'Really? You manufactured a trial, too? I must discuss the proceedings with Senator Aurelius. Perhaps he can explain to me why sentence involves slaughtering children in the Chancellery.'
‘I think you might find that difficult,' said Arducius. He realised his heart was still thundering in his chest. His focus had narrowed right down and all he could really see were Jhered and Koroyan now. ‘I think she visited him before she came here.'
'Sit down, Ardu,' said Jhered gently. 'Before you fall. It's all right, I know what happened to Aurelius. I'm just sorry I couldn't save everyone. What about the others?'
'Safe,' said Arducius.
He sat on the recliner. Jhered's invitation had broken the line keeping him upright. He felt so tired. Ossacer was wheezing next to him. He looked as white as Arducius felt.
'Good.' Jhered turned back to the Chancellor, ‘I don't want to speak to you any further tonight. The list of charges that will be raised against you is going to be the work of several days, Felice, or so it seems to me.'
'Bring them to me at the Principal House. I look forward to them.'
'You have got to be joking. You are not going anywhere. You and every member of the Armour of God inside the walls of the complex is under arrest and will be held in the cells. All of you on charges of murder.'
'You can't arrest me, I am the Chancellor of the Order of Omniscience. You have no authority here.' Koroyan drew herself up, chin pointing, arrogance returned.
'Want to bet? I know who you are but you have forgotten who I am. Head of palace security. Want to see my badge of office?' Jhered leaned in, their noses all but touched.
'You were retained as the Exchequer.'
'I'm doubling up as a favour to the Advocate. Take them. And Felice. Not another word.'
Arducius watched palace guardsmen enter and take the Armour of God soldiers and the Chancellor away. Heads were bowed and not one of them raised objection. The ring of their shoes faded away. Mirron ran into the room and hugged both Ossacer and Arducius. The three of them clung to each other.
'I thought you were all gone for sure,' said Mirron.
'Touch and go,' said Ossacer.
'Lucky Felice likes the sound of her own voice,' said Arducius.
'And the feel of a knife in her hand,' said Jhered.
The three Ascendants broke their embrace. Jhered was standing over Cygalius. Two Ascendancy guards had lifted Bryn's body from him. His toga was red and soaking. Not a hint of white.
'You weren't talking, were you?' Jhered walked over to Ikedemus. He knelt and gave his throat a cursory press. 'Think it was the right decision?' He nodded and guards stooped to pick up the body and take it out of the Chancellery and away to the medics and morgue. 'Well?'
'We had to buy as much time as we could,' said Arducius. 'She was going to kill us all anyway. Any chance that others could escape we had to take.'
'What will happen to her?' asked Mirron.
Jhered shrugged. He was flat, emotionless. Drained. Arducius knew how he felt.
'I don't know, I really don't. I'd like to tell you that she'd be tried along with her thugs, found guilty and executed. The Omniscient knows there is evidence enough to convict a hundred Chancellors. But she is who she is. And out in the city, there is no doubt she holds sway. We had to break through organised demonstrations and near-riots. Couldn't get any sense out of anyone. When you get yourselves together I need to know exactly what's been going on. All I can guarantee you right now is that we cannot afford this. Not with what we've seen and heard.'
Arducius looked round at Mirron. Her face had taken on a haunted look like she'd just woken from a particularly bleak nightmare.
'You didn't find Kessian, did you?'
Mirron couldn't answer him. Tears spilled down her face and she crumpled back into his arms.
'We found him all right,' said Jhered. 'And that bastard Gorian. But there was nothing we could do to stop him.'
'Stop what?' asked Ossacer. 'It's true, isn't it? The walking dead.'
'He's building armies out there,' said Jhered and shivered at the memory. 'He's able to manage forces over great distances. He can make dead soldiers fight for him. Gestern is already gone. Unless the Ocetanas can stop them, they'll sail here and take Estorr too. The whole mainland, if they want. I don't know how to stop him. God-surround-me, we don't even know where he is.'
'We've got a few ideas for seek-and-destroy,' said Arducius. 'Felice may not believe it but we've had no choice. And some explosive powder has come from Sirrane. It's powerful stuff.'
