved knives, the zeal of the righteousness of their cause against the foreigners and the exhilaration of hours spent with the tortured man. But the City soldiers were well armoured and they had been fighting for years, four of them for more than a decade. They were very good at what they did.

  Stern took no time to enjoy his enemy’s agony as a tribesman died skewered on his spear. He tore it out of the body then drove it into a second attacker. It plunged into his throat and lodged in his spine. Stern drew his sword and slashed at a man coming at him from his right. The attacker fell back and Stern pulled the spear out of the Fkeni’s throat and used it to block a scythe-blow from his left. Quora was protecting his left and, after he killed his man, he glanced around quickly. She had moved to her own left, protecting a gap in their line, stopping the tribesmen who were outflanking her to try to get to the three women. A gap in their line …

  The Pigstickers were fighting in grim silence, apart from grunts and sighs. The Fkeni carried on screaming as they attacked, as they died. Then there was a bellowed order and the attackers retreated into the night and the silence suddenly closed around the City warriors as if it had never been breached.

  ‘Hold!’ Stern shouted, lest battle-fury tempt any of his soldiers to chase after them.

  He ordered them all back behind the pony’s carcass then called for names and injuries. Grey Gus had a serious wound across his shoulder, making his right arm useless. He was left-handed, though, and the injury would not slow him when lives were on the line. Benet had a chest injury, a shallow one which he was tending himself. Quora and Cam Cordover had no injuries worth reporting.

  But Farren Cordover had vanished.

  ‘Did anyone see him go?’ Stern asked them.

  ‘Go?’ repeated his brother, his voice panicked. ‘You think he ran away? Those dung-eaters took him. I’m going after him.’

  There was a scuffle in the blackness as Benet grabbed hold of the lad. Stern said to him, ‘No, I don’t believe he ran away, soldier, but if you go running after him you’ll be chasing certain death.’

  ‘I can’t leave him!’ the young man cried. There was desperation in his voice. ‘I’d never—’

  ‘Remember why we’re here,’ Stern growled. ‘We hold, we defend, we protect and we guard, until morning.’ He looked up. ‘Eyes front!’

  The others, who had been watching the exchange, turned away and took their places again.

  ‘Listen,’ Stern said to Cam. ‘Listen to me, soldier!’ he ordered as the young man kept glancing back into the darkness as if readying himself to run off. Cam nodded, his eyes still flickering around.

  Stern lowered his voice confidentially. ‘If they’ve taken your brother they won’t torment him until the officer dies. That is their way. One at a time. It increases the horror and dread for the next captive. Do you understand?’ He waited until Cam took this in then nodded, his breathing calming.

  ‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ Stern said to him. ‘We’ll stand a better chance then.’

  As he turned away h
e caught Gus’s eye and shook his head fractionally. The veteran knew the score better than most of them – he had come up against Fkeni before. Stern knew his words to Cam were vague and he didn’t need anyone arguing with him. He had no intention of leaving the transient safety of this cliff to rescue the soldier, any more than he had for the officer. They’d been ordered to guard the women. They would do this before saving themselves. But he was aware that their only chance now was if the army realized they were missing and someone volunteered to come back for them. And how likely was that?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HER MEMORIES OF childhood were like scraps of leaves blown about in a storm. There was the constant grumbling thunder of dread, scattered with lightning flashes of pain and alarm. Much of Emly’s young life she had spent hiding, first at home – wherever that was – then down in the Halls, and she learned that silence was a virtue. She had since noticed that it was a rare commodity among men and women, its price reflecting its rarity. In silence lived calm and, to some degree, contentment.

  She listened as the Pigstickers spoke together in the gathering darkness, each soldier’s fear igniting alarm in the others. They could not help but speak of the captured man’s torture. The words tumbled out of them as if by speaking them they would ease their own terror. Stern’s repetition of ‘There’s nothing we can do’ was intended to calm them – even Em could see that – but they could not help but speak, as if they were expelling their fear and pain by vomiting up the words for it.

