Beneath it sat a young, stern face. Hunri Saliman, Overqueen of Saliman, Empress of the Dominions of the State of Saliman, First Monarch, and Most Blessed Subject of the Lady Rosium, had always has a furious frown. It was quite a family characteristic, really; the monarchs of Saliman had never looked cheerful. It was probably why they looked so regal, most of the time. But now Hunri did not look regal. She looked slightly worried.
“He rides to his death.” Her voice cut through the sound of slaughter, to her knights, as she gestured at the vanishing figure of the Duke Sethlon. “One’s men are too many, and to fine for him.”
“Yes, your majesty.” One of the men in gold agreed.
“Indeed, it shall not be long before this day is ours.” The frown deepened.
“Aye, your majesty.”
“And I assume one’s husband and one’s cousin, the Earl of Saliman, are doing equally well?” She sniffed.
“Aye, your grace, your bountiful husband does almost as finely as your good self.” One man answered.
“And his grace the Earl does well, but perhaps not as well as your majesties.” Another member of her entourage bowed, an impressive feat on horseback.
“This is good.” She gazed out at the field once more, shuddered slightly at the bloodshed, and turned back to her golden knights. “Sir Oakus, take word to my lord husband of one’s successes. He must be kept updated.”
“Aye, majesty.” One giant knight nodded, swung his horse around and started out over the craters of war toward the opposite flank. But then there came a shout.
“Sir Oakus!” The bellow echoed from the melee somewhere. “Halt! Stand your ground and prepare to die like the traitor you are!”
“And what fool are you to challenge a knight of her majesties hallowed personal guard to single combat?” Oakus turned, spitting his words out.
“I am a Catchbridge!” The confusion parted, letting Duke Toln Catchbridge trot out, atop his warhorse and bearing his cold steel blade loosely at his side. He green, blue and silver tabard sparkled in the sun, despite the rips and tears that criss-crossed the fabric, and the prancing stallion that made his helmet crest kicked out, defiant. “And I know what you have done.”
“What I have done?” Oakus turned, facing his foe. His voice was proud and loud, but his horse stepped back and forth nervously.
“Aye, ‘Sir’ Oakus.” Catchbridge swung his sword up in a steady arch, sweeping it from side to side, swishing the breeze and making Oakus’s horse take a few paces back. “You were the ‘knight’ who took your sword to an unarmed man. It was you who struck down my father upon the wishes of this tyranical queen. And now you shall die.”
“Aye, I killed the old Duke Catchbridge.” Oakus smiled, steadying his horse and leveling his blade at the duke. “I sliced his head from his shoulders as he sat, tied and trussed up like a sleeping babe.”
“You won’t fare so well against a Catchbridge fully armed.” The duke growled.
“You know,” Oakus began, ignoring Catchbridge. “When he was sitting there, in front of me, waiting for his death, he begged.”
“Silence.” The duke’s voice was as sharp as his sword.
“You know what he said?” Oakus ignored him again, letting his horse start to circle his foe. “He pleaded to see his wife. One last time. So we took her out, before him, and sliced off her pretty little head.”
“COWARD!” Catchbridge kicked his heels into his horse and charged, his sword straight before him like a lance.
Oakus let his horse spin away, then turned back, raised his sword and met that of the duke’s in a welter of sparks. Catchbridge lunged at him again, but Oakus was too fast, pulling away and letting the duke’s anger get the better of him.
“But we raped her first.” Oakus grinned, then lunged. His blade cut beneath Catchbridge’s wild sweep, and nearly bit into his stomach, but the Duke’s horse thought clearer than his master, and stepped back, out of the way. Catchbridge simply swung up, fast, knocking Oakus’s sword from his hand, catching the knight off balance and making his horse stumble.
Catchbridge swept his sword again, killing the horse under Oakus with a single blow. Now the knight tumbled to the ground, his golden armour dragging him further into the mud.
“Kneel.” Catchbridge’s sword point quivered over his heart.
The knight stared up at him from the quagmire.
“Kneel.”
Oakus knelt, his knees sinking deeper and deeper.
“Take off your helm.”
The helm was lifted from his head by two shaking golden gauntlets, to reveal a tear and mud streaked face.
“Beg.”
The face blubbered.
“Beg.”
“Please.” The voice was feebly drowned out amid the clatter of battle all around.
“I said beg.”
“Please, I would…” The voice was louder now, but still shaken and filled with tears.
“What?”
“I must…One last time.” The voice collapsed amidst weeping.
“What?”
“I must see my queen.” It was over, in a flash.
“You will in hell. And you shall know what she has faced.” Catchbridge was cold, emotionless. “What she has faced because of you.”
He sliced down, cutting the blubbering head clean off. And then he turned, back toward the terrified cluster of golden knights. His eyes focused on one figure. Justice must be complete. Whatever the cost.
Vengance.
