by Col Buchanan
For the first year of the siege, Forias had commanded the defence of the city, and the Khosians had reeled as the walls had fallen one by one. Old Forias hadn’t been entirely inept in his role as Lord Protector: he had ordered the slopes of earth to be piled against the surviving walls to ward off the constant barrages of cannonfire, and at times had even fought on the walls themselves next to the men, risking his neck with the rest of them. But still, he lacked the charisma and bravado that was needed most of all in those dark days of plummeting morale. He simply hadn’t been a warleader who inspired hope in the people. Public protests were made against him. Mass calls for his resignation. Still old Forias, backed by the Michinè council, refused to step down.
When the news came that the Imperials had invaded distant Coros also, in their attempt to open up a second front against the Free Ports, the Michinè had agreed to make a token gesture in the League’s desperate defence of the island. General Creed, still frowned upon for having given the order to open the gates to the refugees, and no doubt by then considered expendable, had been dispatched to lead the small Khosian contingent of chartassa there. While he was gone, and with the siege of Bar-Khos entering its lowest point so far, Lord Protector Forias had withdrawn into his private mansion, claiming illness, and then had killed himself, or died in his sleep, depending on whom you believed.
Defeat had hung in the city air like a fog.
Creed, though, had changed all of that. He had returned from their unexpected victory in Coros within a week of old Forias’s funeral, now hailed as a hero and seen by many as their most likely saviour. The population of the city had taken to the streets to demand he be made the new Lord Protector. In the end, the Michinè had been left with little choice but to concede to them.
And so Creed had set about defying what had seemed, until then, the natural course of the war. He launched daring counter-attacks against the imperial army; developed the network of fighting tunnels beneath the walls to stop them being undermined; roused the hopes of the soldiers and the people by the example he set for them all. Gradually the imperial advance was slowed, and the siege settled into years of resistance that no one had dared believe was even possible.
Now Bahn and the rest of them hoped for another miracle from this man.
‘General!’
They turned just as they were nearing the command tent. Two Khosian cavalry scouts were approaching with a civilian rider in between them, a man with a bandana around his head and a gold ring in his ear. They drew to a halt before Creed with the nostrils of their zels snorting vanishing clouds of steam. ‘A Mannian ambassador, General,’ one of the riders announced. ‘He wishes to speak with you. We’ve searched him for weapons already.’
All three of them studied the civilian who sat slouched in his saddle, something of the brigand about him.
‘Greetings to you, Bearcoat,’ he declared with a rueful grin.
‘Come on now, you have to tell us more than that!’
‘Leave it alone, will you? It’s embarrassing.’
Curl laughed along with the other men and women in the warm space of the medical tent. They were seated around the surgical table with their cards and coins before them, their pallid faces shining in the light of the single lantern that hung from the roof.
Andolson was playing on a jitar at the back of the room, crooning something obscene and ridiculous about the fallen king of Pathia. Kris stood next to a side-table, a collection of bottled wines and leather mugs arranged before her, carefully adding to each of the mugs drops from a medicinal bottle of sanseed. As for the rest of the medicos, they mostly chattered across each other, hands waving drunkenly over the table, parting the thick coils of hazii smoke that filled the tent.
Young Coop stumbled out once more to be sick.
‘A damned waste of good wine!’ Milos hollered after him.
They were a strange bunch, these medicos of Special Operations whom Curl had fallen in with. Many had painted symbols and words onto their black leathers; the Daoist circle of unity, or quotes from all manner of sources, some even Mannian. Their hair was as often long as it was short, their faces scarred, their tempers hot, their moods unpredictable. Long inured to working in the tunnel systems beneath the walls of the Shield, they were a wild and troubled group of individuals, and they’d taken to Curl easily, and she to them.
The woman Kris was making another round of the table with her concoction of drinks. ‘Some more, madame?’
