by David Hair
The camp was ghastly, a never-ending parade of the dead and the maimed, rent and shredded by wild beasts that had once been obedient constructs. Some were now padding about the camp as if wanting to resume their lives of servitude, but most of those still alive – the surviving legionaries had managed to slay a great many – were out in the desert now, and likely not coming back.
‘We think around a third of Korion’s men got away, but not many magi, sir,’ said Tribune Storn, Ramon Sensini’s senior logisticalus, who was walking with him. ‘Most of the survivors have fled along the northern road, but they’ve taken no supplies. We’ve managed to salvage enough food here to get us to Pontus, maybe even Verelon.’
‘Incredible. I’d been wondering how we’d manage the supply situation.’
‘Kore provides,’ Storn said piously. ‘Will they send more men to stop us, sir?’
‘Perhaps. But the men who died here were the cream of the First Army. The rest must still be in the Zhassi Valley, facing Sultan Salim – so I don’t know who they’d send.’ Seth glanced at Storn. ‘You’ve still got the gold, haven’t you, Tribune?’
Storn ducked his head, then said reluctantly, ‘Yessir.’
‘Hmm. Look after it, Storn. A lot of men have died for that coin, and many more will if we mishandle it.’ Storn saluted and Seth looked away, staring at the great bulk of the construct-drakken. ‘I wonder if there were ever real drakken?’
‘Sometimes folk dig up old bones in the wilds,’ Storn replied. ‘The Rimoni caravans show ’em off, for a price. Drakken bones, they say. But who knows?’
There were splintered shafts of timber protruding from beneath the monstrous carcase. Seth peered at them curiously. ‘What did it land on?’
‘We think it’s a wagon. But the damn thing’s too big to move, so we’re not sure.’
‘Then burn the carcase where it lies, Storn. I can’t imagine it’s good meat.’ He saluted and started to walk on, then turned. ‘Has there been any word of what befell my fa— er, General Korion?’
‘No sir. Not a thing.’
Seth had felt his father’s last few seconds; he’d been in utter agony, and his mind had bled his pain into the heavens, for those listening. There had been no remorse, no peace, just self-centred despair, the last roar of a dying predator, cut short abruptly.
In that moment, a weight had lifted from Seth’s shoulders. It felt as if he could straighten his back for the first time in his life. He felt unfettered. Free.
An old ballad popped into his head and the melody formed in his mouth. He found himself singing as he walked away from the broken beast.
38
Kinship
The Duties of the Exalted
One of the key questions concerning the magi is their true role in society: are they, as the Rondian Empire posits, the natural leaders, divinely ordained and entitled to special privilege? Or should they be the nation’s first servants, using their gifts for the betterment of those less fortunate?
And is the answer Pallas gives us the one we’re prepared to accept?
LADY ODESSA D’ARK, ORDO COSTRUO, HEBUSALIM, 920
Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Thani (Aprafor) and Jumada (Maicin) 930
22nd and 23rd months of the Moontide
Before the magi and their systematic approach to the gnosis, the folklore of Lantris and Rimoni had been filled with ‘magicians’ – usually demigods of the Lantric pantheon – who could do the miraculous, the inexplicable. Their tales were replete with confounding subterfuges and trickery, like turning enemy soldiers into allies with a sweep of the cloak. Gurvon Gyle felt as if he were trapped in such a tale.
Damn you, Elena.
Either Gabrien Gorgio-Sintro had betrayed him, or another faction had triumphed, then marched south under false banners. No other explanation made sense. But Gurvon knew who to blame ultimately: himself.
I got too greedy. Chisel that on my tomb.
The sun was lowering, right in the line of his bowsprit, as he streaked towards Brochena in the aftermath of Jekuar. The winds were contrary, but that would slow anyone chasing him as well. There was no obvious sign of pursuit, but an illusion could hide a pursuer and at this range he’d not know.
I must reach Brochena before the news, otherwise the Jhafi will storm the palace and I’ll end up with nothing.
