The City

by Stella Gemmell

  Fell was baffled for a moment, for it seemed the carts seemed empty. Then he saw the low, long shape lying on the cart bed, and realised it carried a corpse wrapped in a shroud. The carts were taking three corpses outside the rocky fortress for burial. He took no more than a heartbeat to wonder at the reverence for the dead implied by three carts for three corpses. Then he dragged the body off the rear of the cart and ripped off the shroud. He left the dead man lying in the dust, then climbed on the cart and wrapped the fabric around him as best he could, hoping darkness would cover its meagre fit.

  Almost immediately the cart jolted forward a few paces and stopped again. The carter and guards spoke to each other in their alien tongue and Fell, who could now see the glimmer of the torches through the rough weaving of the shroud, held his breath, gripping the sword to his side. After a moment the cart moved forward, then someone yelled out and immediately the cart lurched to a stop. The shroud was snatched from Fell’s face and he found himself staring into the angry face of a guard.

  Instantly he rolled off the cart on the other side from the man, then rolled back under it, catching out the guards who were running the wrong way. Fell leaped up, speared two men, one in the chest and one in the throat, then jumped back up onto the cart. The sudden commotion startled the pony, which started forward, blocking the gates from closing. Swords slashing at his legs, Fell leaped up onto the carter’s seat and held his sword down at the man’s throat. The frightened carter dropped the reins and threw himself from the seat. Fell leaped on the back of the pony, reaching behind to cut the traces. Then he kicked the pony and it set off as fast as it could out of the gates and into the night.

  It was a thin, poor beast which could barely take Fell’s weight, and as soon as they were in darkness he slipped from its back and slapped its rump. It trotted off, following the main road. Fell dropped off the side of the road and headed west.

  It didn’t take him long to realise why Mason had claimed Old Mountain was impregnable. Once off the only road, winding narrowly up to the fortress, the land was steeply sloped, almost vertical in parts. Fell scrambled across the slope, forced downwards all the time. At first there was plant growth clinging precariously to the rock, and he clambered from bush to bush. Then the undergrowth dwindled and vanished, leaving Fell on the exposed side of a mountain, with no way back up and few handholds. The prospect of going down was grim, but he had no choice. It was starting to grow light and far below he could see a shining river, its banks clothed with trees. There had clearly been a recent landslip and the vertiginous mountainside beneath him was covered with shifting shale.

  He sat for a moment to get his breath. He was not built to be a rock climber; too heavy and with a high centre of gravity. And his boots gave him no purchase on the scree. But he took a deep breath, then launched himself onto the slope, trying to cling on with all four limbs. He immediately started sliding and slithering, stabbing his knife into the shale at intervals to slow his progress. At one point he slid for twenty paces, picking up speed fast until his foot knocked against a protruding rock. He tried to get his boot to it but it slipped off. Sliding farther, he reached out with one hand and grabbed the rock, gripping hard and tensing his body and slowing his slide to a stop. The shale carried on roaring past him and he feared he had caused another landslip, but at last it too came to a halt. He was sweating heavily and his heart was racing, and he stayed there for a while, clinging to the side of the mountain, until his heart slowed. Then he let go of the rock and continued down.

  At last he made it to the point where the landslip ended, and he could climb down the rest of the way. He was far from the fortress now, at least in altitude, and he thought it unlikely they could find him. But his original plan, to hole up somewhere then find a way to sneak in and free the prisoners, had to be abandoned.

  He decided to head west. The river, still far below, ran north to south, and it was tempting to take the easy way. But if he went along it he would soon be lost, whereas if he followed the setting sun he would eventually reach the City, or lands he recognised.

  He started to regret his decision almost immediately. The way down was as steep as ever but was now clothed in thick undergrowth. His knife, rendered useless by its hard treatment on the scree, could barely chop a twig. So he ended up hacking his way through near-impenetrable undergrowth with the sword. He knew it left him effectively unarmed, both weapons blunted, but he could see no other choice.

