Stern grinned. It was something he’d heard all his soldier’s life.
‘Look to your brother,’ Broglanh warned, dodging a blow from a cudgel and felling the man bearing it.
Stern looked to the left and saw Benet fighting in a little island of his own. He was a menace to his own comrades for he was flailing and hacking at anyone who came close. Stern moved up near him, beyond his range, and despatched an injured man, then shouted, ‘Brother!’
Benet’s head swung round towards him and at that moment a man came from his left, a long spear at waist level.
‘Down!’ Stern yelled and, though Benet hadn’t seen the threat, he dropped like a stone and rolled under the spearman’s feet. The man, at full pelt, stumbled and fell and Stern moved in and sliced the back of his neck under the helm, cutting through bone and gristle. He bent and tore off the bright crimson sash the man wore and tied it round his left bicep.
‘I’ll stand to your right,’ he told Benet. ‘Watch for me. Try not to kill me.’
Benet nodded, his eyes wide and full of fear.
The City warriors who’d been fighting in front of them were the Hogfodders, doughty warriors all. They had slowly been forced back by the enemy. The last few were holding their own but their comrades from other companies on either side were giving way step by step and soon the Hogfodders would be surrounded. There seemed to be no one left to give them orders so Stern bellowed for them to retreat ten paces and the veterans complied. They withdrew to line up with Stern and his warriors and for a moment there was a pause. Stern wiped the blood and sweat from his eyes.
At that moment a deep drum-note shivered across the battlefield and the enemy started to withdraw, five paces, ten. Stern looked up in the sky.
‘Arrows!’ he shouted and they raised their shields as one as a volley of arrows peppered their armour. A second volley followed, then Stern uncovered and looked left and right. None of his comrades had been injured.
‘Cowards!’ Quora spat. Bowmen were the lowest of the low. Killing from a distance was considered dishonourable work and even the City’s own bowmen, though not quite despised, were not valued as warriors – they were barely equal with the stretcher-bearers in most soldiers’ estimation.
Stern and his comrades had time to advance a few paces before the enemy hit them again. They mostly had fair or reddish hair, like Broglanh and Stalker, both from wild northern lands. But their faces were thickly tattooed. Few carried shields and they were throwing themselves at the line wildly as if careless of death or butchery. They were easy to kill, but there were so many of them. Inside his armour his skin crawled. Who are they? he thought. This army was surely the one the City and Petrassi forces had allied to fight. That was good enough for most soldiers. But not for Stern. What did they want? And, whoever they were, if they were triumphant this day and the City soldiers were left as bones and blood and flesh without life, what next? Was this a battle on which the future of the City would turn?
One of them came at him carrying a broadsword the size of a roof beam. Stern’s usual ploy with such an opponent was to sway back from the heavy swing then lunge and pierce the swordsman under the exposed arm. But this giant swung his weapon low, intending to cut up and across. Stern dodged back but the swordsman took a long pace forward. The tip of the sword caught Stern under the breastplate, ripping it upwards. Stern, unbalanced, fell back and the enemy slashed again at his head. Then the man fell to his knees, pierced in the neck by Quora, his sword glancing harmlessly off Stern’s armoured shoulder. Quora tipped off the man’s helm as she turned back to the line. Stern leaped forward and brought his sword down on the man’s unprotected head.
Spitting out blood and another tooth, Stern stepped up to cover his brother again. Benet had always been a demon in a close fight, and the fact that he was half-blind made no difference. He was hacking and slashing, leaping and charging, armed with two swords now. Stern couldn’t keep up with him; he never could. He was so tired it was hard to keep his one sword raised. His jaw hurt like a bastard; he wondered if it was broken. An enemy warrior came screaming at him from his right and he blocked the man’s blade and, after a short exchange of blows, pierced him through the eye. He realized he would never have spotted the idiot if he hadn’t made so much noise. He tried to stay alert, stay awake.
He looked to his left where the sun was starting to sink into the horizon. Stern willed it to fall faster. Only darkness – or the mercy of the gods – could save them now. And once they were destroyed, would the City be next?
