The Immortal Throne

by Stella Gemmell

  ‘Blackbird,’ the man told her.

  She realized she didn’t know the rider’s name, but she couldn’t ask, not after she’d asked his horse’s. The bearded man grinned as if he guessed what she was thinking.

  Avoiding his eyes, she commented, ‘Evan’s horse doesn’t have a name.’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ the man told her. ‘It’s . . .’ he hesitated as if trying to remember, ‘it’s Patience.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked, frowning at the big warhorse, who stood close by watching for his nosebag. Emly feared she was being mocked, but the bearded man went on with his work straight-faced. When she later asked Evan if his stallion was really called Patience he guffawed, but he started calling the horse that, and she was pleased when he did because it made him smile.

  As the sun went down Emly found she had few regrets about leaving the closed, muffled life of the palace. But she thought of her brother each day. Elija was safe at the Serafia, but she knew he would be worried about her and this seemed unfair for she was happy and she knew he was not.

  Ten days into their journey she awoke well after dawn and lay contentedly in her blanket looking up at the leaves forming a pale green canopy over the little glade where they had spent the night. The morning was already warming and the air was still and thick with the sound of bees. Emly stretched luxuriously and sat up. The bearded man – whose name, she now knew, was Chancey – was stirring oatmeal in a pot over the fire. It smelled different from usual. Em turned her head, sniffing. Something else was different. The air was charged with energy, as if there was a storm coming. There was another faint smell which she couldn’t identify. She rose and walked over to the fire and took the plate of oatmeal she was offered.

  Emly tried to remember the words she had been rehearsing. She had wanted to speak to Evan alone, but Chancey was always there. She swallowed some oatmeal.

  ‘Evan,’ she said, and her voice sounded nervous. He looked up.

  ‘You must tell me,’ she said, trying to be firm, ‘why we left the White Palace. I don’t know about horses or riding, but I am not a child to be carried around like a saddlebag.’

  Chancey lowered his head and chewed his food. Evan said, a hard note in his voice, ‘I’m trying to keep you safe.’

  She thought, I was safe in the palace. I was protected by an empress. But she asked, ‘Was I in danger?’

  The two men looked at each other. Then Chancey spoke up. He told her, ‘The empress was a threat to you, girl. And you were a threat to the City. So we brought you away. There is no better place to hide than in an army.’

  ‘But Archange has always been kind to me.’ And to Elija, she thought, wondering if her brother was in danger too.

  Chancey nodded. ‘The Serafim are usually kind to people who give them what they want. The empress was kind to Evan. She gave him promotion and power beyond the dreams of most men. But if he had defied her orders she would have had him executed on the spot.’ He looked at Evan, who nodded.

  ‘But how was she a threat to me? And how was I a threat to the City?’

  ‘You know the old veil you found in the sewer?’

  ‘My father found it. The Gulon Veil.’

  ‘You know it is a thing of great power?’

  Emly nodded. She had been told the Gulon Veil could make the old young and the dead live, and it had given the old emperor his power to create reflections, undead creatures which stalked the palace like mortal men. But to her it was just her old veil with its friendly animals in the lacework and round the edges.

  Chancey opened his mouth to go on, but a distant sound silenced him. It was a bugle call, high and brassy, quivering on the morning air. Emly looked at the two men, her eyes wide. Evan grinned and pointed with his knife. Emly scrambled up and ran across the glade into the dark line of trees. Through the narrow trunks of young birches she could see bright daylight. She burst out from the trees on the lip of a high green hill.

  Beneath her was a wide valley, its floor seething with a sea of men and women, horses and donkeys, livestock and carts. They filled the width of the valley and stretched forward into the distance as far as she could see. She turned the other way and there too all she could see was moving people. There were patches of colour among them, red uniforms and green uniforms, and cavalry units in grey. The sun rising hotly in the east shone on the polished helms of riders and the harness of their mounts, the sparkling points of lances and spears, and the armour of infantrymen. The sound they made was like a distant ocean, perpetual waves on an eternal beach, and the smell was like a crowded City street, of sweat and grime and ordure, of food and grass and animals and ale.