  The forest was so lush, so rich with life, that it seemed to thicken in front of him as he watched. Even the air smelled green. After a while it began to rain and he held his head back, opening his mouth to the welcome water. When he had crossed the river he rested for a long while, then with a sigh set off up the opposite hillside. By nightfall he had travelled only a short distance; behind him he could still see the scree slope he had slid down and he thought he could make out the square towers of the fortress far above in the east. He spent the night in the branches of a small spreading tree. He had no idea what predatory animals there were in these parts, but he did not care; he was anxious to gain some height above the crawling, squirming life on the ground.

  By the third day he had reached more open land. The hills were lower and the going easier. He no longer had to struggle for each pace covered, and he began to enjoy walking, feeling the muscles in his legs tiring, then strengthening again. He started looking around him with interest. He had seen few animals apart from a sort of hairless squirrel and some small striped rodents with flat snouts. Once he heard what sounded like a lion’s roar in the distance, but he had seen nothing bigger than a lone grey badger. There were many birds, small brightly coloured creatures which flitted from plant to plant, more like big insects than birds.

  He started to make plans again. When he returned to the lands of the City he would identify himself to the first army troop he found and raise a company to return to Old Mountain. He had got out, so he would find his way in again; no one would expect him to break in. Then he would free the other prisoners and between them they would open the main gates. In his heart of hearts, though, he knew there was little chance of a rescue mission for four common soldiers, and the treacherous part of his mind considered Stalker and Garret, Indaro and Doon were better off as captives of Old Mountain than as warriors of the City. When he won Indaro’s freedom, however it happened, he would do his best to ensure she would never have to fight again.

  At last he came to a high, cool plain. He hiked across it, moving quickly, ever westward. By the end of the day there was a thick haze clouding the setting sun, and he thought he could see distant hills. Was it the City? He chose to believe so, and he stepped out eagerly, although he knew it would still be several days’ walk until he got there. He slept on warm dry ground in the lee of a rock, and woke only once, to hear a distant cry.

  In the morning he started walking across land which shelved away slowly in front of him. Suddenly a familiar stench came to his nostrils. He stopped, senses on high alert. He drew his useless sword, looking around. All he could see was flat, dry plain, empty of life. He stepped forward. Breasting a small rise he found himself above a wide hollow in the rocky land. In its centre were staked out two bodies, naked. They were small dark women, similar to the ones he had seen at the fortress. They had been dead for a while and the corpses were partly eaten by animals and insects. He checked the perimeter and found lots of bootprints, arriving and leaving, but many hours old.

  At last he walked down into the hollow. Then his footsteps faltered. Under an overhang of rock he could see a splash of colour, bright red clothing a third body. His heart jerked like a jackrabbit on a snare. He stumbled down the slope and ran to the woman. She was still alive. It was Doon.

  Fell sawed through her bindings with his knife, then looked to her injuries. Blood was leaking from everywhere; there were minor stab wounds and bruises all over her body. Her face was grey and her eyes closed. She didn’t seem to notice when he freed her arms and legs.

 
; “Doon!” he said crisply. But she did not answer and he thought she was near death. He placed his hand on her neck and felt her life force, thin and thready.

  Carefully, aware that she must have internal injuries, he took off Indaro’s jerkin, then stripped off his tattered overshirt and wrapped it round her before covering her with the jerkin again. He sat against the rock, leaning her body against him, his arms wrapped around her. He had no water to give her, no food, no salve for her wounds, only the comfort of another soldier’s company in her dying time.

  The morning went by slowly as he listened to her faltering breathing and tried not to think about what might have happened to Indaro. He cursed himself, thinking that if only he had water Doon’s life might be saved. But he had nothing to carry it in, and he last drank from a muddy brook more than a day ago, before he reached this dry plain.

  When he felt a slight movement in his arms he realised she was trying feebly to struggle against him.