PART FOUR
Way of the Gulon
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE MOUNTAIN THEY called the shield of freedom was not really shaped like a shield. And it had nothing at all to do with freedom.
In the earliest times, when the gods were young and the round earth was their plaything, hot and scarcely formed, a vast shard of rock had come hurtling, spinning through the roiling skies and had pierced the earth’s crust like a splinter in an eyeball. As the world cooled the splinter stood out, a huge, alien object which men, when they arrived, knew with certainty to be a god. So they worshipped it and, as was their way, they sacrificed to it those things they valued – goats and bulls and hard-won horses and, of course, more than a few virgins.
Over geological ages the harsh splinter became mellowed by wind and rain, and small pockets of dust and birdshit formed on its creviced sides, and plants started to grow: first mosses and little clingy grasses and vetches, then stronger plants with insistent roots which burrowed into the rock’s tiniest cracks, widening them to make way for bigger ones still. Earth built up at its base and great trees threw down roots. Men used the rock for shelter, from the remorseless sun and, in its caves and crannies, from wild beasts and other hostile tribes.
It did not take men too long to realize the upper part of the rock would make a fine military base, so the first climbers were soldiers and labourers, mostly slaves from foreign lands sent by their captors to live and die on the rock in the interest of its defence. They tunnelled out more caverns and built the first fortress and constructed, at the cost of many lives, a narrow, vertiginous pathway from base to top, and the rock suffered its first residents – ones who were not necessarily destined to die there, although most of them did.
Over the millennia men continued to burrow and build and the rock became honeycombed with tunnels. There were even wide shafts running the full height of it in which cages hung on cables could haul people to the top, but these had long since fallen into disuse, the cages hanging silent in the black air, a home to bats.
It was Marcellus Vincerus who first declared the rock looked like a shield. Ever the historian, he said it reminded him of the tall, semi-cylindrical shields whose warriors forged a mighty empire that had, or would, conquer the world.
Emly’s brother Elija, languishing in the White Palace and still traumatized more than half a year after the events of the Feast of Summoning, took comfort in learning about his new home and its history, although not a great deal was set down in print. Most of what there was concerned the early history of the rock and the boy set about reading everything he could find. Perhaps he was lured by tales of tunnels and caverns, for in those he had made himself an expert, though a reluctant one.
When he was told Emly had disappeared, her brother’s first impulse had been to follow her, though he did not know where she was. His second was to curl up and close himself off, for Emly was both his link to the world and his stout defence against it. And perhaps he would have taken one or other of these courses, were it not for the empress’s old counsellor Dol Salida.
Elija had an enquiring mind, although outwardly he seemed timid and reticent, and Dol Salida recognized the energetic intelligence in the boy. The old man was surprised when he discovered how fluently Elija could read and write the City’s script, though he had been taught by foreigners. He tried to involve the boy in his own work, but Elija had no interest in such a tedious pursuit as administration of the C
ity. Then Dol Salida hit on the idea of introducing Elija to the game of urquat. The boy took to it with delight once he realized it was not a simple game of chance. Urquat relied on luck to some degree, but also on strategic and tactical thinking and, crucially, the capacity, hard-won by many, to embrace the concept of surrender of advantage for the prospect of future gain.
So Dol dragooned his old friend and loyal agent Sully, for urquat was a three- or five-cornered contest, and they set up a table on the west-facing balcony of the library. Each evening as the sun set they would try to winkle information from each other under the guise of a friendly game.
‘Sun in three.’
Elija turned over a yellow counter and placed it on a black and white square. Dol nodded his approval and glanced at Sully, who grunted. The move was a clever one and showed sophistication for a player who’d taken up the game only days before. Yet it was the wrong move and would fix the player to a path which would inevitably end in his defeat. Elija didn’t know that yet, and Dol Salida had no intention of telling him. Let him enjoy his cunning ploy for a few more moves.
‘Moon in three.’ Sully, small and dapper, was a conservative player, as suited his temperament.