  They had found the Khan army.

  An army draws followers the way a fox’s brush attracts fleas.

  Many of them are predators, human and animal. They lurk and creep along the sides and rear of the moving mass, hiding in the day, bolder at night, hoping to pick off strays and the weak and lame, human and animal. Wild dogs and catamounts are more of a danger after dark, and bandits and scoundrels a threat at any time. Particularly in peril are the camp-followers and their children who trail behind the baggage train, sometimes leagues behind. They travel in everyone else’s leavings – unwanted food, ordure, blunt and broken weapons, discarded clothes, as well as the mountainous clouds of dust raised by tens of thousands of marching boots in the height of summer. Many of them are women who follow their soldiers for years; this is their life and they want nothing else.

  Any good general, and Marcus Rae Khan was a good general, deploys a squad of soldiers to guard the camp-followers. It is, understandably, the most popular job in the army. As well as the often riotous company of the whores and wives and their children, the warriors enjoy having a mission beyond slogging along in the centre of a moving mass of humanity. It is sometimes dangerous, but more often not. And, when they reach their destination, wherever that might be, they are already furthest away from the action.

  The wives and whores had mules packed high with pots and pans, wicker baskets, clothes in rag bags, food, even furniture. The whores wore bright-coloured clothes and ribbons in their hair to indicate their profession. They were louder and more cheerful than the wives and sweethearts, and some were no more than girls, others in the first flush of old age. There were crones too, seamstresses, laundresses, some of them veterans’ wives or widows. The brats ran together in packs, and more than one of the women was heavily pregnant. Stern Edasson had seen babies born on the battlefield before, and he probably would again. It seemed to him neither strange nor wrong; that babes should be born while men and women die seemed the most normal thing in the world to a man who had been a soldier most of his life.

  Also lagging far behind the army was the crowd of fortune-tellers, mystics and shamans who entertained the troops in their different ways. They were mostly spindly old men or comfortable widows who reassured lonely and frightened soldiers of the love of their mothers, or of their future wealth and a houseful of devoted sons. They were at their busiest on the eve of a battle, or when the queues for the whores were long and the waiting men used some of their copper coin to boost their hopes and dreams instead.

  Stern knew the Pigstickers had landed on their feet for a change. Shortly after the fall of the City and their capture by the enemy he and his comrades had been handed over in a transfer agreed between the empress and the Blues’ general. Then they’d kicked their heels in a state of military limbo until, with the other surviving Pigstickers, they’d been engulfed in the new First Imperial infantry. After a long period of inactivity they were glad to be on the march. Stern’s company was deployed at the rear of the Khan army, wide on the left flank, so the soldiers avoided the worst of the dust and debris. There was a cavalry unit back there with them too, so the troopers could gallop off and take a look at anything suspicious. All the Pigstickers had to do was walk in the sunshine in daytime, and take their pick of the whores after dark. They were fed and watered well enough, and after the chaos and suffering
in the City it felt good to be going somewhere.

  The army had been on the march for twenty days, and the main body was strung out over several leagues. From time to time the trailing edge had been ordered to catch up, and that evening when the rest of the army halted the Pigstickers were told to march on, herding their unruly charges, until they reached the baggage train. Now they had settled, and eaten and drunk their fill, food provided by the army cooks and ale from the unit’s own supplies.

  And Benet was standing, peering across to where the whores were getting ready for an evening’s work.

  ‘I can’t see her,’ he complained.

  You can’t see anything much, Stern thought gloomily, but he stood and looked as well.

  ‘She’s there,’ he said, pointing at the yellow-haired whore his brother had the itch for. She was no more than sixteen and was as plump and juicy as her name, which was Peach.

  ‘Is she on her own?’

  ‘No, she’s with the others.’ The whores were like a gaggle of noisy hens, always bustling and clucking, or screeching with laughter which echoed over the encampment and went straight to the loins of many of the male soldiers, as was intended.