He arrived at dusk, setting down in the inner courtyard where one of Endus Rykjard’s messenger-pilots was working on her own skiff. His was almost drained; it wouldn’t be ready to move again for hours. He waved the girl over as he disembarked. She was new and naïve, not someone who could be subverted in moments, and therefore of no use to him. He needed to empty the vaults and get out. Persuading her to help him in the time he had wasn’t practical. Which meant . . .
She came to greet him, faint surprise on her face. ‘Lord Gyle? I thought—’
‘Hush, not here,’ he told her. ‘Come, there is an urgent situation unfolding. I need you to take a message to the Krak for me.’ He ushered her towards a side room, away from the watching guardsmen, laying a friendly hand on her shoulders and flirting just a little with his eyes. ‘Endus speaks highly of you,’ he said, ‘so I know I can trust you. Is your skiff fully powered up?’
‘Of course. I—’ She quivered, and her eyes flew wide as she looked down and saw the hilt of his knife jutting from her chest, just above her left breast. He grabbed her around the waist and put his other hand over her mouth, stifling her cries while his mind blocked her mental calls for help. She went gently, sagging against him as if grateful for his care, closing her eyes as if going to sleep.
Stupid bint . . .
He propped her up in one corner, pulled out the dagger and wiped it clean, then hurried up the stairs into the keep. The few servants he saw ducked from his path, which suited him fine. There was a watchful near-silence to the palace with all the decision-makers and most of the soldiers away, leaving a strange void here at the heart of power. He reached the royal suite unchallenged and co-opted the guards as labourers. He had his gold in eight chests hidden behind the walls in the old spy-tunnels. They broke them down, draped them in wall-hangings and carried them down to the girl’s skiff below. Once they were done he sent them on their way with a generous tip each, none the wiser.
Within the hour he was gone, long before the news of Jekuar had every bell ringing, and every man, woman and child pouring into the streets.
Hebusalim, Dhassa, on the continent of Antiopia
Jumada (Maicin) 930
23rd month of the Moontide
Alaron Mercer strolled through the broken halls of the Ordo Costruo, wondering what it would take to restore the building. It had been burned out during riots in the wake of Antonin Meiros’ murder, according to a grizzled grey-haired Dhassan who was squatting in a cellar below with a young wife and three half-clothed children.
The ruin was positioned atop a rise that gave views over all of Hebusalim. The city was dominated by the Bekira-Dome, the largest Dom-al’Ahm in Ahmedhassa, which had once been sheathed in gold – until the retreating Crusaders had scraped off the gilt as they fled. Huge city walls encompassed the inner city – this was the place where his parents had joined the assault on the city in the First Crusade, where his mother had been so badly burned that she never fully healed, and his father had once shared water with a Lakh trader named Ispal Ankesharan – Ramita’s father. He was still getting his head around that coincidence. Ramita called it Fate.
The city was throbbing with movement in some parts, eerily deserted in others. Where there was life, it had a brittle feverishness to it, as if the normal mores of society had been put aside through the suffering and strangeness of war. Rondian traders, tolerated for the coin and supplies they brought, were pulling out now, cutting their losses and heading towards the Bridge. The Rondian army was in disarray, with outlying garrisons abandoning their posts and pouring northwards, strung out along the roads in little order.
&n
bsp; Alaron and his Merozain brothers had flown here directly from the confrontation with Malevorn, intending only to see if there was anything salvageable in the Domus Costruo before returning to Mandira Khojana and collecting Dasra. They still had to agree how best to return the Hadishah prisoners to the Keshi, but he wasn’t in any hurry to release them, especially Alyssa Dulayne, crippled or not.
A mental touch brought him to attention, and Yash spoke into his mind.
Alaron couldn’t take the same pleasure in the news. Though most of the Crusaders might have acted like a gang of thieves, he knew that the legions from Noros were mostly just farmers and labourers, either unwillingly conscripted or seeking their fortunes when home offered little; most of the others legions were probably the same. he sent back.
