Taking a deep draught of clean air he walked slowly to the river’s edge. There was a man seated on the bank. It was Stalker. His ginger braids were dripping and his clothes were sticking to his body as if he had just been in the river.
‘Where are we?’ Broglanh asked him, lowering himself down beside his comrade. The water was cool on his feet. ‘Are we dead?’
Stalker looked at him and laughed. ‘I know I’m not.’
‘Did we win?’ Broglanh asked. He remembered nothing about the battle, except that there was one.
‘Depends who you mean by “we”.’ Stalker grinned. ‘The City army, Marcus Rae Khan’s army, was trounced, leaving just a few poor souls to stumble their way home.’
Broglanh felt he was in a dream and Stalker’s words only enhanced the feeling. ‘Where are we, man? And how did we get here?’
‘Your girl brought you. You’re in the valley of the Vorago.’
‘Emly? Where is she?’
‘On her way back to the City on your big horse. She thinks she can save them, but nothing can do that now. Their fate was fixed a long time ago.’ He nodded his satisfaction at his own words.
‘She’s alone?’
‘Ay, but she’s tougher than she knows.’ The big man turned towards him and looked into his eyes. ‘Where’s the Gulon Veil?’
Fear flooded Broglanh as he realized at last that this was not his friend Stalker. He wondered if he was still dreaming. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘My name is Hammarskjald,’ the man said, getting to his feet. Broglanh felt the power radiating from him like a northerly wind in winter. ‘Mention it among the rich and powerful and see them quiver.’
He stared down, his face stone. ‘You’re a fine fighter, Broglanh. I’d give you a castle or three or half my realm if you’d battle at my side. But I know you’d refuse. Now, tell me what you did with the veil.’
Broglanh felt powerless before him and he believed absolutely that the man could kill him with a thought or gesture. And he was incapable of lying, for Hammarskjald’s eyes held him fixed in an iron grip and nothing but the truth could force its way from his mouth.
He said, ‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘What do you know of the Gulon Veil?’
Hammarskjald grunted. ‘I know everything about it. It was created to heal the sick and the wounded, but Araeon corrupted it – as he did all things – and made it a toy for his private pleasure. He used its virtue to create a thousand reflections all designed to service his foul needs.’ He spat on the ground. ‘It was better lost deep in the sewers. And now it is mislaid again.’ He shook his head with a sardonic smile. ‘Archange has been careless with it.’ The smile dropped away and his voice thickened with fury. ‘She deserves all that’s coming to her. Where did you hide it?’ he demanded of Broglanh. ‘It was not with you or the girl.’
‘It was in my jacket, stitched into it,’ Broglanh confessed.
The big man snorted. ‘Of course! You wore it. And where is the jacket now?’
Broglanh shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I must have left it on the battlefield. It’ll be deep among corpses.’ He thought of Stern and Quora and all the others. He wondered if any had survived.
Hammarskjald nodded thoughtfully, then he raised his ginger head and whistled and Broglanh heard thundering hooves. From down-river a horse came galloping. It was a huge dappled grey, saddled and ready for war. Hammarskjald swung easily into the saddle. Broglanh felt he should do something to stop him but he was powerless against the man.
‘It’ll take you a long time to get back to the City,’ Hammarskjald told him, gathering the reins, ‘and by then it’ll be long over. I’ll keep Emly safe if I can, and her brother. The rest will die.’
He turned the horse’s head to the north but held it back as it snorted and fidgeted, keen to be away.
‘Selene wanted you dead,’ Hammarskjald told Broglanh, ‘but then she wants most men dead. I’ve given you your life today, son, for I’ll not see a warrior like you slain by a woman’s poison. But next time I see you I’ll kill you.’
As the sound of horse’s hooves faded into the distance, Broglanh lay back on the grassy bank and thought through the conversation. He had heard the name Hammarskjald only once in his life, in Donal Broglanh’s high hall when the old man spoke of times long past. Was this a descendant of the man Donal called a criminal – or was it the same man?
