by Tom Lloyd
Isak turned to the crowd, watching in silence. A few had fallen to their knees in prayer; he could see their mouths moving, though no sound reached his ears. With an effort he sheathed his sword - and then stopped. Something had changed; some detail had set an alarm bell ringing in his head.
Slowly, as though through a fog, the Land came back into focus.
‘Why is the gate shut?’ Isak said. He took a slow step forward as realisation crept over him and he raised his voice to a bellow. ‘Who shut that damned gate?’
‘Bind it fast, Duril!’ Kam yelled, chancing a look back at the now-barred gate. Another man came for him and he swung wildly with his club. Kam missed, but Boren didn’t. He caught the knight’s rapier a heavy blow, sending it clattering away.
Piss and daemons, this place is still full of armed men! More feet charged down the stairs as screams came from the square outside. Did that mad bitch know what she was doing? Kam had caught the beginning of the chaos outside as the enormous spider-like limbs reached up so high that he could see them, even from the back of the crowd. Gods, I hope her friend is as good as his word, he thought fiercely as he prepared himself for the fight ahead.
Four Ghosts charged from the guardroom at the entrance to the cells. Sir Gliwen, the Lomin knight sent by the Duchess, led Kam’s companions forward, jumping over the bodies of the men they’d already taken out and rushing the soldiers, leaving Duril to finish with the gate.
The Heren brothers were watching Kam’s back. ‘See you in the Herald’s Hall!’ roared Jeyer Heren behind him. The man was relishing his chance to try his skill - and his heavy forester’s axe -against the Palace Guard. He was big as a bear and fearless; he’d chopped the first soldier they’d reached nearly in two. Jeyer would buy them the time they needed. They’d said their goodbyes already.
Before Kam could stop the man, Snivelling Woran raced ahead of the rest of them to attack the soldiers all by himself. The scrawny little man was drunk on adrenalin and swinging his home-made mace wildly as he reached the Ghosts, who barely slowed their charge as they ducked Woran’s blows and delivered a brutal cut to his belly. Woran went down shrieking.
‘Keep together,’ Kam yelled, knowing the rest of his men had no chance against the seasoned veterans unless they attacked en masse. He used his club to block another cut, working in tandem with Boren, giving his friend the opportunity to smash the soldier in the face. Blood splattered them all and the man went down, but it didn’t distract his comrades for a moment as they savagely laid into the Siul men. Gren screamed out, a hefty blow to his shoulder almost spinning him around. He grunted as he barged into Foret, just as a glaive slashed deeply into Foret’s face and he fell without a sound.
Kam quickly crouched, risking his own neck to go for the soldier’s knees. It was a weak strike, but enough to unbalance the man, and Tol the charcoal-burner finished the job with his axe. They quickly killed the remaining soldiers, but not before the Ghosts had taken two more of their own.
‘Move!’ Kam yelled, scooping up one of the dead men’s glaives and a ring of keys before heading down the corridor. The entrance to the cells was ahead, and there would be more Ghosts in the guardroom. Keep moving, keep moving: the words ran through his head like a mantra. They were dead men, they knew it, and they had to get to the young duke to make their deaths worth a damn.
Sir Gliwen was the first to reach the guardroom. The two remaining guards inside were standing ready, their swords gleaming in the dim lamplight. The Lomin knight grinned and beckoned to his comrades.
Before the guards quite knew what had hit them, Tol had barrelled into them, his axe taking out a chunk of one man’s arm and leaving a great splintered gash in the thick door behind as well. While the Lomin knight indulged in some vicious swordplay with the other guard, the Siul men finished off Tol’s victim. It was a matter of moments before both lay dead on the floor.
Grimacing at the cut he’d received in his shoulder, Gren shoved Tol towards the door to break it down before Sir Gliwen shouted to get their attention and waved the ring of heavy iron keys.
When they finally managed to get the door open, Sir Gliwen was the first man through - and seconds he later was lying dead on the floor, a grey-haired man sporting an embroidered golden eagle on his chest and brandishing a bloodied broadsword standing over him. He had leapt on Sir Gliwen as he entered the corridor, turning the knight’s last-minute parry and running him through. Almost before the Lomin man had fallen, the old man was darting back to avoid Corast’s swinging axe-blow.
