“City can’t afford to lose you,” the mad old man had told him as they walked the lines at break of dawn.
“I lead my troops into battle,” he told his general between gritted teeth. “I have no other useful function.”
The general shook his head. “Got to keep good men in reserve. We’ll be needing new generals one day, boy.”
Fell Aron Lee gazed at the elderly fools quaffing morning wine and telling war stories. I’d rather kill myself, he thought.
He looked around desperately, hoping to see the City’s first lord. Marcellus was the one warrior Fell admired, for he was the only one of the mighty ever seen in the first line of battle, and was always the last to leave the field. Fell had never fought alongside him but, as much as he had any ambition in this war, it was to stand shoulder to shoulder with Marcellus Vincerus. He could not see the man on the tower. He did not really expect to. He would be somewhere in the battle below, or fighting the enemy in a far distant conflict. He spotted Rafe Vincerus, Marcellus’ younger brother, but he knew little about the man and could scarcely appeal to him.
Fell took a deep breath. To Randell Kerr he commented, forcing calm into his voice, “I can’t remember when last a general died. Was it Victorinus Rae Khan who had an apoplectic fit while being serviced by three whores? Or Jay Garnay, who fell off his horse and injured his leg and insisted on treating the wound with rats’ droppings until he died of gangrene?”
Kerr grunted. “Doesn’t matter how they die, boy. Fact is, you could be the first general to lead his troops into battle since Shuskara. If that’s what you want.”
“Marcellus leads his troops.”
“Man’s First Lord of the City. Can do what he wants.”
Fell knew the general had never changed his mind in forty years. Yet he went on arguing, “I have no talent for strategy.”
Kerr waved a hand dismissively at the other old men. “There are more than a hundred generals in this City, boy, and only two of them know anything about strategy. And I’m not one of them. Like everything else, this is about politics.”
“I have less talent for politics. The only thing I know is fighting.”
Randell Kerr was a tall man, though stooped by age, with the face of a tired hound, and jug ears. His big ears waggled as he shook his head.
“There are ten thousand men and women out there who know about fighting,” he said, pointing towards the battle, where the City troops were slowly giving way to the Blues. “One more won’t make any difference today.”
Fell wanted to grab him by the ears and shout, Yes, one warrior can make a difference! The strength and courage of one soldier can turn a battle. Just as an act of cowardice can. But he could not say that to the man, for if he did not understand it now, then he never would. Not for the first time, Fell wondered how a man like Randell Kerr had survived a long life in the army.
As they watched, trying to make out the tactics of each side through the roiling dust, a bulge appeared in the blue line far distant. Slowly it swelled and pushed forward into the red line, which gave way reluctantly. Fell could see from their vantage point that a patch of black was forcing its way in from the right. Enemy cavalry intent on joining up with the Blue infantry and cutting off the red wing. Fell’s breathing was shallow. He knew with complete certainty that the red troops in peril were his own company.
Behind him he heard two generals discussing a wager over a dog race.
Black rage gathered in his heart and, resisting the temptation to charge at the old boys and tip their carcases off the tower, he ran to the steep wooden steps and began to climb down. On the ground he snatched a horse’s reins from a startled groom and leaped into the saddle. Belatedly he realised he had no armour, or arms apart from a thin-bladed knife. He could pick up a shield and sword on the battlefield.
The horse was strong and fast, a beautiful black stallion, probably wasted carrying a general from palace to mess to inn and back, he thought, leaning forward, urging the beast on. He rode round the rear of the field, his blood thrilling with the speed of the stallion and the prospect of the battle to come. He passed lines of dead and wounded soldiers dragged away from the battle by harried, courageous stretcher bearers. Lame and injured horses wandered in his path and his fine mount eased past them scornfully. Down here on the ground it was hard to work out where he was in relation to the action he had seen from the tower. Fell Aron Lee had never arrived at a battle from the rear before. And the dust obscured everything. Only the sounds were familiar, the heart-stopping shriek of metal on metal, the sickening thunk of metal on flesh, awful cries of the wounded, and the screaming of horses.