‘Hmmm.’ Dol pretended to think deeply, glancing at Elija as if judging his play. In fact he was wondering how long he would have to appear to dither before the boy lost his focus on the game and started to talk about Emly again.
After only a few more heartbeats, Elija said, ‘It makes no sense.’
Dol Salida smiled to himself. ‘What, boy?’ he asked with no indication of real interest.
‘That Em would run away with Broglanh. The empress never forbade their relationship. Why would they betray her by leaving like that?’
Dol shared a glance with Sully who, he knew, shared his opinion on this. Once a traitor, always a traitor. It was a nagging thorn in the old counsellor’s side that of all those in Archange’s inner circle he was the only one who had stayed true to the City which had birthed him. Broglanh, the empress’s right-hand man, had conspired to kill the emperor. Darius Hex, commander of the Nighthawks and now leader of Archange’s bodyguard, had turned his troopers to side with Shuskara. Even Elija had connived with the enemy, and his sister had freed Shuskara from his well-deserved cell to lead the insurrection.
The fact that Broglanh had now betrayed the empress’s trust and Emly had thrown her hospitality back in Archange’s face did not surprise Dol at all. He was just amazed it had taken this long. And that Elija was baffled by his sister’s betrayal.
He sat back as if undecided on his move, though he already had the next few, familiar as his two thumbs, planned.
Since Emly’s flight the atmosphere in the palace had been tense. The empress was furious when she heard, from Darius, that the girl had gone. Archange had despatched scouts north, east, west and south seeking word of the fugitives. She had questioned Elija until she was convinced he knew nothing and the boy looked like a wrung-out dishclout. She had banished that night’s guard, the Black-tailed Eagle century of the Thousand, from the Shield, demoted its commander and brought in the Silver Bears. Throughout all this Dol Salida had looked on with the contented contemplation of a side well chosen. He distrusted both the girl and her lover and was happy to see the back of them.
The scouts had come back with unhappy news. They had followed Broglanh’s various trails without difficulty, then all had suddenly gone cold as if, said lead scout Valerius, the riders had been snatched up into the sky by eagles, horses and all. The shamefaced scouts had called for griffon hounds in a bid to pick up the scent but it was too late for their noses to detect anything useful. Dol Salida privately thought the plethora of false trails indicated the pair were probably still in the City. He had sent out his agents, so far with no success.
The really interesting thing, from Dol’s point of view, was why Archange cared. What was the girl to her? Or her faithless lieutenant, for that matter? There was clearly more to this than met the eye, and he guessed that Elija, despite Archange’s interrogation of him, knew more than he was telling.
‘White defended,’ he said, turning over his black and white counter and winning the third game in a row.
Elija was not stupid. He knew he seemed young for his age and he realized his self-absorption since the Feast of Summoning had made him appear more biddable than he really was. But he was fully aware of what the old counsellor was trying to do. And Elija hoped that in his bid to elicit information on Emly’s whereabouts, Dol Salida might himself give away something the boy had not previously known.
Besides, he was enjoying learning the new game.
Waiting for the old men to reset the table after Dol’s inevitable win, a lengthy task, he walked over to the stone balustrade. He leaned out over the City. He could see flickers of torchlight dotting the broken land, the sheen of moonlight on distant ruins. Level with him were the tops of trees which rose from the palace’s main courtyard. He inhaled the dark air, rich with the scent of tree sap and heavy with a freight of smoke. In the terrible winter after the Feast of Summoning smoke from the funeral pyres had hung over the City like a mourning shroud. But now smoke in the air meant someone was burning debris from the many collapsed buildings, and space was being cleared for new buildings to be erected. Smoke was now a sign of hope.
Elija sighed. He still suffered a little resentment that Em had fled without telling him and he wanted to know why she had left so suddenly with her soldier, but he believed she was safe – as safe as she could be, in or out of this City. Broglanh had protected her before and Elija trusted the man to do the same again, although all the forces available to Archange were searching for them. Elija thought the pair might have followed in the bootsteps of Indaro and Fell and set out for the Land of Mists, Broglanh’s birthplace, and he thought that if that proved the case, then he would eventually follow. Archange would not send out search parties if he left the City.
