Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘There you are, Rumayn,’ Veraine had explained. ‘We have run out of time. The choice is reduced to breaking the siege or sitting here while we shit ourselves to death. Believe me, there isn’t a man in the Host who wouldn’t prefer to fight.’

  ‘But there aren’t enough of you. You can’t break the siege.’

  Veraine had grinned humourlessly. ‘There are enough of us to try.’

  Rumayn had thrown his hands up. ‘Then why in the name of the gods are you putting yourself in the vanguard, General? You can’t direct the battle from there, you’ll get yourself killed.’

  Veraine hadn’t answered, only picked up his sword from the table and sheathed it. The other officers had looked contemptuously at the civilian.

  ‘It’s the General’s first command,’ Arioc had explained through tight lips. ‘He leads from the front.’

  ‘The time for advice is over,’ Veraine had said. ‘Now we act. Get to your stations.’

  The other officers had filed out of the room then to prepare their men, but Rumayn had lingered for one last attempt at protest. ‘You really haven’t a chance, have you, General?’

  Veraine had looked at him distantly, wondering how he could make a civilian understand.

  ‘My men are warriors, Rumayn. Battle is what they’re bred for and trained for, not sitting on our arses in some Yamani flea-pit. Do you think we’d want to go back to Antoth having held this place but never raised a hand against the Horse-eaters? Do you think there would be any honour or pride in that? Do you think the Eighth Host would be the envy of the Empire for creeping back intact and unbloodied? My men would spit on my name. We’re going to fight, Rumayn. The risk is irrelevant, we have to do it.’

  Now the General waited on horseback just inside the city gates, and all the words and all the reasons were like dust under the feet of his army, marching out to meet the enemy. It did not matter any more why they were going into battle, only that they fought well. The air felt thick in his lungs, heavy with the moisture of the coming rains. His left arm ached, although the wound was healing fast under the Yamani salve. His stomach was tight and queasy, his muscles taut and singing with the anticipation. He felt the familiar strength of the horse under his thighs, the weight of shield and sword in either hand, and his heart seemed to expand with joy.

  The last of the foot soldiers was filing out of the gate. Veraine dropped the loosely knotted reins on his horse’s neck and guided the animal into position with nudges of his calves. The other mounted warriors took up their places behind him; they were a pitifully small group for Irolian cavalry but they were expert horsemen, every one. Arioc was at his left, leading a spare mount by the reins in case the General’s own should be cut from under him.

  Somewhere up ahead in the darkness was Loy. Veraine awaited his signal, and eventually it came back down the line; a barely audible clicking of fingers that meant the soldiers were in position, their first defensive front split into two wedges like the claws of some giant scorpion, with a hollow between up which the horsemen could ride.

  Veraine urged his horse forward, under the lintel and out of Mulhanabin. On either side the infantry were poised. In front were the tents of the Horse-eaters. The infantry broke into a trot; the cavalry followed their lead but outpaced them at once. Veraine found himself cantering between the first ranks of foot soldiers almost before he realised it, the flat sands thrumming beneath his horse’s hooves, the wall of tents rising up before him. In the gloom he only had moments to judge what was solid felt wall and what was gap, but he steered his mount adroitly between the obstacles, down the maze of alleys that led into the heart of the enemy camp.

  As the tents dosed in he heard shouting behind him; some sentry must have been awake. But it was too late now – the twin jaws of Irolian infantry were across the arrow-gap and punching into the Horse-eater host. And in moments all Veraine could hear was the thunder of hooves beneath him and his own breath magnified by the walls of the helmet. He rounded the flank of a tent and saw an open space before him. In the centre was a fire pit still glowing and beyond it the bulk of the greater tent, large as a house and grand with spires and carved frame, where the golden disc glimmered high over the doorway even in the darkness.

  The Irolians were over the fire pit before the men sleeping around it had begun to rise groggily to their feet. Veraine stooped from the saddle to slash straight through flesh and bone, barely glimpsing the scarred faces before they fell away before him. The open area rapidly turned into a maelstrom of circling horses and hacking men. They tried to work silently but all around the gasps and cries of battle were going up; further back the first screams were shrilling out into the uncomprehending night.

