Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  No!

  Yes.

  OH YES said the amused, horrible voice.

  Val al-Dun didn’t care. He ran down into the darkness. He went down and down. Perhaps there were gods, and a Lady, because he didn’t fall; he didn’t trip on the corpse of Fama; he didn’t roll to his death on the thousand steps. He stayed on the outside, broader treads, and he thought as little as he could. Then, his knees like water, he was under the golden roof of the portico, passing under the black archway, and it was as if a mighty curse had been lifted from his soul.

  The breeze had become a wind, and it raced through the corridors and the tunnel. And despite his failing strength and his empty lungs, he sprinted down the corridor, leaping the charred corpse and running for the gate.

  It was still open. A Zand lay on the threshold, one of his Tufenchis, and the doors could not close on his corpse.

  Val al-Dun passed through into the clean air of the desert night, and found himself in the garden of magiks—the long lines of grave stelae lit orange and yellow in the death throes of the city burning across the river. To his right, the Black Pyramid towered…

  And yet…

  And yet, from the very apex a white fire seemed to sear the heavens.

  The world seemed to blink. Existence itself seemed…

  He was aware that he was floating in burning metal, in hell. Daemons were pulling him in two, while some sort of monster rubbed him with bone chips, grating away his flesh and muscle. He screamed…

  “Got him,” Draivash said.

  He lay on a smooth stone floor. It took him time to recognise that he was lying in the black tower that he had stormed, what seemed like a lifetime ago. There was blood still dripping between the upper storey floorboards and falling in wet pops close to his head.

  I am alive, he thought.

  “Khan?” a voice asked, close to him. “Does he live?”

  “I do,” Val al-Dun answered.

  “Now blessed be the Lady and the Eagle and any other god or friend of man who can hear me,” Mikal said. “We need you. The world is ending.”

  Outside, on the stone road, the youths still had the horses.

  He tried to herd his thoughts into any semblance of a plan. The bridge would be gone, and home was on the other side of the river. He stumbled to his feet, his side a battlefield of lacerated flesh, his head pounding, and got a hand on the door frame.

  Kati had Thera by her reins, and her feed bag was over her head.

  He looked around. There were, all told, fewer than ten hands of them left, and only two hands had been in the pyramid. They were easily identifiable, as they were all burnt and abraded by flying stone.

  “We will ride west,” he managed. “We can steal boats in the Delta.”

  “Oh, gods,” said one of the Safians outside, and he fell on his knees.

  Even as he spoke, the air seemed to fill with energy. Hair stood on end. The horses snapped their heads up. Every loaded musket fired, as the energy built and burst into light and static charge.

  The sun was rising from the rim of the world, a ball of red fire in the east, and when the first tongue of the red light touched the Black Pyramid…

  The charge blew out of the air; a fine black powder seemed to precipitate. For a moment, everything hung in the balance…

  And then they heard the crack. The sound, like a lightning strike, seemed too close, and then they saw it.

  The Black Pyramid began to split. The split was difficult to follow at first. It raced from a barely visible flaw in the perfect darkness at the very apex to an ever widening chasm. A third of the apparently solid stone suddenly subsided into the earth, as if a great chasm had opened. The dark life seemed to pass out of the thing, so that it was merely black, instead of the living, breathing heart of black.

  Val al-Dun thought he heard the Disciple scream in terror.

  Book One

  Second Intention

  When a combatant performs an action that is not intended to strike home in the first tempo, but to draw a predicted response from the adversary, against which the true assault is made, this is spoken of as an attack in the second intention.

  Maestro Sparthos,

  unpublished notes to the book Opera Nuova

  1

  The Imperial Army of Expedition, Eastern Armea

  Five days earlier…

  Aranthur’s eyes opened in darkness. He was, for a moment, completely disoriented, and then he knew; he was in a very small tent, and his hip was pressed against that of Prince Ansu, who was in the process of putting on breeches. His wriggling…

  “I’m sorry,” Ansu said. “I can’t sleep.”

  Aranthur rolled over, and clutched his borrowed wool blanket closer.