He rode, more slowly now, through ranks of infantry. Men and women turned and looked at him, amazed, as he passed. Some were heading towards the front line, some leaving it. It was chaos in the choking dust, and Fell needed the high sun to tell him which way to ride. Then at last he could glimpse riders, black riders, the glint of metal and the swirl of horses’ manes and tails through the veil of dust. He guessed, he hoped, they were the cavalry company he had seen bearing down on his soldiers. Too much time had passed. They could all be dead.
He had little experience fighting from a horse, but he slowed his mount and leaned from the saddle to grasp a sword sticking out of a corpse. Then he heeled the eager stallion forward again and plunged it straight into a group of three black-clad riders.
They weren’t expecting an attack from the rear. One died instantly, Fell’s sword slicing his neck. The two others turned. One got his shield up as Fell’s sword came stabbing towards him. The other cut at Fell’s head. He ducked and stretched forward, snatching a shield from the dead cavalryman. He brought it up in time to deflect a second blow. A sword lanced for his head but clanged off the shield and he stabbed with his own sword deep into the enemy’s belly. The third man raised his sword to hack at Fell’s head and died with the knife in his eye. Fell snatched up a new sword and a long Missian spear.
“Wildcats!” Fell bellowed into the dust. “Wildcats to me!”
He had no idea if any of his warriors could hear him, but more and more of the enemy riders were turning their horses to face this threat from behind. Officers yelled new orders, thinking ranks of fresh fighters were attacking their rear.
A Blueskin rider galloped towards him, screaming his battle cry. Fell’s spear glanced off his breastplate and plunged up through his jaw and into his brain. The trooper was lifted off his horse’s back and the spear snapped under his weight. Fell dropped the weapon and drew the new sword, looking round. The Blue cavalry was forming a fighting circle, quite needlessly, to defend itself from the attack from the rear. He grinned.
A cavalryman came from nowhere and a sword slashed at Fell’s head. Fell swayed away from the cut and plunged his own sword in the rider’s armpit.
At last he spotted a red blur through the roiling dust. Red-armoured infantrymen were hacking their way through the riders.
“To me, Wildcats!” he roared again.
Two Blue riders came at him side by side, spears levelled. He slid off the horse and ducked under its belly, then came up behind one rider and slid his sword under the man’s armour at the waist. Feet on firm ground again he felt battle lust surge through him. He snatched a second sword from the dead rider.
“Wildcats!” he bellowed, looking around for someone else to kill.
Then he recognised his own warriors with him, tearing into the remaining black riders. One soldier was bearing a spare breastplate, which he thrust on his commander’s chest. Automatically Fell strapped it on.
The soldier’s eyes widened and Fell turned like lightning, his sword coming up to deflect a spear-thrust from horseback. He grabbed the spear and dragged it from the rider’s grasp. The trooper unsheathed his sword, but as he brought it up Fell smacked the horse on the nose with the flat of his sword. The horse shied violently and the rider missed his mark. Fell spun the spear and plunged it through the man’s neck.
The riders wer
e retreating, and the red warriors followed them, enthusiastically picking off the stragglers.
“Wildcats group four!” Fell and the company started forming a fighting square.
Then the enemy trumpeter caught up with events and the retreat order rang out. Fell waited silently, breathing heavily, leaning on a battered sword, until they heard the City orders.
“Stand down. Hold your position.”
He breathed a deep sigh. Ordered back to their lines, Fell would have to face Randell Kerr. Unpredictable at the best of times, when crossed the man they called the Maniac was capable of any atrocity. Fell had seen him order a soldier crucified because he hesitated when told to kill a stray Blueskin child.
But they were holding, and now Randell Kerr’s wrath would have to wait.
