Kiva was astounded at his own strength. He’d never been strong – not like Quintillian or Titus – but suddenly he seemed a Titan among men, his muscles rippling and straining as he lifted the spear, the thrashing soldier hanging from the end by his neck. There was an awful tearing sound as muscle and sinew in his throat ripped away, and the head came loose flopping to one side. The sudden release of pressure sent Kiva staggering back with his empty crimson spear, while the ruined, dead rebel plummeted from the wall top, his head finally separating completely during the descent.
Kiva stared at the spear in his hands. For a moment he was utterly lost in confusion, unsure whether to exult and launch into the fray anew with his weapons or to run and collapse behind a shelter as he stared in horror at his own hands.
A crash shook him out of it as the man at the end of the shield-wall fell from the roof into the courtyard below. Kiva frowned in confusion, but a moment later half a dozen arrows thudded into the other shields, then a dozen, then more. Men in the second, third and fourth line fell with screams, though the shield-wall, bristling like a hedgepig, continued to keep the enemy back from the roof.
‘We cannot hold!’ yelled a captain a heartbeat before an arrow took him in the eye, spun him around and to the floor, shrieking his brief way into the afterlife.
Kiva rose from where he now realized he was crouched in shock. This was it. The end.
‘Sire!’ a prefect shouted. He was pointing at the wall.
Kiva simply shook his head. During the last preparations to hold this roof, a rope had been slung from the parapet down to the palace harbour, some 150 feet below. It would be the last chance of escape, and he knew that they meant it for him. The last emperor, fleeing for his miserable life down a slimy rope to ignominy.
No. He wouldn’t do it. He had determined he would stand here and he would fall here, and that was damn well what he would do. No one had the right to make him live on in a world he would despise.
He cast aside the spear and drew his sword again.
‘Sire!’ bellowed the prefect urgently.
‘No! I shall not run!’
‘No, sire… look!’
The emperor turned in confusion. The officer was not at the harbour wall. He was at the far wall. Below there was nothing but a seething mass of the enemy. He rose, weary, his legs still shaky from the fight, and began to cross the rooftop slowly, arrows clicking off the stones around him as he walked, heedless of the danger.
The prefect was pointing. Kiva squinted.
The light was failing, the sun now little more than a golden dome over the horizon.
The shapes were initially hard to make out. He felt a tiny flutter in his heart.
Ships. The Khan had no ships. Aldegund’s ships were docked uselessly on the far side of the city, maintaining his supplies. These ships had to be…
He lost count. His questing finger found dozens, then scores, then hundreds. Were there thousands? And now as his eyes adjusted properly, he realized the sea was covered with vessels. Countless ships – some great imperial galleys of five oar-banks, others faster coastal skippers with single rows. And among them, mixed and not separate, the black sails of the Pelasian fleet. Ashar’s ships.
Kiva felt a slow smile cross his face.
It remained even as the arrow thudded into his back, the head bursting from his chest in a shower of broken chain links, gleaming a wet pink.
He frowned then for a moment. Why was there no pain? Perhaps the joy of the ships made him impervious?
He turned, feeling an odd tearing in his chest from the shaft as he did so, tottering back across the roof. Men were shouting now. Everyone. The officers were shouting in joy. The soldiers shouting in relief. The enemy were shouting in panic, for suddenly the besieging force had become the besieged, trapped in a ruined city even as the first ships began to hit the beaches to the south of Velutio and disgorge their armies.
Panic among the enemy. Joy among the imperial survivors.
Already the fight at the wall was breaking up as the enemy began to pull back in fear.
Apart from one man. Standing on the wall not far away, Kiva recognized the towering bulk of Ganbaatar, lowering his bow with a look of immense self-satisfaction.
No. Not to him! Kiva was prepared to die, but to fall to that monster!
