After this morning… I am no longer so sure Larent had it right…”
—final entry from the private journals of Yseri Suro
The smell of fire woke Ekene Okonso up long before the pounding on the chamber doors shook his wives and courtesans from sleep. He’d been standing along the rail of his balcony for nearly five whole minutes, in fact, looking out over his city as his black nightgown flapped around him against the summer wind, before the soldiers finally barreled in, escorting his First and Second Hands.
They faltered among the shifting curtains of the archways when they found him already studying the billowing plumes of scattered smoke that cut a score of thick lines against the night sky above the south-east district of Karesh Syl.
After several long seconds in which neither man braved an approach, Ekene chose to break the silence with a growled word.
“Explain.”
“Your Greatness,” Yseri started, his voice unusually tight. “Five of the outer city camps have rebelled in the last three hours, overrunning their assigned troops.”
“Five?” Ekene demanded, whirling on the two men in outrage. “How did this happen? Why was I not woken?”
“The revolts were not coordinated, Great Tash,” Naizer said in a stringy, strained voice. “We ourselves only heard of it in the last hour. It appears the earliest engagements all originated from a single location, the ninth district camp, which is not unheard of. The generals thought they could gain control of the situation, but…”
“It spread,” the Tash finished for him, grinding his worn teeth. “Yes, obviously. If that’s the case—” he leered at his Hands “—what are you doing to fix it?”
“I am having all available troops deployed to the outer rings as a counter-force,” Yseri said at once. “Lord General Sulva estimates we can muster almost ten thousand men, but it will take the night and much of the day to organize them, not to mention recall the short-distance patrols from the savannah. Wall sentries have been halved and put on double-duty, and all entrances to the city have been sealed to anyone but our soldiers until this revolt is contained. If word were to reach Karesh Nan that we are fighting an insurrection—”
“Then his ‘esteemed’ Tash Haji might feel inclined to send his ‘assistance,’” Ekene finished for him with a glower. “Who would be all too happy to attempt to depose me while they have the chance. Yes. Fine. Keep the gates sealed until this is resolved.”
“There’s more,” Naizer followed up with, biting his lip nervously. “Your Greatness… It’s been reported by multiple sources that Raz i’Syul Arro has been identified at several areas of conflict throughout the night…”
Ekene wasn’t the least bit surprised by this, of course. They’d flooded the streets with patrols as soon as the east gate had been breached, but there were literally thousands of places to look in a city the size of Karesh Syl. There’d been a skirmish the evening before, leaving another five men dead, but the Monster and his bitch woman—according to several city residents who had witnessed the attack—had vanished into the night as quickly as they’d appeared.
“Damn him,” the Tash cursed, spitting bitterly over the ivory tiles of the balcony before storming between the Hands, sending soldiers backpedaling away from him as he passed through the silk-hung arches and back into his rooms. “We should have sent the whole damn army out along the east roads. Wiped the bastard off the map while we knew where he was coming from.”
“It would have been inadvisable at the time,” Yseri insisted, he and Naizer following Ekene into the chambers. “He’s one man. No one could have known how much trouble he would be.”
At that, there was a polite, sarcastic cough of derision from the room’s entrance.
Instantly, the sentries all around them spun to face the sound, drawing their swords and hefting their shields with shouts of surprise. Every eye moved to the figure in black leather armor who’d appeared out of nowhere, arms crossed over his chest and smirking at the First Hand as he leaned casually against one column of the open archway. Behind him, another man stood, swathed in loose-fitting garments of varied shades of black and grey, one tanned hand casually resting on the curved saber slung diagonally across his lower back.
“I hate to contradict you, honored First,” Azzeki Koro drawled smugly with a shrug at Yseri, “but I do believe you were given exactly such warnings, only to have them fall on deaf ears.”
“Stand down,” the Tash snapped as the soldiers around them began to creep toward the two newcomers, blades at the ready. “Leave us.”
Several of the men looked confused at this, glancing at him and at each other, as though unsure of what to do.
“S-sir?” one of the unit’s officers stuttered, not meeting Ekene’s gaze. “You’re… You’re sure?”
Behind the Tash, Yseri growled. “His Greatness gave you an order. Obey, or face the repercussions!”
That got the soldiers moving. At once they sheathed their swords and hurried past Koro and Na’zeem, eyeing the two men warily as they did.
When they were gone, Ekene leered at his Third Hand. “You’d best have a good reason for showing your face, Koro,” he seethed. Then he looked around the man to the Southerner behind him. “You and your pet.”
If Na’zeem was remotely offended by the insult, he certainly didn’t show it. The assassin merely watched the Tash and his Hands, grey eyes shifting between them constantly, like he was assessing and reassessing the factors of the room every few seconds.
