Hardway

by David Pilling

  “I’ll tell you something, shall I?” said Dusek in a low voice. “Earlier I spoke of the Fifteenth, and how they only accepted men with a long service record. That’s only part of the truth. They preferred to get their recruits young. Young, poor and desperate. Born fighters from the back streets and alleyways. Alley rats who had to fight for everything in this life from the moment they took their first breath.

  “Just like you, in other words,” he added. “Ignorant, dirty, base-born shitbags. Those whom even the Gods wouldn’t bother to piss on if they burst into flames. The White Bull of the Fifteenth took them all, and gave them their pride. That’s what the power and glory of the Old Kingdom was built on, my dears. The blood and sweat and rage of the poor.”

  Inspiration struck him. He had left the old banner in the care of a youth named Ryson, whose flat feet and severe asthma made him good for little else. Dusek snatched it from his pudgy hands.

  Comrades, forgive me, he thought, offering up the silent plea to the generations of dead soldiers who had marched under the white bull.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting the banner at Skypole, “let the Fifteenth Legion live again.”

  Skypole’s fumbled the banner, almost dropping it, and managed to grab a fistful of the ancient canvas. By some miracle, it didn’t tear.

  “No more dumb insolence from you, laddie,” said Dusek. “You’re an officer now. The first Captain of the Fifteenth in over a century. Captain, I salute you.”

  He drew himself up, straight as a lance, clicked his heels together and ripped off a perfect salute. While Skypole stared, and his mates stood like statues, Dusek turned smartly on his heel and marched off to the cookhouse for a much-needed drink of ale.

  Break them down, he thought with satisfaction, and build anew.

  The next morning Tamburlin himself came to watch the recruits at their drill. All volunteers were entirely given over to Dusek’s care, and he insisted they sleep in barracks rather than going home at night.

  “You asked me to make soldiers out of them,” he explained to the Chief Father, “so that’s what I’m doing. They have to be battle-ready, or as ready as I can make them, when the enemy arrive. That won’t happen if they go home at night to their families.”

  “Surely they resent being kept in barracks,” said Tamburlin. The old man looked ghastly in the chill morning air, stooped and grey-faced, leaning heavily on two sticks. Dusek suspected he was getting little sleep, for obvious reasons. The burden of responsibility, preparing for war while keeping a semblance of order in a snakepit like Hardway, was enough to crush a much younger man.

  “They do resent me,” said Dusek. “I expect they would gladly see my guts ripped out and wound around a tree. That’s just what we want.”

  “It is?” Tamburlin said weakly. There was a drip forming on the end of his long red nose. He fumbled for a handkerchief. One of his bodyguards neatly stepped forward and wiped his nose for him.

  Gods save us, thought Dusek. This is our leader. He ought to be tucked up in bed somewhere with a hot milk drink. I ought to be in charge. Not only of the defence, but the city. I would soon whip mad dogs like Tulgan to heel.

  He stamped on the treacherous thought as soon as it rose in his mind. Dusek was no traitor. He was a soldier, and a soldier was always true to his salt. The Gods knew he had served under enough fools and incompetents, usually inbred noblemen unfit to command an escort, never mind an army. Quite a number of infamous massacres and disastrously bungled campaigns might never have occurred if he had chosen the path of the oath-breaker, and betrayed his chiefs.

  “Indeed,” he said, smartly tapping his boot with his long iron-tipped cane, “first you make them hate you. Loathe you like poison. When their blood is boiling nice and hot, you unleash them on the enemy.”

  Tamburlin sniffed and wrung his pale, liver-spotted hands. “I see. In that case I have good news for you. This morning I received two ravens from our spies in the Old Kingdom and Calisse. Both fleets will be ready inside a fortnight, and should put to sea at the same time. As I feared, Vazul and the Grey Queen have forged an alliance. Hardway will be attacked from two sides at once.”

  Dusek gaped at him. “A fortnight?” he hissed. “I can’t get these clods straightened out in two weeks. How in hells can two fleets be assembled in so short a time? It takes months to careen the ships, muster troops and hire sailors and engineers, not to mention getting the beasts and supplies and provender.”

  “Calisse exists in a constant state of readiness for war,” replied Tambulrin, “and it seems Vazul has been rebuilding his fleet ever since…ever since…”

  “Yes. I know. Ever since I wrecked the last one. Well, well, so the little turd has been busy all these years, has he? I should not be surprised. After the bloody nose his father took at Hardway, I hoped he would turn his head west and waste his youth and energy trying to reconquer the whole of the Old Kingdom.”

  “Two weeks,” Dusek repeated, gazing out to sea. “I knew the Gods were being too kind lately.”