Kam blinked in astonishment at the old man’s speed. He trapped Corast’s axe with his sword and lunged forward with a dagger in his left hand to skewer Corast’s right shoulder. But despite his speed and undeniable skill, the numbers were against him. While Kam attacked from the right, Boren managed to clip the old man’s left arm. As he recoiled, Boren smashed the glaive’s weighted handle into his skull.
‘Keep going,’ Kam panted, shoving his companions on, not allowing himself to look at the fallen. They reached a narrow staircase, and found themselves ploughing into more soldiers. Someone - Kam didn’t know if it was his boys or the enemy - knocked the only torch from its holder, plunging the place into sudden gloom. Cries of alarm and pain were shortly followed by the sounds of bodies crashing into each other and the clatter of weapons falling onto stone floors. The sudden spray of sparks skittered over their heads and caught in Boren’s hair. Kam ducked and struggled to stay on his feet as Boren roared in pain and flailed around, trying to extinguish the smouldering sparks, while the group barrelled on down the stair.
At last the men from Siul stumbled into the lower guardroom, trampling two black-and-white-liveried Palace Guards under their feet and finishing the job with their clubs and maces. Two more were driven back against the rear wall of the guardroom by the onrush of fight-maddened men, and with no space to swing their swords they were battered to the floor and brutally dispatched.
Kam looked around. The dimly lit guardroom was low-ceilinged, barely an inch higher than him, with grimy grey walls and the mingled stench of shit and sweat and fear thick in the air. An unlit brazier stood in one corner. The only other door in the room opened onto a narrow corridor lined with cell doors at regular intervals.
‘Find the keys,’ he ordered as he headed towards the cells. Boren, Gren, Corast and Tol began to search the bodies as Kam called Duke Certinse’s name, looking for the correct cell. A dozen voices replied, all calling for rescue, and he started to pound on each door in turn. He finally found the right door by listening for the only voice that sounded anything like a young duke’s. He started fumbling with the unwieldy ring of rusty keys Boren had handed him.
He tugged the door open and shouted, ‘We’ve got ‘im! Back up those stairs, now.’ He started checking the keys on the ring for one small enough to unfasten the duke’s manacles, but they were all too big.
‘Not that set,’ Certinse croaked. ‘Swordmaster Kerin has the key.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He was here just a few minutes earlier; I heard him. Blue tunic with a gold eagle.’
‘Boren, key’s on the man at the top of the stair,’ Kam called, and Boren grunted and disappeared. Kam took a moment to examine the man he’d given up his life for. He didn’t see much to impress: Duke Certinse was smaller than he’d imagined, a slender, smooth-cheeked young man who still managed to look haughty, even when manacled to a wall.
‘What’s your plan from here?’ he asked.
Kam shrugged. ‘Get out. This place is a maze - we’ll find a window to slip out of and make for our horses.’
‘That’s the extent of your plan?’ The duke sounded angry.
‘Stop bitching,’ Kam said calmly, ‘we’re not going to get that far, not if Lord Isak’s as good as they say he is.’
As though in response, a flurry of shouts came from the staircase, immediately followed by the clash of swords.
‘We’re trapped.’ Kam went to the door and saw h
is remaining comrades gathering at the foot of the staircase, their weapons at the ready. No one spoke, not even Petril Corast, who generally had something foolish on his lips. Kam could almost see the man’s two children rolling their eyes every time Corast spoke - but they’d not be embarrassed by their da now. He was lined up with the rest, blood running freely from the wound in his shoulder. He’d transferred his axe to his left hand.
‘See you in the Herald’s Hall,’ Kam said quietly.
Beside him, Boren nodded and roughly embraced his oldest friend before joining the others. Trying to fight off that awful sinking feeling in his gut, Kam walked over to one of the dead men and pulled a pair of short-swords from his swordbelt. He returned to the cell, dropped the swords at the duke’s feet and used his axe to bash at the chains binding the young man to the wall. The links were thick and well-made, and even with Kam’s sharp axe blade and the strength of desperation, it took too long to sever the first chain.
He paused and pulled a vial from his pocket. It was made of thick glass and bound with wire. ‘Take this,’ he said.
