by Stephen Hunt
‘How has the assembly reacted to the news of the break across the river?’ asked Field Marshal Houldridge.
‘The assembly is worried,’ said Augustus Sparrow. The party leader’s haggard appearance gave weight to that statement. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept properly in days. ‘I cannot say otherwise. We thought that Bad Marcus would be halted by the waters of the Spotswood; that after the assembly mustered its armies, we would push them steadily back down south towards Arcadia. How can soft mill-hands stand against sturdy northerners who grew up in the woodlands and wilds with a hunting rifle in their hands? That’s what we said. But now? Half the assemblymen have left Midsburg for the territories, fearing being caught in a siege and wanting to fortify their home towns against the raiding southern regiments.’
‘We need to follow their example. Pull out of Midsburg and disperse the army,’ growled Jacob. ‘Each company to scatter into the countryside, head to their home territory and mount a guerrilla campaign against Marcus and the Vandians.’
‘We are the royal army, sir, not an unruly mob of bandits,’ said Field Marshal Houldridge. ‘We shall fight as one.’
‘You will die as one! The south had the mastery of the sky before the Vandians showed up as their allies.’
‘You understand nothing of military matters,’ spluttered Samuel Houldridge, banging the map with a heavy fist. ‘Weyland’s skyguard is newly minted, a service that didn’t even exist a decade ago. For centuries our army and navy have been high masters of seeing off troublesome aerial nomads, smugglers and sky pirates. Our city walls can release barrage balloons; our ramparts are drilled with heavy rifle mountings that will put a shell through the cockpit and skull of any pilot foolish enough to try to count our guns; our regiments are highly trained in wide-line marching to minimize strafing and bombing casualties. Merchant carriers may buzz around the clouds like oversized bumblebees, scrounging for fuel and never daring to land, but it is on the ground that victories are won. Boots, sir, boots and blood and bayonets.’
‘I led men,’ said Jacob. ‘I never lost a battle, and I’m telling you that the assembly’s three armies will only survive through scattering, hitting and running.’
Houldridge puffed up like a crimson-cheeked partridge. ‘You led brutes and killers, sir. A taste of mercenary raping and murder across the water in the Burn is not what I would class as quality soldiering.’
‘You want to keep the Armies of the Spotswood, Perryfax and Broadaxe intact, then leave a quarter of their companies dispersed across the west to harry Bad Marcus’s advance, spread the rest over Havenharl, Garsehire and Lowharl. If you can hold the southern armies back, you will have proved your point. But if the three armies are in danger of being overrun at any point, then withdraw north into the Great Gaskald forest and the mountains of Rodal and live to harass Marcus’s forces.’
‘Do you hear this?’ the field marshal bellowed at Prince Owen. The prince looked withdrawn to Jacob’s eyes, as though he had barely heard a word of the heated argument. He’s tired. He might have survived decades as a slave in the sky mines, but none of his old life prepared him for this. ‘That is Father Carnehan’s sage advice: we should abandon the citizens of seven prefectures to the usurper’s forces; let Bad Marcus fire our towns and slay our people while we cower in the far north, waiting for our chance to flee the country should the fighting grow too fierce. That is a coward’s way … marauder and bandits’ tactics. It is not the fashion of a true Weylander, or the tradition of the royal army.’
‘To hell with grand traditions,’ snarled Jacob. ‘We need to fight to win, not to draw the crowds’ applause for your shiny, polished lines on the parade ground.’
‘You, sir, mistake the battlefield for a tavern brawl over a spilled drink,’ barked the field marshal. ‘If you had ever served with a real army, with men of honour, you would understand that. Flee to your damnable air pirate of a brother, sir. Fighting for gold and booty seems to suit your blood. Leave the theatre of war to professional soldiers.’
