by Col Buchanan
For the last half hour, skyships had been bringing them in from their desperate position out on Beacon Heights, yet there was no sign of the Lord Protector down there, no sign of him strutting about in his usual towering manner shouting commands this way and that. Only chaos and despair around a body covered in a sheet, lying on its own square of dirt.
Coya swallowed hard, still amazed by what he was looking at. Still shaking.
For as long as he lived he hoped never to live through another day like this one.
He had made it here to the Stadium of Arms in something of a daze, hardly realizing he was galloping past the famous Bar-Khosian landmark until soldiers had leaped into the street to stop the runaway zel and its carriage. Eyes wide at finding Coya Zeziké lying in its back, they had hurried him inside, away from the enemy forces flooding from the north and the citizens fleeing past in their thousands.
Just in time, Coya discovered, to witness the body of the Lord Protector being carried from a landed skyship. Marsalas Creed, his old friend. Shot in the back by one of his own, some of the survivors were saying, in the very trap that Coya had suspected was being prepared for him.
Still in a daze, Coya made his way through the throng to see the body for himself. He forced himself to bend and lift a corner of the sheet.
It was Marsalas all right, lying there unmoving on the ground with the awful emptiness of death; an inanimate thing where once there had been life. The Lord Protector wore an expression of peace on his bloodless features, as though he had been glad, in the end, to lie down from the burdens of his life. An illusion, surely, Coya had thought bitterly, for Marsalas had never stopped fighting for life, his own or his people’s, just as much as he had lived for the fight.
But it was a poor time for grief and recollections. There was a city falling out there.
Waving off the attentions of those around him, Coya hurried to the busy steps of the amphitheatre and climbed past bloody tiers filled with the wounded. He was shaking badly now, unable to stop himself. He saw a flash of Lynx again; her face in those last moments. He pictured her fighting the white-armoured Acolytes with her final breaths until they cut her down. Panting and gasping, Coya pushed upwards until he reached the top, where a high stone walkway circled the arches and columns above the tiers, hoping for a better look at the situation outside.
It was about as bad as he might have expected, he realized grimly, seeing imperial infantry already engaging troops outside the stadium walls.
They were wasting no time with the Khosian forces at the wall, it seemed. Instead, enemy units were obviously rushing through the blasted gates and heading deeper into Bar-Khos – heading here to this strong point at its centre, where the nearest reinforcements were the fortified garrisons strung along the waist of the city, and the Shield to the south.
With citizens still fleeing through the neighbouring streets, imperial infantry were converging on the Stadium of Arms in ever greater numbers. He saw Khosian soldiers falling back to the entrances below, overwhelmed by missile fire from the enemy. Around Coya, riflemen were blazing away in hot reply. Their volleys forced the enemy forces into cover too, vanishing into surrounding buildings from where they started firing back. Though some Acolytes were simply ignoring the hail of fire, and making frantic charges for the lower-floor entrances, trying to throw explosives before they were shot down.
At least help was trying to get through to the stadium, in the form of a column of cloaked Hoo fighters to the east, fighting with shields and their long charta spears and collective shouts of ‘Hoo!’, and reinforcements of Red Guards to the south. But their progress was being slowed by ever more Acolytes rushing to fill the streets in their way.
It was shocking to see so many imperial fighters in the heart of Bar-Khos. Clearly it was going badly for those thousands of friendly forces defending the wall if so many of the enemy were getting through. A murderous din of battle could still be heard coming from the north – more gunfire and explosions than Coya had ever heard before, like a dozen lightning storms all crammed down together over the city. Smoke rose from streets of burning buildings.
Yet there were so few soldiers to be seen retreating now from the north. They must be trapped up there, outnumbered and encircled, those thousands of Khosians and foreign volunteers who were the majority of the city’s defenders.
