Queen of Fire

by Anthony Ryan

  He pulled a dagger from his belt and started chipping at the mortar around the bricks forming the opening, the others soon joining in. “Softly,” he cautioned Draker as the big man jabbed his short sword hard into the mortar.

  Sunrise had come on by the time they loosened enough brick to allow egress, long shadows stretching from the ruins as they hauled themselves free. Frentis led them from shadow to shadow towards the gate, finding it manned by a dozen Varitai.

  “We should’ve taken Illian with us,” Draker grumbled in a whisper. “She’d pick off a few in short order.”

  Frentis beckoned to Thirty-Four. “We need a distraction.”

  The former slave nodded, sheathing his short sword and rising to run towards the gate, gesticulating wildly. “The general!” he called in Volarian as the Varitai stirred, moving to confront him with swords drawn. “He calls for you!” Thirty-Four went on, pointing towards the southern quarter. “Slaves are in revolt! You must come!”

  As expected, they just stood regarding him in silence. Varitai were conditioned to respond only to orders given by their officers and there was no chance they would follow his commands. However, they were still compelled to look in his direction as he scurried away, halting and beckoning madly. “Come! Come! Or I’ll be flayed!”

  A tired-looking Free Sword sergeant emerged from the gatehouse, rubbing bleary eyes and buckling on his sword as he took in the sight of the desperate slave. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Frentis nodded to the others and slipped from their shadow, crawling closer under concealment of a low pile of blackened bricks, no more than fifteen feet from the gate.

  “A revolt, Honoured Citizen!” Thirty-Four said to the sergeant, an impressively convincing whine colouring his voice. “Please! Oh please!”

  “Shut up,” the sergeant said wearily, moving towards Thirty-Four, clearly puzzled by his clothing, mean even for a slave, and the sight of his sword. “Who gave you that? Give it here!”

  “Certainly, honoured sir,” Thirty-Four said as the sergeant reached for his sword, drawing it in a single fluid motion and flicking the blade across the man’s eyes. Thirty-Four stepped nimbly past him as he collapsed to his knees, screaming and clutching at his face, killing a Varitai with a thrust to the neck then turning and running. Six Varitai took off in pursuit, one falling dead with Frentis’s throwing knife in his throat, two more quickly hacked down by Davoka and Draker.

  Frentis hefted a spear dropped by the Varitai he had killed, hurling it at his onrushing comrade with enough force to pierce his breastplate. Thirty-Four skidded to a halt, pivoted and delivered a precise cut to the leg of the Varitai chasing him, Draker’s blow nearly decapitating the slave soldier as he fell.

  “Stay close!” Frentis ordered, scooping up a fallen blade and charging for the gate, a sword in each hand. The five remaining Varitai formed a tidy defensive knot, impassive faces behind levelled spears. Frentis threw his left-hand sword at the one in the centre, the blade sinking into his face just beneath his helmet. Frentis leapt through the gap, slashing left and right, the others moving in to finish those he wounded. A pain-filled yell drew his gaze and he found Draker on his back, parrying thrusts from a Varitai’s spear, a newly earned gash on his forehead. Davoka moved to help him but the outlaw proved his hard-won skills by rolling under the Varitai’s guard to stab at his groin, spoiling the accomplishment somewhat by proceeding to bring the slave soldier down with a series of frenzied blows, obscenities flowing from his snarling lips in a torrent.

  “Raise the gate,” Frentis told Davoka, making for the steps leading to the parapet. He found two Free Swords there, youthful faces aghast at the carnage they had witnessed below, pointing their swords at him with trembling hands.

  “Fight or run,” Frentis told them in Volarian. “You’ll die today in either case.”

  They ran, sprinting away across the parapet without a backward glance. “Tell your comrades the Red Brother’s here!” Frentis yelled after them before turning to pull a torch from a stanchion. He hopped onto the battlement and waved the torch back and forth, peering into the misted fields beyond the walls. A few heartbeats later he saw it, a single torch flaring to life, burning brighter as the bearer came closer, and two thousand Renfaelin knights resolved out of the mist at full gallop. Banders was clearly visible at the head of the tight column, his faux-rusted armour catching the rising sun, Arendil and Ermund on either side of him. They thundered through the gate without pause, the clatter of steel-shod hooves on cobbles rising to a deafening pitch as they charged along Gate Lane. A few Varitai came running from the western quarter to oppose them, a single company managing to form ranks across the lane before being smashed aside by the tide of horse and steel.

