Cinna nodded. ‘All this I told the emperor. He is of the opinion that the barbarians will cling to their oaths and that the feeble border forces can hold the line. He is utterly mistaken, of course, but that matters not to the man who rules the world.’
‘For now,’ Dev added darkly.
‘Indeed. Even now the northern army is being mobilised and redeployed. The weakening of the border has begun. Even if it gives us the men to win here, which seems far-fetched to me, the empire will be in the gravest danger throughout. We are in an impossible position, Dev. The emperor is wrong, and his judgement cannot be trusted, but we are still hopelessly in his power.’
Dev took a breath to steady his racing pulse and straightened in the chair.
‘At the risk of heaping further troubles upon you, General, I also have grave news.’
Cinna slumped in the chair. ‘I wish someone had offered me wine on the way in. Go on.’
‘No wine here, sir. Not had the opportunity. The news from the north is dire. I sought the Sizhad as you ordered and found him in a mountain stronghold of impressive dimensions. He has become more than just a bandit king, General. The mountain people regard him with a strange mix of abject fear and mindless worship. He is a religious zealot, promoting monotheistic worship of his sun god, and his men seem to see him as some quasi-religious figurehead, like a high priest.’
No need to add that he is my brother. What help might that be?
‘And his force? He will not commit to our cause for religious differences, then?’
‘It goes beyond that, General. Way beyond that. The Sizhad has an army to be reckoned with. It is perhaps not as strong as ours, and certainly not as powerful as that of the Jade Empire, but they are well-provisioned, well-equipped, well-rested, and perhaps most worrying of all, they are absolutely fanatically loyal to their master. With that kind of strength, numbers are less of a factor, as you know.’
‘He cannot be bargained with?’
‘No, sir. He is a zealot who sees all the gods – western, Inda, even the eastern ones – as demons. He will not deal with any of us.’
‘On the other hand, that means that he will not join the Jade Empire against us either,’ General Cinna noted, clearly attempting to find a bright side to the problem.
‘General, the Sizhad only remains uncommitted as yet because it is part of his grand plan.’
‘The zealot has a plan?’
‘He is waiting for us and the Jade Empire to complete a war of mutual destruction. He is watching us weaken each other and waiting for the moment where even together we could not stand against him. If you think the people we are fighting now are ardent for their cause, wait until you see the Sizhad’s believers. They will burn the world to suit their cause.’
General Cinna twiddled his thumbs as he sat, frowning, deep in thought.
‘The world offers a plethora of ways to commit suicide, does it not?’ he said, finally. ‘The northern barbarians will watch the army pull out and it will be mere weeks before they pour over the border and ravage the empire. The only thing that might stop them is another invader. The Sizhad will crush us, then, to rid himself of the gods. And I still fear that the Pelasians will take advantage of the weakening of the empire and push from the south. The empire faces peril in every direction. And oddly the force against whom we are currently engaged in the most bitter war is the weakest threat of them all.’
Dev nodded. ‘What can we do, though, sir? The emperor cannot be persuaded, and unless he catches some dreadful illness and passes on unexpectedly there is unlikely to be a change for the better in imperial policy.’
Cinna suddenly rose purposefully from his seat.
‘General?’ Dev frowned.
‘When the men in power play the fool, Dev, it is the duty of men of action to act. I am about to break my oath to the emperor and defy him. Such a thing is, needless to say, suicidal, but something needs to be done, lest the world go up in flames before our very eyes. I will seek peace myself with the commander of the Jade Empire force across the river, independent of the emperor. I saw wisdom and reason in him when we first met here, so there is a small chance he might be reasoned with, and if so, perhaps we can still end this madness. And if we can, then I hope that when news of my rebellion reaches Velutio, other men of action will follow suit. The emperor is insane. He needs to be defied, no matter what oath we all took.’
Dev was nodding even before he stood.
‘I cannot ask you to join me, Dev. This is certainly the end of my career, if not my life.’
‘Men of action must act, General, you’re quite right. I am with you, and I am sure many of the officers—’
Cinna cut him off with a raised hand. ‘We are talking mutiny against our emperor, Dev. Such a thing will not sit well with many, no matter what they’ve been through. This decision goes no further than you and me and my personal guard, and perhaps a couple of officers I’ve known since the days of my youth.’
‘What do we do, then, sir?’
‘We seek a parley with the enemy. We need to approach the enemy general carefully, and speak somewhere other than the bridge. This is a delicate matter and, at this stage, a rather secret one, to be discussed well out of earshot of the men.’
‘Let me approach the enemy, then, sir. I will try and arrange a meeting between you and their general.’
Cinna thought for a long moment and finally nodded. ‘Do it. Take my guardsmen with you, but leave them at the bridgehead and go on alone. We cannot afford for the enemy to view your approach as any kind of provocation or trick, and after so many months of mindless killing, being accompanied by troops will probably just buy you a cannon shot to the face. You know this land. Find us somewhere mutually acceptable to meet and arrange it if you can.’
Dev nodded and hurried to the door.
