by Ian Irvine
Cubo yelled, “Go, go!”
They leaped through the door and within seconds Llian heard the clash of sword on sword and the ululating scream of a man dying in agony. He prayed it was one of the enemy though that seemed unlikely.
Hingis lurched down the ladder, then the small, golden-skinned Faellem he had spent the flight talking to. They turned towards the southern wall, raised their arms together and most of the flares went out.
“Get moving!” said Yggur, and Llian caught a hint of fear in his voice. “The next flight of sky ships is coming in fast.”
Llian’s knees were shaking. He half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder, then stood at the bottom, having no idea what to do.
“Take this, you bloody fool! Then get out of the way.”
Something struck him in the chest, hard—the black sword in its copper sheath. He buckled it on. Yggur’s sky ship shot up.
The other vessels were gone, and soldiers were running in all directions, though in this light it was difficult to tell friend from foe. The next flight was racing over the southern wall; he had to get out of the way. He ducked low and ran south towards the tents, then crouched down and turned to check his surroundings.
The landing area had been paved with flat stones and might have been a parade ground. It was dimly lit by flares on poles a couple of hundred yards apart, though as he watched they both went out. Two sky ships were still on the ground, one apparently in the hands of the enemy. Another was slowly rising with several Merdrun swinging from its mooring ropes, trying to hold it down. And there was a great convulsion over to the left: hundreds of allied troops in a chaotic melee with the enemy.
To the south, more allied soldiers had attacked the tents, but they were empty. Llian’s blood froze for it could only mean one thing—the Merdrun had been expecting them. But did they know about Malien’s gate? If they did, there was no hope.
The last sky ship rose, but as it reached a hundred feet it intersected with a blazing lance hurled up in a fiery arc.
BOOM!
The airbag exploded, lighting up the camp like a summer’s day. Pieces of metal, timber and blazing fabric spun through the air. Remarkably, the sky ship low in the air remained undamaged, but a spinning rotor struck the one captured by the Merdrun and it exploded even more catastrophically.
The searing blast hurled Llian backwards, knocking the wind out of him and ruining his night vision. He got up shakily and turned round and round, trying to get his bearings, but there was smoke everywhere and he could not tell which way he was facing. He tried to bring Karan’s sketch map to mind, to find some reference point. It should have been for ever imprinted on his memory, but he could not recover it.
Downhill, he thought dazedly. The camp gates are downhill and to the right. He stumbled down a gentle slope, praying he was going the right way. Dimly, through the smoke, he glimpsed pieces of burning wreckage, blazing tents and groups of men fighting and dying, though with the Faellem’s illusions warping everything around him it was impossible to know if what he was seeing was real.
He was creeping through sticky mud, thinking he must be close to the dam, when an awful thought stopped him in his tracks. Where was Malien’s gate? Yggur had said it would open within minutes of the landing, bringing a larger force of soldiers, but there was no sign of it. They were needed desperately; without them, the troops from the sky ships would be lucky to last another ten minutes.
The noise of battle died away, then rose to a clamour and the thundering of hundreds of boots. He looked back. A mass of soldiers was pounding his way, pursued by a second group, though he could not tell which was friend and which was enemy.
In an instant they were on him, his own people, knocking him down without realising he was there and trampling him into the mud. There was a moment’s respite, though not enough for him to get away. The pursuing Merdrun were coming fast.
He lay still, clutching the hilt of the black sword and praying its protective enchantment would do some good, then the Merdrun were there. Most of them leapt over his prone body but one, a big, heavy fellow, planted one booted foot on Llian’s backside and the other on his head. The weight pushed his face into the mud until his nose struck something hard and he felt it break.
He must have gasped or choked, for the soldier skidded to a stop, then came back. Llian clutched the sword desperately. Could he stab the fellow? Not with the sword in its scabbard; if he showed signs of life the Merdrun would hack him in two. He might anyway; he could hear the soldier’s heavy breathing.