  After a long moment in which he almost passed into sleep, he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of Dahlia…

  Making love.

  He sat up.

  “Exactly,” Ansu said.

  Aranthur failed to restrain a string of Darkness imagery.

  “Black darkness; fucking thousand hells…”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Ansu said, equitably.

  Hence you were putting on clothes, Aranthur thought.

  It was odd to see Prince Ansu in Byzas clothes—almost a military uniform. He had leather breeches, an elaborate blue doublet and a small round hat with a turned-up brim.

  “You’ll find that it’s almost dawn,” Ansu said. “Don’t imagine we’ll get back to sleep.”

  Indeed, when Aranthur’s head poked out of the white wedge tent, he understood why it had been so easy to find his kit. Although true dawn was half an hour away, the sky had the iron grey cast of what the Nomadi troopers called “The Wolf’s Tail.”

  The campfires at the end of the tent rows were crowded with Nomadi. Many were sharpening blades or clicking puffers. A few were eating. Some stared into fires.

  Dekark Lemnas raised a steaming cup.

  “So nice of you gentlemen to join us,” she called out.

  The nomads laughed. But it was good-natured, and Ansu bowed elaborately. One Steppe veteran slapped his thigh.

  “I thought I’d be the first one up,” Aranthur admitted.

  Lemnas shook her head. “Day of battle,” she said. “Ever seen a battle?”

  “Day before yesterday,” he said.

  She barked a laugh. “That wasn’t even a skirmish, boso. Bah, perhaps a skirmish. Today, we will all get our feet wet.”

  One of the regiment’s handful of Kipkak tribesmen spat.

  “Battle is for fools.” Then he grinned. “I’m a fool.”

  Their laughter had an edge to it.

  “Good luck today, Syr Timos. I won’t pretend we wouldn’t all like to have your aspides, and Myr Tarkas too, with us. But I’ve heard—”

  “I didn’t wake him.” Ansu turned. “We’re riding as couriers for the General.”

  Aranthur nodded. “Well, I volunteered, way back in Megara.”

  He began sorting his kit. He noted that old troopers like Vilna, the Kipkak, had everything laid out in one neat pile atop his saddle blanket: saddle; riding boots; sabre; two puffers; fusil; breastplate; saddle and headstall and coiled, polished leather tack.

  Aranthur spent a nearly desperate half-hour finding all of his, spread over two tents and the horse lines. By the time he had Ariadne tacked up, he could hear Dahlia demanding quaveh and Sasan asking for some oil.

  Vilna came by, his short-legged rolling gait announcing him even in the murk.

  “Sword sharp?” he asked.

  Aranthur bowed and handed over the old, heavy sword.

  “Hmm,” Vilna grunted. “Huh.” He ran a thumb over the edge and raised an eyebrow. “Good sword. Old is good. Sharp like fuck.” He bowed, as if Aranthur was a little more of a human being than he’d expected. “Bridle but no saddle, eh? Saddle here. Long day. Life is horse. Keep horse fresh. Best, have six horse.”

  “Thanks,” Aranthur managed.

  He was fine, most
ly, but every few minutes a new set of fears rose to choke him. His body would flood with a sense of danger; his hands would tremble.

  It was exactly like his first duel. He had no idea what to expect, and that was the thing that made him afraid.

  When Ansu was feeding his mount, Aranthur asked, “Have you seen a battle?”

  Ansu laughed. “Syr Timos, I come from civilisation. We have law, and just rule, and hundreds of drakes to tell us when we err. We haven’t had a battle in two hundred years.”

  Aranthur bridled at his friend’s smug superiority.

  “But you fight duels,” he snapped.

  Ansu shrugged. “Not as… frequently… as you Byzas.”

  “I’m not Byzas,” Aranthur said.

  “I misspoke. I will apologise—”

  “Nah. I’m cursed snappish.”

  Afraid, Aranthur almost said. Instead, he turned and embraced the Easterner, and felt the prince’s somewhat diffident return clasp.

  “Hah, this is a good custom, and one hug is worth a great many words,” Ansu said. “My hands are shaking.”