‘And be careful,’ the general added. ‘While you arrange matters, I will approach the two men in this army that I believe I can trust. Before I left I set something in motion and it’s too late to stop it. I do hope it will not impact upon our attempts at negotiation. Still, nothing we can do about that now. We must just try what we can. To work, young man.’
A moment later, Dev was outside. His view took in the great plain of Jalnapur. The soggy land was hardening. Now, in more peaceful years, crops would be planted for rapid growth and quick harvest. Not so this year. The only crop growing over these months in that fertile soil was corpses. Soon the ground would be firm enough to move vehicles on, and then the world of Jalnapur would become a ceaseless barrage of death. The only thing that had effectively nullified the enemy cannon thus far had been their inability to bring them close enough to do any real damage. Soon, though, those great machines of destruction would be brought down onto the plain within range of the major imperial positions and the killing would begin in earnest.
But neither had the general been idle during the monsoon period. Despite the conditions, engineers and workers had been churning out weapons constantly for months, while master artillerists had been training new men in their art. The imperial army had arrived at Jalnapur with around fifty onagers and two hundred bolt throwers. Now, after a summer of construction, they had surpassed four times that number, ammunition being produced in such vast quantities that storage was becoming an issue. And while the forces of General Cinna had effectively quadrupled their artillery, the Jade Empire’s army could not have done the same. They simply had not the resources to create new iron cannon.
So the Jade Empire had the powerful weapons, but Cinna’s men had the edge in artillery numbers. The Jade Empire’s commander would bring his cannon down in the hope that they would win him the bridge, but the moment the ground was dry, the new imperial artillery would be moved into place, and the barrage they could unleash would terrify even the gods. No one on the plains of Jalnapur would be safe, no matter under whose flag they stood.
Dev swallowed. And that was another motivation for what he was about to do. Not just to preserve t
he empire at home… Home? Was that right for a man Inda-born? Still, it was not just about preserving the empire. It was about halting this madness too.
Overcoming his nerves, Dev set out through a field of corpses and blood to make peace.
Velutio, palace of the emperor Bassianus
The courier shook with fear as he stood outside the door. The four men who had ridden south with the tidings had sat, sour-faced, in the antechamber a short while ago and drawn lots for the ‘honour’ of attending the imperial court. Luca had lost. Cold sweat poured from his hairline.
‘The grey circle,’ the court functionary repeated. ‘Wait there until bidden to do so, and then deliver your report succinctly before handing over the appropriate documentation.’
Luca nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet.
The doors opened and, willing his legs to stop trembling, the courier entered, marching straight to the grey circle. He tried not to look at the previous plaintiff, who was being dragged from the room by two of the imperial guard, stumbling and wailing his grief over some unnamed ill. Whatever had caused it clearly tickled the emperor, for the divine Bassianus was chortling his glee and waving beringed hands at his lackeys who were laughing in turn, though not with their eyes.
Gradually the hilarity over the departed plaintiff’s woes subsided and the room fell silent. The courier stood with head lowered, eyes on the floor at the emperor’s feet, just able to see the lord of the west and son of gods, but respectfully not meeting his eye.
‘Speak.’
Luca tried. His voice had gone, his mouth dry, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Slowly, he forced out a squeak, which became a word. He had to repeat it twice before it was intelligible.
‘Majesty.’
‘Go on…’ the emperor huffed impatiently.
‘Majesty, I bring word from Lord Divis of Castro Gatara in the north.’
‘Never heard of him,’ laughed the emperor.
No, thought the courier. Because all of your army is in the east and the only men left in the north are poor, petty lords.
‘My lord Divis regrets…’ – a nervous clearing of throat – ‘regrets to inform the imperial court… that the north is overrun.’
The emperor was suddenly leaning forward in his chair. ‘What?’
‘Majesty, the Gota came south in force. They left the mountains. There is burning. Raiding. Slaughter.’
‘What of my border forces?’ the emperor snarled.
‘Limitanei, Majesty,’ murmured one of the courtiers nearby. ‘They are little more than barbarians themselves. They probably joined the incursion.’
Luca nodded. That was very much the case. The few loyal units remaining in the north had been overrun in mere days, leaving the entire region at the mercy of the barbarians.
Bassianus, Lord of the World, shot his courtier an acidic look and rose from the chair, stepping towards the courier, who flinched with each step. He held out the missive from the north in a shaking hand, the wooden scroll case sealed with wax. ‘From Lord Divis, Majesty.’
The emperor stopped two paces from the shaking courier and snatched the wooden tube. Luca waited, praying for dismissal. The first blow from the scroll case knocked half the sense from him and sent him staggering to the side. The wood was hard, designed to prevent any damage to imperial documents on long journeys.
‘You have stepped outside the circle,’ snarled the emperor, and Luca, dazed and panicked, hurriedly stepped back in. The emperor swung again, this time with all his might. Luca felt his eye socket fracture under the blow, and even in the wash of agony and fear, made sure not to step out of the circle. The blows came again and again and Luca took them in silence, other than an occasional whimper, blood flooding his vision. At some point he collapsed, for he was suddenly on the floor, still in the grey circle, wondering how soon he might die. Finally, the rain of agony stopped and the courier realised that the emperor presumed him dead. He made no movement to disabuse his lord of the notion as Bassianus straightened, covered in blood spatter, and turned, gesturing to his court with the tube.