When he felt stronger Broglanh checked his wounds again. The scars had faded from pink to white, the stitches gone. Hammarskjald had not only saved him from poison, he had healed his wounds. As with everything he did not understand he put it from his mind. He needed food. And a horse.
He got slowly to his feet and walked back to the rock dwelling. A tall grey woman stood in his path, arms folded. His old boots lay at her feet.
‘Begone,’ she told him. ‘You’re not wanted here.’ Her face looked familiar.
Broglanh felt red rage swirling up through his chest, the fury that had kept him alive through all his years of battle. He would not be thwarted by this peasant.
‘I could snap your neck like a twig, woman,’ he told her. He chose not to but the thought satisfied him.
She sneered, eyes gleaming. ‘Just try it, soldier. Hammarskjald is not the only one in this place with power. I have promised him I’ll let you live, but he would not fault me if you were killed in an attempt on my life.’
Confusion whirled his emotions like leaves in a gust of wind. He was suddenly tired of it all, of the deceits, the stratagems and lies which had been his life in the year since the fall of the Red Palace. He longed to be back with soldiers again, with the Wildcats – all dead or gone now – or with Stern and his Pigstickers, honest soldiers fighting for a clear cause worthy of the struggle.
So he said to her, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’ He could afford to be polite now he had his strength again.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she snapped. ‘You’d be a corpse floating out to sea if I’d had my way.’
‘What is my offence, that you want me dead?’
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ she asked, wonderingly. ‘I am Selene Vincerus.’
He was startled by the answer, though he did not show it. Selene was Thekla’s mother, Archange’s daughter, and he had been told variously that she was dead or insane or both. But he did not know what her relationship with Hammarskjald was or why she had tried to kill him. Her grey eyes were like shiny pebbles, flecked with gold, and insanity crouched there.
He shrugged as if he had no interest in her name. ‘And Hammarskjald?’
Her mouth twisted into a smile and she spoke with glee. ‘He is the leader of the Hratana, the great army which crushed yours. They are marching south now, far beyond your reach. He plans to scour the City away, to unleash a plague upon it which will kill every man, woman and child within its walls.’
‘A plague?’ He visualized the vast army sweeping across the City like beetles on a corpse, thousands dead in the streets. ‘Is sending an army against it not enough?’
The woman grinned. ‘Death is not enough. The City will be swept from the pages of history if Hammarskjald has his way. The only thing that could possibly save it now is the veil and you lost that, you fool, on the battlefield.’
‘Why does he hate the City so?’ he asked, wondering how the veil could save it.
‘Because it does not belong in this world. It is a pustulent sore which must be cleansed in pain before humankind can go forward into its intended future.’
The rantings of a lunatic, Broglanh thought. He had never suffered from regrets. He would not dwell on the veil or its whereabouts, lost in a sea of rotting bodies. It was gone and that was that. His mind was already voyaging into the future. He looked south, towards the blue sea sparkling on the edge of his vision. He visualized the map of the known world, brown and faded, on the wall of Archange’s library.
‘Begone,’ Selene repeated, waving one arm as if at a bee. ‘You can take these.’ She
flung the old boots at him. ‘You have a long road ahead.’
He bent to pick them up. ‘I’m not going by road,’ he said to himself.
PART SIX
Under Siege
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
AS DOL SALIDA fell to his knees, his lifeblood pooling on the floor, his assassin stepped forward and gently lifted the child from his arms. He stood holding it, wondering what to do with it. It was mute and its eyes were glazed, in shock, he guessed. He did not kill children unless ordered. In the end he put it on the floor and left it with the corpses. Someone would find it eventually.
He took no pleasure in killing women, or old men either. But the women would die when the Plague-Bringers got there, so perhaps this was a mercy. And Dol Salida was one of Archange’s close confidants. His lord had been clear on this. Take out her inner circle first. Then those that rush in to take their places. Leave her vulnerable, isolated.