Without them the city would surely be lost. Especially if the enemy overran the Stadium of Arms, which anchored Bar-Khos’s defences both north and south. Standing at the very heart of the city, the structure had been built centuries ago with fortification in mind, intended from the beginning to stand as a central bastion of defence should the city ever fall to its enemies. Yet even here, with a garrison of a thousand fighters at hand, the situation was becoming truly desperate.
Everyone who could fight was being pressed into action, even the ragged survivors of Creed’s ill-fated raid. As the latest arrivals stumbled clear of the landed skyship down on the stadium floor, they were being hollered at by staff-sergeants to help defend the perimeter defences; exhausted men and women leaping from one scorching hot pan straight into another.
Still trembling with emotion, Coya stood on the high walkway clutching his cane in a white-knuckle grip, barely aware of the busy reports of riflemen as he took it all in. He was no good to anyone here, he realized; just a useless spectator in the way. He needed to find some way out of this place so he could rejoin Shard and the others down in All Fools, before it was too late. But still he couldn’t move. In the end it was the sight of a familiar face amongst the nearest defenders that finally roused him.
Coya hurried along the walkway as fast as he could, calling out as he did, ‘Sergeant Sansun!’
‘Take some cover, you bloody fool!’ shouted Sansun, turning amidst a cloud of gunsmoke in the buckskins and leathers of a ranger.
Coya swayed back into cover, suddenly noticing the intensity of enemy gunfire striking the white facade of the stadium in puffs of rock dust – almost as though the Mannians were firing harmless pellets of salt at them. Yet to his left a rifleman fell back with a cry of pain, and elsewhere an explosion suddenly ripped a chunk from the outer facade, sending other defenders hurtling backwards.
‘We must stop meeting like this,’ Coya called through the racket to the ranger sergeant. ‘Good to see you still in one piece!’ But Sansun seemed unimpressed by his words.
‘Can’t see that lasting for long, can you?’ replied the Minosian man, breaking open his fuming rifle to reload it. The lines of his face were dark with dirt; his hair singed to bare spots on one side. Sansun flinched at another explosion, his fingers fumbling as he tried to slot a fresh shell into the gun.
‘We’re not alone here,’ Coya told him, though mostly it was a reminder to himself. ‘We have the entire democras at our backs, remember that, Volunteer.’
‘You think I’ve forgotten? Home’s just about all I can think about right now.’
The sergeant’s words prompted Coya to glance across the faces of the rest of the squad, crouched along the parapet. He spotted the young sniper Xeno, firing down at the enemy like he was shooting fish in a barrel, mouth open in excitement. And the medico, Curl, dragging back a fallen casualty.
‘Where are Captain Gamorre and the others?’
‘Dead.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that!’
Sansun put the rifle to his shoulder then peered at him over the stock.
‘You need something, Coya?’
‘Yes, I need to get south, into All Fools.’
Sansun lifted an eyebrow high, the only response he needed to give. The sergeant looked back to the sandy oval floor of the stadium far below, where the emptied skyship was taking off with its tilted thrusters roaring away, flooding the open space with its din and smoke as the vessel lifted past them into the sky.
‘Only way out of here just took off without you.’
Coya Zeziké pulled a desperate frown, his gaze a wild thing tearing this way and t
hat. He turned back to the view outside.
People had been caught out by the swiftness of the Mannians flooding through the breaches, so that now the flat rooftops of the city swarmed with citizens taking refuge where they could, seeking places to hide or brazenly hurling down what missiles came to hand at the enemy. Massacres were unfolding amongst the reds and greens of winter roof-gardens. Other buildings were being set on fire beneath the people’s feet.
Over the crackle of rifle fire, through the uproar of the shouting, Coya could perceive a dim wash of sound coming from the fallen districts of Bar-Khos: a shrill yet subtle chorus that was the collective screams and cries of thousands of trapped people.
He rocked on his feet, hunching deeper into himself the more that he witnessed.
‘Don’t think. Just shoot,’ shouted a rifleman to a younger fellow beside him yelling in panic.
