‘But I—’
‘Did Mhani order my men to leave their positions and attack the Pharician garrison? Did Lerien? I have a sword in my hand, Devri. I think you should tell me where my men are and who told them to go there.’
The general ran his thumb along the blade of his naked sword. Devri swallowed. His throat felt torn inside.
‘There is no plot,’ he whispered. ‘I swear it. Mhani is trying to find the White Road. That’s all I know.’
‘The White Road is a passage to death. You had better stop her, Devri. I must deal with this Pharician now, and in Lerien’s absence I can do as I see fit. This room is going to be full of soldiers and you are going to be in the dungeon if I don’t get some cooperation from you. You had better have something more satisfying to say to me by the time I get back.’
He turned and opened the door quietly. ‘Nirozi. Gen. Stand guard outside this door until I return.’
Devri listened to the receding footsteps of the men, still rubbing his throat. He got to his feet, tidied his clothes, finger-combed his hair. Then he plucked the key out of the fountain and opened the door to the Eye Tower.
He did not go to see Mhani this time, for he didn’t expect her to be reasonable. He slid through her antechamber, under a carpet, and down a ladder. Here he expected to find Hanji’s meditation chamber but instead came upon a larder positively swarming with mice. He backed out, climbed through a trapdoor into a gallery overgrown with vines, and began opening doors at random, hoping to find a way back to the part of the Citadel he knew. At last, in a small and dingy wooden corridor that sprouted unexpectedly from the rear of a disused bathhouse, he found the bright silver door he’d been looking for. Flustered and nervous, he entered.
The room was small and octagonal, tiled in yellow and grey. It smelled faintly of spices and water, the latter of which trickled from a carving shaped like an orchid high in one wall, snaked through a complex weaving of stone channels, and finally reached the slim basin that ran in a band around the floor. There was a quality of stillness in the rattle of reeds hanging in decorative bunches from the window ledges that made a constant hiss and slither in the air; in the play of light on the speckled floor; and in the attitude of the man who sat cross-legged on a woven mat, his hands open and lax.
Hanji’s face was smoother in repose than in action, yet paradoxically he looked older. He even breathed slowly. Devri felt the air currents in the room eddy and shift with his arrival; then they settled and he was suddenly calmer. He cleared his throat.
‘I knew someone would find my hiding place sooner or later,’ said the old man without stirring. ‘Didn’t think it would be you. What do you want?’
Devri sank to the mat before Hanji. ‘Help,’ he said.
Hanji continued to study his empty hands. ‘Stew,’ he said cryptically. ‘I am old.’
‘Stew? Can you no longer eat solid food?’
That old, familiar look: Don’t push it, Devri.
‘We have leftover venison from the most recent hunt. The head cook decided to do a stew, but the tithe collectors were late getting back from the villages with their load of produce because of a fire at A-vi-Khalar. Both of my assistants had been coopted by Mhani for some project of hers, so I spent the morning personally organizing six girls to make an expedition down to the king’s private gardens. I could not trust them to tell a turnip from a tomato, so I went with them. They spoke of nothing but their hair and the rumoured sexual practices of the Pharicians. None of which, I might add, sounded remotely physically possible.’
Devri stifled a laugh and Hanji frowned.
‘When we got back with the food, there were numerous other problems piled on my desk, which I couldn’t get to because of a line of confused clerks unable to work out the simplest schedules for the guard because none of their clocks agreed. Before I could get that sorted, the pastry cook burst in and said that the head chef and the entire contents of the kitchens had vanished, to be replaced by a segment of the records room that we lost last week. This left me with a mound of unwashed vegetables, three or four delinquent assistant assistant cooks who hadn’t been in the kitchens at the time of the disappearance, and four Seers who somehow found out about the reappearance of the records and wanted instant admittance. In the middle of all this, a messenger comes summoning me to Ajiko. I told the messenger I would follow him shortly, told everyone else I was urgently needed by the general – and came here! I have been reduced to this by a stew. It is true: I am no longer merely not young. I’m not even getting old. I am old, I have been old for a long time, and I’m only getting older. Stew!’
‘Is there to be no food this evening, then?’ asked Devri in alarm.