  ‘I mean, are there any poxy officers creeping up on her?’ Benet asked anxiously.

  ‘Not that I can see.’ Stern sat down again. He was not interested in the whores tonight.

  Fastidiously, Benet wiped his greasy moustache on his sleeve, then delved in his pouch to find the coins the girl would expect. He counted out five copper pente, then tallied what he had left and stared at the result with dismay. Each night his little hoard of coin diminished, and each night he was newly dismayed.

  ‘I think I’ll go see Peach myself,’ said Grey Gus, getting up and hoisting his breeches comfortably. Gus was a thirty-year veteran, who had been an infantryman for time out of mind. Stern knew he was tormenting Benet, as he often did, but Benet could never see it.

  His brother stared at the older man in alarm. ‘She’s mine!’ he cried.

  ‘No, she’s not. She’s a tart,’ Gus told him. ‘But you can go first. I’ll wait,’ he offered generously.

  Benet hurried off, counting his coin again, casting suspicious glances back at Grey Gus, who laughed and sat back down by the campfire. Stern knew the man had suffered a lance to the privates some years back. He had trouble pissing and had no interest in women, but Benet didn’t understand that. They glanced at each other and grinned.

  Gus lay back against his pack and said, ‘That officer’s on to him.’

  Stern sighed. ‘I know. But what can they do?’ he asked. ‘Send him back home?’

  ‘They should put him in supplies. Or with the cooks,’ said Quora, rolling over on to her back and yawning up at the night sky.

  ‘Would you want Benet’s hands on your food?’ Gus asked her, and she shook her head fervently, the beads in her hair rattling.

  But Stern knew she was right. The four of them had fought together for more than two years and they relied on each other in the way only warriors do. Benet trusted the others to watch his blind side, but equally they had the right to trust him. And they couldn’t. Benet was a threat to them all. They had covered for him until now, as comrades should, but they couldn’t go on doing it.

  The previous day an officer, who had been watching Benet too closely, had asked him if his eyesight was good.

  ‘Good as yours, sir,’ Benet said promptly.

  He had been coached for this eventuality by Stern, and he said to the officer, ‘I can see that bird over there.’ He pointed to a tall pine on the ridge above.

  ‘What bird?’ the officer asked, squinting.

  ‘The one with the missing eyelash,’ Benet told him proudly, and the others laughed and the officer smiled. He walked away but he hadn’t forgotten. Stern guessed he was still watching and biding his time.

  Suddenly Quora jumped up, scratching at her calves. ‘Ants,’ she cried, dancing around. ‘We’ve camped on an ants’ nest.’

  She stamped at the ground a bit, then moved her belongings to the other side of the fire, cursing under her breath. Stern watched her through half-closed eyelids, as he often did. She was small and compact, a head shorter than him, but a fearsome fighter. He wondered what would happen to her. The empress was intent on barring women from the armies, gossip said, but there had been no sign of it so far. Quora had been fighting for ten years or more. What would she do if she was no longer wanted as a soldier?

  He lay back and stared at the sky. The stars were white and fat, like snowflakes, against the black. The moon was a half-coin in the west. The air was still and warm, and the dry ground under his back hard as stone.

  In his dreams he went back to Adrastto, the town of his boyhood, where the air was soft with rain and waves crashed endlessly against the cliffs as they had done since the world was young. Their father had been a fisherman who pitted his frail wooden vessel against the might of the sea daily until the one time he did not return. His wife married his brother, as was the custom in their community. But it was the end of childhood for Stern, and he and his brothers left the port town to sell their swords to the City of Gold, seeking honour and fame and wealth. They had not found any of those things. His elder brother had died five years before, a slow agonizing death from a belly wound. He and Benet had survived many battles and were content enough, despite the death and pain and horrors they had seen. This was their life and they imagined no other.

  He turned his head to look at Quora, who was asleep now, dream ants making her twitch a little. He could not guess what he would do if he could no longer fight, if he was blinded or if the empress told him he had to give up his sword.