  “Mine too.” Aranthur admitted.

  “Listen.”

  Far off, in the direction of the enemy, there was a long roll, like the rise of summer thunder in the hills above Soulis.

  It reached a crescendo and stopped.

  And started again.

  “By the Lady, what is that?” Aranthur asked.

  Ansu made a face. “Our foes two days back had drums.”

  Sasan came up with two feed bags.

  “Morning, friends.”

  Aranthur found it impossible to hate the Safian man, even when he had just been making love to Dahlia.

  “Morning, Sasan. Are those drums?”

  “Oh yes,” Sasan said, a trace of bitterness evident in his speech. “Every Beglerbeg has at least a pair of big drums, for signalling and for status. They’ll form in front of his tent every morning. The more powerful officers will have six or even ten drummers—big men, mounted on camels with a pair of big drums.”

  A new drum storm began.

  Sasan’s eyebrows went up.

  “That’s a great many drums,” he admitted.

  All along the cook lines, men and women were peering out east, where the sun was just cresting the rim of the world. The drums had a supernatural quality, and they rolled again, long and deep.

  Aranthur shrugged to his friends.

  “I’m ready,” he said. “I’m going to the General.”

  Sasan was just tacking up two mounts and Ansu was still drinking chai.

  “Go with the gods,” Ansu said. “I’m not in a hurry to do work, and that’s all she does.”

  Aranthur nodded, and walked off across the camp, leading his horse. He walked to the head of his squadron street. He was not actually a member of the Imperial Nomadi, but his own militia regiment—the Second City Regiment, often called “The Tekne”—was in a different camp, and his officer was also a Nomadi officer…

  The army was like a large, sprawling, complicated family.

  “His” squadron was a street of fifty tents, twenty-five on either side, each holding two troopers and all their tack. At the head of his street was his centark’s pavilion, a fine silk tent with heraldic bearings.

  Centark Equus stood in front of his tent, fully armed, with his light armour on. He smiled, Aranthur threw a barely competent salute, and Equus bowed with some irony.

  “Good morning, Syr Timos,” he said.

  “Good morning, syr,” Aranthur said, formally.

  “Try not to put your head in the way of a cannonball, there’s a good chap.”

  “I’m going to find the General.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  Equus went back to drinking his quaveh, his eyes on the eastern horizon.

  Aranthur walked across the dry grass, trying to imagine that the cheerful Equus might be afraid. He saw no sign of it.

  The General’s pavilion was in the exact centre of the Imperial camp. Her personal standard fluttered from the central pole, and her pavilion had three peaks and seemed as large as a palace. There were four sentries, all very alert, and behind her tent, an entire squadron of City Militia cavalry stood by their horses, armed and armoured, booted and spurred.

  Even as Aranthur walked his horse across and through the camp, everything changed. The rumble of the enemy drums was drowned out by the sound of wheels and heavy horse tack, and a dozen great gonnes—more—rumbled past. Each great gonne had a bronze barrel twice the length of a man, or longer, the muzzles cast like fantastical monsters. Each gonne had a pair of lifting handles, made to look like leaping, swimming dolphins, cast so well that they almost seemed alive in the red light of morning. Each gonne had the touch mark of the casting master, and the coat of arms of the donor, the noble or merchant who had gifted the Imperial Arsenal with the cost of a great gonne. Their carriages were like heavy farm wagons, with wheels as tall as Aranthur’s head, bound in iron. All the carriages were painted sky-blue, and some had iconography painted on the gonne chest between the trails. Dragons and drakes predominated, but one heavy piece had the Lady rising from the waves, and another had Coryn the Thunderer pointing his war hammer.

  Each gonne had an attendant ammunition wagon, and the gonne and wagon each had six horses in draught and forty men and women to serve the bronze monsters. The train rolled past Aranthur on the dry grass, raising dust even so early in the day. He had to slip between one team and another, taking his life in his hands before battle was even joined, because the drivers were not going to stop their charges for a mere man.

