But then Kruges moved, letting his warhorse slowly trot forwards, letting the still air between them part, letting the bubble of protection envelope his every sense, until there were just two men in the whole world.
Neither spoke. They let their eyes meet through battered helms, let each man see the others intention. And then they left the realm of permission, and cast their lots with fate.
It was Kruges who swung his swordblade first.
Cloaks swished, as the secret service men emerged from the side streets of South Saliman onto South Street, the crucial and straight line that cut up from South Gate, on the fringes of the city, to the spire of the Klagen itself. But today the cobbles were quiet, no longer battered by thousands of feet, but as still as the morning air. As far as the eye could see, there were no crowds of commuters, just nothing. Nothing but the occasional body dumped at the side.
They ran through the city, letting the air carry them like messengers of the Gods. House after house slipped by, without a sound from any. It was eerie.
They say in Saliman that Death knocks quietly. This was clearly nonsense to Pouchii. For a start, Death here was not quiet. He hadn’t made a sound.
Secondly, He does not need to knock.
And he knew, as they ran through the quiet streets, that when they burst into the Klagen, searching for Takka of the house Masala, they would not make a sound. And they would not knock.
They reached the junction with Circular Street faster than seemed humanly possible. Even this, the most crucial artery of Saliman, was deserted. When he had been here, what seemed like years ago, but was only a couple of days, it had never been busier. No-one had wanted to let him past. He had needed to turn the flashing light on his hat on to make the crowd part.
Now there was no need for ritual humiliation. The flashing cloaks of the General’s men were enough to keep the street clean of everything but the boldest pigeon. And those were met with flying boots and crushing feet. Silence flattened them.
They hurried on, out into the East Saliman district. It was surprisingly still, the air fresh, and somewhat hopeful. Pouchii frowned. Usually this was the industrial sector, smothering everything and staining the pure white rock of the city walls a sickly grey. But suddenly the chimneys and skyscrapers had grown silent, with a single noise trilling out from nowhere; the brave little song of a single songbird, so frail and sweet it made Pouchii’s eyes water. His mind was filled with a single face, with that captivating smile. The eyes of hers that half closed in pleasure when she saw him. Her neck, arms, legs, her hair and sweeping cold figure, like a knife. The chilled rush he got when he saw her.
“Hestia.” He whispered, and even in the silence of deserted Saliman, not a soul but him knew. Rosium above, the thrill of secrecy felt good. He was alive again.
Now the sunbeams were starting to lance through the white stone, as dawn turned to day. But still the city slept. And they rushed on, past the Police Headquarters building; now smouldering, concrete cracked and abandoned, the last vestiges of law and order gone. But they didn’t stop, couldn’t, despite Pouchii’s mind flickering briefly to Sergeant Graider, wondering if his foolish second in command was still alive somewhere, out there. But it was only for a second. And then his mind filled again with that blistering kiss.
The running continued, Pouchii starting to pant slightly with the effort. The houses around now, once with iron railings and front gardens, were battered and ripped, many with crumpled remnants of metal bars lying shattered on the pavement, rubbish upended into the shrubbery and herb gardens. The flattened tops of the cobbles on the street, designed to make it more comfortable for pedestrians, were broken and chipped, and Pouchii nearly tripped.
Anger seeped from every single stone for miles around, and from the tightly closed curtains that peeped down onto the daylit street below. Fury stalked the streets, but invisibly. The city was filled with the shadows of people, but ghost people. The thunder of millions of feet was there, but then again it was not. It was, in a word, wrong.
They ran on past the closed doors of the Bent Bicycle, the pubs shutters firmly closed, with a little sign on the door reading ‘Closed due to incessant violence’. Pouchii didn’t look too long though, as they dashed on, ignoring the turn off he’d used days before and continuing along Circular Street.
Now approaching, came the district of North Saliman, the proudest of them all, where the super rich lived in luxury. It loomed up above the middle class gardened housing of East Saliman, the houses here higher, more authoritarian, bolder. At the moment where Circular Street entered the North, the General raised a single hand into the air, and they stopped. It was sudden, and brought Pouchii back down from the icy realm he had been dreaming in.
Before them, several guards stood, talking and smoking. They did not notice the group of secret service men who had just arrived due to the flapping cloaks that seemed almost invisible in the right light. Which was fortunate. Pouchii could see several guns sticking our of holsters.
“The Queen’s men.” The General explained, in a harsh whisper. “North Saliman and the keep are still under her control.”
“And our way in is…” Pouchii asked, frowning through the morning air.
“Not through North Saliman, fortunately.” The General motioned them all to the side of the road, into the shadows of houses. “Down there.”
Pouchii followed his pointing hand into the recesses of the road, where the houses broke for a moment, the single space in the tight confines between East and North. Something glittered.
The boundary between East and North is the only one in the city that is actually marked with a geographical feature. The River Saliman breaks them up, splitting the middle from the upper classes. It was this that caused that slightest of gaps. It was this that seemed to glitter.