‘Thank you,’ said Curl, and accepted the offered mug and took a welcome sip from it. The wine was strong, but still she could taste the small amount of sanseed within it; liquid dross, essentially, used as a painkiller for the wounded. ‘If I’d known I could get this stuff for free I would have enlisted a whole lot sooner.’
‘That’s why old Jonsol enlisted,’ quipped Milos. ‘Isn’t that right, Jonsol?’
Jonsol was leering at her from across the table. The grey-haired man leered at every female within talking distance of him, though, and Curl’s scowl was a light-hearted one. Jonsol leaned back and howled at the canvas roof like a forlorn dog.
Curl had been fortunate from the outset, for the story of her outburst in the recruitment office had preceded her. The medico corps of the Specials had assumed she was a hot-tempered bitch not to be messed with, and she’d seen no reason to disabuse them of their illusions.
‘I’ll call,’ Jonsol said loudly, and threw in a few coppers. Only he and Curl remained in this hand, and the final card lay face-up on the table between them. A High King.
Curl spread the three cards in her hand face-up on the table. More laughter sounded as they realized she had won once again. Curl acknowledged their praise and curses as she swept the small pile of coins towards her.
‘You’re a fool, Jonsol. You walked right into it all over again.’
‘She might be a pup but she can play, I’ll give her that.’
It was true, she could play a decent game of cards. Though in fact tonight, for the sheer thrill of it, Curl was cheating. Every other time it was her turn to deal, Curl used one of the many shuffling tricks her old lover had once shown her to stack the deck in her favour. She was doing so well at it, in fact, that only one of them seemed to have yet noticed, and that was Kris, who simply watched with a knowing amusement in her eyes.
They all looked up as the tent flap parted and Koolas the war chattēro stepped inside. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he puffed.
Exaggerated groans sounded from around the tent. ‘There must be a hundred games of rash in this camp tonight,’ chirped Milos. ‘And yet always you come to us.’
‘Well now,’ replied Koolas as he found himself a free seat around the table. ‘That’s because you medicos have all the good drugs.’
Jeers and catcalls exploded around him. Kris gave him a bow and began to fix him a drink of wine and sanseed, while Andolson changed to a different song, making up the lyrics as he went along. He crooned about the fat war chattēro who was so in love with battle he rode along just to watch it.
‘Besides,’ Koolas called out, ‘I’m thinking of doing a story on you all. The medicos. The unsung heroes who go out there alone amongst the killing to save who they can, or to steal the jewellery of those who they can’t.’
Amidst the jeers Milos hollered, ‘Unsung fools more like!’
‘Aye, well, if it was truth the copy-houses wanted then I’d write of it. My thanks,’ he added, as Kris brought over a drink.
They were shouting him down when Major Bolt stepped into the tent.
‘Popular tonight,’ muttered Milos as the tent fell silent, and Kris hid the bottle of sanseed behind her back.
‘At ease,’ Bolt told them all. ‘I’m just here to see how you are. See if you need anything.’
‘We’re fine, Major, just fine,’ said Andolson languidly from behind his jitar.
Bolt surveyed each of them in turn. His eyes lingered on Kris for a moment, her hands behind her back. ‘Carry on, then,’ he said.
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As he turned to leave he gave Curl a sidelong glance and a tug of his head.
She ignored the comments around her and followed him out through the flap.
Outside in the fresh air, Curl experienced a strange moment of transition. Suddenly she stood once more in a camp of war, and the memory of what they were doing, and what still faced them, came slowly back to her. Out there somewhere was the imperial army.
She shivered, the goosebumps rising on her flesh, and held an arm across her chest.
‘How are you?’ Bolt asked. ‘You seem to be fitting in well enough.’
‘They’re good people,’ she replied, looking up at him only briefly. She was always nervous in the company of this man, for she could never tell what he was thinking.
‘Here,’ he said, and handed her something. She looked down and saw a wrap of graf leaves in his outstretched hand.
‘I noticed the markings,’ he said, looking at her nostrils, which were less reddened now that she had left the city, and her supply of dross had run out. ‘It’s just a little muscado. It’ll help take the edge off a little.’
‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Really.’
‘Take it,’ he said, and she so she did, and slipped the folded leaves into a pocket. ‘You’ll be glad of it once we see some action, and we start running low on those bottles of sanseed.’
She looked up into his grey eyes. ‘Thank you.’
Bolt stared hard at her.
‘I’d better get back inside,’ she told him.
After a moment he nodded, his expression still blank. Without a word he turned and strode away.
They gathered in the warmth of the command tent, the space heated by the black iron stove that squatted in one corner, its chimney running up through the roof. A plain, square table stood in the middle of the tent, covered with maps and notes for the march. Bahn swept them up quickly to put them out of sight. Creed took the weight off his feet by sitting back in his wicker chair. Halahan sat on the edge of the table, his leg-brace squeaking. The Nathalese colonel was clearly fighting down his anger.
After a few moments the Mannian ambassador was allowed to enter. The guards had stripped him of his clothing before searching his cavities. The man hadn’t shaven in some days, and he covered his nakedness with a borrowed red cloak wrapped about him, so that his appearance was that of some ragged beggar. It was an illusion only. The man held himself tall, and seemed hardly concerned that he stood in the heart of his enemy’s encampment.
‘Our spies were correct, it seems,’ he said in an accent clearly Q’osian. ‘Though I can hardly believe it. You must have fewer than ten thousand men here, if even that.’
Creed brought his hand to his chin. His eyes flickered to Halahan.
‘State your business here, ambassador,’ Halahan instructed as he removed the hat from his head, lay it down on the table. His tone was openly hostile.
‘Please. Call me Alarum. May I sit?’ This last addressed to Creed.
The general raised a hand in consent, and the Mannian settled down in a chair with a long and weary sigh. ‘It’s been a hard ride,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could share some wine and food while we talk?’
Creed’s chair creaked sharply as he leaned forwards. ‘Why are you here, fanatic?’
Alarum inclined his head and studied the general with his dark eyes. ‘I’ve been sent by the Holy Matriarch to offer you terms.’
‘She wishes to surrender?’
The man gave a quick, pinched smile. ‘It’s not too late, you know. Even now, after all these years, we can settle our differences another way.’
‘Aye,’ snapped Halahan. ‘You can pack up your armies and go home.’
‘Come, now,’ responded the man. ‘You know as well as I what reputations are riding on this. We can hardly simply withdraw. But what we can do is this: we can offer you the lives of your people, if only you will surrender Khos to us now, and agree to become a client state of Mann.’
‘What, open our gates to you like Serat, so you can decimate the population with your purges and enslave the rest?’ Halahan was incensed. Bahn could see the blood rushing to his face. ‘You came all this way for this?’
‘If you don’t, we’ll slaughter every man, woman and child of Bar-Khos. That is a promise not made lightly.’
Halahan stood up with his hands clenching. Creed held a hand up to restrain him, staring hard at the ambassador. ‘You still have to defeat us first,’ he reminded the man softly.
‘I have forty thousand fighting men at my back, General.’
‘Aye. That you do. And those men are far from home. Their fleet has departed. Their supplies are limited to what they already have and what they can pillage from the land. If they’re not fast, winter will set in and trap them here without adequate sources of food or shelter. You are hardly in any position of certainty, ambassador. Else you would not be here.’
Alarum’s response was to rise slowly from the chair with the cloak held loosely about him. He glanced at Halahan as the colonel took a step towards him. Bahn felt the sudden rise of tension in the air. He gripped the pommel of his sword without thinking.
‘If I may,’ said Alarum, with a soft, cautious smile. ‘The Holy Matriarch has sent a gift for you, should you fail to see sense in this matter.’
Creed nodded, and one of the guards at the entrance stepped forward with something in his hand. He handed it to Bahn, the closest person to him.
