The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  ‘We’re off,’ Benet said, and Stern saw the ragtag army was on its feet again.

  He stood and his brother gazed at him sympathetically. ‘You can’t save them all,’ he said. Stern thought of all the men and women they had lost, comrades who had fought and died beside them. The Battle of the Vorago had taken the last of them, and now he and his brother were the only Pigstickers left. He got to his feet, turning his face from Quora, trying to think only of the living. He clapped Benet on the shoulder. ‘Let’s march,’ he said.

  By the end of the first day four more had fallen by the wayside, three felled by sickness. ‘If we go on like this there won’t be any of us left,’ Benet commented gloomily, but Stern believed he was wrong. One more night’s sleep would finally sort out the strong from the weak. He predicted losing a few more the next day, then those who were still on their feet would stay there – until they caught up with the enemy army.

  Travelling in its detritus was enlightening, for it soon became clear they too had abandoned their wounded. Hayden would pause briefly when they came to each enemy body, looking at armour, visible tattoos, broken weapons. The almost-dead were despatched economically. Some living soldiers, fighting fit but for broken legs or backs, glared at the City men, spat at them and cursed in their foreign tongue. There was no questioning these, for their language was utterly strange. Stern found deep inside him a spark of kinship with these fierce warriors who had marched to their doom in a foreign country. Hayden would not let his soldiers torment them, which raised the man in Stern’s judgement. They were despatched mercifully, throats cut.

  Once Hayden paused and said, ‘Bowmen.’ A torn and battered quiver lay on the ground, trampled by many booted feet. Stern picked it up.

  ‘Some riders can loose arrows at terrifying speed,’ Hayden said. ‘They are a force to be reckoned with. See the men all have shields.’

  Stern grunted. ‘We met some Fkeni riders on the way here.’ He threw the ruined quiver to the ground. As it hit something fell out, an object which shone in the sun.

  ‘Stop!’ Hayden shouted, and he said to Stern, ‘Don’t touch it!’

  He crouched by the object and Stern joined him. The other soldiers watched, glad of a break. It was a small round box of beaten gold with a hinged lid, decorated with tiny fighting figures. Hayden took his gauntlets from his belt and put them on before awkwardly picking it up.

  ‘This is an ominous thing,’ he said, and his face was grim.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A poison cup. The bowmen smear the tips of their arrows with poison. The slightest scratch from them ends in madness and death. They are works of evil. We must treat these bowmen and their arrows with great caution.’

  He stood for a moment in thought, then swung his arm and threw the thing far out across the plain. It glittered as it caught the sunlight then it was gone. Hayden set off again and his soldiers followed. As they marched he pointed out the ruts where the enemy’s carts had travelled over rough ground.

  ‘They are deep,’ he said; ‘some of their wagons are heavily loaded. With cannon, I’ve no doubt. It will slow them down. They can only travel at the speed of their slowest wagon. This is good news.’

  It seemed like mixed news to Stern. Hayden had explained to him about cannon, the great iron pipes the enemy had used to spit fire and flame and destruction at the Vorago. Stern was unwilling to face such evil again.

  He asked, ‘What sort of poison do the bowmen use?’

  ‘Snake venom,’ Hayden told him. ‘They live in parts where such serpents are common. Their people, even children, become skilled at drawing the venom from living snakes. Then they mix it with a substance which makes the liquid venom easier to handle.’

  ‘What substance?’

  ‘They usually use their own shit. Then, if the venom does not kill you you die from infection in the wounds.’

  He went on, ‘It’s likely we will meet these bowmen and their accursed arrows. You must instruct your troops to handle them safely. Avoid touching them and if some poor soul is wounded by such an arrow, it must be pulled out quickly with a gloved hand and the flesh around the wound cut away. Speed is vital.’

  ‘Will that save him?’

  ‘Probably not. In which case a clean death is preferable.’

  They marched on in silence. Stern’s thoughts were grim. This new world of weaponry was a terrible place. True warriors fought face to face with swords, and the better won and the lesser died with honour. Poison was a craven thing, a woman’s weapon. And bowmen had always been scorned, even those of the City.

  ‘Did your troops use these arrows?’ he asked hesitantly, for the fact that Hayden was Petrassi was not something that had passed between them.

  Hayden shook his head. ‘No. They are dishonourable, and they are indiscriminate killers. The tribesmen who use these are much hated, even by their own allies. Their arrows can as soon be picked up by friends as by enemies. The poison is hard to contain, for the gold cups are seen and coveted. A tiny vessel like that, passed hand to hand, will kill a dozen men, two dozen.’

  ‘I will warn our troops. Why are they made of gold – for their value to the wielder?’

  ‘No. Gold is impervious to venom. I will speak to the men when we make camp.’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Stern argued, ‘it might be best if I spoke to them.’ Hayden listened, his pale eyes showing only interest.

  ‘They don’t take well to anything new,’ Stern said quietly. ‘If you tell them about something strange and foreign they will dismiss it, for they don’t understand it. If I tell them about the poison arrows they will accept it from me, because they know me, many of them.’