But the river in Saliman does not really glitter. It is sluggish, grey with a hint of brown, devoid of the white stone that covers everything else. Nothing moved in it, save perhaps a few poor souls who had been thrown in during the violence last night. And they only moved like floating whales, slowly rolling and tipping in the light breezes. They were silent, though. Life clearly had left everything in that thick treacle.
“I don’t know how much you know about the river,” The General hissed. “But it empties out in the sea a few miles out of the city, to the east. If we trace it back to the source, it seems to flow out of the city between East and North, from what appears to be a source just upstream, before the city hits the Klagen.” He gestured up to the looming white stone spire that dominated the city.
“But it doesn’t.” Pouchii remembered something from his old geography lessons. “It goes underground, flowing beneath the spire and continues underground to Alibaster, which is a few hundred miles north west. So?”
“There are docks under the spire, to bring in supplies from Alibaster.” The General grinned. “So all we have to do is get into that river, get underground, ad w should pop up right underneath the spire, city, and, with a huge amount of good luck, our missing viscount.”
“Very clever.” Pouchii glanced down. “But have you seen the river? I’m feeling vaguely sick just sniffing it from here.”
“That’s why the Klagen has never fallen.” The General laughed. “This way in is, in some ways, just as impassible as the other.”
“Which is through an unmapped labyrinth, then up twenty two and a half million steps being fired at by up to fourty million expert marksmen.” One of the secret service men reminded them.
“But, of course, we are the SSS.” The General smiled. “So we have already worked out how to do it.”
“Without any risk of death?”
“Don’t be silly.” The General frowned. “Perhaps a eighty percent chance of death, rather than ninety nine.”
“How reassuring.” Pouchii smiled.
But in his mind, he knew he couldn’t die. He had too much in the world. He cared for life, for what life could give him. He knew he was a fool,
but then, who isn’t? And if he died, he would never again feel those lips, those eyes, that fateful smile. A sliver of ice passed through his heart.
But he wouldn’t die. Because he was happy, young, fufilled. He had everything before him, and everything behind him. He was filled with the optimism of freshness, of the belief that nothing could happen to something so perfect.
In front of him, the General slipped down the side of the street, letting his feet guide him toward the water, but stopping just in time, short of the putrid river. He pulled once on a battered iron chain covered in slime, making the links clunk into his hands as the river parted, as the waters split and let a charred old jumble of timbers slip from beneath the bridge.
“A boat.” The General announced, beckoning them down the slope toward the stinking silence of the waterway.
“That won’t get us underground, will it?” Pouchii looked incredulously at the wreak, not quite believing that something so small could conquer the heights of the proud spire that towered over it.
“You’d be surprised.” The General hushed him down, glancing up at the road above slightly, nervously. “Besides, you can have the worst tools in the world, but if the workman is astoundingly amazing, it doesn’t matter.”
“And fantastically modest too.” Pouchii muttered, but the secret service man did not hear.
The General leapt from the banks in an exhuberant manner, his cloak fluttering behind him. He seemed to hang in open air for a second, suspended as if by magic half way between sky and water, between East and North, between heaven and hell. And then he dropped, like a stone, into the boat, not making a sound, but rocking the waters violently. Then nothing stirred for what seemed like an age, as the General stood still, desperately listening for a single sound from above.
There were none.
The men had to leap too, one by one, each followed by the same pause, the same gap of nothingness. Finally, with all aboard, only Pouchii was left. He too jumped, he too seemed to fall for ever and ever, until he felt unsolid ground under his feet; the river rocked backwards and forwards, and there suddenly seemed to be a billion noises at once, all pointing towards them. His heart hammered, his mind twitched and panicked, but there was nothing from above.
The General touched him lightly on the arm, smiled, and winked. Success, it seemed, had been achieved.
Two of the men brought out paddles, and started to let them glide through the waters. Now that Pouchii had started to relax slightly, the smell returned. It was horrific, wafting from every pore and somehow reaching every inch of his body. In seconds, his clothes reaked. In minutes, so did his hair.
But they glided on. The banks grew darker and darker as they came closer to the Klagen, shadowing everything and blocking out even the morning sun. It made Pouchii shiver. Long ago, he’d viewed the spire as a monument to freedom, as a celebration of the city. Now he saw it as it was, a towering and enslaving ediface that gripped the city like a vice, a cloudy mountain that could not care for what lay beneath it. A monarch amongst slaves.
Suddenly the murky river cut short, ended by a grill of rusty bars set into the side of the white stone base of the Klagen. After that, all was dark and black.
Pouchi looked up from the gate, his eyes following the sweep of the stone. No longer was it pure and white, but pockmarked, and, in some places, stained with smog and smoke. It didn’t seem to end, just go on and on, higher and higher, bending further and further over, so it looked like it might topple over and shatter not just them but the houses and people who lived all around them. But it didn’t. It threatened, but did not fall. Pouchii found himself glancing up every few seconds though, just in case it tried to sneak up on them.
