The prince shrugged. ‘If it does exist, then it is with the ambassadors. When my father was killed, the ambassadors and everything about the meeting were taken by the queen.’
Bellacon coughed lightly. ‘Are you saying that the ambassadors were not killed, but captured?’
‘That is my understanding: that they are in Steinvic. My mother is no fool. She would not dispose of such a valuable bargaining piece as three imperial noblemen.’
‘Then we could end this whole thing without the dreadful fight we could see coming,’ Bellacon said. ‘We need the queen dead, begging your pardon, Prince Suolceno, given that we are speaking of your mother.’
The prince brushed it off – there was clearly no love lost there.
‘If the queen can be removed,’ the tribune continued, ‘then you are the only member of the royal family in the running, and you can unite your tribe. And we need either this possible treaty document, or the ambassadors who can draw up a new one. Either way the queen, the ambassadors and the document, if it exists, are all inside Steinvic. We cannot see an easy way to take the place, but perhaps we could get inside through more subtle means?’
The prince was shaking his head. ‘For years I have had men looking for a way to break Steinvic. There is no viable point of access. Even from the inside, there is no way.’
‘How do you know about the inside?’ Convocus murmured.
‘From my political visits to the queen. We are a warlike tribe, but we are not animals. There are times when I am able to visit. Sacred times of the tribe’s gods, matters of external treaty and so on.’
Convocus was starting to grin in a manner that resembled Cantex’s usual happy smile.
‘Then that is our way in. Were you aware that a sizeable force of… what were they?’
‘Oscui,’ Lissa put in, a knowing smile beginning to crease her face.
‘Oscui,’ continued Convocus. ‘A sizeable force of Oscui were in this area a few days earlier. We fought them at a bridge just to the south, and sent them running.’
‘The Oscui.’ The prince nodded. ‘I had heard rumours they had been seen.’
‘And these people are supposed to be under your command? Yours, or the queen’s? Would this not be a suitable topic to take you to Steinvic and confront the queen over?’
The prince chuckled. ‘Under a flag of truce, yes.’
‘And when you visit your mother’s court, I presume you travel with a substantial guard?’
‘Of course. I am not a fool.’
‘I think I can see a way for us to get to the queen and the ambassadors.’
Chapter 23
Cantex took a last look over his shoulder, craning to peer through the narrow gap in the helmet, to see Bellacon standing on the slope, watching intently in the grey distance. He could imagine what his friend was saying, or at least thinking. The three of them had argued long into the night about who would go, and it had been a simple logical suggestion of Prince Suolceno that had settled it.
One man had to remain behind and control the army, and it should be the best commander. The choice, therefore, had been simple. Convocus was the brightest of the three and, given the nature of their plan in Steinvic, being able to think through problems would be useful. And Cantex, damn him, was the luckiest bastard that ever walked a battlefield. Bellacon was just good at his job. Instinctive, maybe. Inventive, perhaps. Reactive, certainly. But mostly a damn fine commander of men. The choice had been obvious.
And so the other two tribunes rode in disguise with the prince and his escort, making for the great east gate of Steinvic and leaving Bellacon on the hill with the army.
Steinvic…
Where Convocus would confront the queen, while Cantex would hunt the ambassadors.
The prince had laid out the geography of the city for them, noting in particular the central enclosure where the high nobles lived. This was something of a walled settlement within the walled settlement. That would be their objective. Any meeting between the prince and his mother would be at her hall within that enclosure, and any prisoners of import who had survived this long would be kept in one of the rooms of that royal structure.
Getting into that enclosure, and even into the queen’s hall, would likely be the easy part. Unless they were simply killed on approach, if the prince was admitted to see her, they would be taken there, albeit under guard. And the prince had assured them that Albante custom meant they would be admitted to parley without fear of reprisal. And because the prince could not defy their custom any more than the queen, that meant he could not draw a blade on anyone unless they did it first.