An hour later he met Yash outside the stockade walls of a legion camp on the edge of the city, a dismal place full of hollow-eyed, exhausted men trudging gloomily past, or collapsed against the walls. The gates were wide open, the guards taking little notice of who came and went, and the lack of magi or even senior officers was striking. There were queues outside the cooking tents, and shorter ones to a row of semi-permanent huts housing a bedraggled line of Dhassan women with jaded bodies and sour faces, too tired even to call out to passers-by.
‘Hey! Who’re you?’ a guard barked at Alaron, the first to even notice he existed. ‘Stop there!’
Alaron was dressed in a cloak over his monk garb, but he was clearly Yurosian. He probably presented quite a puzzle to the guard. He conjured gnosis-light in his periapt and the guard’s eyes bulged. ‘Magister! I’m sorry—’
‘Who’s in command here?’ Alaron asked. ‘May I see him?’
The guard looked blank and sent him to a pilus, a cohort leader, who found a lost-looking tribune, who pointed him towards a large tent that was almost empty, apart from a pile of broken wooden cases filled with all manner of Dhassan and Keshi carpets, cushions, and trinkets.
‘I say!’ a Brevian man exclaimed from among the bunks, ‘who’re you?’
‘Alaron, Founder of the Merozain Brotherhood. And you?’
‘Kendric Vitalis of Brevia IV.’ He pulled a puzzled face. ‘The Mero-what?’
Alaron shook Vitalis’ sweaty hand and asked, ‘Are you in charge?’
‘Me? Kore’s Blood, no! I don’t think anyone is – I’m just trying to get some sleep before I go on. It’s been a nightmare since Bassaz.’
‘What happened in Bassaz?’
‘You don’t know? Hel’s Belles, where have you been? It was a disaster! Worse than Shaliyah!’ Vitalis poured Alaron a mug of wine and motioned him to a chair before giving him a vivid account of construct-beasts going mad and destroying the army. ‘The worst is it was our own people who did it: deserter scum, men who ran at Shaliyah. Old Kaltus himself brought us south, all of us either riding or flying so we could move fast. Now Kaltus is missing and people are saying he’s dead. And the men coming in from the Zhassi say the First Army has surrendered.’
Alaron blinked. ‘Surrendered?’
‘We’re screwed, I tell you – I’m flying straight home! The only organised Rondian force left in the East are these damned deserters.’ Vitalis leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘They say Korion’s disowned bastard leads them!’
Kaltus Korion had dozens of bastards, but to be disowned implied prior legitimacy. ‘Who’s this Korion bastard?’ Alaron asked.
‘Seth Fetallink.’ Vitalis, clearly delighted to have an audience, explained. ‘Fetallink had been presumed dead at Shaliyah; then the Old Man disowned him after he’d re-emerged as commander of a band of deserters. We went south to put them in irons! Then, well . . . chaos! They must have done something to our construct-beasts to make them turn on us. I barely got out, I swear.’
‘Seth Korion commanded the deserters?’ Alaron asked. Seth Korion? His memories of a timid young man who was permanently out of his depth didn’t align with any of this . . . except maybe the deserting part.
‘Seth Fetallink,’ Vitalis corrected him. ‘Never met him, but they say he’s a dirty cocksucker who sold his arse to buy his men’s passage through enemy lines.’ He dropped his voice. ‘There was something going on, something involving Pallas, because the camp was crawling with Treasury legates and Inquisitor spies.’
‘Where are these deserters now?’
Vitalis glanced nervously to the south. ‘They’re coming up the high road behind us, making for the Bridge. If Fetallink can destroy our army, what else can he do? I’ve heard he’s going to march all the way to Pallas and make himself emperor.’
Alaron stifled a snort . . . But then, I was thrown out of the Arcanum as a failure, and here I am as an Ascendant with the Scytale of Corineus in my bag. What’s Seth been through? ‘His army is just a few days away, you say?’
‘Maybe only a day,’ Vitalis insisted. ‘I tell you, I’m gone, first light!’
‘Then who’s going to get the men here home?’
‘Not my problem. The damned garrison commander fled last week. It’s every man for himself! Unless you’re going to join Seth Fetallink and march on Pallas? Up to you: I don’t give a shit! This city is going to go to the dogs, I tell you.’