Duke Certinse looked at it in confusion. ‘What is it?’
‘Poison. You want to be sure they don’t take you alive, then drink it. The swords are so you can die fighting; poison’s in case you don’t.’
Certinse gave a grim nod, suddenly looking less of a child. He prised out the wax stopper, lifted the vial as if in silent toast and downed the liquid. They both tried to ignore the sounds of men screaming in the guardroom as he fought back the urge to vomit up the poison.
Kam picked up his axe again, but before he could attend to the other chain, Certinse, stopped him. ‘Arm’s no good, it’s not healed right.’ He gestured at the swords and Kam handed them up to him. He grasped one in his manacled right hand, then hefted the other in his left.
Kam nodded approval and turned to face the door. He could hear Boren’s roar, and recognised Tol’s nasal cry of pain over the commotion.
‘Hope your mother’s as good as her word,’ he said, raising his own glaive and stepping slightly away from Certinse to give them each room. ‘If she’s not, I’ll haunt the Dark Place itself for the pair o’ you.’
There was no time for a reply as the Ghosts charged in.
CHAPTER 8
Haipar needed no help to look desperate. No longer the proud mercenary, the shapeshifter, the leader; the years had finally caught up with her and now she was just a broken relict. Where once she had proudly smeared ash in her hair, now there was only grey, both natural and unnatural. Her limbs, once corded with hard muscle, were now as brittle as those of a starving refugee. Only her prominent nose and brow looked almost unchanged by their trek and an all-too-brief pregnancy. Ilumene had treated her kindly on the journey south, surprising even himself. Unlike that snivelling wretch Jackdaw, whom Ilumene had been glad to see head north with Venn, Haipar had been too fragile, too broken, to really incur Ilumene’s contempt. It had been easy for the former member of the Narkang Brotherhood to restrain his vicious nature. If nothing else, King Emin had taught him the importance of self-control when on a mission.
Haipar’s mind was fractured, unable to follow any thought to its conclusion, but something unconscious, primal, made her check the bundle in her arms. When she looked at the child, her own face lit up with wonder and fear. He looked back, the curl of a smile on his lips and shadows in his eyes - watching, always watching.
The crowd around her had swelled in the last hour. She had been one of the first to arrive in the big square in the city of Byora, just where the main highway led out of the quarter. Byora was the largest and most prosperous of the Circle City’s four self-governed quarters that nestled around the huge shape of Blackfang Mountain.
Sipping disgustingly sweet tea from a dirty cup, Ilumene continued to watch his charge as she shielded her child from being buffeted as a sudden swell ran through the assembled beggars. They assembled there hoping - mostly in vain - for casual work of any sort. Ilumene had told Haipar to go there and there she’d gone, but she most likely had no idea why she waited there now. There was no recognition in her grey eyes, only bewilderment at a Land she no longer recognised.
The square was unremarkable save for its location on the highway between the main gate from the upper districts and its equivalent in the quarter’s wall. Ilumene raised his eyes and looked at the upper districts, snug behind a high wall of stone and looking down on the rest of Byora with gentle disdain.
The huge structures that gave the Eight Towers district its name were just about visible against the low winter cloud. Flanking that, like squabbling children kept apart by a parent, were the imposing buildings of the districts of Hale and Coin. In contrast with Byora’s southern neighbour Ismess, where religious law ruled and no building could stand taller than a temple, the eight towers looked down on their neighbours, much to the ire of the priests of Hale and the merchant-princes of Coin. In the shadow of Blackfang, height was the province of the powerful, and Eight Towers made a statement to the low-born of Byora.
Behind them loomed the mountain. Ilumene found it impossible to ignore its presence; he had been born in the coastal city of Narkang, miles from any mountains, and he was unsettled by the jagged bowl-like cliffs and the thin black spire that rose from the crater within those cliffs. He felt crowded, and more than once he had found himself leaning away from Blackfang, as if it were physically oppressing him.
A sound broke his reverie and he turned to see the bobbing heads of the retinue of the Duchess of Byora, Natai Escral. The scarlet tunics of the Ruby Tower Guards were an abrupt splash of colour on such a drab day. They had been seeing to the duchess’s defences, no doubt. Everyone in Byora had heard that the Menin were marching north towards Tor Salan, and if they continued on after defeating the mercenaries defending that great trading city, the Circle City was surely the next prize in Lord Styrax’s sights.