“He’s maggot food,” said a voice close by. “Come on, there’s killing to be done.”
The first soldier kicked Llian in the side of the head and turned away. The blow dazed him and he lay still, blood pouring from his nose into the mud. The enemy ran on, and soon he heard the sounds of battle again, though it sounded more like slaughter.
He lurched to his feet, head and nose throbbing, and staggered the other way, keeping low. The Faellem’s illusions weren’t so strong down here, and Karan’s map came back to mind. The camp gates were only a hundred yards further down, though how was he supposed to get through them?
As he approached he heard fighting ahead of him as well, then remembered that a squad had been ordered to take the gates and hold them. He went forward gingerly—covered in mud as he was, he could have been friend or foe, and in this bloody madness he might be cut down by his own people, unrecognised.
He scrubbed the mud off his forehead—absence of the black Merdrun glyph was his best protection from his own side—and looked back. Some of the flares on the walls had been relit, though they revealed little through the smoke. Fires blazed in half a dozen places on the western side, where the storerooms and other buildings had been. There was still no sign of Malien’s gate.
Only a single lantern burned at the camp gates, and as he approached he saw bodies everywhere, Merdrun as well as his own people. The gates were closed and unguarded. Every man was dead including Captain Cubo, and as Llian made his way through the bodies old nightmares rose to the surface. He wished he were a thousand miles away.
But Karan was here somewhere, and Sulien was in danger, and if he did not succeed, this battle would be the prelude to the end of his world. He turned the great timber wheel that lifted the bar to open the gates and was about to slip through when he realised that they could easily be barred again against the slaves—assuming he could free them.
He hacked the lifting rope off the wheel, cut it to pieces and chopped through the wheel as well. The black sword cut through the wood as if it were kindling. It was unlike any weapon he’d ever held—light but strong and its edge as sharp as the day he had dug it up from Mendark’s hoard two months ago.
The enemy could still bar the gate manually, though it would take half a dozen people to heave the bar—a massive slab cut from a tree trunk—back in place. He went through, then stopped. A slave rebellion would fail instantly if none of them was armed. He collected knives from the dead and shoved them in his pack, then gathered all their swords, save one that was broken a third of the way from the tip, and warily headed down the rutted road into the darkness. He encountered no one and, following his mental image of Karan’s Gwine map, headed towards the slave camp. It was not hard to find; the palisade wall must have required the felling of a small forest.
The gates were guarded, though only by four Merdrun, and they looked jumpy. No wonder, with flames and smoke gushing up from inside the army camp a mile away, and the sounds of fighting audible even from this distance. There could be more guards inside and others patrolling outside the walls, but he would have to risk that. There was no time to waste.
Llian crept around the back of the camp, listened for pacing guards and heard none, then found a place where the palisade felt flimsiest and thrust the tip of his sword into the timber. Any ordinary blade would only have penetrated an inch but the black sword went in three. He thrust again and again and finally it passed right through.
&
nbsp; After ten minutes’ heavy work he thrust with his right foot, and a section of the palisade a foot and a half square fell in. He shoved his armload of weapons through and wriggled into the camp, which was inches deep in mud and stank like the foulest privy in the slums of old Thurkad.
There was only a couple of feet between the palisade and the rear wall of a building with four solid walls, presumably a storeroom for food or supplies. From what Karan had told him, the slaves’ sleeping shelters had roofs but no walls. He gathered his weapons and crept around the side, then stopped.
The open area ahead was crammed with thousands of slaves, all milling about excitedly. Clearly, the clamour at the camp had reached them. Hundreds had their eyes pressed to chinks in the palisade and were reporting to the others. Llian saw no evidence of guards inside; perhaps they had been called up to the battle.
He strode out into the middle, tossed the ten swords and eleven knives down in a clanking heap and yelled, “Wilm?”