And now the Khan’s son was rallying a small force to accompany him, and they were doing it, for they were more afraid of the giant warrior than they were of the newly arrived army. There were not many of them in the scheme of things, but given the tiny number of remaining defenders, there was little hope that Ganbaatar could be held back from the roof.
Kiva sighed. Would he live long enough for the Khan’s son to torture him anyway?
He staggered over to the harbour wall, his legs beginning to feel leaden, and peered down. Another ship had docked and the people down there, as yet unaware that they were saved, were pressing to get on board. His gaze rose to the island in the distance.
At least the people were safe. And the imperial line, too.
Goodbye, brother.
Chapter XXX
Of Vengeance and Endings
Quintillian blinked. The world was a blur of gold-orange and indigo fading to deep blue. Ah, yes. Sunset. But it wasn’t sunset yet, surely? Why did his head hurt so much? His vision gradually cleared to reveal the shapes of three men leaning over him. They were speaking but all he could hear was the thumping of his own blood coursing around his body. Blood. There was something about blood. And the city. And Kiva.
A moment later he sat bolt upright, dragging in a hard breath, and the sounds of the world rushed in as though he’d been lying beneath water and had suddenly surfaced. The sound was immediately all-consuming, and Quintillian recognized the din of ongoing battle instantly.
‘Brother!’
‘Shit!’ yelled one of the figures leaning over him, clutching his chest as the prince sat up. The other two were equally surprised.
‘I thought you said he’d be out for hours yet.’ Quintillian focused on the speaker. He was wearing the uniform of a prefect of the guard.
‘I did. He must have the constitution of an ox,’ replied a man in a white robe bearing the winged staves of the medical corps.
‘Where is my brother?’ Quintillian snapped.
‘Fighting on the walls, sir,’ the third man – a guardsman – said in a dark tone.
Quintillian looked about himself. He was lying on a makeshift pallet formed of two exploded hay bales and a military cloak. Other goods stood around in barrels and bales and crates and jars, and he could see a huge crowd of people surging around a ship on a dock. Widening his scan, he found the high walls of the palace and the archway of the long staircase to the grounds above.
‘The harbour?’
‘Sir,’ acknowledged the guardsman. ‘The emperor gave my commander specific instructions that you were to be ferried on the next ship to Isera, but the Prefect of the Port here would not permit it.’
The prefect standing above him saluted with a sly grin. ‘I had a feeling I might pay a costly price if I shipped you out to safety, sir.’
Quintillian tried to nod but his head felt as though a horse had stood on it and he was immediately sick at the movement.
‘Do I know you?’
The prefect nodded. ‘I served under you in the eastern provinces for two years, sir.’
Quintillian squinted. ‘Laetius. Received a silver crown for valour at Lappa, right? You were a captain then.’
‘Time marches on, sir. But when this lad and his friends brought you down here, I took one look and stopped them. The marshal I served at Lappa wouldn’t want to be shuffled out to safety, and I have a feeling the city needs you yet.’
Quintillian sat straight, slowly, gently feeling the back of his head. A smile crossed his face. ‘You are absolutely correct, Laetius. Absolutely right. Congratulations. Have you drawn that sword yet today?’
‘No, sir. Been on harbour du
ty all day.’
‘A waste. Time to change that, then.’ He turned to the concerned guardsman who’d brought him here. ‘You take over here. Laetius, come with me.’
Carefully, he rose, but it seemed that now he’d been copiously sick on the hay pallet and the poor guardsman’s cloak, he felt a lot better. As long as nothing touched the back of his head and he didn’t twist around too suddenly, he’d be fine.
‘There’re too many men down here now,’ he said to the guard. ‘You only need half that number for the civilians left. Laetius, grab every other man and make for the steps.’