Convocus had wondered, then, how they would deal with the queen until the prince pointed out that the custom bound only his people. The soldiers and tribunes would just have to break it, and Suolceno would deal with his conscience over the matter in due course.
When they reached the queen, the prince would take Convocus and one or two others into the room with him. There they would have to be swift and quiet in their task, for if an alarm was raised across the compound, they would find themselves having to fight their way out through thousands of Albantes. Convocus, a man who hated to enter into anything unprepared, fretted throughout the night over what he would do once he was in the room with the queen, but there simply was no way to plan any better than this.
While Convocus was dealing with the queen, Cantex would take another few men and search the building. That, of course, would mean removing any guards. But if they could do it quickly and quietly enough, the queen’s hall would be theirs for a while. Getting back out of the hall, then the enclosure, and finally Steinvic as a whole, was an entirely different matter, and one that Convocus had worried over even more.
Cantex had come up with the solution, in conjunction with the prince. It was, in Convocus’ words, far-fetched, dangerous, idiotic, and doomed to failure. It was also the only plan that two solid hours of musing had come up with and so, despite Convocus’ slew of misgivings, it was the one upon which they had agreed.
And so, under lead-grey clouds with the chilly promise of rain, the two tribunes had ridden out for Steinvic with the prince’s party on a fool’s mission. Their chances of success were ridiculously small. And yet if they succeeded the Albantes would fall, the prince would take control, and the empire would acquire Alba without a costly war.
There were twenty of them in Suolceno’s retinue. Just enough to seem reasonable as an escort for royalty into the lair of his mother-and-enemy, yet not enough to raise serious alarm with the defenders of the place. Twenty men. Cantex and Convocus, of course, and six of the prince’s own guard, who rode to the fore drawing most eyes and attention along with their lord. The other twelve were soldiers, suitably attired in native war gear and trying not to look unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
Cantex and Convocus had agreed readily on the need for the majority of the group to be soldiers and not the prince’s men, and he’d been relieved when the prince raised no argument. The man seemed genuine, but if the past weeks had taught the tribunes anything it was that no one could be entirely trusted. And if the natives would not fight one another, the more men the tribunes had to hand, the better.
They had chosen the soldiers to help infiltrate Steinvic not by skill or the admirable qualities of the spy, sneak or thief, much to Convocus’ regret. The men had been selected by two simple measures.
Firstly they were the hairiest men in the army – weeks of campaigning left most soldiers hirsute, given the difficulties of shaving and trimming hair out on the march.
Secondly, they were all from the northernmost imperial provinces, and so had the closest colouring to the native Albans, as well as a slight northern twang to their tone, even if they spoke only the imperial tongue with it. These soldiers had learned a few choice words in the Albante tongue from the prince’s men before departure. Mostly foul language, which seemed the best choice to have them drop in occasionally as an additional aspect of their disguise. And half of them
had been told to shave off several weeks’ growth of beard, leaving heavy moustaches, while the others had tied rings into the bottom of their beards, the more inventive even braiding them. Their hair was not truly long enough, but with native helmets on and cloaks over their shoulders only a close investigation would really make that noticeable.
Twenty-one men: a prince, two tribunes, six native warriors and twelve excitable, nervous, hairy soldiers.
Gods help them.
Cantex grinned. He couldn’t help it. Convocus might not like to gamble, but he did, and this was one of the most exciting gambles of his life. The dance of sharpened steel was exhilarating, and the movement of armies was fascinating, but it was for moments like this that a true adventurer really lived. He daren’t say anything, of course, and whenever Convocus turned to him he made sure he wasn’t grinning like a lunatic. But still, the smile kept creeping back.
He was forced to concentrate now, as they began to approach the east gate. He wore some stupid native helmet that had clearly been designed for someone with more pretensions than brains. The whole thing was made of iron and bronze, and almost fully enclosed, just pinholes at the ears and a small clover-shaped hole at the front for mouth, nose and eyes. Far more enclosed than his usual imperial helmet, it was also hideously over-decorated with patterns and designs that would easily catch a blade rather than turning it.