  ‘I am their leader,’ Hayden argued mildly. ‘They have followed me so far.’

  ‘They believe you can get them home. When the battles start, well, we’ll see if they’ll follow you then.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE SOUND OF spade and hoe digging dry soil was the only noise in the hot, arid land apart from the trickle of the river and the distant, complicated call of a bird high in the sky. The sun was scorching on Emly’s back and on the young plants which lay wilting in their muddy pools.

  She stood and stretched, gazing around at the grey-clad women working alongside her in the narrow field planting winter crops. Above them loomed the massive cliff of the Vorago. The shadow of the opposing cliff, sharp-edged, was coming quickly towards them as the sun moved across the sky.

  Em had been in the valley for days – eight, ten? She was not sure how long for she awoke each morning feeling muddled, perhaps because she was sleeping deeply for the first time since she left the City. Their journey down the cliff had been gruelling. The woman who had found them, whose name was Cora, had left her at first then later in the day returned with another woman and a stretcher. It had taken them half the day to make their way down the rock-face, but at the bottom the women had transferred Evan to a donkey cart. They travelled swiftly after that and soon arrived at the women’s citadel home.

  Emly gazed at it, an ancient building carved into a layer of red rock tucked under a ridge of grey granite which hid the place from above. It was first built as a fortress, she was told, but now its walls were pocked with rounded windows and doors, its interior riddled with connecting rooms and passages. Em was given a small cell and Evan was next door. The women washed his body and tended his wounds but when asked if he would get better they shook their heads. They could not say. They asked her no questions and she gratefully fell back into silence, her old friend.

  Her first day was spent sleeping and eating their good food and tending Evan, willing him to recover. Then she asked if she could help in the fields, for she had watched the women working and wanted to show her gratitude.

  She bent to her task again, grabbing the next drooping plant.

  ‘Randomly,’ a curt voice reminded her.

  She looked up. The woman’s name was Selene. She was very tall and thin, with iron-grey hair cu
t like a soldier’s, and, like most of them, was wearing grey cotton trousers and a green sleeveless shirt. Her skin was nut-brown and her eyes grey crystal.

  Em smiled apologetically. She had been told not to set the plants in rows, for people looking down from on high might discern a pattern.

  ‘Can they not see us?’ Em had asked, looking up at the cliff.

  ‘Only as dots,’ a woman had told her. ‘We are very far down. We could be goats, or a flock of crows. The heat haze confuses the eye from above.’

  Em decided where to put the next plant then moved a pace to the left. She looked at Selene, who nodded. She dug a hole and sloshed water into it from a bucket then put the plant in and enclosed its roots in mud then firmed it down. Then she moved to the next one, randomly.

  She had been in the field all day, apart from a break when the sun was high, when, hidden in the shade of an outcrop of rock, she had eaten fresh bread and cheese. The smell and texture of the food were intoxicating after a long season on soldiers’ rations. She wondered if Stalker had survived his dash through the lines. It had seemed reckless, but Stalker had a knack for survival and she liked to think he had. She cleared her mind of soldiers and armies and concentrated on the planting, digging each hole deep, treating the roots gently, watering thoroughly.

  She started as a hand touched her shoulder and Selene’s voice said, ‘You can stop now.’

  Em looked up. She saw the others streaming back towards their home, their buckets and boxes and tools packed on donkeys. The sun had dropped behind the cliff and she had not even noticed.

  ‘You’re a hard worker,’ the woman said as she helped load the last donkey.

  Em stroked the beast’s soft nose and thought of Patience and Blackbird. ‘I am grateful,’ she answered simply.

  Together they walked back towards the rock citadel. Selene said, ‘You have asked us nothing about this place or those who live here.’

  ‘It is a sanctuary,’ Em replied. ‘And I do not need to ask why women need sanctuary in time of war.’

  When they came closer to the citadel Selene started to point things out: the barns which held winter grain, the mill which turned the grain to flour, the stables for the few donkeys. Chickens, fat and noisy, clucked and fussed around their feet.

  ‘What are they?’ Em asked, pointing at a row of wooden boxes on stilts set high above the river.

  ‘Beehives,’ the woman said. She saw Emly did not understand. ‘Bees make honey,’ she explained. ‘We use the honey they make.’

  ‘Can I see?’ Emly asked. She’d had no idea honey came from bees. It seemed very unlikely and she wanted to see for herself.

  ‘You need special clothes to protect you from their stings. Some other time.’

  ‘Why is that one over there?’ Em pointed across the river to a lone hive.

  ‘You have sharp eyes. The honey made in that hive is poisonous.’

  ‘Poisonous?’

  ‘Bees sip the liquid essence of particular flowers. For example, these bees feed on the clover that grows over these low banks. The honey is good to eat. You can have some tonight if you wish. More importantly, this virtuous honey heals wounds. But the bees on the other side of the river feed from a plant called sheep-bane which only grows there. It is not poisonous to the insects, but their honey is fatal for people to eat.’

  ‘Then why keep them?’

  ‘Poisons can be useful. You said your soldier ate a black pellet which helped him sleep and heal. If it is what I think it is, the essence of a blue flower, then two of those would have killed him. Sometimes there is a narrow line between that which heals and that which kills.’