  Silence is the only way, Emly thought. In silence I will rise above the terror and the dread to a place where only I exist and where there is no fear, for fear lives in other people …

  An arrow thwacked into the rock-face above her head. Bouncing off, it scored shards of loose rock which pattered down on the women. Em leaped up shouting a warning, but the warriors were already on their feet. The Fkeni tribesmen were charging at them out of the darkness. There seemed to be hundreds of them. They had to go over or round the dead pony, which gave the City warriors a heartbeat of extra time. Some of the Fkeni skewered their bodies on spears, their battle screams turning to cries of anguish.

  Em looked at the broken arrow she had been gripping tightly in her hand and threw it aside.

  ‘Give me your knife,’ she said to Bruenna, but the midwife shook her head, her face pale and her expression firm. She did not have to explain: she would use it to cut Maura’s throat and her own rather than hand it over to Emly.

  The girl looked to the left of the line, closest to her, where Quora had speared a tribesman through the torso and stepped forward to take on another. The injured man was crawling forward, behind the line now, a curved blade in one blood-drenched hand. Em ran forward and stamped her boot on the hand as hard as she could, feeling bones crunch. She was about to snatch the knife from the man’s fingers when there was a shouted order and the Fkeni vanished away again, leaving their dead and dying. Stern walked back to the injured man and cut his throat. He glared at Emly, as if wondering what she was doing, and picked up the dagger.

  Em sat down again next to Bruenna, feeling useless. She was terrified by the way the enemy appeared out of darkness then vanished in a heartbeat. They seemed to be taunting the soldiers. Her stomach clenched in a pang of dread for how this night might end.

  ‘That went well,’ Stern said, raising his voice so the women could hear. ‘Chances are they’ll wait until dawn now and attack en masse. Remember they’ll be trying to take us alive. This will give us a great advantage.’

  Em stood up. ‘I need a weapon,’ she said resolutely, walking over to the watching soldiers. ‘Something better than a broken arrow.’

  ‘Here, take this.’ The woman Quora handed the girl her own knife, a long, wickedly sharp blade.

  ‘No. Give it back,’ ordered Stern. To Quora he explained, ‘You’ll do more damage with it than she will.’

  ‘You can’t leave us weaponless,’ Em said to him, looking up into his dark-blue eyes. ‘Give me a good knife and I’ll protect Bruenna and Maura.’ She found her voice was firm and level and she stared up at him unblinking.

  Stern looked surprised and he hesitated.

  ‘I will not be taken,’ she assured him with perfect certainty, ‘and I will ensure they are not either. Trust me. Give me a knife.’

  Stern shrugged and stepped forward to hand her the dagger he’d taken from the Fkeni, but Quora moved in, took the enemy blade for herself and handed the girl her own knife. She looked at Stern, who shrugged acceptance.

  Emly looked at the warrior’s knife in the light of the moon. It was the length of her forearm, with a blood channel following its line. She looked up at the two soldiers and managed a smile, pleased with their confidence in her.

  Stern told her, ‘We’re not called Pigstickers for nothing.’

  Emly nodded. ‘It’s beautiful.’ There were markings etched into the blade. She had only started learning to read, but she was fairly sure the marks were not of the City tongue. They looked ancient and spoke to her of a land far away and, perhaps, long ago.

  From behind her came a moan and a rattling sigh. She turned and saw Bruenna leaning close over Maura, listening for her breath of life. Finally the midwife shook her head. ‘She’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘What a pigging waste,’ one of the soldiers said venomously, and Em wondered if he meant it was a waste of life, of Maura and her unborn baby, or of their own lives, thrown away on a hopeless cause.

  She slumped down beside Maura, seeing the pain and fear smoothed from her face, seeing a young girl, no older than she was, with the spark of life fled.

  Bruenna laid her head on the dead girl’s belly and closed her eyes. Long heartbeats passed. Em watched, wondering that the midwife hadn’t given up yet.