  Veraine jerked a cloth-and-feather standard from a pole and thrust it into the fire, hurling it as soon as it was alight onto the roof of the great tent. Flames began to lick at the structure. He was not rash enough to enter the building, ordering his men to surround it instead in case anyone tried to cut their way out of the back. Even as his soldiers moved into position the doorway filled with the shapes of men, their features indistinct but their curved swords glinting as they raised them against their attackers. Veraine threw himself forward into the struggle, shearing bone from bone with every blow that hit its target. One of his men hacked away at the far doorpost and it tumbled in, forcing the defenders to stumble out from under the weight of the felt doubled over and presenting an easy target for Irolian blows.

  Flames were running along the eaves of the cloth palace now.

  Suddenly his horse screamed and folded beneath him. He rolled away from it and as he rose buried his sword to the hilt in the belly of the squat figure that loomed over him, stinking of animal fat. A blow hammered into the top of his helmet but rebounded without biting. Hot blood gushed over his arms as he kicked the body free and whirled around.

  ‘General!’ Arioc shouted from nearby. He lunged towards the voice, slashing down in passing at a wounded Horse-eater struggling to rise from the ground, and grabbed the mane of the horse waiting for him. Throwing himself into the saddle, he cast around quickly, getting his bearings. There were horsemen everywhere, but they all seemed to be clad in the white blur of an imperial tunic. The figures on foot were suffering badly, getting hacked to pieces even as they lurched into the fray.

  ‘Drop the tent!’ he ordered. The designated men unslung bronze axes from their saddles at his command and began to hack at the slender supporting frame of the tent. It sagged under their blows, felt and horsehair and oxskins slumping to the ground in great heavy folds. The smell of burning hair was disgusting. The screams from inside were louder now. Women’s voices were audible among them but Veraine swallowed his compunction. He held his ground until the tent was irretrievably alight and no more warriors seemed able to emerge, then he rallied his men with a yell.

  More Horse-eaters were running into the fight from all around, but they seemed to have little organisation and came in knots of two or three men, not warbands. It was steady work to beat them off. The sound of metal on bronze armour rang through the smoke amidst the cries of dying men.

  Between Veraine’s men and the city, the noise was growing to a great hubbub. The glow of several fires dyed the air. The whole Horse-eater encampment, Veraine judged, must be startled awake by now, though most would have no idea what was happening to them.

  ‘Fall back!’ he yelled. ‘Rejoin the ranks!’

  He had barely been in time. As they wheeled and began to ride back through the seething camp a band of riders came charging at them from a flank. The fighting on horseback was brutal and far more dangerous; horse slammed against horse, men were shoved against tents and thrown from the saddle to be trampled underfoot. The Horse-eaters screamed as they attacked, far more confident once their feet were off the floor, and Veraine found himself fending off blow after blow. He felt one land upon his hip, but such was the aggression and the ferocity of the fight that there was no pain and it did not check him for a moment as his ow
n blow sliced vertically down though his opponent’s collarbone and ribs, toppling him from the saddle.

  Everyone in the Irolian group was by now smeared dark with blood and flecked white with great gouts of foam from the labouring horses. Sweat was pouring down Veraine’s face and stinging his eyes, but he did not dare lift the helm to wipe it off. The grip on his sword was slippery with gore. Still the Horse-eaters kept coming, appearing round every twist in the pathway. Their way back seemed inordinately long and Veraine almost suspected that they had lost their way in the confusion and were heading off at a tangent to the main army. That would be fatal.

  ‘Form up,’ he snapped, wheeling his horse to survey their surroundings.

  ‘General?’ Arioc said. His voice was pleading. Veraine turned to him and saw with shock the spearhead jutting out of his belly just below his breastplate. Slowly the young man folded forward over his horse’s neck, masking the wound and the sheet of blood spreading down his abdomen from it.

  The Horse-eater poised behind him howled. Then Veraine’s sword took his throat out.

