God of Night

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘I seem to recall there were troops stationed there to provide security of all kinds.’

  Bade gave a dismissive snort. ‘We couldn’t spare the bodies.’

  ‘That order was not yours to give.’

  ‘I decided otherwise.’

  ‘Then Exalted Olebeis should have taken you into custody,’ Utrik said in a grave tone. ‘Olebeis, why did you not do so?’

  ‘He’s …’ The woman paused. ‘I decided the Order was best served with him in command round here.’

  ‘Him? He’s not even part of our Order! What about the other officers here? Lord-Commander Ashael, High-Exalted Prian or Colonel Besetil?’

  ‘Ashael and Prian are both dead, leading patrols. Besetil couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘You mutinied against Besetil’s command?’ Utrik gasped.

  That made Bade laugh and shake his head. ‘We mostly just ignored the gibbering fuck until he went away. Does it count as mutiny, if the commander is the one to leave?’

  ‘And the men have accepted this chain of command, Olebeis?’

  The Exalted nodded. ‘All of them, sir. They all feel it.’

  Around them, Bade sensed the soldiers edge forward as those Bade had sent away returned with mage-guns and cartridge cases for the Lord-Exalted’s men. It wasn’t exactly threatening, but he could feel each of them drawn in by some indefinable compulsion as Olebeis edged in front of Bade.

  ‘What do they feel?’ Utrik demanded, seeing the mood turn. He raised a hand as his own bodyguard moved forward, sensing the tension.

  ‘Nothing,’ Bade said quickly, ‘they sense nothing. Most of ’em just ain’t spent much time in the deepest black before. They don’t know how it messes with your head and down here’s as bad as it ever gets. We’re fighting running battles in shifts, everyone’s tired and hungry so it’s playing games with their minds. They know I’ve spent more time underground than anyone else and they trust me to keep ’em alive, nothing more.’

  ‘And the mages?’

  ‘Are workin’ as hard as the rest – keeping us alive and supplied with the ammunition we need. Those mages on the perimeter are working their arts on the ground. It’s built on rock and earth. Without ’em there’s a real risk o’ something nasty burrowing up come nightfall.’

  ‘But …’ The senior figure of the Torquen Inquisition looked faintly ridiculous standing there, lost for words and far from master of all he surveyed. Eventually, he shut his mouth and looked Bade straight in the eye. ‘Just how bad is it?’

  Bade and Olebeis exchanged a look of weary amusement. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you, but load up on ammunition first. The deep halls are a barrel of laughs these days.’

  To Bade’s surprise, the Lord-Exalted didn’t prolong the argument.

  He has brought most of the garrison guarding the valley, he reflected. You don’t do that if you think we’re just chasing shadows.

  He led the Lord-Exalted to a massive archway in the mountainside that led into a grassy stretch of ground around the Dawn Stair. High on the left was a broad open stretch of sky above the perimeter wall, quirk of fate or Duegar design Bade had never decided. The archway itself had once been thick with Duegar glyphs, as were the walls of this strange open square of ground, but time and the elements had scoured much of them.

  Used as a barracks and staging point in years past, this place had always been busy. Now it was full of people and movement. Every corner of the strange mountain courtyard was in use. From the defensive fort and the barracks, two great discs of Duegar glass shone a stark white light down across the courtyard, casting back the evening gloom. In addition, great oil lamps topped the low pillar at each corner of the Dawn Stair. At the top of those steps stood a dozen armed soldiers in distinctive all-white uniforms.

  ‘Welcome to the Long Watch, my Lord,’ Bade announced, gesturing to the soldiers in white. ‘Last line of defence, noble act of godliness and all that other stuff. Or what’s left of it, anyway.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘The Long Watch?’ Lord-Exalted Utrik exclaimed. ‘Here? What do you mean? You’ve abandoned the lower station?’

  Bade nodded. ‘Had to – weeks back now. Couldn’t hold it, not without putting every soldier we have there all day and night.’

  ‘But … that is …’ Utrik gaped, barely able to comprehend what he’d heard, words failing him. It took a while before he could say anything at all and still he sounded stunned. ‘You’ve abandoned the Long Watch! To stand that is a duty all Knights-Charnel should perform. It is a tenet of our faith!’