‘I owe you my crown, Samuel,’ said Prince Owen. ‘Without your early support against my uncle, half the regiments which answered parliament’s call would have split and wavered.’ Owen glanced sadly towards Jacob, hardly seeing the pastor. ‘And you have my thanks for journeying to the sky mines and supporting the slave revolt, Father Carnehan. You have my gratitude, too, for saving my life from that traitor Thomas Purdell. If by the grace of the saints Anna survives her injuries, I will grant you any reward you ask for once this terrible war is settled. But in this matter, I must heed the army’s advice. Fortify the city as best you can, Field Marshal. Muster every soldier in the prefecture. We shall make our stand at Midsburg. Where we still hold the northern shore of the Spotswood in Deersota, order our regiments to contain the Army of the Boles as best they can. If the river should be crossed in force, our forces must pull back towards the eastern lakes and prevent our being flanked by the loyalists.’
‘I understand you’re hurting over Miss Kurtain,’ said Jacob, ‘but you’re not the only one who was taken in by Thomas Purdell. The traitor fooled me and my son; he took in the guild and Assemblyman Gimlette. You’re not thinking straight. What you’re planning is no way to beat your uncle or the Vandians.’
‘Hold your tongue, Father. I know what part my failures have played. I still have my conscience.’
‘You and your precious, highborn conscience,’ spat Jacob. ‘If you had listened to me when we returned, I could have slit Marcus’s treacherous throat before he realized you had escaped Vandia. Your uncle would be dead, you’d be king, and when the Vandians arrived spoiling for revenge, they’d be facing a nation united, not a country divided and tearing itself apart.’
‘Hold your tongue!’ shouted Owen, before swaying down to his chair again; almost confused, as though pondering his outburst.
‘Enough,’ barked Field Marshal Houldridge. ‘Sentries, remove this gentleman. His presence here dishonours honest fighting men.’
‘I couldn’t save her,’ murmured Owen. ‘That was my mistake.’
Not your biggest one. Jacob reached for his pistols by pure reflex, but felt only their empty holsters. Carter still has my guns. Soldiers surrounded the pastor and encouraged him out of the mess-hall with hard prodding rifle-butts. Jacob ignored the field marshal’s final disparaging remark as the guards marched him out of the room. ‘Nothing but a common murderer. Better off without him sullying the council.’
I’m not the common kind; I’m the breed that gets it done. Outside, Jacob found Sariel waiting for him, wrapped tight in his story-teller’s coat against the cold wind, its weathered leather covered with illustrations of the tales he told, but none so outlandish, Jacob suspected, as whatever the hedgerow magician’s true story was.
‘I could have done with your presence inside there,’ said Jacob. ‘It might have been better if I’d just let that bloody traitor Purdell hang the boy prince. He seems intent on committing suicide for real and taking the cause down with him.’
‘Do matters really stand so perilously?’ asked Sariel.
‘Between Prince Owen’s precious honour and the general staff’s ignorant stubbornness, the war’s just been lost. The Vandians are coming; the southern army’s forded the river and is marching towards Midsburg. And what is our fool of a field marshal’s brilliant strategy? To pack the regiments in as tightly as possible to make the fattest target for the imperium’s weapons. Is there nothing you can do?’
‘Alas, I cannot cast a glamour over men’s minds, and even if I could, such trickery would not be permitted,’ said Sariel. ‘I am no plume-plucked puppet-master.’
‘What the hell are you, then?’ said Jacob.
‘A watcher and a waiter, for the most part. A tardy-gaited meddler only when I must be. There are far wider concerns to worry me than those that preoccupy your nation. Weyland is but a small corner of the tapestry of Pellas.’
Jacob bit down a curse. ‘So what good are you?’
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br /> ‘The good I am allowed to be.’
‘This city will fall, the rebellion will be lost.’
‘We wade through the dust of fallen empires and lost causes. The very constituent particles of your flesh once existed as part of countless other men and women who passed this way before you; kings and queens, peasants and poachers, stardust delivered through the circle of existence and fired with the spark of the holy. An atom here, an atom there.’
‘I don’t need your tall tales. We’ll be dust again soon enough, you damn rogue. Soon after the Vandian legions arrive outside Midsburg.’
Sariel’s elderly face looked serious above his long white beard. ‘You saw what we faced in Vandia at the end. Demons, stealers. You heard their cries again yesterday when we travelled north through the gate, howling at the surrounds of my tunnel, battering against the very walls of the world. Weyland is but a very small part of the stage.’
