by Tom Lloyd
He spoke up so all the men nearby could hear, hoping conviction would swell into courage. ‘This whole city may have turned against the Gods, but while there are still temples here, our oath to defend them binds us.’
Isak took the lead as they ran back through the corridors of the palace. The handful of soldiers they met were dispatched without breaking stride. The sounds of destruction echoed in their wake: men dying, the distant crashes of the fire Vesna had set raging out of control. Isak didn’t care how much noise they made now.
When they reached the postern gate there were no guards waiting, and when they checked, they could see the remaining guards on the wall were leaving their posts and fleeing for the far side of the palace. They could hear the roar of flames echoing through the passageways they had run through. Outside, orange shards were leaping higher and higher into the night sky.
Without further delay, Isak charged through the open gate and down the stepped gardens until he was once again in the lee of the building where he’d left Major Jachen and the ranger, Jeil.
The troops he’d left behind were already mounted and formed up, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Only Jachen, Jeil and Suzerain Saroc were on foot, and as soon as Isak rounded the corner they ran forward, leading their horses.
‘My Lord, we have to hurry,’ Saroc said, his voice muffled by a black-iron helm with a red chalice painted on the left cheek. The plate armour accentuated his short stature; he would have appeared comical had it not been for the massive axe resting easily in the crook of his arm.
‘What’s happened?’ Isak asked, sheathing his sword and swinging up into Toramin’s saddle. His huge charger danced on the spot, the emerald dragons on its flanks rippling as he did so.
‘Jeil went to check on the decoy troops. The mobs have found them. We need to get you away to safety before they move further this way.’
Isak didn’t move. ‘And what about the decoy troops?’
Jachen stepped forward. ‘They’re surrounded, my Lord. There’s nothing we can do for them.’
‘And that’s it?’ Isak asked in astonishment. ‘You’re happy to leave them to it?’
‘There is nothing we can do, my Lord,’ Jachen repeated. ‘There are thousands attacking them. We’re not enough to help - and the sight of you will drive them into a greater frenzy.’
‘So you suggest we abandon them? Leave men you’ve fought alongside to be torn apart by a mob?’ Isak roared. ‘Or is it simply that you’re as much a coward as I’ve been told?’
‘My Lord,’ exclaimed Suzerain Saroc, ‘it is not a question of cowardice; Major Jachen has a duty to the tribe, and that must come first.’ ‘Come before the lives of five hundred men and the most loyal suzerain in the tribe?’ Isak turned to Count Vesna, but he remained silent. ‘Vesna, have you got nothing to say about this?’
‘My Lord . . .’ His voice tailed off.
His face-plate was up, and Isak could see the helplessness on his face. At last he realised what the count had been talking about in Tor Milist: good men were dying when they shouldn’t have had to. To Isak’s surprise, Count Vesna said nothing more. ‘You can’t agree with them,’ Isak gasped, almost pleading. He felt a clammy horror sweeping over him. He’d had a change of heart in Tor Milist; was he now going to leave these men to die, without even a word?
‘I—Lord Isak, duty must come first,’ Vesna said eventually.
‘Duty? Will even you not follow my orders?’ Isak growled, his shock turning now to anger.
The other suzerains, Nelbove and Fordan, had dismounted and come to add their voices to the argument, but Isak’s obvious fury kept them silent.
‘Well? What about it, my loyal subjects? Are you going to follow me, or does one of you want to be the first to try to force me to run?’ Isak’s voice was tight with fury. Eolis remained in its scabbard, but that meant little; they all knew he could draw it in the blink of an eye.
‘My Lord,’ said Major Jachen, moving a half-step forward.
Isak whirled to meet the man and saw naked fear in Jachen’s eyes, yet the former mercenary refused to buckle. A spark of defiance remained and he forced himself to stand tall and match Isak’s relentless gaze. ‘My Lord, they are loyal to death. They will follow you.’
‘Well, what are we waiting for then?’ Isak snapped.
‘You’ll have to cut me down first, my Lord.’