  “Doon,” he whispered, “it’s Fell Aron Lee. You’re safe.”

  She stopped resisting. “Indaro?”

  “She’s not here,” he said cautiously.

  “You escaped together?”

  “Yes,” he lied. “Indaro has returned to the City. She asked me to look for you.” He was ashamed as he said it. Although he would have personally petitioned the gods themselves to save Indaro, he had scarcely given her servant a thought. All he could think was It could have been Indaro.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked.

  She was quiet and still and he thought she’d drifted away. But then she whispered, “I walked into them. City soldiers. I thanked the gods for my luck.” She bit her lower lip, already ragged and bloody. “They didn’t believe I was one of them. Even though I had Indaro’s jacket.”

  He had nothing to say. He knew how enemy women were used.

  “I told them all I knew of the Maritime, names of my comrades, details of troop movements, nicknames of the generals. They said they didn’t believe me. They didn’t want to believe. They chained me with two enemy women. We had to follow their horses. Sometimes they kicked into a gallop and dragged us a short while for fun. One woman died that way. They were angry she died so easily. They wanted us alive. When we stopped for the night…” Her face was expressionless but a tear welled up under one bruised lid.

  “I’m dying,” she whispered.

  When he said nothing in reply, she roused a little. “Am I dying, sir?” she asked.

  Fell looked at the blood pool, growing wider and darker. Above them he sensed the flight of carrion birds.

  “Yes, soldier,” he said softly.

  “Have you a knife?”

  He took out the blunt blade and showed it to her. She craned her neck to look up at him. Holding his eyes she nodded slightly.

  Fell had seen many a mutilated warrior go gratefully to his death, mercifully released by the severing of the great blood vessel in the inner thigh. Without hesitation he leaned forward and nicked the artery and watched the blood pump sluggishly out. She had not much left to give.

  “Tell Indaro…” Doon whispered.

  “What?” He bent closer.

  But she said no more and after a while he closed her eyelids against the dust from the plain. Then he closed his own eyes and bowed his head.

  Arish sat with his eyes closed, hands over his ears, like a small boy again, trying to block out the horror. Days had passed but the appalling scene played itself again and again in his mind’s eye.

  “Arish, it’s time,” a voice said.

  He looked up. It was Riis, tall for his age, grey-eyed and serious. “You said you’d be there,” the younger boy said.

  Numbly, Arish nodded and levered himself up. With Riis at his heels he walked out of the barracks and across the litter-strewn yard at the back to a small copse of scrubby trees where he had agreed to meet the other boys after dark. He had avoided them since they had been freed. But he said he’d be there that night. He would likely never see them again. Earlier that day he had been called to meet Shuskara, and the general had told him he was to be his new junior aide. Arish was to have a new name, his past erased from the history of the City. They were to leave the next day for the Salient.

  The last five boys were gathered round a campfire, and Arish wondered how they could sit there so calmly when all he could see in the flames was a writhing, screaming horror.

  “About time,” commented Ranul, with some of his old ill-temper. Ranul had been most changed by their experience, Arish thought. The bully had vanished, and in his place was a sadder, more thoughtful young man who no longer caused pain and fear for the pleasure of it.

  “Parr made it,” he told Arish. “We all agreed. You were too busy.” The words were petulant, but they came from memory and habit, not from feeling.

  Arish looked at the long metal thing Ranul was holding, its curling end in the fire, white with heat. “A brand!” Arish felt his flesh crawl.

  “We’ve all agreed to take the vow, and be branded with this—an S—so we never forget, however long it takes.”

  “The vow?”

  “To kill the emperor.”

  Fell sat for a long time with Doon’s cooling corpse in his arms. At last he laid the body down gently then stood and looked around him. He had no way to bury her in this hard land. He made a heartfelt prayer to the Gods of Ice and Fire to receive her as a warrior in the Gardens of Stone. Then he stripped off the red leather jerkin, folded it and tucked it under his arm. He strode back up to the lip of the hollow.