The prefect saluted with a satisfied look and hurried off to gather a new small force as Quintillian reached down and collected his weapons, which had been lying by the side of the pallet. A moment later he was scurrying up the steps into the archway. He could see from the absolute darkness ahead that the passage had been secured. Normally a small square of light would be visible at the top. And if the gate had been sealed that meant the enemy were in the palace grounds. That explained why Kiva was fighting on the roof. In theory, the harbour was secure from the palace with that door shut. And in theory, the roof was inaccessible from this position. But Quintillian had spent much of his youth exploring this great complex with his brother and Titus, the three of them fascinated by the ancient palace buildings.
Several of the torches that lit the staircase had burned out. With the sealing of the door the stairs would no longer be used and no one would consider replacing them. Quintillian hopped lightly up the steep, slightly damp steps seeking the marker, the whole place smelling of briny mould. It took three trips up and down the middle section of stairs to find the step with the broken corner. From there he counted four more steps up and crossed to the left wall. Behind him, he could hear the prefect and his new small force moving into the stairwell, and the light from below was partially blotted out. Good man. He was quick as well as bright.
The prince’s questing fingers found the stone with the chipped corner and he pushed two fingers into it, feeling them tear cobwebs and dig deep into muck and dust. It was highly unlikely anyone had done this since the three of them were children.
Putting all his strength into it, he hauled on the brick. With a sound like a mountain tearing, which echoed up and down the stair tunnel, a small section of wall juddered outward. It was a difficult job, but then this door had never been intended to open from this side. It had been designed so that some ancient, nervous emperor might flee his sumptuous apartments in times of peril and reach the harbour and the safety of the imperial island all via hidden routes.
‘Laetius,’ he barked. ‘Help me!’
A moment later, the prefect was next to him, a small group of guardsmen hovering expectantly on the steps behind. Without enquiring, seeing what the prince was about, Laetius leaned in next to him, grabbing what he could of the lip of the wall. ‘Urso,’ he said, ‘give us a hand.’
There was a shuffling of men on the stairs and a figure the size of a small house pushed to the front. Taking a place behind the two officers with difficulty, the big man reached over and grasped the stonework, hauling on it. The combined strength of the three men was enough. The section of wall ground quickly open, revealing a pitch black corridor hung with decades of cobwebs.
‘Torch,’ he shouted, and a guardsman quickly passed one to him. ‘Every fourth man grab a torch and follow me.’
With Laetius and Urso close behind him, the latter having to stoop to enter the tunnel, the small force pushed into the secret passage. Quintillian held the light source forward and used his free hand to sweep aside the worst of the cobwebs as they moved through the narrow confines, the flickering torch half-blinding him and filling the choking, musty space with unpleasant fumes. Five turns and they entered a narrow stairway that climbed steeply, doubling back on itself repeatedly as it rose through the palace. After what seemed an age, and enough steps to give each man shaky legs, they emerged into a narrow flat passage that led to a dead end. This wall was fitted with an ancient loop of half-decayed rope. Without bothering trying this time, Quintillian pushed himself against the side wall and gestured to the rope.
‘Urso?’
The big man squeezed past him, gripped the rope and hauled, and the blocking wall slid easily inward with a stony grating noise. Every man in the corridor blinked at the sudden intrusion of light. The doorway opened onto a wide room with huge, bright, arched windows. The floor was one giant mosaic filled with the figures of gods and emperors, animals and monsters, hunts and battles. Pillars formed a central circle within the room – a focal point where Quintillian had eaten many social meals in his life. As the unit emerged from the passageway, Laetius looked back at the wall, noting how the section that had slid open was perfectly aligned with the geometric designs in the painting.
‘Clever.’
The men fell silent for a moment at the sound of the fight outside, and then the prefect joined the prince as they rushed to the windows. Nomads, barbarians and rebel soldiers flooded the grounds below and were emerging from the roof of the palace in the next building.
‘Looks like we’re just in time to lose the fight,’ Quintillian noted sourly.
‘We can still buy time for another ship or two, sir,’ the prefect said, and the prince nodded at the staunch tone of the man’s voice.
‘Come on, then.’