To hide his clean shaven face, he lowered the odd half-moon flap that left only his eyes showing. It also helpfully hid from the others the grin that simply wouldn’t go away. Convocus had a similar helmet and the prince had assured them that they were perfectly normal to see on the heads of the richer warriors.
And the most dumb and ostentatious, Cantex thought with a smile. You had to turn your head to look at anything. Peripheral vision in this thing meant more or less anything but straight ahead. And hearing? All he could hear was the increasing pace of his own blood and the echo of his breathing. He kept moving his head a little this way and that to get a good view of the place. It was, as the scouts had intimated, considerably more impressive close up.
The ditch they were riding alongside was impressively deep. Here it was also full of water, forming a good moat, for this was where the stream issued through the low opening in the wall and flowed away to the east. The horsemen crossed that narrow channel with ease and approached the gate beyond it.
The walls consisted of thirty feet of well-mortared stonework. After the broken bridge at the battlefield he’d assumed the northern tribes didn’t understand mortar, but that seemed not to be the case. The wall would be a tough proposition. Men wandered around atop the rampart, mostly bearing spears, though some had bows.
Then there was the gate. Each of the twin leaves was formed from thick timber boles almost a foot thick and fifteen feet in height. They were not bound together with ropes or connected by pegs, but seemed to have been joined instead by heavy iron bands at three heights, bolted to each timber. Above the doorway rose three feet of wall, where men watched the approach suspiciously. The entrance was wide, the gates huge. Two wagons and a great catapult could fit through them abreast without touching side or top.
As they neared the gate, a voice called out from above in the unpleasant local language, and Cantex sat still, trying to be unobtrusive. The exchange that followed was clearly troublesome and slightly heated, and the prince and his second-in-command debated forcefully with the gate guard, the name Oscui coming up more than once.
At several points during the argument, the native warriors grumbled and spat and muttered curses and Cantex was pleased to note his men doing the same, joining in with the curse-words they had learned. He muttered what he believed to be some insult to do with cross-species ancestry, if the prince’s man was to be believed, and glared up from inside the sweaty kettle that was slowly cooking his brains and making him go deaf.
He had counted to five hundred and forty-nine by the time the prince seemingly won the argument and the left gate was opened just enough to admit a single horseman at a time. The prince’s top man went through first and, when he didn’t immediate become a pin-cushion for arrows, the prince followed. As they gradually assembled inside the gate and Cantex took in the terrain beyond, the prince grasped the opportunity to whisper something to Convocus. Cantex felt a thrill of worry, but then all the horsemen were murmuring to one another, so it wouldn’t look amiss. Convocus managed to manoeuvre his horse over and leaned in the saddle, craning his neck so that he could align the narrow hole at the front of his helmet with the pin-hole of Cantex’s ear.
‘Murfle hurgle burh murdle furg,’ he said, his voice sounding like a fluttering bird inside an echoing bell.
‘What?’ Cantex whispered back as loud as he dared.
‘Murfle hurgle escort murdle queen.’
He nodded, if only so he didn’t have to listen again. Something about being escorted to the queen. Just as they’d expected. His attention returned to his surroundings. The gate led into an enclosed area of around five hundred by three hundred paces from which the grass had gone, most of it now mud churned by boots and horses’ hooves.
The inner side of the ramparts here had been revetted in timber, so that they were now in a large rectangular killing zone, with men looking down on them from all sides behind wooden protection. It was a lovely piece of work and though the danger set the hairs standing on the back of his neck, Cantex felt once again the thrill of the adventure they had engaged upon. Nothing could beat this. Who’d be a senator, eh?