  ‘We told you things’d got bad. What did you imagine?’

  ‘Anything but this!’

  Bade scowled and screwed his eyes up against the artificial light there. It hurt his head if he stayed long at the Dawn Stair, but that was precisely why he’d picked this spot to defend. The overall effect of the Duegar light-discs was not bright daylight, but somehow a more oppressive brightness.

  ‘We couldn’t defend Banesh’s Stair,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not the only point of entry, not now. We lost one whole watch finding that out. Some of the vaults we simply can’t defend. Bring in a field army and I’ll take ’em back, but you’ll lose half the troops.’

  ‘Exalted Olebeis, you did not object to this plan? I had thought you unshakeable in your faith.’

  The Exalted looked down at her feet but was not slow in answering. ‘My faith endures – though the gods test it with each patrol. We are trained to be pragmatic as well, my Lord. It pains me, but I cannot deny the fact we would die and the Stairs of Eternal Night would still be lost.’

  All around them, men and women worked under the light at various stations outside the old stone buildings. More tents clustered near the entry arch while a makeshift mess backed onto a small forge, filling the air with a strange mix of scents. Repair work to clothes and kit went on alongside the stitching and cutting of a packed field hospital. There were as many civilians as soldiers here and mages were clearly visible through the mass, all of them carrying mage-guns.

  ‘Sergeant!’ Bade shouted towards the guards at the top of the stair. ‘Sound the gong!’

  He hurried forward, keen to be out of this light as fast as possible. The danger down below was all too real, but somehow he felt calmer within the darkness of underground. He knew his place there, while politics and articles of faith were left behind.

  Even so, when Bade caught the eye of one dragoon and gave him a nod, he did so when the Lord-Exalted was not looking. The soldier, a decorated paladin of the Torquen no less, gave him a grim look in reply but didn’t hesitate. He gestured to his companions and between the four of them they hoisted a wooden ammunition crate on loops of rope and made for the stair too.

  Ridged and weathered with the hint of carved decoration still visible, the steps were an odd sight. Each step was short and shallow, but easily wide enough for twenty soldiers to stand abreast. A crash rang out as the gong was sounded, warning those below that another party was entering. Bade headed straight down into the still, cool shadows. The steps were uncomfortable to walk on, awkward to take two at a time. After the fractured dreams he’d been having and the slopes commonly found in Duegar ruins, Bade had adapted faster than most.

  Sounds rose up from the deepest black to greet him. Not just the clipped words of soldiers or the whispers on the edge of imagination, but people too. Those most vulnerable to the dreams. One shriek, not of pain but madness, made them all flinch just as Bade reached the bottom step. He quickly reassured Utrik and his guards.

  ‘Stay those guns. That’s just one of the touched.’

  ‘You allow them down here?’ the Lord-Exalted asked. The gods-touched – men and women who had been visited in their dreams by Insar – had at least been included in Olebeis’s report. No doubt it gave credence to their warnings. Such a thing had rarely happened since the great convocation of the first Militant Orders at Jang-Her, centuries ago.

  Olebeis gave a startled cough at that and Bade m
anaged to smile.

  ‘Allow? Not sure that’s ever been much of an option, but sure – we’re glad of ’em.’

  ‘Blessed by Insar they might be, but they are a danger to themselves and others!’ Etrik protested. ‘You cannot leave them wandering these halls to be preyed upon.’

  ‘You’ve no need to worry for them,’ Bade said. ‘Come, you’ll see soon enough. Everything changed after Jarrazir, we just never realised how much.’

  Bade touched his cheek as he spoke, an unconscious reaction he’d given up trying to stop. His scarring hurt, rubbed red at his neckline, cracked and weeping on his shoulder where he’d fallen hard a few days before.

  He walked into the slab of darkness that faced him, crossing the shadowed threshold with a sense of relief. For a moment Bade could almost have felt the touch of a hand upon his shoulder. A welcome or benediction from his dark queen. Imagined or not, gods-touched or not, it drove the last of his fatigue away. He activated the Duegar lamp he always carried and again felt surprise at what he saw.