Fin Gilshenan did not know why he had been given these orders. Nor did he care. He and his men had been sent ahead to infiltrate the mountain called the Shield of Freedom through its long-abandoned tunnels and shafts, following intricate diagrams drawn by his lord himself. They had broken through iron gates built long ago then forgotten. They had built and erected many lengths of ladder to replace those in the shafts which had rotted and fallen. And now they were ready. At dawn after the dark of the moon they had been ordered to enter the White Palace and execute the security chief Dashoul, the military commander Darius Hex, General Eufara of the Emperor’s Rangers and, of course, Dol Salida. The old counsellor had surprised them, the day before his doom was destined, by suddenly visiting his wife. With time to spare, Fin Gilshenan had chosen to do this deed himself. It was the first link in a chain of events and he wanted to see it went perfectly.
He left the cottage, pushing closed the front door. The bodies might not be discovered for a couple of days, by which time the mountain would be in ferment. Even if they were found quickly it would not matter. The deaths would be put down to a passing scoundrel, or gang of them, for the mountain’s base town attracted many of that sort.
He hurried back along the river bank. Rain was coming down hard. He reached the southern cliff-face at dusk. The cliff was considered unclimbable so it was not guarded. Sloppy. He found the rope he had climbed down earlier and swarmed back up it. At its top he was greeted by his second, Makenna.
The man raised his eyebrows and Fin reported, ‘All dead.’ Then he added, ‘But for a child.’
Makenna would have been watching from a prudent distance lest some inconvenient troop of soldiers passed. Not that he would have interfered; it was crucial that Dol Salida’s death be not perceived as part of a greater plot, for today. Tomorrow would not matter. If the mission had gone badly, and Fin had been killed or dragged off for questioning, Makenna would have returned to tell the others and to take Fin’s place. They had no fear of torture. None but Fin could speak a word of the City tongue and no one on the mountain, or within a thousand leagues of it, could speak theirs.
Makenna pulled the rope up and the two entered a hole disguised by broken branches, careful to replace fresh foliage behind them. It was a tight squeeze, but inside it opened out into one of the main routes through the mountain. They lit a lantern and when they reached the chosen shaft Fin started to climb, the lantern hanging from his belt. It was not the quickest route – that would be via the great shaft through the centre of the mount, connecting its base with the White Palace at its summit. But by unspoken consensus they never went that way. Climbing more than half a league on one continuous ladder was brutal on the muscles but even harder on the mind. After a while the repetitive movement, and the darkness beyond the lantern pool, and consciousness of the terrifying drop below made the mind start to play tricks. A man could believe he was crawling across a ceiling like a blowfly, or that the ladder would never end, or that the silence around him hid flying things with teeth and claws intent on tearing him off the ladder to fall, flailing, forever in darkness.
When they reached the top they crossed to the north side through an access tunnel built by and for long-ago workers, then climbed a second shaft to their adopted quarters.
It was odd to think of a palace on a mountain-top having dungeons, but that was what they were – small cells, dozens of them, long abandoned and with corroded shackles hanging from the walls. They had chosen one each, careless of the cold, the dark, the damp, for they were on a hero’s path. There was a disused guardroom with an air-shaft out on to the sheer mountain beneath an outer wall of the White Palace. The air-shaft allowed them to make a fire and occasionally cook food. Yesterday they had slaughtered a wild pig, slaughtered it, butchered it, and tonight would feast on it – perhaps the last feast some of them would enjoy.
Fin reported his success and there were satisfied nods from his men, but some looks of envy. They had a long night still to wait, then they would sally forth. Fin and Makenna would despatch the Nighthawks’ leader. Darius Hex was a warrior, young and strong, but he had not seen battle recently and he had grown soft, talking to the empress each day, eating her good food. The only problem, as it would be for all of them, was to do the job in silence and leave no trace.