‘This is Cinna’s doing. He delays and prevaricates, and now he has forced me to strip the last of my defences. Because of his weakness we stand to lose the north. I will not have this. I will replace him. We will end this Inda war and quickly, so that we may reclaim the north.’
Luca felt himself being dragged from the room, watched the emperor recede, still ranting.
I did not die, the courier thought. This was a good day.
Chapter 14
The blossom falls, stirred by the wind
Breath is held
The world turns
Poem in Huazo form, author unknown
Jai reined in on the hillside, his men gathering in a knot behind him. Jalnapur stretched out below him like a festering sore on the flesh of the world – a canker in need of removal. Everywhere he had been these past three weeks he had seen deprivation and misery, but nothing on the scale that Jalnapur offered.
In a last effort to find a solution before time ran out, General Jiang had dispatched Jai – the most adept scout in the army – with a unit of horsemen to try and find another feasible way across the river. It was likely suicide, but it was the only path they could seek that offered even the possibility of progress. If they could find a place suitable for cavalry to cross the great river unobserved, even slowly, they could send a contingent round the rear of the imperial force and create a distraction.
If, the general reasoned, they could create enough noise and chaos with cavalry at the rear of the imperial forces, perhaps they could distract the enemy enough to keep them occupied and draw them from the riverside. It would perhaps weaken the bridgehead enough to permit a strong enough force to break it. The cavalry would have to be extremely noisy, of course.
Jiang, though he professed to hate even the thought of it, could then launch a full assault with the slim hope of gaining the far side of the bridge. It was a small chance, and even if it succeeded it would take a horrendous toll in lives – especially those doomed cavalry on the far side – but when weighed against what would happen when the reinforcements arrived from the east under their vicious commanders it was still preferable.
And so Jai and his hundred riders had set off south along the banks of the great Nadu, keeping to the hillsides and avoiding the low ground, which was still treacherous following the monsoon, though it would soon be dry enough for action. He didn’t hold out much hope for his mission. He’d never been south of Jalnapur, but by all accounts the river was too wide to bridge any further south, and the western empire patrolled the lands on the far side just as thoroughly as Jai’s allies patrolled these reaches. Any ferry crossing would be made under the watchful eyes of the enemy, Jai was sure.
Of course those ferries were being used, though. The general had committed numerous scout units to the south the day they’d arrived at Jalnapur. Those men had crossed the river wherever they could and set about causing havoc on the far side, burning crops and trying to make life more difficult for the enemy. But in a way that action, though it meant there were already units active somewhere across the river, had ensured that the imperial forces would now watch any potential crossing far closer than they’d done at first.
Yet it had come as a surprise to Jai when they’d come across the enemy unit sometime in the second week of their mission. While Jiang had sent plenty of men across the river, they’d had no reports of the western military crossing to this bank – something to do with Cinna’s policy of halting the Jade Empire’s advance rather than pressing home an attack, he suspected.
He and his men had ridden clear of a path that meandered through a stand of mango trees and out onto a grassy common, only to see a dozen riders below, encamped in a hollow, with their horses tethered nearby. They were wearing native clothing, but in an instant Jai knew them for the enemy. There were no Inda cavalry these days, unless they were in service to a foreign emperor or a bandit. And these
were so clearly a regimented military group and not civilians, not to mention the foreign, western look of their camping equipment.
Jai had given the order even before the shout of alarm went up from the camp, his own force falling upon the enemy like the wrath of the war gods. A hundred men bore down on twelve, the aggressors already in the saddle and drawing weapons as they thundered down the grassy slope into the gathering, the startled campers rising urgently to their feet and searching for their weapons.
Jai had, of course, joined in. He was no administrative strategist, for all his position with the general. He was a swordsman – a killer trained in the empire’s greatest academy. His sword escaped the scabbard with a threatening hiss.
The forms were different for mounted combat, of course, and he was less familiar and practised with them than he was with infantry fighting, yet still probably more so than most, given his years as a scout and all that time in the saddle.
His chosen target had to be an officer, judging by what he saw as he descended the slope at speed with his men. There was a certain stance that identified an officer in a combat situation. The others looked or called to him, and he was the first man armed and directing the others. One of Jai’s riders was making for the same target but, as he saw his commander heading straight for the officer, he turned and chose a new victim.
It was slaughter. At odds of perhaps eight to one, with the stronger party armed, mounted, prepared and confident, the result was a foregone conclusion, but Jai had to hand it to the enemy – they did not simply back down. Every man attempted to fight. No quarter was given, but none was asked for either.
The officer held one of those straight, waisted blades of which the westerners were so fond, gripped in both hands and pulled back for a strike. It was no genius move, but then a man facing cavalry was always left with few options. The sword came back for a sweep at elbow height, the perfect position for hacking into a mount’s legs and unhorsing a cavalryman. He would then duck as he swung, hoping to avoid the counterstrike from the man in the saddle of the doomed beast.
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