  In the faint blue light of his lamp, Bade could see more than in weeks gone by. It was one thing he had not mentioned to Exalted Olebeis. From the foot of the stair he could make out most of the chamber with ease. It was big, as wide as the one above but with several tunnels leading off in different directions. His men were already scouting around, checking the rear sections before they moved to the largest tunnel where a grey stone archway was visible.

  That was a recent addition, along with the rubble on one side of it and a signal-lantern used to relay messages. The rubble didn’t block the way entirely, merely created a dog-leg path through. At the base of the arch was the piteous sight of the touched, a ragged and emaciated woman huddled with her head bent low and moaning softly.

  Utrik spluttered with recognition as Bade led the way to the side of the arch.

  ‘The bloodgate?’

  ‘What else did you think I was going to do with it?’ Bade asked with a small smile. ‘Pretty up my library?’

  ‘And she is gods-touched?’

  ‘Aye – Trooper Uqail, I think her name was.’

  ‘How is she not dead? Not wandered through the bloodgate and died?’

  ‘Ah, well now – remember all those folk at Jang-Her who learned how to read Duegar and the like?’

  The Lord-Exalted nodded.

  ‘Uqail’s learned a bit more. The gate’s safe for all humans, she fixed it that way. I ain’t saying I’d trust it, except in an emergency, but she walks through fine and she ain’t the only one who has.’

  ‘How long has she survived down here?’

  ‘Days, a few weeks for some mebbe. The beasts don’t go for ’em much cos … well, they’re god-touched. They’ve got surprises up their grubby little sleeves.’

  As though demonstrating his words, the woman looked up and Utrik gasped as he saw her eyes. They glowed with a faint light as she stared unblinking at them then turned and looked further down the corridor. There was nothing that Bade could see there but still she pitched abruptly forward. She fell to the floor, but somehow didn’t stop there. The rock underfoot didn’t part to admit her, she just fell into it and disappeared as though she were a ghost.

  ‘Eyes up!’ Bade yelled.

  They filed through the dog-leg passage and formed a knot around the men bearing the ammunition crate on the far side. The tunnel was a short one and soon they were at the upper gallery. There he could see distant lights. Once the Order had maintained Duegar lamps all down this path. Now the patrols carried those that remained on poles, like ancient regimental standards.

  Bade gave a whistle then stepped out to the upper gallery, fifteen yards wide and running around three sides of a rectangular space four hundred in length. Checking left and right he went to the parapet that ran around the inner face, mage-carved to look like a breaking wave. He glanced over into the Hall of the Gods but saw no movement below. Reassured, he hurried to the picket at the top of the nearer spiral slope leading down to the hall.

  ‘Touched just dropped away,’ he said as the startled dragoons fumbled salutes for the Lord-Exalted. ‘Down into the floor.’

  ‘Shit, understood.’

  The young captain who led this patrol hefted her gun and started down the stair, picking a careful path down the shallow slope. The sides of the slope were short, just a foot or so high, so they had a good view of the path ahead. It looked clear to Bade, but not long after they moved out of sight, below him, the captain gave a shout.

  ‘Bugs!’

  The warning was reported back up the line, the last man of the patrol turning to ensure Bade’s group had heard. He had a fleeting memory of his now-lost pet, the maspid runt he’d named Bug. Fortunately, it was not a pack of maspids, but something far smaller. A skittering sound came from somewhere below. Almost immediately the lower patrol started to fire – burners and sparkers casting a brief light out through the gloom. It added to the impression of immensity from this vast chamber, the light unable to reach the far side before the darkness snapped back into place.

  When the patrol gave an all-clear Bade led his group down after them. They descended in silence, the echo of their footsteps swallowed up by the void around them. Even the crunch of roasted carapaces beneath their feet seemed to fade into the background. At the bottom was the welcoming sight of a light mage. She held up a brightly shining glass sphere, a pool of clear white illuminating one small section of the hall.