  “Brother!” Frentis looked down from the gatehouse, finding a grinning Ivern there, mounted, with Frentis’s horse at his side. “The Blackhold awaits!”

  The squat fortress was already in uproar when they got there, two Varitai lying dead at the main gate and several more inside. They were obliged to fight their way into the courtyard as more guards came rushing from a maze of shadowed doorways, mostly Varitai with a few Free Swords showing none of the cowardice of their comrades on the wall. Sollis took his brothers up the stairs and into the upper levels, clearing the archers from the parapet and sending their own arrows down on the defenders below.

  Frentis led his company from doorway to doorway, Draker breaking them open as they searched for the Aspects, finding only more Volarians, most willing to fight, others cowering, but all destined to die. He was emerging from a storeroom when a Kuritai appeared out of the shadows, twin short swords flashing. Frentis parried his first blow but slipped on a patch of blood, tumbling to the flagstones, the Kuritai looming above … then falling dead when a crossbow bolt punched through his breastplate.

  “Not like you to be so clumsy, brother,” Illian observed from across the courtyard, words garbled somewhat by the bolt held between her teeth as she braced the crossbow against her midriff to draw the string back.

  He was about to tell her to join Brother Sollis on the parapet but found his attention drawn to a commotion rising from a half-open door at the rear of the courtyard. He went to it, finding a set of steps leading into the bowels of the Blackhold. He called to Davoka to follow and took the stairs at a run. At the base of the steps he found a dead Free Sword with what appeared to be steel darts embedded in both eyes; beside him lay the body of a man in a bedraggled City Guard uniform, bloodied sword in hand and belly rent open.

  In the chamber beyond the stairwell lay three Varitai, steel darts jutting from their necks; beyond them a young woman was grappling with a burly Free Sword, blood streaming from her nose and eyes as he forced her to her knees, short sword inching towards her throat. Frentis drew his sword back for a throw but Illian was faster, sending a bolt into the Volarian’s temple before he could bring his blade to bear.

  The woman slumped beneath the collapsing Free Sword, blood bubbling on her lips as she issued a groan of near-complete exhaustion. Frentis hauled the corpse away and helped her upright, finding her eyes still bright despite the paleness of her skin. “My brother…” she whispered.

  “Brother?”

  “Rhelkin … City Guard.”

  Frentis shook his head and the woman moaned in sorrow, blinking red tears before speaking again. “Aspects … are they safe?”

  He cast his gaze around the chamber, taking in the sight of the cells. From one of them he could hear an implacable thumping noise, a voice within shouting something unintelligible but with an odd note of authority. “Search the bodies,” he told Illian. “Find the keys.”

  Aspect Dendrish stood still and straight-backed as the door swung open, face rigid and composed though his rapidly blinking eyes told of a man expectant of a swift death. “Aspect,” Frentis greeted him with a bow. “Brother Frentis. I doubt you remember, but we met at my Test of Knowledge…”

  The Aspect seemed to deflate, issuing an explosive si
gh of relief and doubling over, as much as his bulk would allow. “Where is Aspect Elera?” he demanded after a moment, raising a haggard face that somehow managed to retain a vestige of the imperious self-regard Frentis recalled.

  “Brother Frentis,” she said as the door opened, sitting on her bed, smiling in welcome, her hands clasped in her lap. “How you’ve grown. Is Alucius with you?”

  There was a pounding of running feet and Ivern appeared at the door to the cell, his grin even wider than usual. “Brother Sollis sends his regards, Aspects,” he said, nodding briefly at them in turn before addressing Frentis. “He says to gather your people and forget about holding this place. We need to get to the docks.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Vaelin

  “Have I ever told you,” Nortah began, his pallor somewhat grey in the dim light of the hold, “how much I detest sea travel?”

  Behind him one of his fighters gave a grunt of agreement before heaving into his helmet. “Do it in the bilges,” Nortah rebuked him. “You’ll have to wear that before long.”