Isak faltered, surprise overriding anger momentarily. ‘What?’
‘They’ll follow you to death if you ask them to—’
‘And you won’t?’ Isak cut in angrily. ‘Last time I looked, you were also under my command.’
‘Do you remember the first time we met?’ Jachen said with fatalistic calm. ‘You asked me if I’d have the guts to face you down if I thought you were wrong.’
Isak thought for a moment. ‘So this is you clouting me round the head, is it? You’ve picked a bloody stupid time to grow a spine, Major Ansayl.’
Jachen ignored the jibe. ‘I am in command of your personal guard. My first duty is to the tribe - and that is to keep you safe. You said it yourself: you’re a white-eye, and you don’t always make the best decisions, and you need a commander who’ll tell you when you’re plain wrong.’
Jachen could see the men behind Isak standing open-mouthed, but he didn’t dare change tack now. The massive white-eye was as surprised as any of them, but at least it had deflected Lord Isak’s anger for a moment, and made him think. Oh Gods, am I putting my life on a white-eye thinking rationally? he thought, surprised at how calm he felt.
‘You think it’s wrong to think our comrades worth saving?’
‘Right now, yes,’ Jachen said firmly, sensing his lord was wavering. ‘The mobs number in their thousands, many thousands. Whether those men are torn apart or not, my duty is to keep you safe. Their loss would be a tragedy, something to pray over when the time is appropriate. Your loss would be a catastrophe, for the entire Farlan nation, maybe even the entire Land. The loss of five hundred soldiers means almost nothing to the future of the tribe, while the loss of the Lord of the Farlan is a disaster that puts us all in danger. There is no Krann to replace you. We would be adrift and at each other’s throats before winter.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Isak said, more reasonable now. ‘But what use is a lord who runs from danger and leaves his men to die?’
‘One that knows his own value to the tribe,’ Jachen said softly. ‘Most of those men are going to die, and only the Gods could change that, but as soon as the rabid folk of Scree see you, they’ll want your blood first. You’re a white-eye lord, and Chosen of Gods they have come suddenly to hate. For all your strength, my Lord, you cannot kill them all.’
Isak stared at the major, mouth half-open to retort, but unable to find anything to say. He couldn’t fault anything Jachen had said . . . but to so lightly condemn a division of men to death? What did that make him?
Is this what it is to be lord? To carelessly choose who lives and who dies? He felt sick at the thought.
‘It is,’ rang out a powerful voice in his head. Isak jumped at the unexpected contribution from Aryn Bwr. ‘To be mortal is to be afraid of what comes after; to be afraid of consequences. They make kings as they worship Gods, because they are too weak to make choices themselves. Offer them a shining figure they can pretend is better than they are and they will embrace you as their saviour.’
Isak kept silent, trying to come to terms with what he had to do. An image of Lord Bahl appeared in his mind, the blunt lines of his face and his usual grim, inscrutable expression: a face to trust, a man to rely upon, no matter what. And inside he was wracked with loss and guilt, but as long as his people didn’t know that, they would have stormed the gates of the Dark Place at his side.
Slowly, Isak nodded; Lord Bahl would have made this decision. It would have pained him, and their deaths would have weighed on his soul, but only his closest friends would have ever seen that pain. The needs of the tribe would always come f
irst. Isak hated himself for it, but he had to do the right thing.
‘Fine,’ he said in a muted voice. ‘We make for the rest of the army.’ He didn’t look at anyone.
From the streets south of the Red Palace came the clamour of voices, and the sound of hundreds of feet thumping on the cobbled ground. Without delay Isak remounted, gesturing to everyone to do likewise.
‘And we go quickly,’ he said in a louder voice as he drew his sword.
‘Is there anything else I can get for you, my Lady?’ the soldier asked, hovering in the guardroom doorway.
Tila looked up, her face blank for a moment until she returned to the present. ‘No, thank you,’ she said eventually.
‘Are you sure?’ The guard’s face was half concealed by shadow, but he looked concerned. ‘Lady Tila, when did you last eat?’