“Your safety isn’t enough of a reason?” Koro asked, detaching himself from the archway. “We cornered an animal, gave him little opportunity for action and even less avenues of escape. Now he’s biting back, and tearing your city apart as he does so. He’ll want to take advantage of the chance while he has it.”
“What do you mean?” Naizer asked from the Tash’s right, frowning at the Third. “What advantage?”
It was Na’zeem who answered, taking a step forward at once to speak.
“The ‘chaos’ you were just speaking of,” the man offered simply. “In the confusion, Arro is very likely to try and use it to his benefit. You’re all clearly aware of the coup the lizard managed to pull off in Miropa over a year ago. Are you familiar with the circumstances that gave him the opportunity?”
As one, the Tash and his Hands held their tongue, waiting.
Na’zeem nodded, apparently unsurprised. “I thought not. Sparing you the details, the former šef of the city set a trap for the Monster. A very intricate one, which required a mass coordination and planning by all involved. It nearly worked, but the beast just managed to escape, killing dozens in the process. The failure caused a panic in the ranks of the Mahsadën—as well as unrest in the city itself—resulting in several mistakes made on their part. Arro promptly exploited these, and within a few hours of the failed attempt, every one of the šef were dead.”
The ringing silence that followed this account was so absolute, it seemed even to dim the Moon outside.
“You think he’ll strike?” the Tash hissed, struggling to wrap his mind around the concept. “Now? So soon? He’s been in the city less than a handful of days.”
“Days in which we did everything we could to disrupt him and keep him from gaining any hold with which to anchor himself to,” Koro continued for him. “We forced him to hide, might even have split him from his forces, if he brought any with him into the city. Even now he is still on the move, following the rebellion as it spreads. If he cannot establish a place of advantage on this ‘battlefield’, what value is there in waiting and allowing your forces to entrench themselves into familiar territory? Even if he manages to free the rest of the slaves in the south-east quarter and call them all to his banner, that leaves him with perhaps a force of twenty thousand untrained and largely unarmed bodies. Yes—” he nodded in Naizer’s direction as the Second choked at the thought “—that is a sum, but it’s doubtful he would be able to manage that in a day.”
“By which tim
e our ten thousand will have congregated.” Yseri was scratching his smooth cheek thoughtfully, staring at the Third. “Even with half that, we could blockade them within the quarter…”
“I have seen your men fight, Your Greatness,” Na’zeem offered with an inclination of his head. “Even if he manages to gather twice the number you bring to bear, neither your Third nor I foresee such a battle going in favor of the lizard.”
“But that’s good news!” Naizer erupted excitedly, looking around. “Isn’t it? Arro has already lost!”
“And he knows it.”
The words left Ekene’s mouth unbidden, even as he registered Koro’s point. He’d turned his head to watch the growing pillar of smoke he could see against the night through the arches to his right, pondering the facts Koro and Na’zeem had presented.
“He knows it, so he will attempt to manipulate the variables in another way,” the Tash continued. “It would take a fool not to notice we’ve halved the sentries along the walls…”
“And Arro is no fool,” Koro pressed. “He will expect our response, will know we are going to do everything we can to contain the situation, even if it means surrendering the south-east quarter until his revolt burns itself out or your soldiers stamp it into the ground.”
“He’ll see it coming, and react accordingly,” Na’zeem continued for the Third. “As he did in Miropa. I can assure you Arro knows there is only one sure way to cripple your army absolutely, to give himself and the slaves a real chance for victory in this battle.”
“My head,” the Tash grumbled, understanding. “He’ll come for my head.”
“He will,” Koro said, he and the Southerner nodding together. “And sooner than you might believe. If the First already has your soldiers gathering, Arro will realize the sand has started slipping through the hourglass.”
The Tash grimaced, glaring at the ground.
“When?” he snapped finally.
Koro and Na’zeem glanced at each other.
“No later than tonight,” the Southerner answered after a moment. “More likely much sooner.”
“Today?” Yseri cut in, frowning. “Would he be so brazen? Would he truly make an attempt in the light of day?”
“The sooner the better, in his mind,” Koro said as Na’zeem inclined his head in agreement beside him. “He knows the army gathers. I’ve no doubt he sees you are already starting to limit the fight to a single district of the outer city. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was already on the move, in fact.”
“There is no rule that insists an assassin must move in the night, honored First,” the Southerner added. “If Arro believes striking under the gaze of the Sun lends him the greatest advantage of surprise, he will not hesitate to plan accordingly. It is what I would do.”
For several seconds after this deduction, no one said anything. Only Koro, in fact, appeared brave enough to smile.
And it was that smile that connected all the dots for the Tash.