  Vaelin gave his brother a soft pat on the arm and moved deeper into the hold, passing ranks of free fighters dressed in Volarian armour, taking the steps to the lower deck where the Seordah sat in equal misery. He found Hera Drakil sitting next to a half-open porthole, eyes closed and mouth open to suck in the sweet outside air.

  “We’re five miles from the harbour,” Vaelin told him, drawing a puzzled frown. “We’ll be there soon,” he clarified. “Make your people ready.”

  “They have been ready to get off this horrible thing since they stepped on it,” the war chief returned with a baleful glint in his eye. Without Dahrena’s guidance, persuading them to this stratagem had not been an easy thing. He had explained it all in detail to Hera Drakil, the queen adding her voice with promises of great rewards and everlasting gratitude should they consent to take ship to Varinshold. The Seordah listened to it all in silence then walked back to his people’s encampment. Vaelin and Lyrna lingered on the periphery watching the argument unfold. The Seordah were not a demonstrative people, rarely given to raised voices or gesticulation, so there had been a certain ominous quality to the increasing stillness and quietude evident in the various war chiefs as they sat in a circle and debated the merits of Vaelin’s plan. Eventually, after several hours and with night coming on, Hera Drakil returned, his face rigid with reluctance as he said, “We go on the big water.”

  “Salt staining every breath,” the Seordah said now. “No earth beneath your feet. How can such a thing be borne for any time?”

  “Greed or necessity,” Vaelin replied. “You recall your part in this?”

  “Kill all the two-swords we find and make for the big black building.” The Seordah stirred as Vaelin rose, leaning forward, fixing him with the same questing gaze he had shown him since Alltor. What is he looking for? Vaelin wondered again as the war chief’s eyes met his. Does he ponder if there is another soul behind these eyes? Or is it more what I may have brought back?

  “You…” The Seordah paused, searching for the right words. “You are more … you now, Beral Shak Ur.”

  Vaelin replied with a cautious nod. In truth he felt stronger, the chill having lifted from his bones, for the most part. Also his final practice with Davern had actually seen him defeat the shipwright, much to his sister’s delight. She had taken to watching the daily contests and gave a squeal of triumph as Vaelin’s wooden sword found a gap in Davern’s defences, jabbing into his midriff with enough force to provoke an obscenity-laden shout of pain. His dark-faced fury at Alornis’s taunts had been something of a guilty pleasure, though Vaelin was careful to hide it as he thanked the sergeant for his service and released him from future obligations.

  “I am,” Davern grated, “always at your disposal, my lord.”

  He made his way to the top deck and joined Reva at the helm, dressed in her light mail shirt, sword on her back, and bow in hand, laughing at something the Shield had said. The man’s humour faded at sight of Vaelin and he beckoned his helmsman forward to take the wheel, offering a cursory bow. “My Lord of Battle.”

  “Fleet Lord Ell-Nestra,” Vaelin replied, bowing lower. The Shield’s resentment was more carefully hidden than Davern’s, though, he suspected, no less deeply felt.

  “Our pet savages are prepared, I take it?” Ell-Nestra asked.

  “Don’t call them that,” Vaelin told him, annoyed at the ease with which the Shield provoked him. Defeat and humiliation are poor tutors, it seems.

  “Your pardon, my lord. Though you must agree they make poor sailors.”

  “Who can blame them?” Reva said, her face only slightly less grey than Nortah’s. “I’d fight half the world to get off this tub.”

  “Tub?” The Shield rounded on her in mock fury. “My lady insults the finest vessel ever taken by a Meldenean sabre. Why, I would challenge you, if you were not merely but a feeble woman.”

  He took the lightning slap she gave him with good grace, making her laugh again with a florid bow before striding off to order his first mate to muster a fighting party. I thought at least she’d be immune to his charms, Vaelin thought sourly.

  “Your people are ready?” he asked her.

  She jerked her head at the rigging above, Vaelin seeing the densely packed archers on the platforms at the top of the great ship’s two towering masts. A figure leaned over the side of the foremost platform to wave at them, Vaelin recognising Bren Antesh’s silhouette. He sensed a certain impatience in the archer’s movements. “I think your Lord of Archers is keen for you to join him aloft,” he advised.

  “In which case he’ll be disappointed,” she replied with a level gaze.