‘A while ago,’ she said, not really sure when that had been.
‘Shall I fetch you something? You’re not looking your best.’
Tila sighed, her fingers twisting the citrine ring on her left hand. ‘I’m not hungry, and I’m not ill, I’m just worried.’
He tried to look relieved, but Tila couldn’t tell if it was genuine. ‘Lady Tila, I don’t care how mad the people of Scree are, they couldn’t hurt Lord Isak. All he needs to fear are the Gods themselves!’
‘I’m afraid you are wrong, Cavalryman,’ Tila said wearily. ‘Lord Isak is stronger and faster than any man, but he is flesh and blood. After the battle in Narkang I bound his wounds. He has as much to fear from battle as you or I. Is there any news from the city at all? Do we not have scouts or mages reporting back?’
‘Of course,’ he said, wondering how much he should say. ‘There’s no word of Lord Isak. I heard one of the mages tell General Lahk that some of the Knights of the Temples were on the move. There’s talk they’re going to ambush Lord Isak, but the general says he was expecting them to move.’
‘General Lahk is correct,’ Tila said firmly. ‘The Devoted will not harm Lord Isak -they will head straight for Six Temples and protect it against the mobs, nothing more.’
The soldier nodded and Tila thought she saw a fleeting glimpse of surprise on his face, though it was obvious enough to anyone who knew anything of the Devoted.
Behind her the narrow guardroom window was open to the city. Bars made it secure against intruders but they did nothing against the ebb and flow of sounds from outside, voices, the clatter of hooves, and behind them, further away, noises she couldn’t identify. The newly returned wind rustled through, bringing no relief from the sticky heat within.
The soldier bobbed his head, trying to catch Tila’s attention as she stared pensively at nothing. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can get you?’ he repeated doggedly.
Tila nodded. ‘I’m sure. I left my books in Tirah and that’s all I want right now.’
‘Your books?’
‘Oh, everything: history and diplomacy, journals, treatises on prophecy -in times such as these, who knows what scrap of information -a past allegiance, a war long-past -might prove crucial to us now. I feel so useless sitting here; surrounded by people moving with a purpose, while I have none. If I had my books, I could at least pretend to be something more than a liability.’ She sighed again.
The soldier shifted his weight, deeply uncomfortable. He was there to bring the lady a pot of tea, not to tell a noblewoman how to make herself useful. He knew men who’d been flogged for expressing opinions on the subject, so he kept his mouth firmly shut. As expected, she didn’t seem to be looking for a contribution from his corner anyway.
‘If you change your mind,’ he ventured after what he thought was an appropriate pause, ‘if you do need anything, just call. I’ll be down the corridor.’
Tila looked up, bleary-eyed. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to keep you. Thank you for the tea; please tell me when Lord Isak returns. ’
The soldier bobbed his head and ducked out of the room, leaving the door ajar.
Tila listened to the half-dozen heavy footsteps that took him to his station at the entrance to the guard tower, then returned to her thoughts, and a creeping fatigue. She tried to count the hours since she’d slept properly and gave up. The heat had reduced a full night’s sleep to restless hours punctuated by snatched moments of rest.
She looked around the guardroom. She’d come in here because there was a pair of massive armchairs in the centre of the room, presumably liberated from some officers’ mess, and each one was easily large enough to contain her small, exhausted frame. Between them was a battered leather-bound chest held shut by mouldering buckles that she was using as a footstool. She curled up again and let her thoughts blur and drift. The clatter outside began to slowly recede into the background.
Tila’s eyelids sank inexorably down as her head filled with the stuffy air of the guardroom that smelled of dust, dried mud and old wood shavings. There was an empty grate beside her, where shadows danced over the cold ashes. She tried to focus on the blackened hearthstone, attempting to pick out the worn, sooty lines of the image cut into it. She expected to see Grepel of the Hearths, Tsatach’s most domesticated Aspect, with her burning tongue hanging out like a dog’s, but Tila’s brow contracted into a frown as she realised the undulating lines bore no relation to Grepel. Her mind tried to frame the shapes around other Aspects of Tsatach, but the effort proved too much as her thoughts floundered like a deer in a tar-pit. A sense of weight built relentlessly, dragging on limbs already weakened by fatigue. Her breath grew shallower. All the while the flame of the oil lamp guttered, flickered and grew ever dimmer.