‘And you know you don’t have anywhere near the strength Tor Salan can bring to bear,’ Ilumene whispered as the duchess rode closer, ‘despite Aracnan and the Jesters awaiting my command.’
He finished his tea, glad for the warmth no matter how vile the taste, and eased his chair back a little so when the time came there would be no obstacles in his path. ‘Don’t worry, your Grace,’ he murmured, ‘you’re about to be introduced to your Saviour.’
As the noblewoman’s retinue reached the square, the beggars surged forward to meet them, hands outstretched for alms and a wordless keening filling the air. The shivering poor were filling the road; it was almost as if the winter wind had robbed them of any sense of danger. Haipar found herself being pushed along with the crowd. She heard a cry and looked up to see a mounted soldier bearing down on her.
‘Back, back! Clear the road!’ he roared, reining in at the last moment to avoid trampling the beggar in rags; he scarcely noticed the tiny bundle in her arms. It was no concern to him. The wind caught his cloak and swirled it open to reveal his pristine crimson uniform adorned with gold braiding as noticeable as the weapon at his hip. The crowd ignored his words, shrinking together to avoid the cold, moving almost as one as those at the front pressed forward.
Ilumene sat forward, watching intently. The wind had a flavour he knew, a subtle touch on his mind he recognised. Aracnan was following Ilumene’s orders. The immortal would be standing at a window, somewhere within sight of the crowd, naked and holding his Crystal Skull in shivering hands. His stomach would be growling with hunger.
Ilumene pulled his own fleece-lined jacket closer as a chill seemed to rise from his bones. Aracnan had cast his own ill-humour and discomfort out into the wind to affect everyone in the square, and even though he was prepared, Ilumene felt a familiar growl of resentment. His thoughts went back to Narkang, to the king he’d once loved as a father, until he got a grip of himself and returned his attention to the crowd.
The change was immediate. Ilumene, a man well-schooled in anger, sensed the shift in mood before anyone else did. His eyes were dr
awn to a tall man on the left-hand side of the pressing crowd who reached out to grasp the bridle of the nearest horse. The rider saw him move and reacted first, kicking the man and sending him sprawling in the dirt. The crowd, instead of retreating, surged forward. The rider cried out for help, but the words were lost as voices on both sides were raised in a wordless paean of hatred.
The cavalry remembered their training and didn’t fight into the crowd. They kept their line, content with hammering down with the butts of their spears at anyone within range. Blood sprayed and men screamed, falling to the ground before being trampled. Ilumene finally rose from his seat, his sword, still sheathed, in his hand as two squads of infantry ran around from behind the duchess’s carriage.
The soldiers roared as they barrelled into the crowd, which actually moved forward to meet them before half a dozen or more beggars were smashed to the ground by soldiers’ heavy shields. Ilumene tensed, his eyes on Haipar as she was pushed here and there, her arms raised to protect her child. The crowd’s voice began to fail as the infantrymen drove them back, and Haipar ducked down in fear - until suddenly she was standing alone in front of the duchess’s defenders.
Ilumene was already moving when a high scream cut the air. Everyone else paused, watching as three infantrymen turned towards the woman, their weapons raised. Haipar stood still, watching her own death, while the child in her arms shrieked again.
The sound seemed to freeze everyone except Ilumene in their tracks, until the big man smashed his shoulder into the nearest soldier and knocked him to the ground. He saw a flicker of fear in the eyes of the next man as, moving with unnatural grace, he drew his sword, cut down into the soldier’s knee and moved past. The face of the third infantryman was filled with fury as he lunged at Haipar with his spear - but Ilumene was there. He cut down into the shaft and let his momentum carry him forward into the man. He slashed upwards, catching the man across the face. He felt blood spatter on his cheek as the soldier fell. A small man was the first to react, charging forwards with shield and spear held close together. Ilumene turned away from the spear-point, letting his bulk take the impact of the shield, and then slammed his elbow into the man’s neck, sending him sprawling. His sword was already rising to catch the next soldier’s blow.