Without delay, Quintillian led the small force through the imperial apartments. A few of them probably knew some of the building from guard duty, but few if any would know the whole palace as well as the prince. Passing through a marble-floored lobby, he led them to the narrow, rarely-used roof access. The door at the top of the staircase led out onto the top of the palace, very likely where the last fight was now going on. Some enterprising defender had locked it and removed the key. Damn it, but that had been part of Quintillian’s own defensive plan.
‘Urso? Care to earn yourself a decoration?’
The big guardsman grinned and moved forward as the two officers stepped aside. Grasping the heavy handle of the door, he wrenched. There was a cracking noise from somewhere within the wall. A second tug and a third brought the same noise, and the fourth jerked the door inward, along with two large pieces of shattered brick around the lock. Quintillian smiled at the fact that the entire mechanism was still intact and attached to the door. Urso had simply broken the wall to free it.
The guardsman stepped back deferentially and the prince, with the prefect at his shoulder, emerged onto the rooftop in the last golden light of the day. It so happened that the exit from the stairway faced south and the view he was immediately greeted with was of the next block where the rebels were massed, as well as the palace walls behind it and, in the distance, the sea.
Quintillian’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t help but see the fleet. A thousand vessels of varying sizes, both black and brightly-painted, filled the wide expanse of the sea, forming myriad small dark blots among the golden reflection of the sun on the waves. The army had come, as well as Ashar’s Pelasians.
And the enemy had seen them, too. Now that his gaze slid to the next building once again, he could see that the flow of men was going two ways. The majority were trying to leave the wall tops, fleeing in an effort to escape the palace before they found themselves cut off there, besieged by the imperial army and their Pelasian allies. A smaller number of men were still trying to get to the walls, but many of these were turning at the news from above.
They were going to win! At the very last moment, at the dying breath of the empire, they would be saved.
‘Sir.’ He felt Laetius’s hand on his shoulder and turned.
His heart jumped into his throat and froze at the sight of Kiva staggering across the roof, an arrow jutting from his chest.
‘No!’
A moment later he was running. The emperor fell against the parapet above the harbour and slid to the ground. An officer was rushing over towards him. Quintillian was vaguely aware of the prefect an
d the small unit behind him, but his eyes only slid from Kiva at a familiar voice calling a familiar word.
‘Ba’atu!’
Something changed in that moment. His heart was still in his throat at what had happened, but suddenly what had threatened to become soul-crushing sadness found a new outlet. That voice galvanized it into hatred. Without looking round at Ganbaatar, knowing it was his arrow that stood proud of Kiva’s chest, Quintillian walked across to his brother. Kiva’s eyes were closed, but his wounded chest still rose and fell. The prince had seen more than one such chest wound in his time, and there was a possibility – not a probability, but a possibility – that the wound was not fatal.
‘Watch him,’ he said to the officer, then turned to Laetius, who stood nearby, respectfully silent, his men with him.
‘The Khan’s son,’ he said simply, and the prefect nodded.
Already Ganbaatar and his small force of howling nomads had all-but broken the line of defenders at the wall’s end. The brute had no renegade soldiers with him, Quintillian noted, nor any northerners of Aldegund’s force. They would all be doing their level best to get away. If they could be far from Velutio before the relief force retook the whole place, they might never be known as rebels. Many would escape punishment. The nomads had no such luxury.
‘Ba’atu! I will pluck out your bones and use them to skin the corpse of your brother!’ howled the Khan’s son.
‘You’ve lost, Ganbaatar,’ Quintillian shouted as he closed on the fight at a steady walk, sizing things up as he went. ‘You’ll never have the city now.’
‘I don’t want your city, Ba’atu. I never did. My father wanted your city. He has lived with a hole in his soul all his life and sought to fill it with your empire. But I am a clan rider, and I do not want to rule an empire. I want the wind in my hair and a horse beneath me. I want women bent to my will and the gold of my enemies in my bags. And I want your skulls for my drinking cups.’
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 37