Unable to resist, Tila submitted and felt herself drift down into the shadowy embrace of sleep. Sliding up the walls of the guardroom, the darkness rose until the feeble light from the oil lamp was nothing more than a distant glimmer, subsumed by creeping fingers of darkness that flowed over her skin, soothing and lulling away the weariness. Enveloped in that comforting touch, Tila skirted the boundaries of sleep for a time, her awareness dulled as she listened only to the sound of her own breath, in and out, in and out . . . until that too was lost to the quiet of the night.
Then there was only the darkness.
A sudden breath surged through her body, forcing her eyelids open a crack and rushing with a tingle from her lungs out to her fingers and toes. Tila stared ahead in surprise at the unfamiliar room smelling of dust and mould, and the oil lamp in front of her faded almost to nothing, down to vapours. The guardroom, the Autumn’s Arch gate. Images and faces returned: the door left ajar, the small cylindrical cup in her hands coming back into focus.
A chair where she sat so snug and warm, another opposite her, facing away from the lamp. The shadows looked longer now, lying thick within the other chair, so it looked almost like a man sat there, the worn, scratched leather supporting a shoulder there, and an arm . . .
What am I doing here? she thought bitterly. Why did I make sure they brought me, when all I could do was to slow them down?
‘Because they are men without families,’ the shadow answered her. ‘You bring order to their lives, and a balance, that reminds them of who they are.’
Is balance what they really need? she found herself thinking, as if the shadow had actually spoken to her. A good soldier is one who can cast off who he is, put aside everything of him except instinct and training.
‘And you remind them of their fears,’ the darkness in the empty chair continued. ‘By your vulnerability you demonstrate what price they might have to pay, you wear the faces of those they might lose. What use are you now to your lord?’
I am his advisor, she told herself. I have taught him about history and prophecy—
The shadowy figure laughed. ‘And yet you cannot even see when it is on the cusp of being fulfilled. You failed to recognise the danger of the last king on Silvernight, you ignored all the signs while you pursued your own desires.’
How was I to know? I couldn’t have known—
‘You failed him when his life was in t
he greatest of dangers and now once more your inadequacies prove a burden.’
A burden? Tila asked herself. What now? What have I done so wrong? She felt tears welling in her eyes as dread stole over her.
‘This task you appointed to yourself, yet cannot fulfil. The role so crucial to the fortunes of your lord given to a foolish slip of a girl with a head full of gossip and some childish notions of scholarly work, playing the minister and guardian of her lord’s person.’
She could not control her deep, juddering sobs now. What have I missed?
‘“Twilight heralded by theatre and flame, the scion and sire kill in the place of death—”’
“Treasure and loss from the darkness, from holy hands to a lady of ashes. A shadow rising from the faithful,” she continued with mounting horror, “his twilight reign to begin amid the slain.” Oh merciful Nartis -his father! His father is missing!
‘And he meets his allies at the Temple of Death,’ the voice in her head finished triumphantly. ‘And thus once more you fail him.’
Swathed in a cloak of night, Aracnan watched the Farlan soldiers below, raising their barricades ever higher as they prepared for assault. Three legions were camped outside the city gate, lines of tents and cooking fires huddled close to the wall. A rampart of earth studded with sharpened stakes had been thrown up in a crescent around them. Pickets lined the rampart and most of the soldiers had been formed into regiments, ready for the general’s command - but still dozens of men were preparing food, irrespective of what violence might be occurring soon.
‘A statement to those of us watching,’ said a voice beside him. He knew better than to turn. Shadows were best seen out of the corner of an eye.
‘I don’t think we need take note of any such statement. Leave that to the cattle out there.’
Their voices were strangely similar; more than once Aracnan had wondered whether there was anything to read into that.