  ‘How soon will he recover?’ It was a question she was afraid of asking.

  Selene’s face was grave. ‘Do not hope for too much. He is strong but his wounds are serious and he has unseen injuries. If they heal he will live. If not, he will die.’

  ‘Who is Thekla?’ she asked him.

  Evan looked up from where he was gutting a rabbit, his thick lashes bright in the moonlight.

  ‘Where did you hear that name?’ he replied coldly.

  ‘You spoke it in your delirium.’

  She watched him construct his reply, then the question she could no longer keep within her burst out. ‘Is she your love?’

  Emly thought he was not going to answer. Then she wished he hadn’t, because he said, ‘She has my heart.’

  Her insides felt as if they had been scraped out with a spoon. She had to force herself to keep breathing, sucking the air in, pushing it out. ‘But who is she?’ she persisted, hating the whine in her voice.

  ‘She is Archange’s granddaughter,’ Evan told her.

  She stared at him, speechless.

  ‘Thekla is a healer and a surgeon. She took a lance-head out of my ribs,’ he said, bending to his task again.

  ‘That was how you met? She healed you?’

  ‘Archange healed me. But Thekla brought me to her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  He shrugged. ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Then,’ she choked, trying not to cry, ‘why are you here with me rather than with her?’

  ‘Because my first loyalty is to the City. You had to be sent away.’

  ‘You could have had me abducted and sent away. Or killed,’ she added bitterly.

  ‘That’s the way of the old regime. And I made a promise to your father to keep you safe.’

  She sat down suddenly, tears in her eyes.

  ‘But you are acting against the empress, stealing the veil, stealing me.’

  ‘Again,’ he said reasonably, threading the rabbit on the string with the others, ‘that is the way of the old regime. I’m acting against Archange, but for the City and with Thekla’s blessing.’

  Emly looked up. ‘She knows about us, our journey? Your love?’ She spat out the word.

  ‘It was her idea.’

  When Em woke she was sluggish, and exhausted by the vivid dreams which had plagued her since she arrived in the valley. Feeling fretful, she could not separate them from reality. Was Thekla a real woman? The thought made her tremble. Or was she just a dream phantom, summoned because she’d heard Evan say the name? If Thekla was real, why had she never heard of her? What else was being kept from her?

  She washed her face and hands and dressed but she still felt anxious, fearing that events were happening which she knew nothing about. She picked up the cup she had been given the night before, full of warm milk to help her sleep. She peered inside then poured the dregs into her palm. There was something granular in it. She stood thinking for a long while.

  Then she went next door. One of the women was at Evan’s bedside redressing the wound in his thigh. She looked up. Em had seen her before, struggling around the citadel. Both her legs were cruelly injured and she walked with two sticks and in evident pain.

  ‘His breathing is good,’ the woman said, and she got up with difficulty and left.

  Emly sat on the stool and looked into the face of the man she loved. His eyes were closed, the thick fringe of his lashes lying on his cheek. The cuts and grazes on his face were healed. Em thought this a good omen for those injuries that could not be seen. She placed her hand on his chest, felt the slow beat of his heart and the barely discernible rise and fall as he breathed.

  She spoke softly to him. ‘Evan, I must leave you now. I’m going back to the City.’

  Was there a slight hitch in his breathing, a flicker of his eyelids? No, she was imagining it. He could not hear her. But she still felt the need to explain.

  ‘Someone has to go back and warn Archange. I know you want to hide me away from her but this is too important. Everything is changed now. Stalker says the enemy army is marching on the City and if I don’t raise the alarm then who will?’

  She paused, half hoping he would awaken and argue with her. But he slept on.

  ‘Believe me, I don’t want to go. But there is … I know you will think this foolish, but there is the assassin Casmir
. He will be looking for me, if he lives. If he finds me, or if I find him, he will take me back to the City. It is his job to take me back unharmed. Then I can warn Archange. These women will take care of you and …’ She found tears rolling down her cheeks, ‘… we will meet again, I know.’

  She remembered another phrase he used. ‘If not here, then on the other side.’

  She dried her tears and left him. She found a woman and asked to speak to whoever was in charge. Eventually she was guided to a high room, small, like all of them, but with a large round window overlooking fields and river. Selene was standing at the window. She turned as Emly came in.

  ‘Was a few days in the fields enough for you?’ she asked. Em couldn’t tell if she was being criticized or mocked.

  ‘You put something in my milk,’ she accused.

  Selene smiled thinly but there was a brittle coldness in her eyes. ‘Merely a light sleeping draught. You were exhausted when you arrived. Do you not feel stronger?’

  ‘I am returning to the City.’

  Selene frowned and her eyes glinted. ‘Are you sure? It is perilous up there. You can stay as long as you like here. We need hard workers.’

  ‘I must go back and tell them, warn the empress what is coming. There is an army marching on the City and someone must tell them.’

  ‘You are already far behind the enemy. You cannot possibly get to the City before they do.’

  ‘How many days have I been here?’ Emly tried to remember.