It took Indaro two days to return to her company. She crossed the open country known as Limbis, once known for its vineyards, now a wilderness of dry scrub dotted with poor villages and broken-down farms. Battles had raged back and forth across Limbis for more than five years and, though the area was now considered secure, it was useless for vines. The former vineyard workers, those that had survived, or returned, scraped a meagre living growing hemp and grain and grazing goats. It took Indaro half a day to ride the length of Limbis, and when she smelled the fumes of the northland furnaces in her nostrils she crossed by a minor gate and rode outside the wall, now heading south-east.
After a night spent in the lee of the wall, she set off again towards the battleground she had left two days before. Alone in the flat grassy landscape, she pushed her horse to a canter.
Once again she thought there was something strange about the ambush incident. No living being could have survived that final blast in the carriage. And who was the boy she had rescued? Why did she not see him again? Half her brain thought she had imagined him, in the shock of the explosions. And why did she fear Saroyan, for fear her she certainly did? Her father’s enemies were all long dead. And she was just a common soldier.
She put it out of her mind as the grey raced across the short grassland of the eastern plain, heading towards the battlefield of Salaba. The wall was well behind her, and there was nothing on the horizon but a distant line of grey hills.
She could smell the battlefield long before she saw it. The sun was sinking rapidly behind her and the armies would be preparing for rest. She could smell roasting meat and smoke, and the metal tang of shed blood, and the other bodily smells that hang over an army that has been occupying the same benighted place for nearly a year.
At last she saw the red glow of campfires in the gathering dusk. They stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Reining her horse in she paused, then dragged on the reins and kicked the grey to the south. The Wildcats would likely still be on the right flank. She could tell there had been no fighting that day, for the noises that came to her across the plain were subdued; the soft snorting of a thousand horses, and the quiet sounds made by a hundred thousand warriors preparing for rest. No screams, no cries, no pleas for death.
She came to supply wagons first, some of them heavily guarded, and the camps of the old whores, who were getting ready for the night’s business. Some called out to her as she passed, and she waved and smiled, but walked her horse on. When she came to the horse lines her mount snuffled in recognition, and she slid down from her back, patted her for thanks, and handed her to one of the boys, with instructions that she be well fed for her long journey. She asked where the Wildcats were, but the horse boy had no clue, so she carried on walking south.
At last she was stopped by a sentry she recognised, and asked the way to Fell Aron Lee’s tent. When she reached it it was near midnight and she hesitated to enter. Then the tent flap moved and suddenly he was beside her.
“Indaro?” She heard the frown in his voice. How had she annoyed him already?
“Sir, I’ve just got back.” She could barely see him, but she could smell blood and sweat. She was tall, but he loomed over her and she could feel the heat coming off him.
“Broglanh was injured,” she volunteered. “Broken arm.”
“What happened?”
“We were attacked.”
He nodded impatiently.
“There was an enemy attack on the emperor’s carriage. One of their magical explosions. The emperor was injured.”
Fell said nothing for a moment, then tightly, “Will he live?”
“I’m told yes.” She blurted out, “But I saw the injuries! No one could have survived that. Yet they’re saying he will recover.”
The commander nodded, as if expectations were fulfilled. “The injured man you saw was probably a proxy,” he explained. “They say the Immortal never leaves his palace these days. He uses substitutes who look a little like him. I thought the mission a strange one.”
Irritable beyond discretion, she blurted out, “So you guessed you were sending us on a fool’s errand?”
Fell stood in the darkness feeling helpless and frustrated. Whenever he met this annoying woman it was after a battle or, as now, at the end of a long day. He could feel ill-temper rising from her like mist. He was repelled by her arrogance—who else would have the gall to stand and criticise him as she did?—yet drawn to the vulnerability he guessed it cloaked.
So he found himself explaining, “The emperor’s proxies have to have a bodyguard, else it would be clear to the enemy that they are substitutes. And he may sometimes leave the City.” He admitted, “I am just repeating gossip.”
She was silent, then she said, “The carriage was torn apart. I saw the mutilated bodies.”