  When he awoke the stars had disappeared, all but the largest ones, chased away by the dawn light. Stern rolled over and sat up, old stitches in his side pulling and making him wince. His eye was caught by movement on the hillside to the north. Riders, he thought. He was about to shout ‘Incoming!’ when he saw the troopers on duty had spotted them and were riding to meet them.

  As they came closer he saw they were two men – one tall and fair, one shorter and black-bearded – and a youngster leading a pair of horses. Papers were demanded and given up. Another trooper, an officer, rode out towards them.

  Around him his comrades were rising. They were economical with their mornings. They would roll out of their blankets, relieve themselves, then hoist their packs and start marching. Each had reserved a little food from the night before, but it was eaten on the move. The first proper meal of the day would be many leagues down the road.

  Stern looked to his right again, to the green hillside, but the newcomers had gone, swallowed up somewhere into the body of the army.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  OF THE SEVEN families, the Broglanhs were the least regarded, by the others if not by themselves. They were no longer Serafim, although there was a Broglanh among the original Travellers, and yet through the myriad descendants, with their muddled, tainted bloodlines and genetic accidents, and intermittent dynastic genocide, and plain old bad luck, the Broglanhs had stayed remarkably pure over the generations. Although the word ‘pure’ would make Evan Quin Broglanh scoff.

  Perhaps only Archange could still remember the first of the name – Donal Kyle – and she visualized a twinkly-eyed pipsqueak of a man, an engineer of some sort, she thought, cheerful and resolute even when the very first enemy they met seemed to doom them all. Then he had gone out one morning and got himself mauled by a bear, or a big cat, or surprised by an earth fall. It was a long time ago, the empress had explained to Evan Broglanh irritably. But it had taken the engineer days to die, and in that time he had learned that his woman was with child, the first mother of them all, pregnant with the first child. And the child had lived, against such great odds, and he was cheerful and resolute like his father.

  And it was strange, Archange told her lieutenant, that Evan Quin was so like the Broglanhs though he was no more one of them than she was.

  As small boy
s he and his brother Conor had been despatched to the City from the Land of Mists, sons of some fierce northern queen, thin and pale and half-starved like all those raised in those lands of uncertain weather and unreliable nutrition. The queen, red-headed and savage, rode into battle, it was said, barebreasted.

  Archange had snorted at this. ‘Impractical,’ she had judged, crossing her arms firmly across her own old bosom, ‘and as distracting to her own warriors as to the enemy.’ Broglanh had opened his mouth to argue that the breasts would have been pointing at the opposition, not her own troops, then he thought better of it. His leash was long with this old woman, but he took pains not to discover the full length of it.

  The tribal queen, called Gruach, had birthed twelve live young – ten boys and two girls. They were raised like pups, rolling in the ashes at their mother’s hearth, fighting the war hounds and each other for scraps from the table. Gruach seemed oblivious to her get, but when each of the three eldest boys reached the verge of manhood he suffered a fatal accident. A year or so on and the next pair, twins, vanished away one night – fled or dead. The girls seemed safe in their mother’s hall, then one died in childbirth aged just twelve.

  Gruach, scarred and leathery, must have thought herself well past the hazards of pregnancy when the last two boys were born within a year of each other. Perhaps it was her age, or perhaps she had already lost enough children, but these last, golden-haired Conor and tow-headed Evan, were raised with more attention than their siblings.

  What was in Gruach’s mind when she sent them across the world into the dubious protection of the emperor Araeon would never be known. She was scarcely threatened by the City, unless she thought the emperor jealous of the isle’s bounty of cold winds, rocks and icy seas. Maybe she really believed the boys would be given an education, raised like little princes, indulged by an emperor with no sons of his own. And the pair did receive an education, though a harsh one, and they suffered hardship and torment small boys should not experience. Until Conor’s short, brutal life was ended by dogs and Evan caught the eye of a powerful woman.