The slaves stared at him, and Llian realised that he must be a sight; he was saturated in mud and the lower half of his face and chest were covered in blood. They looked hungrily at the weapons though no one made a move towards them. They were cowed by the Merdrun’s brutality and perhaps suspected a trick.
He wiped his forehead again and pointed to it. “I’m not one of them. Wilm!”
A minute passed, then Wilm emerged from among them. He was filthy and his skin was the colour of mud, as if he had not bathed in the five weeks he had been held here. He looked thinner than before, yet harder and older—no longer a boy who had not yet grown into his body but a thin, intense and determined young man.
“Llian?” he whispered. “Can it really be you?”
He ran to Llian and embraced him, then stepped back, looking him up and down, and shook his hand. His grip was crushing, his bony hand callused.
“Aviel asked me to bring you your sword.” Llian unbuckled the sheath and handed it to him.
“Aviel,” Wilm said in a choked voice. “And you. Yet again you’ve come to save me. I have the best friends in the world.”
“I think we’re even on that score.”
Tears formed in Wilm’s eyes and Llian knew he was thinking about Dajaes. Wilm buckled on the black sword, then picked up the rest of the weapons.
“I’m going to address them,” said Llian. “We’ve brought nearly four thousand troops—” assuming the gate had got there “—and if I can incite them to rebel—”
Wilm shook his head. “No need.”
“But with my teller’s voice …”
Wilm got out a wrapped phial and took a sniff of the contents. His shoulders went back, he stood straighter and taller, and the weariness fell from him.
“I’m one of them, Llian,” he said quietly. “It’s up to me now.”
He headed towards the nearest slaves, carrying the weapons like the precious gifts they were. He held them out, and a number came forward, each taking a sword or a knife. There was no rush, no fighting; everyone seemed unnaturally calm.
Wilm addressed them softly and simply—he would not want to alert the guards outside. “We have to kill the Merdrun,” he said, “or they’ll kill us, then destroy Santh the way they’ve ruined your beautiful island. Will you follow me? But not as slaves—never again as slaves. Will you follow me as proud Gwinians, to take your country back?”
A stir passed through the Gwinians, and Llian knew that no speech he could have given, even in his most compelling teller’s voice, could have moved them more than those simple words by a fellow slave. It was staggering how the awkward youth Llian had met at Shand’s house in Casyme three months ago had transformed himself.
“Wait by the gate,” said Wilm to the gathering. He went forward and spoke softly to the leaders. “This many minutes,” he said, holding up five fingers. “How many guards are outside, Llian?”
“Four.”
Wilm smiled grimly. “How did you get in?”
“Cut a hole.” Llian pointed.
Wilm led half a dozen of the armed Gwinians back to the hole Llian had come through, and outside. He followed in silence, clutching his own knife. There was little he could do to help, given that he was useless as a fighter, but the slave camp unnerved him and he could not bear to spend another minute inside it.
Wilm and his men crept around the palisade wall towards the front. Llian followed, keeping out of the way and counting the seconds. What was Wilm’s plan? The Merdrun were brilliant fighters; how could he hope to overcome them with half a dozen poorly armed Gwinians?
Smoke had drifted down from the Merdrun’s encampment and there were haloes around the twin lights over the gates to the slave camp. They only lit the area immediately outside the gates; thirty feet away in the darkness, Wilm and the Gwinians were invisible.
Wilm waited, tense as wire. Llian’s thoughts drifted back to the battle up the hill. The fighting had died down. Were all the soldiers from the sky ships dead? If Malien’s gate had failed, they soon would be. And what about Karan?
He heard a distant boom and flames climbed a hundred feet in the sky. Another sky ship destroyed? The sounds of fighting grew again. The Merdrun guarding the gates of the slave camp moved closer together and stared up at the fortress, whispering among themselves. They looked unnerved; they had never experienced anything except swift victory.