Kendric Vitalis clearly wasn’t going to be any further help; all he cared about was filling his skiff with plunder and flying away. I hope his skiff runs out of gnosis-energy over the sea, Alaron thought. But he thanked the mage and left, found Yash outside and went looking for Ramita.
He found her with Corinea in their small camp. The skiffs were almost fully primed and Ramita was anxious to return to Lokistan and Dasra.
Alaron took up a relay-stave. ‘I’ve just found out something. There’s a Rondian army marching up from the south, and I know the commander: someone from my college.’
‘A friend?’
‘Not really. Actually, he was only marginally less despicable than Malevorn Andevarion – but he’s not the same sort of person. I think I can talk to him.’
*
Ramon Sensini was riding alongside his cohort, cradling Julietta, while the rankers grinned at the sight of ‘Bastidinio’ bouncing her on his knee.
When the domes of Hebusalim came into sight, he gave the baby to one of the many Khotri wet-nurses, ignored a string of speculative comments from the cohort as to why he didn’t feed the child himself and nudged Lu into the more rarefied air around Seth Korion, who’d decided his legions would enter the environs of the Holy City looking as military as possible. So while correct uniforms were by now a rarity, their armour had been polished and the men were marching in more or less unison.
‘You know this could be a trap?’ he murmured to Seth.
The young general started. ‘Really?’ Then he laughed nervously. ‘No, no, there are no ambushes here.’ He threw an amused look at Ramon. ‘Not really.’
For a couple of days now, Seth had been behaving like he was in the know on some giant joke. It was irritating, but Ramon refused to admit he didn’t know what was going on. None of the other magi had let on either, leaving him with no choice but to grit his teeth and carry on.
They could afford to rest here for no more than a week if they were to cross the Bridge with enough time to beat the rising waves. But the men badly needed that down-time; they’d been on the march almost continuously for two months – and there were things to do here, lots of things. He needed to deal with the gold before they got to the Bridge. He needed to keep Tomasi Fuldo and Silvio Anturo onside. They had to resupply and re-equip, not to mention ensuring no nasty su
rprises awaited them in Pontus. So far the Rondian Empire had been utterly silent about the destruction of the cream of the Northern Army; he doubted that would last.
The Rondian staging camp on the south side, where they’d camped almost two years ago, was a burnt-out wilderness, still smouldering. The only sounds were the distant yapping of wild dogs, the cawing of the crows and the crash of timbers as the city gates slammed in their faces.
‘I guess all the talk about Hebb hospitality was just that,’ Jelaska sighed.
Seth turned to an aide. ‘Have the men make camp here. I want to have a look around.’ He glanced at Ramon. ‘Come on, Sensini.’
This was far enough outside the normal protocol – commanders never wandered off on their own – that Ramon was immediately wary. But Seth was so relaxed that he decided that whatever was going on probably wasn’t dangerous, so he affected an air of normality as they wandered into a ruined legion camp which reeked of piss and ash. The local Dhassans had clearly waited until it was empty, then destroyed anything they couldn’t salvage.
Seth turned to him, expectation all over his face. ‘So, Sensini . . . Ramon . . . do you know why we’re here? I keep thinking you’ve guessed—’
‘Honestly, I have no idea.’
‘Really?’ Seth laughed aloud. ‘Wonderful! Well, here we are, you and I: alumni of Turm Zauberin Arcanum, yet together on another continent entirely! Everything is so alien, yet some things remain familiar—’
‘Si, si, I get it: skip the speech!’
Seth laughed again. ‘Very well.’ He raised his arms as if making a dramatic conjuring, and shouted, ‘Khazza!’
Khazza? A meaningless phrase used by stage performers portraying magi? Ramon poked his tongue into his cheek and wondered if he’d lost track and this was some kind of belated birthday surprise. Then on all sides gnosis-light shimmered and a dozen grey-robed young men appeared as if from nowhere. They looked like some monastic order, but they also looked like they’d faced death, and dealt it out too.