  Then, ‘It’s still alive,’ the woman said loudly, picking up the little knife. Stern gave the other soldiers a sharp order, then he and Quora both wandered over to watch.

  Bruenna ripped off the rags of the dead girl’s dress and expertly slit the belly. Blood oozed but did not flow. In the poor light Em wondered how much the midwife could see and she wished they had a fire. She looked up to the sky and saw clouds racing towards the moon.

  Quora had seen the same thing. ‘We’re nearly out of light,’ she commented.

  Bruenna must have been working from memory and experience, for surely she could not see what she was doing, but suddenly she sat back and Em could make out something in her hands. The baby’s body gleamed a little in the dim light and Bruenna shook it gently. It let out a weak squeal.

  ‘There’s a shawl in that bag,’ the midwife said to Emly, who scrambled to get it. She held it out and Bruenna thrust the babe into her arms and wrapped it quickly. Em felt its thin body move feebly against her and was startled to find tears welling.

  Bruenna was briskly tying off and cutting the cord. ‘Will it live?’ Emly asked her.

  ‘Babies are hardy,’ the midwife said, cleaning up around Maura’s body. ‘They only have to do one thing – stay alive. That’s what they’re good at. But we need to get some milk into it.’

  Stern grunted with satisfaction and the two soldiers turned back to their duty.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Bruenna told their backs, and they heard the words repeated among the remaining soldiers.

  Em cuddled the baby close to her, smelling its warm body. She stilled herself and focused, and could feel its tiny heartbeat. She felt her eyes welling again and told herself sternly that tears wouldn’t help the mite, only her knife and her determination. She decided then that she would die before the baby did and the thought gave her comfort as she waited for the dawn.

  The sky was dark blue and she could just make out the shape of the mountains high above when the Fkeni came back. Stern was right, there were more of them this time, far more than the few soldiers could hold back.

  Emly wrapped the baby up tightly in the shawl and laid it at the back of their shallow shelter. She looked at Bruenna, who nodded to her. The
midwife held her sharp little knife.

  Emly watched the battle anxiously, trying to learn what the soldiers were doing, but it was impossible. From her vantage point behind them it was just a frenzied battle of clashing metal and screams of pain. The soldiers were hacking at anything that moved, and the tribesmen were trying to overwhelm them with their greater numbers. There seemed to be no skill, no art such as in the sword-fights she had witnessed in the Hall of Emperors where she had watched, with terror, as Evan took on one warrior after another on the red staircase. There was nothing for her to learn here except to keep on hacking at your enemy until he was dead or disabled. I can do that, Em thought, holding the long knife so tightly her hand cramped.

  And then her time came. An injured Fkeni found a momentary space between two of the soldiers and lunged through. He ran at the women, dagger raised. Em leaped forward, then ducked to one side as he plunged the blade towards her breast. She twisted and rammed her knife into his side, above the hip. It went in a short way then seemed to stick. She wrenched it out, twisting it. The man fell to one knee but kept crawling towards Bruenna. The midwife placed her large body in front of the baby’s and slashed at his face with her own knife. Em plunged her blade into the Fkeni’s neck. He dropped to the ground, blood pouring. Then it slowed to a trickle. She stared at him, gasping, fearful he would rise again.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Bruenna.

  Em turned back to the battle. She could see the old warrior Gus battling two Fkeni and she ran forward to help. Before she could get there Gus sliced the throat of one of them. The second screamed his battle cry and swept his curved blade at Gus. Gus swayed to one side but the blade sliced his shoulder and he went down. The Fkeni caught his weapon at the top of its swing and, with graceful ease, brought it down again towards Gus’s head. Emly picked up a discarded spear as she ran and thrust it at the tribesman’s back. It was a weak strike and caught in his robes, but it deflected the arc of his blade and it drove into the ground. He pulled out a knife, too late. Gus was up and he ran his sword into the man’s belly. The veteran glanced quickly at Em, nodded, and threw himself at the next opponent.