  He let the matter drop; cautioning her seemed irrelevant given their mission. A wasteful gamble, Count Marven had called it, not without justification. Vaelin looked at the two ships following in their wake, the only Volarian vessels captured by the Meldeneans during their brief campaign, each crammed with more Seordah. Beyond the horizon waited all the ships they could commandeer on short notice, thirty vessels laden with more forest folk and three regiments of Realm Guard, including the Wolfrunners. The cream of this new army, gambled on an expectation of Volarian arrogance.

  The Shield had sailed into Warnsclave a day after Belorath’s arrival, his great flagship laden with stolen supplies, relating his dismay at failing to seize a ship of equal size and design to his own newly acquired monster. “It was like fighting a mirror image,” he told Lyrna, his usual ebullience muted somewhat, and unlike most, less inclined to stare at her face. “Except one captained by a fool,” he went on. “Sadly, the fires we birthed in her were too great and she went down, along with a few hundred Free Swords, judging by the screams.”

  The idea had been birthed then, triggering instincts Vaelin had thought lost with his song. They expect the Stormspite’s twin at Varinshold. He had pondered it for a day and a night before seeking the queen’s approval. “We don’t have ships enough for the whole army,” she reminded him.

  “But enough to seize the docks, and Varinshold will stand or fall on who holds them. Plus, Brother Caenis will relate the need to attack on Winterfall Eve to the Renfaelin host via Brother Lernial.”

  “The odds.” She shook her head. “Even if these Renfaelins, whoever they are, do ride to our aid, the odds still do not favour us. Marven is right, the risk is too great.”

  “Not for the Seordah,” he said. “Not if they make the first attack, aided by Lady Reva’s archers. The docks will be taken within an hour.”

  “Their prowess impresses you that much?”

  He recalled the Kuritai that day as the rain beat down, swift and deadly but seeming like slow children as the forest folk broke their line. “You didn’t see them at Alltor, Highness.” He straightened, addressing her formally. “My queen, as Battle Lord I tell you this is the only way Varinshold will be in our hands before the year’s end.”

  “By the Father,” Reva’s whisper brought him back to the
present. She stood at the rail as they rounded the southern headland and Varinshold came into view. For a moment Vaelin felt certain they had sailed to liberate nothing more than a ruin, the entire southern quarter seemingly just a mass of piled brick and blackened wood. As they drew closer however, he began to pick out familiar buildings still standing amidst the rubble: the merchants’ houses overlooking the harbour, the northern wing of the palace just visible through the fading morning mist, and in the centre, the dark stump of the Blackhold, where he hoped the Aspects still drew breath.

  Reva turned back from the view, her face grim, waving at the archers above, who promptly crouched, disappearing from view. The Shield donned a shirt of broad-ringed mail and buckled on his sabre. “Best if you stay by me, my lady,” he told Reva with a wink. “I’ll protect you.”

  This time she failed to laugh, the sight of the city seemingly robbing her of humour. “It’s they who need protection,” she muttered, jerking her head at the Volarians now visible on the quay. Her face had taken on a tense aspect, her brow furrowed and gaze focused. On any other woman her age it might be taken for sullenness but Vaelin knew it was the face she wore throughout the siege, the face so many Volarians had seen in their final seconds of life.

  He reached out to place a hand on her shoulder and she clasped it before he moved away, going to the prow. Nortah’s chosen men were coming up on deck, dressed in their Volarian gear, his brother making a convincing Free Sword Battalion Commander as he arrayed them in good order. He would be first down the gangplank to exchange salutes with whatever senior Volarian came to greet their arrival, before striking them dead and leading the charge against their escort, the Cumbraelin archers raining death on all others.

  The sails were trimmed as they approached the harbour mouth, all in silence to prevent those ashore wondering why Meldenean voices could be heard on a Volarian ship. Vaelin could see their reception more clearly now, neatly arrayed rows of Free Swords standing to the rear of a single officer, hopefully the senior Volarian commander in the city. A cheering sight since the man would probably be the one to greet Nortah, or if not, would be almost certain to die in the arrow storm. Off to the left stood a tall figure on a warhorse, long dark hair tied back from his handsome face. Lyrna had given orders for Darnel to be taken alive if possible, keen to extract whatever intelligence he held regarding Volarian plans, but Vaelin gave little for the man’s chances once the Realm Guard came ashore. He would have to get the Shield to spirit him away …