Back beneath the white city, DCI Pouchii couldn’t see a thing. He had stopped straining his ears some time back. All you could hear was the constant roar of the river, and that was enough to make anyone feel ill.
So he just sat, silent as a mouse, waiting. In front of him, the dark coldness enveloped him, wrapping him in dark tendrils. But he was not sad. His mind was on other things. His fingers were twitching for a hand to hold, a different sort of icy grip. In the dark caverns of his mind, he could hear just one voice, feel just one hand.
“Hestia.” He said it again, and the roar of the water swallowed it. Not one of the men in the boat even looked up. He smiled.
“Hestia” He said it again, but louder. It vanished again, never to be seen. He grinned.
“DCI.” A voice boomed out of reality at him, shattering his little world and breaking his bubble. He jumped slightly.
“Yes, General?” He answered, in what he thought was a cool tone.
“We’re coming up to the docks.” The General’s voice floated over the darkness. “Be prepared to disembark.”
“Very well.”
Out of nowhere a set of steps materialised, lit by a single burning torch. The boat clung to it like a moth, and the ragged collection of grey cloaks disembarked from it, letting the boat float away back into the darkness, unpopulated. If they died doing this, no evidence would be left. If they suceeded, there would be another way out.
The steps were old, worn by thousands of feet and the lapping waters. They were built of the same white rock as the outside of the Klagen, but this was greyed by years of being dark and uncared for, like a child kept in a cupboard all it’s life. They looked angry. But then so did the men who now climbed them.
The stairs led upwards, through the solid rock. Not a sound penetrated through, and the only light was the flickering flames that bathed some parts in a cherry red glow. They darted in and out of them, the shadows of their cloaks throwing up grotesque shapes on the walls and making the flames shrink away from them as if afraid.
Despite the naked flames, there was no heat in the stone. The metres upon metres of solid marbled stone that surrounded them removed any warmth, and the miles of it above them could almost be felt, crushing down, trapping them all under the weight and impossibility of their situation. The air pounded in on the DCI’s ears, making his heart beats seem to reverberate through the fabric of the stone. Every sound, every step, was a colossal crash, enough to wake a dragon and certainly enough to wake the guar
ds who doubtless prowled the corridors above. Or so it seemed. Even Pouchii could see that, in reality, their little clattering was probably not enough to even register with this giant building. The stone absorbed everything, like a sponge.
The stairway continued, onwards and onwards. Glancing up, through the spiralling hole through the centre of the steps, Pouchii could see torch after torch after torch, lighting little patches of white in the dark, so high up it seemed impossible.
“How far?” His whispered, his words carrying far in the blackness.
“This is the tallest stair in the four universes.” The General murmured. “It goes up for almost a mile, through the centre of the Klagen. About 6000 individual steps.”
“Really?” Pouchii sounded incredulous. “I bet lighting it costs a fortune.”
“You’re telling me.” The General grumbled. “The things the taxpayers money is wasted on. They really should have thought about the practical implications and just stuck a lift in when they built the place.”
“What, one of those famous thousand year old lifts?” Pouchii raised his eyebrows.
The General ignored him. It was true that the building was far too old to have a lift, although he did think Pouchii’s maths was a little out. More like five hundred years old, if he’d read the history books right.
The stairs towered on, regardless of the conversation. But however high they got, the spiral didn’t show any signs of slowing up, or of getting any lighter or less oppressive. In fact, if anything, the stairs now seemed darker, and the corners of the spiral seemed more likely to have an axe murderer hiding behind them.
When the turn came, it was sudden. A tiny little slip corridor off the main stair, darker, less grand, nearly impossible to see in the great expanse of the stairway. Except it was easy to see, in some ways. It emanated silence, foreboding, loathing. It was a blank space in the white walls, and so was out of place, conspicuous because it was so inconspicuous. It was strangely out of place, a space that somehow wanted to be filled.
They turned as one, down through the darkness. Now the torches were sparser, Pouchii’s head filled with a strange spinning sensation from the sudden change from going round and round to going straight. In the muddled mess of his mind, he saw stars. They lit up the silent blackness of the tunnel around him, and filled it with iridescent sparkles, like ice crystals. His mind flashed instantly to Hestia, and the stars glittered again, brightly and fiercely. Sol Centurion, Saliman’s sun, fluttered in his peripheral vision, fiercely hot and burning bright, but so distant it seemed cold and white. An icy guiding light.
The tunnel broadened, widened and lightened. More torches blazed from the walls, but the stone seemed colder, harsher. The tunnel roof soared, higher and higher into the air, casting a million shadows over the group as they ran on. The blackness faded, and the great white walls came sharply into focus, blindingly so. Majesty, before so confined within the darkness, shimmered into being, oppressively.