  Other Irolians close by tried to aid the chariot-driver, but the spear had come in at an angle down through his lungs and he was already dead.

  They let him tumble from the saddle. It was impossible to stop or for the healthy to carry the fallen; Horse-eaters were pressing in at every side, never in numbers sufficient to overwhelm them, but allowing no rest. The sound of fighting was very close by, but Veraine could not see the rest of his forces. He sought out the glimmering bulk of Mulhanabin beyond the tent-tops.

  ‘That way!’ he yelled.

  There was a shudder in the wall of the tents hemming them in. The shudder went up through the hooves of the horses and sent them stumbling, then screaming mad with fright. All around, on both sides of the battle, they bucked and reared and fell. Veraine felt his beast stagger beneath him, but at first he had no idea what was happening. Then as he jumped from its back and his feet hit the ground, he felt the earth ripple and heave beneath his soles and he saw the tents start to collapse in on themselves.

  The Horse-eaters were howling with fear.

  A thick dark crack snaked through the pale sands not a body-length from Veraine. He saw a barbarian stagger, his feet slipping into the crevasse.

  ‘Earthquake!’ someone was yelling close by.

  The barbarian clawed his way to safety and began to crawl away, but a horse dashed over him and split his skull wide. It was almost impossible to stand on the fluid sand, even without the panicked horses that were bolting everywhere. Veraine grabbed the shoulder of the Irolian nearest to him and they staggered like sailors on a rough sea. A bass vibration too low to hear was pounding up through his diaphragm, threatening to burst his heart out through his ribcage. He saw the same strain and horror on the faces of his soldiers as was carved, he knew, on his own.

  When it stopped, they stood for a moment stunned. Then they heard the noise. The quake itself had been almost silent, but this was a great roaring grinding noise, as of earth masticating earth. It seemed to go on for ever.

  ‘What in hell was that?’ Veraine asked as the last echoes died.

  Then the dust hit them. It came on a wind that hit like an open hand, lashing them with grit. Everyone threw their arms over their faces. Even when the unnatural gust dropped, as abruptly as it had started, it left the air full of choking dirt.

  ‘Regroup,’ Veraine coughed when he could finally speak. ‘Fall back to the ranks!’ They did not try to collect their horses but simply shouldered their way through the pall of dust, climbing over the collapsed tents. No Horse-eater opposed them. The barbarians were running, those that were still on their feet. From every direction came the flat wailing of wordless terror, and in every direction the dull glow of flames was springing up. Veraine guessed that many of the tents had collapsed onto the embers of cooking fires.

  They found the Irolian ranks, but there was no battle going on now. The men stood with bloodied weapons, staring about them as if they had woken from a dream and did not know where they were. Their enemies had melted away before them, fleeing into the brown darkness. Those few Horse-eaters that were braver or had no route of escape were being cut down with a mechanical efficiency that belied the confusion on the faces of the soldiers.

  Veraine found an optio and demanded, ‘What happened?’

  The man shook his head, scattering droplets of blood clotted with dust. ‘I don’t know, sir.’ He stared behind him. The men were shouting, a boiling wave of words rippling through the ranks from east to west.

  ‘The city, sir!’ the soldier repeated, as if Veraine couldn’t hear for himself. ‘They’re saying that Mulhanabin has fallen on the enemy camp!’

  An hour later he stood among the ruins of the Horse-eater horde and stared up at Mulhanabin, the dust still plastered over his skin and cold horror in his belly. In the grey light just before dawn, even through the pall of dirt and smoke and the gloom of the lowering storm clouds, the city seemed to slouch in a misshapen heap. A great slice had been cut from its eastern flank; a scoop taken out of the rock by some invisible hand. The Citadel wall ended in mid air. Half the Outer Temple had disappeared, though the smaller and older Inner Temple beyond seemed to be missing only part of its walls.

  Some unseen weakness in the rock had, when wrenched by the earthquake, caused the cliff to fall away into space, and those thousands of tons of rubble had plummeted to the desert floor below and exploded across the flat plain; straight through one half of the Horse-eater encampment.