'Really?' Jhered brightened. 'Being able to blow them up from a distance would be a mighty weapon.'
'Orin D'Allinnius is fine-tuning it and he's started manufacturing, I think,' said Arducius. 'And we—'
But Jhered had stopped listening. He shot to his feet and ran from the Chancellery, shouting men to him, shouting others to guard the Ascendants.
'What's got into him?' asked Arducius.
'I hope it's not what I think it is,' said Ossacer quietly.
At least she hadn't left him alive this time. There had been an end to the suffering. Eventually. Jhered was almost pleased. He stood at the door to the workshops, unwilling to step inside for a while. He was cold with rage. This was worse than looking around the Academy. There he had seen things he could at least comprehend. Religious outrage made flesh.
Here it was brutal revenge that had been a decade in the making. And it hadn't been quick. Orin D'Allinnius, the most brilliant scientific mind in the Conquord, had been strung up between two roof beams in the centre of his office. He had been beaten, his head a mass of bruising and blood, his lower jaw smashed across his face such that every cry of pain would have brought fresh agony. He had been partially burned and disembowelled. Great threads of intestines hung from his body and spread across the ground under his feet inside a pool of drying blood.
Orin's face was slack, his eyes mercifully closed. Jhered wondered why Koroyan hadn't gone the whole way and reduced him to ashes. His cycle would continue. The Chancellor's should not.
Jhered swallowed hard against the sight and smell. He walked across the floor and drew his gladius. He cut at a rope. Orin's body swung down to the left and smeared across the floor with a sick thud and swish. He hung by the other rope, spinning slowly.
'Sorry, Orin,' whispered Jhered. 'Sorry I wasn't here to save you.'
Jhered cut the second rope and tried to cushion Orin's final fall. He laid his head gently on the blood-slicked stone flags. A noise at the door made him look up.
'Marcus,' said Jhered. 'God-surround-me but it's good to see you at least have escaped this. What are you doing in Estorr? I thought you to be in Sirrane.'
Gesteris walked into the room, single eye burning as it stared at D'Allinnius's mutilated body.
'Roberto sent me back with information,' he said gesturing vaguely. 'I've been here for some time. I was meeting with Elise Kastenas for much of the night. Just got a message that there had been trouble in the palace. Who ...?'
But Gesteris knew who. He ran to one laboratory after another, throwing open the doors and looking in. Furnaces were still alight but there was no other sound. When he returned, his face was pale and grey.
'She's killed them all,' he said.
'They were manufacturing a powder.' Jhered stood up and stepped out of the blood and over intestines to get close to Gesteris. 'An explosive. We need it.'
Gesteris nodded, ‘I brought the materials back from Sirrane. They obviously thought we'd need it. All the powder we can find is all that we'll have. This was the dedicated team. They were working day and night. We might find a couple who were off duty but Orin hadn't even started formalising the procedure. Nothing will be written down.'
Jhered put a hand to his mouth. 'She might have killed us all.'
'What do you mean? Paul?'
Jhered couldn't answer him for a moment. Visions cluttered his mind. Of him doing to Koroyan what she had done to poor Orin. Of legions of the dead marchin
g through the Victory Gates. Gorian sitting on the throne. He felt a hand on his arm and came back to himself.
'You've been out there, Paul. What have you seen?'
'Everything is true. Gorian, the dead, the Tsardon. God-embrace-me, Marcus, but the things I have seen.' Jhered shivered. 'Anyone killed, Gorian raises to fight again. They have no fear or will. They don't suffer pain. We couldn't stand against them. Gestern is already lost. They don't even have beacons alight. The dead are coming here and no one even knows it yet.'
'Walk with me,' said Gesteris. 'Let's get out of here, let the medics clear up. Elise came with me. She's at the Academy.'
Jhered nodded and the two men left the workshops, heading back towards the Academy buildings. Jhered felt numb now. The rage had left him and something else had settled on him instead. It was unfamiliar and it muddled his thoughts. Gesteris put it into words for him.