“Some brave soul gave his life for his lord.”
She argued, “But if that is true, what was the point of continuing with the pretense? Yet the commander behaved as though the emperor was gravely injured and escorted him back to the City.”
“Then perhaps it was the emperor and he was less badly hurt than you thought.” But as Fell said it he was doubtful, and he found himself being drawn into her reasoning. “Or perhaps a proxy was in the carriage and the emperor rode among his men. I would. But,” he argued with himself, “their commander must know who is emperor, who is decoy.
“Who was in charge?” he asked her.
“Fortance. He seemed grief-stricken.”
“Fortance is a veteran of the Thousand. He served with the Gulons, the elite century. He knows the emperor if any man does. Did he accompany the emperor back?”
“No. On our return we were met by an escort from the City.”
“The Thousand went back to the City?”
“No. The bodyguard stayed at the attack site. I thought it was a punishment. The emperor went back to the City with the First Adamantine.”
“The Nighthawks. Who was their commander?”
“I don’t know. But we were met by Saroyan, the Lord…”
“Yes, I know who Saroyan is,” he told her.
“Um. Fortance told her who I was. I mean, my family name.”
“Why?”
She hung her head in the moonlight. For once in her life she seemed reluctant to speak. “I tried to stop the assassin. I didn’t succeed, but perhaps I hampered his aim.”
Conflicting emotions vied in his heart. “You saved the emperor’s life?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“And Fortance pointed you out to Saroyan for praise?”
“Mmm.”
Suddenly Fell realised they were speaking openly. He lowered his voice. “This is no business of yours, soldier. Go back to your unit. Say nothing.”
“But, sir…”
He leaned towards her, feeling her warmth. “Just for once, Indaro, shut your mouth. Rejoin your colleagues and forget about the last few days.”
He waited to see if she would argue again, but she bowed her head, exhaustion taking over. Without another word she disappeared into the night.
Chapter 11
The storm of the century began over waters very far from the City. Sailors on foreign galle
ys looked to the sky with dread, and their captains made haste for shore and harbour. The winds picked up quickly and soon the skies were filled with roiling, boiling clouds like octopus ink. The air was sharp with the tang of metal. Thunder grumbled just below the horizon. The winds rose and started to howl. By the time the first lightning flashed most ships were safely harboured, hatches battened, lines tied, the sly gusts plucking at loose stays and poorly furled sails. Those boats still racing for safety were picked up by the ferocious winds and flung about, mere flotsam in the grip of the gale.
The storm headed east, taking its time, moving relentlessly across the waters towards the City. The seagulls forecast it first, and they fled before the storm long before human senses could detect it. As the great white birds crossed the City’s coastline old salts looked up and heard their eerie cry, and they knew a blow was coming, though the horizon was clear and the sun still shone blandly down. The birds continued eastward, and men and women far inland watched them pass with unease. Seabirds were seldom seen in those easterly parts, and hasty invocations were made to many gods, especially the gods of sun and rain, and the east wind, and the cruel god of the north wind known as Cernunnos.
The white birds streamed over the tall turrets of the Red Palace of the emperor. The passed across the slate and tile roofs of the rich and powerful and the tarpaper shanties of the poor, caring nothing for any of them. They looked down on the great eastern walls of the city and the only thoughts in their small sleek heads were of sanctuary.
The battlefield of Salaba was more than a hundred leagues from the coast and the gulls paused there and started wheeling and circling, thoughts of safety giving way to thoughts of food. Beneath them was the wide, sluggish brown ribbon of the river Kercheval crossing a flat plain that had once been rich with grain and horse meadows. On its western side the armies lay entrenched, six leagues distant from each other, indistinguishable to a seagull.
Had the birds passed over a year before they would have seen much the same sight, although the armies were lying six leagues farther north. Were they to pass over a year in the future they would spy an empty plain, empty at least of people, the first flush of green tinting the blood-soaked soil, the wild beasts returning once the savage warriors had gone.
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