  Veraine felt as if a freezing hand were clawing his guts. He lifted off his helmet and stuck it under his arm. The horsehair plume was matted with dried blood.

  ‘Sir,’ said Loy, coming up beside him.

  Veraine dragged his gaze away from the city. Its shattered elevation was like an open wound. Simply staring at it did no good at all.

  ‘Your report, Commander,’ he said.

  ‘No more resistance encountered, sir. They’ve bolted, the ones that could. We hold the camp.’

  ‘Good.’ Veraine did not feel like expressing more enthusiasm. He swung round to survey the scene of devastation and chaos that stretched to the horizon, and thought that it was as if some god had eaten the entire Horse-eater nation and them vomited it out in a vast slick of ash and corpses and smashed tents. Where human beings remained, they huddled together in shock and terror. The sound of weeping drifted on the wind, over the triumphant shouts of the Irolian soldiers who strutted through the detritus.

  ‘Set sentries to watch the perimeter. Then detail men to collect our wounded and get them in to the surgeons. Find the fallen. I want Arioc’s body to be recovered, and a full funeral arranged.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Loy cleared his throat. ‘He died well, I hear. He wasn’t that popular, but he was a brave man.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ Veraine agreed bleakly. He sighed, mostly with regret at the young man’s death, partly because he suspected that Arioc’s family were going to nail him to a wall for the loss. ‘He deserves full army honours.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Veraine’s gaze strayed back to the city. ‘Have the locals shown their faces yet?’

  ‘We have a detail on the city gate, sir, holding them off until you give the word.’

  ‘Right. I want every man that hasn’t another duty to take charge of a group of civilians and sweep the camp. Sort the spoils and get the tesserius and his staff to make a full count. Prisoners, weapons and valuables we keep. The Yamani can have whatever they find of Horse-eater food, tents and clothing. The horses are to be put aside so they can be sorted in due course. Keep the men busy. They can celebrate later.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Veraine’s voice remained flat and businesslike. ‘Bind the male prisoners and kill any that show fight.’

  Loy nodded.

  ‘And find me a rider on a strong horse. I’ll be sending a message to the Emperor.’ He allowed himself to smile as he said that, though
he still hardly believed in his own triumph.

  Loy grinned. ‘Congratulations, General – it’s an honour to serve with you! The gods are with you.’

  Veraine nodded slightly. ‘Well, we have work to do. Get the men together; I’ll address them before we get started. Then I suppose I’ll have to find Rasa Belit.’

  * * *

  There was dust on her lips, dust in her mouth, dust gluing her eyes shut. The Malia Shai could not see or think for the dust. It had crawled in under her skin and soaked through to her bones, as cold as spring water. It clogged her throat. It left her too numb to feel and too weak to move, the ache in her cheek and the fire in her skull dowsed by its chill, soft, smothering touch. She had grown used to the pain a long time ago, but now she could not feel it.

  Noises echoed in her head, but they were muffled by the dust and she could not identify them. She did not move. Only when hands gripped her shoulders did she realise that the noise was a voice; only when her torso was raised from the floor did she realise that she had been lying down.

  The hands slipped her mask off and dropped it to the floor. She saw the stone staring up at her through the empty eyeholes. The Earthquake Mask was cracked red enamel.

  ‘What happened?’ the voice demanded. ‘Can you hear me?’ She tried to focus on the face connected with the voice. It was General Veraine. His hands were so hot they seemed to burn her skin.

  ‘The earthquake,’ she tried to say. Her tongue was dry like a wad of felt. She shook her head and then winced as pain lanced across the top of her skull.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Hold still.’ His fingers slid deftly across her scalp, through the tangle of her hair, probing for wounds. She sagged against his forearms.

  ‘You’ve got a lump like a duck egg at the back here,’ he informed her, then glanced around them at the floor. ‘It looks like plaster’s fallen from the roof.’

  She remembered a blow that went through her bones in a great jarring wave right to her fingertips. ‘The earthquake,’ she repeated, with more success.