'There's shock on you,' he said. 'All that you've seen ... It's one thing to deal with it at the time, quite another to relate it, bring it back to the front of your mind. Stick to simple facts. How many are coming through Gestern?'
Jhered stifled a laugh. 'That's the problem. I don't know. We saw thousands in Kark. But by the time they reach the western coast of Gestern how many might have fallen to decay and how many might have been added to the ranks is impossible to tell. Gorian has used plague as well as blades to get his army. And the Tsardon are backing him. If they can make passage to out eastern shoreline, I'm not sure we can stop them.'
The palace was quiet now. Academy and palace guards were at every door and were on the walls and patrolling the grounds. Noise filtered up from the city. Rioting was still going on. Fires marked the night. The slap of feet on cobbles was the only regular sound from within the walls as surgeons and soldiers did what they could to help the injured and give respectability to the dead.
'We can signal the Ocetanas,' said Gesteris. 'The invasion beacons are lit and our defences will be prepared. The Ocenii squadron will not let a single ship make land here.'
Jhered paused at the door to the Academy. A guardsman held it open for them.
'Why did Roberto send you back here?' Fresh anxiety was flowing in Jhered. A realisation that he did not want to face. 'Why did the Sirraneans give you the powder? What do they know?'
Gesteris took his arm and they walked inside. The door closed behind them. Inside, the corridors were bright with lantern light. Bodies had been moved but blood still marked floor, wall, bust and painting.
'Roberto went to the Gosland border because the Sirraneans said a Tsardon force was headed there. We are pretty sure others were moving towards Atreska too. We'll be all right. We have sound defence in both places, great men will be in charge. I think you need to calm down.'
'And I think you need to understand what we are facing here. This is not some simple invasion by an enemy we know. You cannot kill what is already dead.' Jhered shuddered afresh. 'Marcus, I have tried to fight them. I have struck my gladius through the heart of a walking dead man and he came at me again and again. Everything we know about warfare, about legions and phalanx, archer and gladius. It's all useless.'
'Paul, come on—'
'Listen to me, Marcus! Think. If we fight them one on one, every man of ours they kill swells their ranks. We have to stop them moving because they move day and night. Catapult, fire and Ascendant. That's all we have.' Jhered walked on towards the Chancellery. 'Pray the Advocate gets back soon. We have to know the Conquord strength of arms and we absolutely have to find Gorian. We encountered him once and we couldn't kill him. But he is the key.
'This is terrifying, Marcus, believe me. Because he can control dead armies on three fronts, have no doubt about that. And that bitch Koroyan has managed to kill at least four of our weapons and murdered our best mind.'
'But if they really are coming on three fronts, we don't have the strength of artillery, we don't have the Ascendant numbers and we
certainly won't have enough powder. How can we stop them?' asked Gesteris.
'Exactly. If we can't find and kill Gorian, we are lost. And the sand in the timer is running very low.'
Chapter Forty-Three
859th cycle of God, 42nd day of Genasrise
General Dina Kell reached her decision and despatched fast riders to connect with the Conquord messenger service. She sent six. Each with the same message, each to find their quickest route to Estorr to deliver the news that might bring Ascendants into the field quickly enough to save the Conquord.
She had agonised for days while she and Prosentor Ruthrar talked and her people became more and more despondent. The dead were following and they did not pause in their pursuit. She couldn't make enough distance between them to put them off the scent, if that were even possible.
Conquord legionary and Tsardon warrior alike were blistered and exhausted, but at least the animosity was fading. One thing was becoming very clear to them all. Gorian did not recognise the difference between them. To him, all of them were potential recruits to the army of the dead. Conflict between them was a pointless exercise that only strengthened Gorian's hand.
The Tsardon were no longer the enemy.
But while there was no hostility, there was no real trust either. The two groups maintained their distance and Conquord soldiers still guarded their erstwhile foe at every rest break. None should be allowed to forget that this was Conquord territory.
'How long before we reach the Atreskan border?' asked Ruthrar.