The inner gate was much the same as the outer, and a great gentle dome of a hill occupied the south-western section of the enclosure, rising even above the level of the ramparts enclosing it. The turf there was untouched and the grass deep, which meant that no livestock was allowed to graze upon it. A burial mound perhaps?
Moments later they were moving again, with an escort formed of men from Steinvic. The inner gates had opened for them, and once more they were off. Into the den of the lioness. The view of the place from the camp a mile or more distant had been unrevealing, showing only the most pronounced details of the interior, including the gleaming surface of the lake seen across the walls, the various ramparts dividing inner sections, the farmland and the residential area. Seen from the inside, it was much more complex.
The inner gate led to a wide avenue lined with stones that stood on their end, reaching to the sky like imploring arms, each carved with intricate swirls and designs, some with stylised drawings of men or animals or apparently fantastic creatures. The avenue consisted of heavy white gravel that left dust on the boots and hooves of those passing along it, though not raising clouds of it due to the dampness of the day’s air, which portended rain presently.
To the right of the avenue rose the earth rampart of the animal grazing enclosure and on the other side, to the south, lay a huge triangular lake fed by the small stream. Beyond that, he could see the irrigated farmland all the way to the south rampart. The bulk of the town itself lay ahead, in the western side of Steinvic, but they were bound for another enclosure that stood at the very centre of the complex.
Surrounded by its own ramparts it sat alone, and slightly higher, than its surroundings, an ancient mark of status. Just before it, at the end of the avenue, stood an open space of white gravel, and to one side was a great stone trough surrounded by carvings, from which a continual jet of crystal water bubbled up.
The stream in its gulley carved its way across the gravel avenue at the entrance to the central enclosure, running around the northern edge of that complex and along by the side of the avenue to feed the lake. The importance of that stream, perhaps two feet deep and four feet wide, in Cantex’s ‘far-fetched, dangerous, idiotic’ plan could hardly be overestimated. The sight of it sent a tingle of nervousness up his spine. It was smaller than he’d expected.
Tearing his eyes from it and his mind from the troubles of the next hour or so, he returned his attention to the present. The scouts had been right: besieging this place an
d trying to starve them out would be fruitless. They could survive indefinitely, while any attacking force would almost certainly suffer far more deprivation and hunger.
There was a distinct air of seething resentment, bordering on hatred, hovering in the damp air around them as they moved through Steinvic. They rode with a prince and the most noble of warriors, and yet even the lowliest farmhand in Steinvic looked at them as though they should be shovelling them out of some animal pen. How long had this feud in the ruling family been going on to engender such hatred from their own people? Cantex recalled the prince’s words, though. The Albantes lived in a state of perpetual civil war.
The gates of the central walled enclosure were no smaller than the main gates of Steinvic, and the walls as high, though there were timber fortifications above, here, rather than defensive stone revetment.
Cantex’s guess would make this place separated more for reasons of status and ceremony than war, and yet adequately defensive, should the unthinkable happen and Steinvic be filled with enemies. More native warriors stood on those walls and at the gate and Cantex was interested, and a little relieved, to see that several wore high quality armour and similar over-decorative enclosed helmets to the one he bore.
There was a brief exchange in the native tongue at the gate, and the visiting party sat ahorse, quietly waiting. A small boy of perhaps six summers wandered across the open area, tapping the ground with a stick from which he’d stripped the leaves. He stopped next to Cantex and peered up at him. The tribune suddenly felt very vulnerable.
What if the boy spoke to him? He could probably murmur something inaudible through the heavy helmet, but nothing they had encountered thus far had set him so on edge or brought home just how easily this entire ruse could be undone like the scrutiny of one child.
The boy opened his mouth, and Cantex shivered in anticipation.
There was a snorting noise, and the lad spat a wad of phlegm up at the visiting warrior. It missed, falling away under the horse’s belly, but the point had been made. No one feared them, but everyone hated them. Even the young boys of Steinvic felt free to insult rich warriors who supported the prince.
Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Page 27