Fin smiled to himself. Killing an old man and some women had been no challenge. But at dawn their work truly began.
As the ten black-clad men sat quietly talking, the fumes from their fire and the rich scent of roast pig wafted along the tunnel between the cells and into a crevice where Rubin Guillaume stood, still as a carved statue, listening.
When he first discovered the intruders he had been lucky and had spotted their distant lights before they saw his. He had quickly doused his torch and followed them, intrigued to find other secret trespassers. He guessed they were the ones who had breached the barred gate at the root of the mountain through which he and Valla had entered. Over several days and nights now he had spied on them, keeping his distance, staying in darkness, watching their lanterns as they moved through tunnels and shafts. Sometimes he followed them when they crept out into the palace at dead of night, but he always made sure to be back in his hiding place before they returned.
Though they clearly had some evil intent, Rubin was reluctant to raise the alarm. Since his time in the Halls he had been attracted by the secret and hidden, and he would never find out what they were up to if they were arrested. He listened to their foreign speech and understood not a word, and he suspected no one else in the palace would either. But now he had concluded, after some soul-searching, that he must alert the captain of the guard. Above all, he considered himself loyal to his City and he could hardly go on doing so if he continued to keep this dangerous information to himself.
Leaving the intruders feasting, Rubin crept back to one of their hidden ways into the palace, feeling his way, quiet as a spider. He found the panel in the wall and pushed it open. It swung silently on oiled hinges and he climbed out, closed it behind him and, with a sigh of relief, set off through the midnight palace.
There was a wild storm outside. Heavy rain lashed the windows and he could hear the sounds of water everywhere, drumming on roofs and balconies, running down pipes, splashing leaves and tree canopies and courtyard flags. He loved the rain and on any other night would be out in it, revelling in its power. But now he was thinking hard, wondering how to reveal himself and his information without being killed by the empress’s soldiers, hoping he could use his knowledge of the intruders as leverage when he found out why, and if, Archange had been hunting him.
He headed towards the western redoubt, where the captain of the watch was based. He had learned a great deal about the palace as he watched the watchers. He remained unchallenged. He saw no one. He came to a stairway, its stone steps gleaming in reflected torchlight, and ran lightly down three levels. As he passed a doorway deep in a wall he glimpsed sudden movement on the edge of his vision. Something hard struck him on the side of the head and he went down.
Dazed, he heard shouts and the
sound of running boots, then his arms and legs were grabbed and he found himself spreadeagled, facing the floor, unable to move. He heard the alarm begin, a deep brazen clanging which echoed down the corridors and was taken up by more distant alarms. No! he thought. That will only alert them! He tried to raise his head to speak, but someone grabbed his hair and slammed his face into the stone. Pain seared through his head. He felt blood trickle from his nose and he choked, trying to breathe.
‘Let him go,’ a commanding voice ordered.
He was hauled to his feet and found himself face to face with an officer. He had reddish-fair hair and penetrating blue eyes and wore the uniform of a commander of the Thousand. He stood relaxed, hands behind his back, gazing at Rubin expressionlessly.
‘Your name?’ he asked.
‘Rubin Kerr Guillaume. I have a message for the empress.’
The soldier raised his eyebrows, glancing at Rubin’s red hair.
‘You are Indaro’s brother?’
‘Yes!’ cried Rubin, relief washing over him that this man knew his name, knew Indaro’s.
‘Then you must know that she has been banished from the City and her name is cursed in this place,’ the officer said. His tone was unemphatic and it was impossible to tell what he thought of this.
Rubin stared at him, disbelieving, wondering that the officer could say such a thing. ‘That isn’t true!’ he blurted. ‘Indaro is loyal to the City. She is its most loyal warrior!’
‘I am Darius Hex, commander of the Nighthawks, and I do not lie,’ the soldier replied. ‘Indaro killed the emperor.’ He was watching Rubin closely.
The Immortal Throne Page 42