  Behind the line of gonnes, companies and banners of infantry were forming on the grass strip that ran down the centre of the camp. It looked as if the whole population of Megara had been transported to Armea. There were thousands of men and women in each stand of pikes and arquebuses. The line seemed to extend into the dust at the edge of the world.

  He saw people he knew—a wheelwright, an apprentice leather-worker, a tall, foppish man with whom he’d fenced. And then he saw Srinan, at the head of a troop of jingling City cavalry. The nobleman saluted with his sword.

  “Morning, Timos,” he called.

  Aranthur took his helmet off and bowed.

  Apparently, on the day of a battle, everyone was friendly. Even Srinan, who was no friend of his.

  He walked his horse to the picket in front of the General’s tent. There were a dozen chargers already there. Ariadne was the smallest horse, but, for Aranthur’s money, the handsomest. He gave her a pat and a carefully hoarded turnip and then went to the door of the tent.

  One of the guards, an Imperial Axe, nodded.

  “She’s with General Roaris,” he said. “I’d wait. If’n I was you.”

  The man paused. His fellow Imperial Axe, on the other side of the door, spoke without visibly moving any muscle in his body.

  “Which you ain’t,” he said.

  “Ain’t?” the first Axe asked.

  “You ain’t him.”

  “Sod off, Narsar.”

  “Bollocks to you, Gart.”

  The two blond giants stood as solid as statues of iron.

  Aranthur walked back to his horse, fiddled in his saddlebag and found a pipe and some stock. He filled and tamped his pipe, but he didn’t light it. Instead he put it back, carefully; pipeclay broke too easily for rough handling. Instead he took out his kuria crystal, ran a thumb over it, felt its power.

  He put the chain over his head, and tucked the crystal into his shirt under his doublet. He took a deep breath, and then another, and used just a touch of the crystal to drop into a light meditation state, from whence he began to review the workings he could effect.

  The Secret Walk. The first working he’d ever managed, it could hide him, but not unless certain preconditions were met—darkness, or shadows, or a preoccupied adversary. It was a simple, weak working, and not for battlefields.

  The Purifier. A very simple volteia that made water
safe to drink. Almost every person in the Empire could cast it.

  A complex occulta called the Eye of the Gods. It was actually a cantrip of light with a vast array of modifications that adjusted the very air into a pair of lenses. It was a required element of first-year casting, and people failed out of the Academy because working it was so hard. It was not his best occulta.

  The Red Shield, or aspis as the Magi called all the protective occultae. He was merely adequate at casting it, as his brushes with combat had shown. But it cast quickly, and he was learning to trust it. It could be a very powerful protection, but he needed practice…

  Leon’s Pieasi, or compulsion. Leon was a long dead Byzas Magos, and his compulsion was both powerful and simple. A first year working. Aranthur had only ever used it on a friendly dog, in class.

  The Safian Enhancement. Despite being a much more complex working than any of the others, he was confident that he could cast it in any condition or situation. The experience of writing his will on that particular working while near to death had forever imprinted it on him. It was his in a way that no other spell except the casual spark of fire was his.

  A variety of cantrips or volteie that adjusted or made light.

  A simple visual enhancement that allowed any caster to “see” sihr and saar, the powers that fuelled occultae. Or rather, the powers that fuelled most of the Academy’s occultae. The Safian spells were all powered by the caster’s own will, a surprisingly different process.

  Lately he was working on a Safian Transference. He could cast it, but without sufficient result to justify the expenditure. What ought to be like a puffer shot at close range was more like a breath of foul air. He took it out and played with it in what he imagined as a child’s sandbox, an internal meditational demi-reality that he’d learnt in the first weeks of first year, as if a piece of the Aulos could be sealed off for his own research, which, just possibly, was exactly true. The Master of Arts had told him, repeatedly, that his sandbox would be essential to him later. Only now, on the edge of a battle, did he realise what a useful tool it was.

  He held the Safian Transference in his head and rotated it to look at the working. He couldn’t see his flaw. He needed to go back to the grimoire, or perhaps he had the starting conditions in a flawed way…