  In the silence of the high plain he could no longer ignore the compelling whisper which had been speaking to him for so long. He looked to the west, where lay his duty as a son of the City. There the sun shone high and bright in an azure sky.

  It could have been Indaro, he thought.

  He turned to the east, where clouds hung over the highlands, and he set off back towards Old Mountain.

  Chapter 26

  Indaro threw aside the book she was trying to read and stared out of the cell’s window, bored beyond sanity. The view was startlingly beautiful—gleaming green cloudforest topped by crystal sky—but she was sick of it.

  She had been transferred to this chamber from her old prison cell when ice started to form on her water bucket at night. She was considered an honoured guest, so Mason told her, and she now had a bed with blankets, and was fed twice a day, though frugally. But the door to the room was still locked.

  Mason had suggested she awake before dawn to witness the new day appearing at the Gate of the Sun, a rite which was important to the old ones of the Tuomi. She had no real interest in such pointless practices, but she played along, hoping to find advantage in the ploy. Five mornings in a row she had risen in darkness to make her way up the mountain to watch this event. Five times she had returned disappointed. Today she and Mason were to walk up to the Gate of the Sun together, so she could see it in daylight.

  The mornings and evenings were cooling fast, but here at the start of autumn the days were still warm. She could not conceal a weapon easily. She had hidden a chicken leg a week or more ago and honed the bone to sharpness on the stone floor of her room. It made a poor weapon but, deftly wielded, it could pierce a vital blood vessel. She dressed in a skirt and loose tunic, trusting it would hide the bone stuck in the waist of her skirt against her belly. She hoped her guards were well-armed—the more weapons the more chance of snatching one. With a sword in hand she would take on the entire garrison.

  Yet when her cell door opened Mason was not there. Instead guards escorted her through the dark halls of the fortress to a place she had never seen before, where huge carved stones looming above her dripped with wet and the smell of time. Oak doors, carved heavily with monstrous beasts, opened ponderously and she was shown into a great chamber. It was very high, the ceiling lost in darkness, and the stone floor stretched before her like a City avenue. It was illuminated by lights in glass boxes which gave a steady light. She had heard the en
emy had such magical knowledge unseen in the City. At the far end of the room a fire blazed in an enormous hearth. It was the first fire she had seen for weeks and she was drawn to its comfort. In front of the hearth was a wide table, and at the table were five people. On one side were Mason and an olive-skinned rider dressed in grey. Next to them sat a pale young man with dark curly hair. On the other side were, to her astonishment, Saroyan, Lord Lieutenant of the East—and Fell Aron Lee.

  Fell gazed up at her coolly, his eyes piercing her as if trying to penetrate her with meaning. She nodded and sat down beside him, folding her hands on her lap.

  “Where are the others?” she asked him.

  “They are not needed here,” Saroyan answered, as if she were in charge of the meeting. She was dressed in worn riding clothes and there was a hurried, sweaty air about her as if she had ridden post-haste to this rendezvous. Indaro already knew she was in league with the enemy, yet it was still a shock to see her here, in his heartland.

  The grey-clad rider spoke. “My name is Gil Rayado. My father was Tuomi.” Indaro noticed he spoke the language of the City with an accent, and a slight lisp. He was very good-looking, she thought, his long black hair held back at his neck, his beard shaped and trimmed. “There are perhaps fifty Tuomi warriors left,” he explained, “and about two hundred women. So, like you, Fell, I am one of the last of my people. In a hundred years their names will probably be forgotten.”

  Indaro was careful not to show it, but she was surprised. Fell, the last of his people? What did that mean? At her side, Fell made no response.

  Gil Rayado went on, “Mason here is the product of many races, but he was born and raised in Petrus. He calls himself a Petrassi scholar.” There was a hint of amusement in the man’s voice, and Indaro guessed this was a joke between the two.

  “Saroyan…”