Jacob remembered their supernatural journey from the south to Middenharn all too well; but he had hoped against hope that his memories of those furious screams were a phantasm of travelling across Pellas using Sariel’s sorcery, a price for transgressing the laws of motion, distance, time and God. Sariel was growing more certain of his powers, that much Jacob could see. When he had first opened up a gate towards the imperium, the effort had nearly killed the tramp and the entire rescue expedition. Yes, the strange man was growing certain and sure of his abilities. But what was the use in that, if every memory that returned to the amnesiac vagrant merely drove Sariel further away from the concerns of mortal men?
‘I need your help.’
‘That help will come at a price, your grace.’
‘Name it then, damn you.’
‘Your son, Carter Carnehan.’
‘Dear saints, do you think you are God above now, you old rascal? Sending me visions of how I must sacrifice my boy to prove my faith? If so, you are more than insane. Everything I have done I have done for Carter.’
‘Everything? How easily you lie to yourself. Your mutable conscience may rest easy. I do not require Carter’s death. Quite the opposite, in fact. I require your son alive, I require his assistance.’
‘Have mine instead.’
‘Yours, sadly, is of limited use to me. Carter was given a gift in Vandia. The ability to restore the knowledge of who we are to those of my kind. To return our soul and the reason for our existence. I have been searching for my people, and have happened across rumours that others like myself yet survive. One in particular. I require Carter’s gift to heal my old companion as he healed me.’
Healed you? Released you back into the world, is more like. A dreadful thought occurred to Jacob. ‘That’s why you came to Arcadia for me, isn’t it? Why you rescued me from the usurper’s jail. You knew Carter would never travel away with you while I was stretched out on one of Bad Marcus’s torture racks.’
‘What an untrusting rough-hewn fellow you are, your grace. Why, the very milk of human kindness runs through my veins.’
‘Your blood’s white, thick and milky, I remember that much. I watched you reattach your ripped-off arm in the arena. Better if Carter had left you thinking you were a hedgerow magician and wandering potion peddler,’ said Jacob.
‘Oh, but you must never wish that,’ said Sariel. ‘Without my intervention, all your runaway Weylander slaves would have been recaptured on the long flight from the empire. Your son and his young friends would be decorating trees along Vandia’s roadside, nailed to the oak as a warning to any slave who dares to rebel against the imperium.’
‘You’ve travelled on a fool’s errand, then, freeing me. When Carter returns with Lady Cassandra, you can ask him to travel with you, with or without my blessing. But I know exactly what my son will tell you. He won’t be setting a foot outside the nation until Willow’s safe.’
‘Willow Landor will be protected enough. The ladies of the court are throwing picnics on the hills overlooking Midsburg, hoping to applaud the spectacle of the burning of the city. Willow’s father and her blue-blooded new husband are among the officers overseeing the abolition of your rebel assembly.’
‘Benner Landor is coming here?’ Damn the landowner. Benner always did know when to trim his sails to chase whatever wind blows strongest. ‘Are you certain?’
‘I had that titbit for the price of a major’s uniform in Arcadia. The things a client’s proud tailor will boast of are almost unlimited—’
‘All for the good. I’ll kill Benner for what he did to Carter and Willow.’
‘Killing is your answer to so much,’ said Sariel. ‘And you are in the right place at the right time, Jake Quicksilver. A siege always brings out the worst in soldiers on either side. There is something final about a good siege, isn’t there? A binary proposition. One side wins, the losers are slaughtered. No quarter given or asked for after the first shot is fired.’
‘I’ll ask Carter to travel with you,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ll even sally out to the southern camp and carry Willow back over my shoulder if needs must. In return, this is what you will do for me …’
Sariel listened to Jacob’s scheme, and when the pastor had finished, the hoary old vagrant grinned. ‘And to think that you had the audacity to call me a devil, your grace. Yes, the right man for the right time, indeed.’