The five minutes were up. Inside the slave camp someone cried out, then four thousand throats roared defiance and the gates shook as if they had been struck by hundreds of shoulders at once. The guards spun round, staring at the gates. There came another roar, another blow that shook the gates. And another.
“Now!” Wilm said softly.
His band crept forward until they were only twenty feet away then, as the Gwinians roared and shook the gates again, they rushed the distracted guards, who had their backs to them. The Merdrun whirled and one struck at Wilm, but the black sword sheared straight through the lesser weapon, leaving the man holding a useless hilt. Wilm cut him down and stabbed a second Merdrun in the thigh. He lurched sideways and Wilm’s second blow killed him.
The Gwinians had not done so well—the third guard had killed one of them and, with a savage sweeping blow, had cut both hands off another as he wielded his sword two-handed. The third guard went for the next Gwinian, who hurled his knife. It went through the guard’s throat and pinned him to the planks of the gate.
The other Gwinians surrounded the fourth guard and killed him, then dispatched the third man. Wilm went through the guards’ pockets, found a long iron key and unlocked the gates.
The Gwinians surged through, some arming themselves with the weapons of the dead guards, then followed Wilm up the track towards the Merdrun’s camp.
Llian watched them go. Against the odds he had succeeded, though he did not see how Wilm or the allies could prevail. If Karan’s numbers were correct there were at least ten thousand Merdrun up there, the toughest and most experienced fighters in the void. The Merdrun had never been defeated, so how could a few thousand troops, plus four thousand inexperienced and mostly unarmed Gwinians succeed against an army forewarned of the attack?
They could not.
55
I’VE COME HERE TO DIE
As Hingis lurched down the ladder onto the paved ground of the fortress, for the first time in twenty years he was free of pain and almost happy. He had made a friend!
He had spent all his waking hours on the long, wild journey from Zile talking about the art of illusion with Culligon, a young Faellem from the icy forests of Mirrilladell. Culligon, like Hingis, felt sure he was going to die on Gwine, and it had relaxed the chilly reserve the Faellem normally showed towards the other human species.
“It’s forbidden to speak about our arts to outsiders,” Culligon said after they had been in the air for an hour or two. His voice was high and melodious, and Hingis could have listened to him all night just for the beauty and purity of his speech. Even more marvellous, Culligon gave no indicat
ion that Hingis’s hideous face and body mattered to him.
“But in this case …” Culligon had continued, “ … since we’re going to be killed, yet by our deaths we might save many others and possibly this world we’ve come to love almost as much as our beautiful Tallallame …” Tears formed in his eyes and he fell silent.
“Your people were exiled from Tallallame long ago, weren’t they?” said Hingis. He did not know the ancient Histories well.
“Not exiled, just unable to return. And not me—I was born here. My ancestors came to Santhenar almost four thousand years ago in the hunt for Shuthdar, after he stole Rulke’s Golden Flute and broke open the Way Between the Worlds for the first time. It exposed the Three Worlds to the deadly void and the savage creatures that dwelt there, and every human species was desperate to close the Way again.”
“I barely know that story,” Hingis prompted.
“Shuthdar, who had been hunted for an aeon, was finally trapped. The enchanted flute had drawn out his life by a thousand years, though by then he was decrepit beyond imagining, yet he was determined to never give up his most precious possession. He destroyed the Golden Flute, but that brought down the Forbidding that sealed the Three Worlds off from each other, and from the void. It trapped many Aachim here, and my people, and also the three most powerful Charon: Rulke, Yalkara and Kandor.”
“It must have been a terrible thing,” reflected Hingis, “to have lived on the most beautiful world of all, and to for ever be cut off from it.”
“We had a saying to describe it,” said Culligon. “The loneliness of Faelamor. She was the greatest and most long-lived of us all, and she suffered for every one of those four thousand years. But enough of the Histories; tell me about your arts of illusion. They must be utterly different from our own, and I’m eager to learn new ways in the time I have left.”