  “Perhaps the same power that restored your sight will aid us now, in our dire extremity,” ventured Tamburlin.

  Dusek glanced at him. The old, old man was clearly frightened, his rheumy blue eyes opening wide as they fixed on the General, silently begging him to offer a sliver of hope.

  It wouldn’t do to lie to him. At a rough estimate, over two hundred warships would soon be heading towards Hardway from east and west. The ships would carry some twenty thousand men, perhaps the best fighting troops on earth, along with their artillery and siege equipment. All to conquer one small island and a few thousand people living in an ex-prison colony.

  On the other hand, Hardway had endured many storms. Its walls were high and strong, and the people deceptively tough.

  This will be the hardest way yet, thought Dusek, but something may yet remain once the storm has blown over.

  Not me, though, he thought with grim certainty. My fate is bound up with this island.

  “Take heart, sir,” he said, patting Tamburlin’s withered arm. “Believe me, Hardway is a pig of a place to storm. I couldn’t do it, and I was the best. The fortress didn’t stand that could defy me. Save this one.”

  “Consider our enemies. Vazul is a spoiled little fool, and as for the Grey Queen, who can tell? She’ll most likely send some toady of a general to mop up this little island for her. None of them know of our secret weapon.”

  “It must be a damned well-kept secret,” Tamburlin muttered crossly, “since I have never heard of any such weapon. What is it?”

  Dusek’s battered, age-worn features creased into a smile.

  “Me.”

  13.

  Vazul stood proudly on the foredeck of his flagship, the Stormcrow, and sucked in deep breaths of sea air.

  “Gods!” he cried, throwing his arms wide. “I have rarely felt so alive!”

  The ship gave a sudden lurch, almost throwing him onto his back. Waving away the bodyguards as they rushed forward to steady him, he seized the rail with both hands and planted his feet wide.

  That was better. He had never been to sea before, and the pitch and roll of the deck frequently caught him by surprise. He thanked the Gods for his iron stomach: hundreds of his soldiers were stricken with seasickness and lay in misery in the hulls of the troopships, puking and praying for death.

  He glanced right and left, through the eye-holes of his golden mask, at the endless broad sweep of the ocean. His fleet had put to sea three days previously, sixty lumbering troopships escorted by eighty-five smaller galleys and single-deck dromons. The Stormcrow was a galley, lean and fast and gleaming with fresh black paint. She cut through the water like an arrow, skimming swiftly towards her target, the unsightly lump of rock in the middle of the sea dividing the Old Kingdom from Calisse.

  Vazul’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the rail. The winds were set fair, propelling his fleet towards Hardway at a rate of knots. A tremendous sense of exhilaration coursed through his so
ul, blowing away the creeping boredom and cynicism of absolute power.

  “This,” he informed the world at large, “is what I was born to do. To journey to new lands, and make their people bow before me. The blood of conquerors is in my veins. I must obey the call of my blood, or wither away and die.”

  He had left his stewards in charge of his kingdom—dull, competent men, bean-counters and shopkeepers, well-suited to the tedium of government. Let them pore over documents and sit in judgment in the Court of Pleas. Let them decide the grazing rights on some damp patch of land, or which lucky peasant should be awarded a cow. Vazul was forged of different metal. His task in life was to win glory on the battlefield for his people. Write his name in blood on the annals of history.

  “I am the Dragon!” he shouted as the Stormcrow knifed through a sudden swell, dousing the entire length of the deck in water. “The Dragon reborn!”

  The Dragon was immediately soaked to the skin. His wild laughter echoed inside the dome of his mask as he clung to the rail, exulting in his personal duel with the elements.

  Someone dared to pluck at his cloak. “Dread lord,” the captain of his personal guard said nervously, “perhaps you should go below. A storm is brewing.”

  Vazul glanced at the midnight black clouds massing across the skies to the north-east. “Let it come,” he said contemptuously. “It will take more than a few puffs of wind to frighten the Dragon.”

  His guards and servants continued to plead with him, even as the storm-clouds boiled overhead and shrieking winds stirred the sea up into a maelstrom. Vazul would not be shifted.

  “Don’t you see?” he yelled above the howl of the gale. “It’s those magicians on Hardway. Those damned monks! This storm is their doing. Can’t you smell it? The vile stench of sorcery?”

  He shook his fist at the lowering sky. “Come!” he bawled. “Do your worst, shavelings! Dark magic will not avail you. The Dragon is coming to tear out your hearts!”

  In the end he ordered himself to be lashed to the mainmast, so he could stand firm against the storm even as his ship was flung about like a cork, hurled from side to side by the raging waters. Only the best and hardiest of the crew remained with him above deck, struggling to keep the Stormcrow afloat. Everyone else cowered below deck. The terrified screams of horses, cooped up in their stalls in the hull, mingled with the groans and prayers of soldiers, slaves and sailors.