Towards the south, just beyond the Red Guards trying to fight their way through, a hasty last-ditch line of defence was being thrown up across the streets by soldiers and citizens alike. Buildings were coming down – the Khosians collapsing them strategically, Coya realized, using them to choke the streets with barricades of rubble. Behind the barricades, the district was teeming with people who had already fled from the north.
‘I need to make a dash for our lines there,’ Coya shouted to Sergeant Sansun.
‘A dash? You really think you’re up to it?’
‘Question is, are you?’ Coya retorted, and he rapped his cane against the ranger’s boot in challenge.
*
Downwards Coya hobbled with Sansun and his squad of rangers following after him; down through the crowded tiers of seating, with the whole wide world sounding like it was coming down around his ears.
Don’t think, Coya recalled the soldier’s advice to his freaking comrade up above. Just shoot.
On the ground level, a mob of startled faces filled the wide arcade of supporting archways that ran below the tiers of seating. The noise here was a physical force upon the senses, jolting and jarring, nearly overwhelming him. Medical crews bawled for supplies and help as they tried to cope with screaming casualties. Dogs barked at walls that shook with explosions from the other side. A pair of Greyjackets ran past carrying a heavy box of ammunition, only to drop it onto the ground so that shells spilled everywhere.
Yet even in the chaos, people stepped aside for Coya when they saw him approaching, startled to see him there amongst them in such moments as these.
‘Coya Zeziké!’ someone cried out for the tenth time in as many seconds, though this time Coya turned to look with faint recognition.
Towards him sprang the portly form of Koolas, the independent war chattēro, whose reports on the siege were read throughout the Free Ports.
‘Not now, Koolas, my dear fellow. Can’t you see we’re all rather busy?’
‘What do you make of our situation?’ asked the war chattēro, a pencil and notepad in his hands. ‘Can the League send relief forces in time to save us?’
‘Koolas, please, this is hardly the time for an interview!’ yelled Coya, and he was gladdened to see Sergeant Sansun pushing the fellow aside.
They hurried past a burning brazier where a tall Ground Marshal was surrounded by officers all shouting at him at once. At the edge of the circle, a bald and heavily scarred fellow caught Coya’s eye, for he had one of the officers shoved up against a column, a young Michinè nobleman by the looks of him, and the scarred man was yelling into his face with a passion and waving a leather tube at him.
Coya stopped even as the man saw him there and released the officer.
‘You!’ he shouted, coming at him waving the leather tube like a sword. ‘Coya Zeziké. You’re just the person to take these off my hands. None of these bloody fools will listen.’
‘And you are?’
‘Cole Calvone. I have charts here to the Isles of Sky, if anyone will damn well take them.’
Maybe Coya was hearing things. Maybe in his distress he was creating phantoms of impossible hopes.
No, he realized. It was simply his good fortune holding out again, impossibly so. Coya almost muttered a silent thank-you to the cosmos.
‘My dear man. Did you say something about charts?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
High Priest
A kind of glee played across the ancient features of Kira dul Dubois as she gazed down upon the burning districts of Bar-Khos, blazing brightly beneath the murk of the morning sky. As a priest of Mann and true believer, it seemed like the culmination of her life somehow, wickedly and delightedly so, to be standing there within the enemy city, watching its downfall.
The flesh is strong, she recited in her head, stirred by the triumph of her faith.
Kira had always known the truth of the First Patriarch’s words, that the reign of Mann would have no end if only they could some day defeat the Free Ports – for Nihilis had always understood the true threat of the democras, this League of people who had been on the rise even longer than the faith of Mann. He had always known how their foundations of equality and cooperation made them the very antithesis of the Mannian faith, and even a danger to it.
And now here was another validation of his prophecy, happening before her very eyes. From this victory over Bar-Khos, the Empire would go on to seize the rest of the weakened Free Ports. And then, finally, they could turn to the long-standing matter of the Alhazii Caliphate, and the completion of this project of conquering the known world, so that they might shape it in their own image.