And then there was a door, that stretched up to the heavens of the tunnel, and from wall to wall, vast and regal. It was as white as the walls, if not whiter, and hewn rather than carved, apparently of the same white rock as the walls. At its centre stood a guard in golden armour, a light blue cloak flowing around him, the image of regality. This was the heart of the city. The queen’s powerhouse.
“Halt!” The guard shouted, his voice echoing through a million stone corridors. “Who dares to approach the throne room of Her Imperial Majesty the Overqueen Hunri Saliman?”
“Her subjects.” Pouchii spoke, clearly and proudly. “Those who are sick of her oppression. Who do not want an over privileged aristocracy. Who want a say. Who want to walk the streets of their city safe from the threat of her death squads. Who clamour for freedom, for equality, for liberty! Who dare to dream of four universes where, whatever our class and creed, we can live in palaces and eat off sliver plates and all unite!”
The guard drew his sword, with a sound like the screams of innocents.
Seven crossbow bolts punched through his body, splintering his puny golden armour into matchsticks. He jerked like a puppet on a string, and tumbled to the floor, his strings cut.
“Thus freedom speaks.” The General spoke through clenched teeth, hissing the words and letting his crossbow slip down to his side. “DCI, there are some steps to the left. We will wait here and guard against intrusion.”
“Steps?” Pouchii saw them in the gloom, a pearly white spiral that twisted up out of sight.
“Yes, I have it on good authority that our friend the Viscount is there.” He turned from the DCI. “I believe you would be the best to... interrogate him.”
“Indeed, General.” Pouchii nodded his head once, speaking quietly and calmly, and checked that the pistol that hung at his side was loaded. It was.
He turned from the SSS men, who were milling around, fading into the shadows of the corridor and inspecting their crossbows, away from the General, and to the side of the great doorway, towards the steps. His feet found the first, and he started to ascend.
He filled his mind with her. He let his mind wander, over starlit plains, across a snowy tumult, through whirling storms and blizzards and let his heart freeze and yet beat faster. The steps before him vanished, becoming hollowed cheeks, icy lips, that icicle nose. And those eyes, which burned through his very soul, leaving chilblains sore and raw across his consciousness. He was tortured, yet elated. Bitterly cold, yet burningly bright. Alive, yet somehow dead.
He trudged on, up the steps. Onwards, upwards, towards the slowly lightening steps above him. In fact, when he finally reached the little wooden door at the top, he almost walked straight into it. But it stopped him.
Here it was. The doorway. The threshold to his future. The door was flimsy, a simple shoulder, well placed, would shatter it. His path was not barred.
And yet he hesitated. Once he had entered, there was no going back. Once he had decided on a course, he could not return to innocence. This was it.
Murder was quite an act. It could not be undone. Pouchii had killed before; he had quite a reputation for it, but never in cold blood. Never had he gone somewhere with the specific aim of assassinating another human being.
But his mind was on his purpose. Hadn’t all the great writers written about killing for love? He was sure a few Elvish sages had described, in some flowing detail, that romantic and ideal act. This was just his uncontrollable passion taking charge.
After all, he’d do anything for Hestia.
The door shattered before his shoulder, splintering into a whirl of rotted fragments. The tattered remnants creaked back and forth on the tired old hinges, and dust spiralled up in great swathes, obscuring the room for a second.
As it settled, the four walls came into focus. The room was small, cramped, plainly furnished. A single wooden table and chair were squeezed in, adding to the sense of decrepidation. It looked to have a serious woodworm problem.
A man sat at it, his eyes sunken and entrenched, his flame-red hair faded and burnt out. His suit hung from his lanky frame, and his bones stood out from his skin everywhere, as if he were dying.
“And who are you, to dare to enter this room without my permission?” He spoke with a high, haughty tone that rasped violently.
“DCI Malcolm Pouchii, South Saliman Police.” The DCI stepped across the threshold, coldly and calmly. “And I’ve come to avenge my people, Viscount.”
The Viscount Takka burst into laughter, letting it croak out from his mouth and bubble over his thin, emancipated lips.
“And what makes you think the people need avenging?” He glared into Pouchii’s eyes. “What makes you think that you have the right to stand here? You graceless little oik. I stand here, on the shoulders of an illustrious family, sponsored by queens, the greatest politician Saliman has ever known. You...You stand there, in the footsteps of some pauper, a jumped up nobody who dares to tell me he represents our great city.”
“I represent it better t
han you.” Pouchii took another step forwards. “You’re just another aristocrat, another monarchistic coward.”
“But what else is there? If your dad wasn’t a duke, who are you? If the queen doesn’t rule, who does? We can’t give it to the poor.” He sneered “They’re just incompetent. I mean, look at yourself. You’re clearly here to kill me, but it’s taken you ages, and you’ve only shuffled a few steps through the door.”
“Try me.” He drew the gun.
“Why?” Takka grinned. “Do you even know what I’ve done? Who I am? What I stand for?”
The Viscount Connection Page 13