‘I shall let them roast me. Some little nourishment might be obtained by sucking my bones. What’s your problem?’
‘I know why Ajiko summoned you. Hezene has sent a messenger to enquire why we have attacked their garrison at Ristale – and to threaten us, presumably, with war. Mhani’s still locked in the Eye Tower and Ajiko now accuses all the Seers of being in a plot against the army. He says we have been lying about the missing troops. He wants to use the Eye to talk to Lerien. But Mhani told me no one was to go up in the Eye Tower. And Ajiko will be back soon, and he’ll find me gone …’
‘Ah,’ said Hanji. ‘Perhaps I should go have a word with Mhani.’
He stood up creakily, swaying like a sapling in a wind. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘And these mice are becoming a real nuisance.’ One of them scurried across the floor and disappeared into a small hole. ‘Come with me, boy.’
They crept into the Eye Tower together and found Mhani slumped on the floor beside the Water of Glass. To Devri’s educated eye, the surface of the Water was crowded with images, moving and still, piling on top of one another and changing places. It was a mess. But …
‘I can See the White Road!’ he cried. ‘Mhani, you’ve done it! I see it – but ah, it is too far away.’
Hanji put a finger to his lips. ‘Where is it?’ he enquired in a too-nonchalant tone, slipping around Mhani to get closer to the Water. He moved as if she were a sleeping lion. ‘Why does it not come to Jai Khalar?’
‘Don’t touch it!’ Mhani said dully, beginning to rise from the puddle of robes on the floor. Devri spared her only one glance before returning his attention to the elusive vision of the White Road; but even in that second’s glimpse he thought she looked weak and pale.
‘It begins outside the boundaries of Clan territory, far away above Snake Country. I can try to trace it down. By your goldfish, Hanji, nothing’s been properly monitored for weeks and there are messages piled up … Mhani, why don’t you let us take over the routine work, so you can concentrate on the Liminal?’
‘No!’ she cried. Springing to her feet she seized Devri’s wrist with a sudden strength. ‘You must leave. All of you must leave. What’s been started must be finished.’
‘But Mhani,’ Hanji began in a placating voice. Still holding fast to Devri’s wrist, she looked at him over her shoulder and Devri saw the tendons in her neck tighten.
‘See me swim?’ she hissed, and gestured to the image-murky Water. ‘It’s what you wanted, old man. No good crying about it now.’
She turned back to Devri. She gazed at him with melting dark eyes, and her mouth worked. ‘It is winter,’ she said. ‘It is winter in the valley of Everien, and I must return.’
Her fingers on his wrist were chill, and they cut off circulation.
‘You have interrupted me,’ she whispered. ‘I asked you not to do so.’
Devri looked past her towards Hanji for support. The old man worked his way around to stand beside Devri, but he remained silent and steady as if he was treating with a wild animal. Devri had the feeling that Hanji didn’t know quite what to do.
‘You are a meddler, old uncle,’ Mhani commented. Slowly she began backing them toward the door. ‘Blame me not if your fingers are burned. Now both of you – get out. Get out of my Tower.’ With a sud
den shove, she released Devri in the direction of the door. Her red robes spread behind her like a fan as she flew at them, spittle flying. ‘Get out!’
Devri felt himself propelled backward as if by a wind, and regained his balance only after he had stumbled down several steps, tripping over his own heels. He was quivering. Pulling his blue cloak around him with slightly more dignity as he descended, Hanji said to the Seer, ‘Now, don’t be bothered by any of that performance, my boy. Just keep guarding the Tower, and don’t concern yourself with the bad moods of the High Seer. She’ll get over it.’
Burning
‘They said he had lost his mind when he came back from Jai Pendu alone,’ Lerien remarked. ‘And to watch him go into one of his trances that he thinks no one notices, you would say he is still touched. But I tell you all: Quintar was a madman from the day I met him. Even when he was Ysse’s pet he was mad. He was the greatest swordsman of his generation and all feared him, and he knew it. Sometimes I think it is he who makes the Eyes go wild and who made Jai Pendu perilous, for he was crazy enough to carve up the Moon and eat it, when I was young and under his tutelage.’