Mann would finally reign supreme.
Kira watched on from the high tower of the mansion, over the roofs of other villas that rambled down from this cliff-top district, trembling from the cold and from the excitement of what she was seeing. Beneath the hood of her cloak, the old crone muttered quietly to herself, and wrung her withered hands together like two sticks of deadwood – proud that they had played a part in this destruction.
Upon the breeze came scraps of smoke and cries of panic. From here, near the sea cliffs of southern Bar-Khos, the whole northern half of the city seemed overrun by flames and imperial forces.
It was a sight of savage beauty, for sure. Enough to have drawn her from the sanctuary of her warm room to this windy rooftop to gain a view. Enough even to draw pricks of emotion to the old woman’s eyes, for there was a reckoning in what she saw here; a long-overdue rebalancing of the scales.
Kira inhaled the scent of burning wood like sweet incense on the wind, taking in the dull shine of the sea and the many ships now fleeing from the western harbour, loaded with citizens escaping while they still could.
It had worked, this plan of theirs to employ the Khosian traitors in breaching the gates of the city. And Creed too, the Lord Protector, had been slain. Now the future was clear. Mann’s destiny was to conquer this world, for there was nothing left to stop them.
She had come a long way since her days as a young initiate in the underground cult of Mann, back in Q’os. Clenching her numb hands together, chilled to the bone, Kira swayed backwards and felt the whole course of her life rushing through her.
Such a long way to come, she thought with a little vertigo, a little dizziness, recalling the girl she had once been all that time ago. An ignorant and hungry street hustler, who might never have left the slums of the Shambles if her best friend Sool hadn’t gone and joined the cult of Mann, prompting Kira to do the same.
Had that really been her, the same person, so audacious yet naive?
Kira had been beautiful back then. She remembered her beauty as she felt the dry rasp of her hands and the stiff, aching arthritis in her bones. She had become the lover of Nihilis himself, she and Sool together; lovers to the founder of the underground cult who would become, after the coup of the Longest Night swept them into power, the First Patriarch of Mann.
She hadn’t lasted long as his lover, not nearly as long as Sool. Yet Kira and her family had gone on to the heights of power and wealth within the burgeoning Mannian
Empire. It had almost been easy, so long as she never stopped for long enough to think of the blood on her hands.
It had been Nihilis who had sent her to this doomed city of Bar-Khos, in order to oversee their covert operations here; a man who had pretended to be dead for decades now. An ancient, twisted creature who she increasingly despised, despite her devotion to the faith he had founded.
Kira blinked long and slowly like a sated vulture, her eyes reflecting the burning districts below. Gunfire echoed like Alhazii firecrackers in the warrens of streets zig-zagging out from the heart of the city. She looked around, seeing yet another skud lifting off from one of the neighbouring mansions. No doubt more Michinè nobles making their escape.
She was close to the Bar-Khosian Council Chambers here, standing on a prominence of white rock, though by all accounts they were largely empty now, only Chonas the First Minister and a handful of his people remaining behind. Soon she would go there herself, when the time came to accept the Bar-Khosians’ unconditional surrender.
A scuff of boots announced the arrival of her bodyguard, Quito, at the top of the stairs.
‘There’s news,’ said the old Diplomat. ‘I thought you should know.’
Kira sighed and hoped he wasn’t about to spoil her good mood.
‘Go on.’
‘One of our teams picked up a signal in the southern district of All Fools. From the pulsegland of our rogue Diplomat. The one who deserted after Chey-Wes. It seems he’s been moved there by the Khosians.’
How delightful. The young Diplomat who had slain her daughter Sasheen as she had retreated in battle, following Kira’s own instructions.
Now a traitor to his own people.
‘He’s in the open?’
‘Alarum thinks we can get to him. Though he doesn’t think we can spare any people.’
‘Forget what Alarum thinks. Strike the Diplomat dead.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Diplomat