“You expected this,” he snarled abruptly, taking an angry step toward his Third Hand. “That’s why you supported Yseri’s protocol, why you told us it would be a good plan to run extra patrols and keep the lizard on edge after he had made it into the city. You knew it would come to this. The both of you!” He jabbed a crooked finger at Koro and Na’zeem in fury.
The First, behind him, sputtered in outrage, but Koro cut him off before he could say anything.
“We thought it might come to this,” the Third said with a conceding inclination of his head. “Truthfully, we hoped the patrols would rout him out, but we suspected it was unlikely.”
“And so you led us into a trap?” the Tash howled indignantly, taking another step forward. “You allowed Arro to seed chaos and rebellion? For WHAT?”
“To turn the trap around on him,” Na’zeem said simply.
As one, everyone in the room except the Third looked to the assassin.
“Turn it… Turn it on him?” Naizer asked in a weak voice. He had been unusually quiet throughout the exchange, and Ekene rather thought it was because the man sounded like he was about to faint.
Silently, he swore he would replace him the moment they ended this madness.
“Yes,” Na’zeem said, his grey eyes on the Tash. “Your Greatness, just as the lizard sees your death as the blow that would bring your city to its knees, so can you look at him in the same light. If you bring an end to ‘the Dragon’, you bring an end to his rebellion. More than that, you crush the legend of the man, and with it any such desire for similar uprisings for the next hundred years. You have the ability. You have the numbers. The lizard is not invulnerable. He bleeds. I have seen it. I have made him bleed. If you could pit your forces against him on an even field, you would crush him with sheer force.” His eyebrows rose, as though trying to make his point. “And to do that, all you need is to know where he is, and when he’ll be there…”
Ekene considered these words for a long time, chewing on them as he turned them over and over again in his head. He was of half-a-mind to shout for the guards to come back, to order them to heave both his cursed Third and his pet shadow over the balcony and be done with it. His own hands itched to throttle the both of them, and in years long past he might have attempted just that.
With age, though, came wisdom, and—for better or for worse—the Tash saw the sense in Na’zeem’s words.
With that conclusion, all the anger flooded out of him, and Ekene’s frail body became suddenly overcome with fatigue. With a sigh he turned and slunk back to his bed, using the nearest banister to ease himself down to sit at its edge.
When he was ready, he looked up.
“So I am to be the bait,” he muttered disgruntledly. “I suppose it’s a pleasant change, knowing beforehand of the attempt on my life.” He looked up at Koro with weary eyes. “Can I at least pray to the Sun that you have a plan?”
In response, the Third glanced at Na’zeem. The assassin bowed to the Tash before turning and hurrying back through the archway and across the greeting room to pull open the distant door that led out into the palace halls. He exchanged a few brief words with someone outside, then some harsher ones with what might have been the sentries. After a moment, he stepped away from the opening, allowing one of the soldiers to peer nervously through.
“Your Greatness?” the man called skittishly, his eyes on the floor. “I have a number of slaves here who are requesting entry? They claim that you would be expecting them, but they have—?”
“Yes, yes!” the Tash snapped impatiently. “Let the damned fools in already!”
The soldier started and nodded, disappearing again to shout an order at whoever waited in the hall. A moment later, several awkward forms appeared, carefully managing their way through the door, carrying with them a pair of very peculiar items. It took a moment for Ekene to recognize the figures as several of Na’zeem’s men, half of the eight other Southerners the assassin had brought with him from the fringe cities. At first he thought his tired eyes were playing tricks on him, but with a blink the Tash realized that the foursome of figures were indeed dressed in the simple white tunics shared by the palace slaves, having apparently traded out their greys for less conspicuous attire, complete with manacles and chains around their ankles. It made him momentarily uncomfortable, wondering suddenly if he’d ever been in the presence of one of the Southerners without noticing it, thinking on how many times he might have allowed them to serve him his meals or bring him hot water for his baths.
The concern, however, was quickly pushed aside in favor of confused interest when he took in the two objects each pair of men lugged between them, hauling them across the greeting chamber, through the archway, and into the room.
“What in the Sun’s name…?” he heard Naizer mutter to his right, and for once the Tash thought this an appropriate commentary.
They were a pair of massive, roughly identical plain clay pots. Each of them was about half as high as Ekene might have stood in the prime of his youth, and two
or three times as broad. They’d once been sealed, apparently, though the fragile papers that had been pasted to their sides were now broken, and carved into their tops were the rough scrawlings of Northern letters the Tash barely made out as “pork”.
Even from here, he could detect the sour scent of the vinegar likely swilling about within, and at his left Yseri raised a hand to cover his nose and mouth, grimacing in distaste.
“Are we to dine Arro to death, Koro?” the First asked sarcastically, eyeing the objects. “Is that your plan? Your time in the North lent itself to learning the beast has an insatiable appetite for pickled meats, did it?”
The Third only smiled in response.
As Iron Falls Page 53