Lerien’s sheathed sword stood upright before him, and as he spoke he leaned on its hilts and peered into the dawn that slowly revealed the disposition of the enemy.
‘What will Tarquin do?’ asked Ketar in an ingratiating tone – for now that Tarquin was no longer on hand, he was trying to get back into Lerien’s better graces. ‘What can he do?’
‘He will attack the Sekk, I guess,’ Lerien said. ‘It is the most reckless of all options, and therefore he will probably choose it. If Chyko were here, maybe he could think of something wilder; but he is not.’
Miro said, ‘Our bows have longer ranges than theirs. We might make something of that.’
‘Or we might find a way to poison their supplies,’ Jakse added. ‘I am not carrying enough tinctures to give so large an army a case of hiccups; but it is still some distance before they reach the end of the range and climb on to the sea plateau. We might contrive something.’
‘Their supply trains are surely the key,’ Lerien agreed. ‘They are poorly guarded in the rear, as Ketar and Kivi discovered yesterday. We must disable their pack animals, ruin their food stores, and burn everything we can. I am not entirely convinced they intend only to go to the Floating Lands. Why do they have siege towers, and oil, if not to assault Jai Khalar?’
‘We might use those things against them,’ Stavel said. ‘It’s not much, but it is our best hope.’
The army had begun to break camp, so Lerien was compelled to finish his plans on the move or be left behind. He was extremely angry with Kivi for making off with the Carry Eye, even if it had done Lerien no good, but he said nothing of it. His small party had come close enough to a complete mutiny already; Lerien needed the support of these men, and if he was in the habit of getting it by diplomacy, then he supposed he had better stick with what he was good at and remain diplomatic – or they would desert him and then he would be a laughing stock.
‘Think of it this way,’ Lerien told them. ‘The majority of our men have been captured by this force. As far as I am concerned, the only army I have now are the five of you. Maybe you didn’t expect to find yourselves in this position, but the real mark of what you are depends on your actions now. You will have to be as effective as a thousand men each. And you are capable of it. Remember, Quintar only had twelve in his company.’
Then he described his plan. It was a simple one: overtake the rear guard, slip in among the siege towers, set fire to everything they could, and slip out. Even if this only slowed down the advance of the army, it had to be better than doing nothing. Anyway, if slowed down enough, the Pharicians might not make it to the Floating Lands in time to catch Jai Pendu – for the floating city rode to land for only one day.
The plan was outrageous, but its execution came surprisingly easy at first. Perhaps because of its massive size, and because it marched on its home territory, the Pharician army behaved as if it had nothing to fear from behind. The siege towers and catapults rumbled along among the oxcarts and mule wagons that bore supplies and materiel for many thousands; strings of spare horses and animals for slaughter were also kept at the rear, where they tended to be allowed to sprawl to either side of the ranks. The rear guard was on foot, and they marched amid such dust and noise generated by the war machinery that they must scarcely have monitored their perimeter, for six men on foot were able to slip in undetected, each at a different point.
After he had overturned an oxcart carrying barrels of oil, opened their spouts, cut down two startled guards, and set the whole affair alight, all of a sudden Lerien started to feel strangely free. He could scarcely concern himself with the politics of Everien when he found himself cut off with no Seer, no Eye, no army and no horse in what was now enemy territory. His task was so impossible as to seem easy – he really had nothing to lose. And so he got into the spirit of things, releasing all his frustrations of everything gone wrong in the past weeks since the trouble in Wolf Country began. He slashed, and he burned, and if he could not burn all the documents and maps and records that filled his daily life, then damn it he would burn these towers and anything else he could set alight.
But the Pharicians were only complacent, not asleep. Once they realized what was happening, they acted to clamp down on the insurrection in their rear segment. He had told his men to act quickly and get out, and he intended to do the same. Lerien dodged through flames and among overturned supply carts, cutting down anyone who attacked him with the sword in his right hand, and with the torch in his left setting fire to anything that looked flammable. He had almost reached the fringe of the supply train when he was lucky enough to spot an escaped horse trailing a long lead rope. He grabbed the rope and was trying to calm the animal enough to mount when a Bear Clan warrior he didn’t recognize stumbled out of the smoke and fell at his feet. ‘My king!’ he sobbed. ‘Forgive me – I think I have been lost to the Sekk!’