Elija sighed again, blowing his breath out into the cool night. As if in answer a frog hiccupped far to his right and another answered. A third joined in, then a fourth. The summer night was full of sounds – the creak of crickets, the flit of bats’ wings close to Elija’s head as they whipped invisibly past him, the cheerful song of nightingales, so out of place in the darkness. And the clatter of urquat counters, the rattle of bone pyramids at his back. Elija loved the night. He loved the darkness. Whereas Em loved the light, now she had found it.
Suddenly he thought, frogs? The croak of frogs at the top of the Shield? Frogs usually lived in rivers and swamps, wet places unlike this hot, dry mountain. Then he remembered something Darius had told him – that the night guards on the mountain, since time out of mind, had used animal and bird calls to exchange information. This had now been taken up by the Shield’s newest guardians: the Nighthawks and Silver Bears.
‘Are you still playing, boy?’ Dol Salida asked his back and Elija turned again to the urquat table.
The boy was as transparent as water. Dol could see grief and pain flowing across his face as he sat down to resume play. He missed his sister, Dol supposed. Too bad, he thought. Most of us have lost loved ones, boy, many of them as a result of your actions.
‘This is a classic move, the Hammarskjald gambit,’ he explained to Elija, turning his black and red counter in an opening ploy. Dol had not lost his will to win the game, though he had been playing it for more years than he cared to remember, and he hoped he never would. But his main interest tonight was teaching the boy a little more about it, even allowing him to think he had a chance of winning, although he hadn’t, and also keeping good Sully engaged. Sully, alert to the slightest stumble, could take a game or two off him if Dol allowed his concentration to lapse.
The others made their predictable moves, then Dol looked at Sully and nodded slightly.
‘Where in the City were you and your sister born?’ the little man asked the boy in his friendly way. ‘I’m a Wester man myself.’
‘Amphitheatre, me,’
Dol offered, lying merely out of habit, throwing the bone pyramids and turning over a green counter.
‘I don’t know,’ the boy confessed, staring at the table. ‘We entered the Halls when I was very young. I remember nothing before then.’ He went to make a move, then stopped his hand, unsure.
‘What part of the sewers did you live in?’ Sully persisted as he had been schooled by Dol.
‘The Halls. The Dwellers call them the Halls. Em and I lived in the Hall of Blue Light for a long time.’
‘A strange name,’ put in Dol. ‘What was the blue light?’
Elija shrugged. ‘It was just a name.’
‘What part of the City was it beneath?’ Sully asked. ‘I understand the Halls extend to its furthest reaches.’
‘I don’t know,’ Elija repeated. ‘It wasn’t important to us. You see,’ he looked up, ‘the Halls were all of our world and we had no interest in Outside. Just as the people on the streets have no curiosity about what goes on down there. If they even know.’
Then he thought about it, head cocked in a parody of reflection, and said, ‘I have studied maps of the City since.’ He paused and Dol thought, Of course you have, boy, for your friends among the enemy.
Then Elija said, ‘I think maybe it was beneath Otaro.’
Both the older men looked at him. ‘Otaro?’ repeated Sully. ‘Then perhaps your father was a wealthy citizen.’
Elija smiled wanly. ‘I don’t think so, sir. Why would I be in the Halls if he was?’
‘There are many reasons to retreat into the Halls,’ Dol said. ‘And most of them have nothing to do with poverty.’
The boy looked surprised at these words and Dol explained gruffly, ‘I have lived in the City for most of my life, boy. I know a good deal about it. And I know a good deal about the sewers, though I have never been there.’
They played silently for a while. The game was slow and Dol’s thoughts, despite himself, turned back to the vexed question – why did Archange concern herself so with Emly? There was gossip that the empress intended the girl to succeed her, and that she would adopt her formally in due course. Dol thought this highly unlikely. The armies would never stand for it. But the matter of succession was a thorny one.
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