The General raised his crossbow, firing once at the chains that held the bars in some sort of order. They cracked and broke, letting the gates twist and buckle. Now the water was running faster and faster, onwards into blackness. Pouchii glanced around him, as the city shrunk, seemed to blur and vanish. Everything was dark as pitch. And quiet. In fact, the only sound was the drip drip of the waters, and the sudden, gushing echoing roar of the River Saliman, fighting against them as the battled upstream into the dark depths of nothing.
Miles out of the city, things were not dark, and most certainly not silent. Where the Duke Sethlon’s men had crashed into those of the Royal Guard, the violence continued with much haste. The blasting of trumpets, cries of dying horses and men, and the clashing of steel resounded through the fibres of the planet, as the thundering of hooves clumped the already broken ground.
One man, dressed head to toe in armour and bedecked in the black and gold of house Sethlon, charged through the fray, slicing left and right at the knights in gold, loyal to the queen herself. He bellowed loudly, crying furious shouts to the sky and scattering his foes swords.
Suddenly, he was met by two Royal Guard, both covered in their enamelled golden armour, who let their horses trot up to him, snorting in the rising sun. He slowed, lowered his steel blade at them, and charged, thundering down the uneven ground, over bodies and the churned remnants of horses. One of the guardsmen met his sword with his own, and they clashed, each man screaming through his visor and letting his shield thump against his foe’s.
Now they were still, their horses circling each other, tramping the ground like dancers, searching and waiting for time to come to the rescue.
The Guardsman spotted the chink in the Sethlon knight’s armour first, darting forwards suddenly and swiftly, leaning out of his saddle and swinging at the knight’s heart. The knight turned the sword away without blinking, twisting and turning, swinging back, straight at the single square inch of unprotected skin now visible on his foe’s neck.
But the second Guardsman had wheeled around, come at his foe from behind, so that the heavy helm atop the knight’s head had obscured him from view, and lunged. Now it was his blade which bit through skin and bone, that crushed life and brought fate quickly to heel.
The first Guardsman looked on in shock, as the sword that had almost taken his life slowly dropped from view, and as thick rivers of blood flowed freely from the grilled visor of his foe, staining his black and gold tabard a shade of violet. And then the heavy helm atop the head let gravity take it, and slipped from the knight’s neck, head and all, leaving a horrific stump. The knight’s body followed it.
The second Guardsman made his horse step forwards once, and then sliced down again. The enemy horse screamed once, and was still. Another body filled the stricken plain.
Then, through the sprays of blood and screams, rode a single figure, flanked by two others, all covered in battered black and gold robes, their armour battered and stained, swords nicked but still shining. The single figure, his sword arm extended, bellowed. Atop his head sat a multicoloured crest, two swords crossed, the emblem of the Dukes Sethlon, and, tracing its way round the edge of his great helm, a ducal crown, adorned with strawberry leaves of gold and fine ermine, although it looked a little crooked. The Duke Sethlon himself.
One of the men raised an arm to defend himself, but Sethlon’s sword came down regardless, cutting through steel and bone. The guardsman fell back, toppling from his horse as the sword sliced open his helm like a can opener and cut into his face. The fall silenced his screams. Warhorses are surprisingly tall.
The other man rushed the Duke, cutting through one of his retainers and hacking at Sethlon’s unprotected back. The Duke’s shield arm swung round, catching the man off guard and smashing his sword to the floor. The Duke turned, hissed, and ran through the terrified man with a single stroke. Behind the visor, the man’s eyes froze. He trembled for a moment in darkness, as the boom of battle was muffled from his ears by the pounding of blood, and then slipped into stillness, as his eyes shivered shut. He slumped against Sethlon’s sword arm, but the Duke laughed, and shunted him backward, so he slid off his sword and into the mire beneath them.
There was a squelching clatter.
Sethlon turned his warhorse with a sin
gle jerk of his feet, and thundered off into the fray, beheading a guardsman from behind without a second thought. Another turned to face him, but the Duke’s shield smashed him in the helm and he toppled sidewards into the mud, Sethlon’s horse treading him in. One more dived for him, his sword low and dangerously close. Sethlon swung his sword down into the man’s hand, cutting through the gap between gauntlets and armoured arms. The man cried out, dropped the blade alongside his hand, and stood still in shock as the Duke ran him through the tiny little slits in his great helm, piercing his skull and brains.
He vanished into the melee, carving a red trail before the gold and blue of the Royal Guard closed up around him. Then, into the space his charge had created, rode a group of figures, bedecked in gold, and gold alone. The towered over the surrounding fight, inspiring terror in the democrats, and hope in the royalists.
But one figure seemed to think she was taller than all the others. She wore no helm, but instead a heavy crown. It was gold, tall, enamelled. The stepped walls of Saliman seemed to rise out of it, and then the spire of the Klagen, high above her domed head. It was fringed with pearls, capped with diamonds, and, poking inbetween the golden butresses, imperial blue fabric peeked.
The Viscount Connection Page 12