He was riding beside Kell as he had done these past four days. His Estorean had improved from their constant conversation and Kell could not help but warm to him. Just a soldier doing what his rulers demanded of him. And now cast adrift. She had searched for subterfuge within him and had found none. He had been open about the Tsardon forces he knew were marching on the Conquord and he had never once asked the questions about the Conquord defences she half expected. The only conclusion Kell could realistically reach was that his first assertion, that he be allowed to warn his king of the danger Gorian presented, was an honest one.
'Thirty days at least. And that assumes we don't have to slow because of the condition of our infantries. It's not the worst country but we won't have highway all the way. We may find river transport but don't trust to the possibility. It's a hard march ahead.'
'And then?'
Kell shrugged. 'And then I release you and your men back into Atreska to warn your king and I stand with my people to defend our backs as well as our fronts. My prayer is that Khuran listens to you.'
'He will listen.'
'You sound so sure.'
'The evidence he can hear from any one of those under my command. And he will know from where I have come. You should ride with me to meet him.'
Kell shook her head. 'No. My duty will be at the fortifications. The dead will be at our heels. We'll need you to bring them down ahead while I deal with those behind.'
‘I understand.' Ruthrar looked at her. His was a keen mind and he sensed in her something she was trying to keep hidden. 'What of your people who escaped up the cliff side? Roberto Del Aglios was with you, wasn't he?'
'He was.'
'And your husband. A hero of the battle of the Gaws.'
Kell bit her lip and let her gaze fall to her horse's mane. She tried to keep him out of her thoughts but he crowded in every time she closed her eyes. So hard to believe that he had fallen. But so hard to believe he had escaped, or Roberto. The filth and disease had been rushing towards them and they had not made the path before she had been forced away. She had lost sight of them both. What would she tell their children if he had become one of the dead? What can you tell a small boy who idolises his father and believes him invincible. Or a daughter who delights at her father's smile and wants to follow him into the legions, as a surgeon to rival Dahnishev.
'Dahnishev ...' she said, closing her mouth abruptly.
'General?'
'Three great men were at those cliffs when Gorian did what he
did.
I cannot afford to believe any of them survived.' She frowned. 'How did you know about my husband?'
it would be disrespectful of me to speak further. I can only join you in hoping he and Del Aglios survived. They will be useful in the days to come.'
'We agree there. But tell me. I will not take offence.'
Ruthrar paused to consider how he should frame his words. 'A couple are married and in charge of an elite Conquord legion. Ir was news that spread through the whole kingdom of Tsard.'
'Really?' Kell managed to laugh, ‘I had no idea my fame was so far-flung.'
‘I'm sorry it is so, now I have met you. We thought it a weakness of your Advocate's leadership. An experiment that had to fail.' Ruthrar gave a rueful smile. 'There were many jokes coined about it. You can imagine ...'
'And I have heard them all. But it worked, Ruthrar. I promise you that. Or it did until Gorian came back.'
Ruthrar nodded, ‘I have no doubt, General. No doubt whatever.'
Gorian clutched at his sides as the pain swept him again. He laid a heavy hand on Kessian's shoulder and the boy staggered beneath it but did not buckle. His head pounded and his legs were stiff. Ahead, the dead marching around Lord Tydiol faltered a step before regaining their rhythm. Tydiol looked round and his face did not mask his concern. Gorian waved that he was all right.
'Why don't you go back on the cart, Father?' asked Kessian.
'A commander should not rest while his troops march,' said Gorian. ‘I'm fine. I'm fine.'
He and Kessian were walking alone some thirty yards behind the dead of Tydiol and Runok. They had kept their forces going admirably and the Karkulas had not let him down. The priest was on the cart, one they had found at a farm they had overrun and now pulled by the farmer, his three sons and four others. Their deaths had given Gorian new ideas.
While he could not rely on horses or oxen, he did not have to waste the strength of his fighting force on mundanity. It would be wise to arrive at their next battle with more than just strength of arms. Artillery perhaps. And maybe a front line of those who could not fight but would sap the wills of the enemy. Was it not the duty of gods to use their subjects wisely and to bring into the fold those best suited to each task?
A Shout for the Dead Page 43