Bahn looked down at the sheathed dagger in his hand. It was a curved blade no larger than his thumb, and the scabbard was ornately decorated with gold and diamonds, and fitted with a cord to hang about a person’s neck.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
He looked up even as Halahan struck the ambassador hard across the face, sending the man toppling back across the chair.
Halahan kicked him in the side of the head as he tried to get up.
‘What gives you the right to this? What gives you the right to demand that others bow down to you or they must die?’
‘Colonel,’ Creed snapped. ‘Halahan!’
At last the colonel backed away, panting hard now. Nothing in the world could tear his gaze from Alarum as the man climbed unsteadily to his feet. The ambassador’s lip was bloody, and he hitched the robe over his body to cover his sudden nakedness.
He glowered at Halahan as he dabbed a corner of the robe against his mouth. ‘What right? By right of natural law, what other? Do I need to explain this as though to children? What is man’s nature if not to take power wherever he can? The strong do what they like. The weak must endure what they must always endure. Do not blame we followers of Mann because life is this way. Blame your World Mother. Blame your Dao.’
Creed placed his hands on either side of his chair and rose slowly to confront him.
‘We have a belief, amongst the Free Ports, ambassador. A belief that power must always flow outwards, especially to those most affected by it. The idea comes from Zeziké. I suppose you Mannians don’t read much of our famed philosopher, no?’
Alarum tilted his head, saying nothing.
‘I’ll be honest with you, I don’t always agree with him myself. But at times he made some fine points, especially about such notions as yours. If I recall his words correctly, he said that human behaviour is as much a result of our environment as it is the blood in our veins. And that our environment is as much a result of how we choose it to be as it is the turning of the earth and the sky.’
He leaned forwards, looking carefully at the ambassador’s expression.
‘You do not like that idea, perhaps? Yet you of Mann wish to shape the entire world in your image. Why is this, then? I will tell you why. Because you know this truth as well as Zeziké ever did. You know that to rule absolutely, you must control those choices in people’s lives which allow them to shape their environment. Is that not so?’
Alarum’s breathing had calmed now. He dabbed his lip again, looked at the blood that stained the material of his r
obe. ‘You talk of ideals, General,’ he answered. ‘Empty words of this and that. I talk of something much closer to reality. I talk of power, which in the end needs no defence. Power will always speak for itself. It will always subdue what is weaker, no matter what you believe.’
‘Aye, it’s an old story certainly, subjugation. Yet so is murder. And rape. And theft. Things that decent people despise and outlaw from their lives when they have the choice to do so. Because they choose to believe in man’s capacity to be better than that.’
They blinked at each other as though from across an abyss. Bahn could barely see the seething anger beneath the general’s impassive features, so well did he hide it.
‘Now, ambassador, if you’d kindly get out my sight,’ Creed growled.
Alarum accepted his dismissal with a cavalier bow. He looked faintly amused as the guards pulled him roughly from the tent.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Bahn at last. He was studying the dagger in his hand again.
Creed ignored him. He remained standing with his eyes locked on the flapping entrance of the tent, his jaw muscles clenching.
‘The dagger,’ said Halahan with a wipe of his mouth, ‘is a ceremonial blade of Mann.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘For taking your own life.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Burning of Spire
On the fifth day of their march, the Imperial Expeditionary Force descended into the country known as the Tumbledowns, where they found themselves looking down upon the snowmelt rapids of the Cinnamon river.
To the north, high mountains stood black and ice-capped against the pale sky. To the west, the Tumbledowns ran on to the horizon. Beyond them lay fertile lands of rice paddies and orchards and vineyards, which rolled onwards past the Windrush into the flat western half of the island where most of its population could be found, and where fields of wheat rippled all the way to the Sargassi Sea.
The army turned south-west on a course that followed the Cinnamon, and which would take them into the Silent Valley and the lands of the Reach, and from there to the ancient city of Tume. The floating city was most probably heavily garrisoned by now. All knew it would need to be dealt with before they pushed on to Bar-Khos in the south.