  To Bade’s eyes the gloom was no great impediment to the beauty of the Duegar work beneath their feet. Age and dust merely dulled the bright colours of a mage-worked mosaic that covered most of the huge chamber floor. Most remarkable was the north wall where the gallery didn’t run. That was slightly curved, bulging out to the centre and decorated with the most fantastically ornate Duegar mural Bade had ever seen.

  The subject matter was rare, the quality and size unsurpassed so far as he knew, but that wasn’t even what made it stand out in Bade’s mind. More significant was the fact the entire mural – four hundred yards long, one hundred and fifty yards high – was mage-warded. Hardened by sophisticated magics, and carefully woven materials ensured even a blend of magic would struggle to impact it. He had never seen such a thing done except for the most urgent of reasons. It would have been necessary in Jarrazir to prevent water ingress from the bay, no doubt there it would have been set in layers of rock. Here it seemed to serve no obvious purpose, yet.

  ‘Welcome, my Lord,’ said the captain commanding the patrol, managing a salute for the Lord-Exalted. Those around him followed suit with varying degrees of precision, but Bade could see the man was too busy to care.

  ‘The eastern tunnel,’ Utrik said suddenly, pointing towards a half-blocked tunnel mouth. It was one of four massive archways leading off this chamber, twenty yards high at least, but while the others were blocked up, here the rubble had been cleared enough to allow access. ‘When did you clear that?’

  ‘Wasn’t us,’ Bade said. ‘The mages are overworked as it is.’

  ‘What then?’ the Lord-Exalted gasped. ‘Stonecarver beetles? That tunnel has been blocked since the earliest days of the Knights-Charnel!’

  ‘Yeah, that was a fun surprise I can tell you,’ Bade growled. ‘Damned things took out thirty men when they attacked and the tunnel’s now a path for maspid packs to come a-huntin’.’

  Utrik was silent as he turned on the spot, trying to make sense of what he remembered about these tunnels. This was once a Duegar complex of unknown origin. Not exactly a city, whether it had been a palace for their living gods, an enormous temple structure or something else, they’d never known.

  There were four main levels below this one that the Order controlled, a self-contained complex around the broad shaft that ended in another great stairway. Below the Stair of Eternal Night, site of that famed Long Watch performed as a sacred duty by the Knights-Charnel, was largely uncharted ground. They knew there were Duegar tunnels and huge caverns beneath, but no more than that ev
en after centuries of Knights-Charnel control.

  ‘Exalted Olebeis,’ Utrik said at last. ‘I accept the situation is worse than I believed, but have you truly abandoned three charnel vaults without a fight?’

  There was a slight pause before she replied. ‘Many have died as we tried to defend them. I accept the failure as my own.’

  ‘It is imperative we retake the vaults,’ Utrik said slowly, as though only half-listening to her. ‘It is a sacred duty.’

  ‘I … I do not see how it can be achieved. Unless the lower stair is sealed somehow, we can only muster incursions to effect repairs – but naturally the creatures of the deep are focused on the vaults.’

  ‘Then we must impede their progress and have a standing guard placed inside each vault complex itself.’

  Bade stopped at that, stunned. He opened his mouth to respond but surprise slowed him and Olebeis got in there first.

  ‘It will be done, Lord-Exalted.’

  ‘That’s a bloody death sentence!’ Bade objected.

  ‘Your job is to ensure that is not the case,’ Utrik snapped, rounding on him. ‘This is your domain. Either you are up to the task or I will find another more suitable.’

  ‘I shall lead a party myself,’ Olebeis interjected, cutting off Bade’s reply. ‘It will be done. A standing garrison in each to defend the mages most suited to repairing the defences. I am certain Colonel Bade will ensure resupply incursions reach us.’

  The Lord-Exalted nodded. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘I have had word from the south. Agents inform me that a major success is anticipated soon. One that makes this duty all the more vital. Your Long Watch will not be forever.’

  Bade growled. ‘In the dark, it might bloody feel that way.’

  Across from this great crossroad was the entrance to one complex of tunnels that surrounded the great charnel vault of Insar. It was another closed system that opened out only here and in the Sacred Halls above. There stood the entrance to the Torquen temple complex and the fractured miles of the northern slopes where their patrols still held on.