‘Get up,’ Lerien commanded. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ivren, my lord,’ answered the other, gulping.
‘Ivren, where is your section?’
The Bear pointed to the rear of the infantry, where the columns had broken apart in the confusion. Lerien edged closer to the horse and caught it around the neck; the animal was well-trained, if nervous, and it did not try to unseat him once he was mounted.
‘Can I trust you?’ he asked, looking down menacingly on the overwrought soldier.
‘I think so, my lord. I have shaken it off; it was like a dream.’
‘Get up behind me.’
Thus mounted, the two rode off to round up what men they could of the Clans. Everything was in chaos. Fires blistered and shook the air. Where the oil casks had been struck by flaming arrows, dense black smoke spiralled into the sky and gradually obscured the supply train and rear guard. Multiple blazes had caught nearby, spreading quickly in the sedge and dry midsummer grass of the border country. The main body of the army ground to a halt, with the ranks erupting into confusion. This gave Lerien hope: if Ivren had shaken off whatever spell bound the Clans, then others must have done so, too.
Still, they were surrounded by enemies, and the air was hot and hard to breathe. The remainder of the cavalry section detached itself to begin riding back down the columns. An elite mounted squad had already vanished in the smoke. A tight knot of spearbearers with shields had closed around one burning siege tower; the king could only infer that one of his men was inside that circle, but he did not have the luxury of rescuing any one person when he stood a chance of getting back whole regiments of his lost army. Everyone would have to fend for himself.
As Ivren guided him towards the rioting Clan troops, Lerien saw that some of the Clan soldiers wore their Animal colours instead of Ajiko’s uniforms – a disturbing observation because it meant that even the newest and most inexperienced recruits were here, the ones for whom there had been no time to make regular uniforms
. Everien must be drained of virtually all fighting-age men. At the moment, however, the lack of Clan uniforms worked to Lerien’s advantage: it was easy to pick out his people among the Pharicians, now that they were at close range.
Ivren gave a shout and his comrades began to rally round the king.
‘Get yourselves horses if you can, and fly!’ Lerien said to them. ‘Quick, in case the Sekk tries to reassert its influence. I will wait for you at the base of the cliff – ride south along it until you find me. Draw any Clan soldiers you find with you, and forget any spells you have been subject to.’
Ivren got down and gestured to his men to follow him. They struggled against the tide of Pharicians, who were having organizational problems of their own. Officers had begun riding amongst the infantry, screaming orders which were only partly obeyed in the upheaval. Then Lerien caught a glimpse of Taro, who had found himself a horse and was shooting flaming arrows at the supply wagons while he clung precariously to its bare back.
The operation was beginning to feel less foolhardy and more feasible; but now he had to bring his men to order. He signalled Taro to stay close by him and pointed to the approaching Pharician horsemen, who, Slaves or not, were not going to be friendly at a time like this. The archer responded by shooting one of them, first in the leg, and a second time in the back as he was bending to loosen the arrow from his calf. The second arrow caught a lucky gap in the striated Pharician armour and the rider slumped in the saddle. The horse checked his stride, sensing a problem. Out of nowhere came Ketar. He sprinted towards the animal from the off side. His sword surged ahead of him as if pulling him forward, cutting down two dead-eyed Wolf Clan Slaves and hamstringing a third; but Ketar scarcely broke stride. More horsemen were almost on top of him. Arrows flew and dodging them he stumbled over the churned, uneven earth. The wounded rider was struggling with the reins, and the horse had wisely slowed to a walk, while reserves passed by. The smell of fire brought up the whites of the horse’s eyes. Ketar took two long strides and vaulted over the shifting hindquarters. He ripped off the Pharician’s helmet from behind and dragged the length of his sword along the rider’s throat, then cast the dying man to the ground. The horse staggered sideways at the change in weight and then began to buck. Ketar was thrown up against the poll and had to scramble for reins and stirrups.
The Company of Glass Page 27