‘Believe what you want.’ So, it’s to be here. Midsburg. This is to be Vandia’s blood price. And mine, too. All I have to do is survive an assault by Bad Marcus’s already superior southern army assisted by the most powerful empire Pellas has ever known. And if I can do that, see out the siege, then this will finally be my war. As Jacob gazed across the parade ground he saw the ghosts of the warlords he had fought and killed in the Burn, hundreds of walking corpses lined up in formation, uniforms torn in the fray, powder-blackened and blood-stained. You never frightened me. You’re my legion. Hell’s company. And your numbers are about to grow.
FIFTEEN
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE …
Willow stared around her as she walked. Midsburg was clearly a city preparing for war. There were soldiers everywhere, marching in columns or riding in cavalry squadrons, parading past a steady stream of Weylanders leaving the city with all their worldly goods piled around them, weighed down like peddlers. In Arcadia, uniforms had been worn as badges of honour; bright, colourful symbols of status like a fashion; the boast of supporting the loyalists and the winning side. Here they were just drab grey functional coverings needed to hang rifle slings and army packs from, signalling that hope hadn’t entirely been snuffed out in the north yet. Willow travelled toward the city’s council hall where the reformed assembly sat in wartime session; where she hoped to find Owen or Anna or any of her old friends. To find them and betray them. Her brother’s parting words rang in her mind, mixing with Holten’s threats. Find and free Lady Cassandra, or watch Carter swing before being sent to Vandia as a slave. Paetro and his brutes waited in the city market for her; selling rifles and conducting their false business while she was about hers. Willow was started out of her shame. Someone had stepped in front of her. Dressed as a soldier, it was the young guild courier who had travelled with Carter and Jacob. ‘Mister Purdell, I nearly didn’t recognize you under that regiment cap.’
‘A soldier’s what I need people to see. I might note much the same for you, dressed like a Gidorian caravaneer.’
‘How did you get here? The last time I saw you—’
‘Myself and Assemblyman Gimlette escaped the prisoner-of-war camp we were interred in. We managed to steal a skyguard kite and fly north.’
Willow summoned the story she had prepared and launched into it. ‘It was the same for me.’
‘Don’t lie to me, I know why you’re here,’ said the courier. ‘I saw the “merchants” you came into Midsburg with, and if they’re Gidorians, then so am I.’ He reached out to catch Willow’s arm as she turned to flee. ‘You don’t have to run. Carter made me swear I’d keep Lady Cassandra safe. The assembly’s soldiers took the Vandian
girl from Sheplar and Kerge’s custody by force in the north. They half-killed the Rodalian and are keeping the gask drugged so he can’t harm the guards. I tried to break all three of them out of a cell under the town council, but I failed. Look …’ He dragged Willow over to a lamppost. A sign hung there, a poorly rendered drawing of Thomas’s face along with a reward of a thousand shillings. Wanted for treason. ‘Sweet saints, that’s you.’
‘I told Prince Owen we could trade the emperor’s grandchild for Carter and Jacob. Owen wanted to, but the field marshal in charge of the army, a dolt called Samuel Houldridge, he refused. The field marshal promised Lady Cassandra would end up dangling on a rope in front of the city walls as soon as the first shot was fired in the direction of Midsburg. The assembly and the army are in charge now, not the prince. Owen’s as much a prisoner of the assembly here as Carter and Father Carnehan are down in King Marcus’s dungeons.’
‘None of this is how it was meant to be,’ cried Willow. ‘I just wanted to escape home and live in peace.’ We should have never taken Cassandra hostage. That poor girl. Carter and I should have travelled into the Lanca and vanished; left the world to its madness.
‘Wars are a damned messy business,’ said Tom. ‘But have heart, Willow. If we work together, we can still break Cassandra, Sheplar and Kerge out. Where are your “Gidorians”?’
‘They’re selling rifles in the market.’
‘You mean they’re travelling the city shouting their wares, looking for weak points to blow up when the siege starts. Distractions from your real business.’
Willow nodded, sadly.
‘I still have friends in Midsburg, the true kind who won’t be trying to collect on that reward. I’ll arrange somewhere safe to room you and your Gidorians. I know the layout of the public halls. With your raiders’ help, we can seize the girl. We’ll see Carter and Jacob free, yet.’
‘If we succeed … what will Carter think when he sees me like this?’