  Hours passed: a seemingly endless trial in pitch darkness, lit up only by the dim glow of storm-lanterns and the stab-stab-stab of lightning, far out to sea. Vazul interpreted the lightning as spears hurled by the Gods, attempting to impale his ships.

  “Your aim is well wide!” he screamed. “Is that the best you can throw at us? You have grown weak, you Gods of old. Do you sense a new power rising? Tremble in your heavenly sphere!”

  His triumph over the Gods was confirmed when the futile storm blew itself out, the black clouds parting and drifting away to reveal a clean, fresh morning, sparkling blue skies and a calm sea, swept by strong winds from the east.

  “Captain,” Vazul demanded as the sailors cut the ropes binding him to the mainmast, “where are we? Did the storm blow us far off course?”

  The captain, a dark-skinned Temerian with over forty years’ fighting and trading at sea under his belt, respectfully bowed his grizzled head. “Not so far, lord,” he replied, “A few miles, nothing more. This old boat is a sturdy vessel, and suffered little damage. The rest of the fleet, though…”

  He threw up his callused hands. “See for yourself, lord. We are alone.”

  Somewhat unsteadily, Vazul walked over to the aft side of the maindeck and stared out at an empty sea. The storm had swept it clean of ships. Nothing moved out on the grey waste, save the gentle churning of waves and the occasional white-winged albatross, skimming low over the surface of the water in search of a meal.

  “Curse you,” he said softly, gazing at the skies, “you think I am beaten, do you? That I can be so easily thwarted by a rabble of small gods and magicians? I shall go on, though I have no other follower save my groom!”

  “Perhaps we should weigh anchor, lord,” ventured the captain, “and wait awhile for the rest of the fleet to find us. Assuming…”

  He hesitated. “Assuming the fleet still exists,” Vazul finished for him. “You coward. I have spent many years preparing for this campaign. Spent rivers of gold on building and hiring new ships, raising the army that would conquer Hardway. Do you think fate would be so cruel as to rob me of the fruits of my labour?”

  He stared hard at the captain, who to his surprise didn’t flinch before the engraved grimace of Vazul’s mask.

  “Not for me to say, lord,” he replied levelly, “save that fate is not only cruel but indifferent, and treats kings and peasants with the same lack of courtesy.”

  Vazul laughed. “True enough,” he said, “which is why we must bend fate to our will. Hoist sail for Hardway. If necessary, you and I shall storm the walls of the town together, sword in hand.”

  The other man looked doubtful, but gave the orders to his officers, who in turn bawled them at the ship’s crew, or such as were fit to handle the ship. Soon the Stormcrow was slicing through the waters again, driven on by fair winds.

  The Dragon’s luck continued to hold. Even as his flagship bore down on Hardway, signals passed back and forth between her and other vessels of the scattered fleet. By sundown the island was in sight, a black mark on the horizon to the east, and most of the missing ships were accounted for.

  “Four are still missing, lord,” reported the captain, “three dromons and one galley. Lost at sea, I fear, with all hands, or else wrecked. There are some nasty reefs a few miles north-west of here.”

  Vazul shrugged. He was in his usual position on the foredeck, his single eye fixed on the distant hump of rock.

  “We can bear the loss of a few men,” he murmured. “Many more shall die before our task is done.”

  He squinted, sweeping his gaze north and south of Hardway. “No sign of the Callistean fleet yet?” he asked.

  “None, lord,” the captain answered. Vazul gave a brief nod, and the man bowed and left him in peace.

  Vazul may have appeared calm. Inside his guts churned with barely suppressed excitement. He had defeated the storm, and the clumsy efforts of the magicians on Hardway to scatter his fleet.

  I am justified in all I do, he told himself. There is nothing I dare not risk. This is my time. I cannot be thwarted.

  “Nothing,” he muttered, chewing his bottom lip. It was almost time to roll the dice again, this time for even higher stakes.

  He gave the order for the fleet to sail within two miles of Hardway, and there weight anchor. It was safe enough. The city had no fleet of its own, bar a feeble collection of fishing boats and ancient galleys. Vazul’s ships were out of range of the artillery on Fort Alex. The famous, multi-layered fortress squatted on its high crag like a malevolent toad, the watchfires burning at its summit like eyes, glaring down at Hardway’s would-be conquerors.

  Vazul remained at his post until the sliver of moon was high in the sky. Only then did he consent to get some sleep. Instead of returning to his cramped quarters below, his servants had set up an awning on the reardeck, and inside it spread a mattress covered in soft woollen blankets and a lion’s skin—the same lion that had taken his eye in the arena.

  The bed was not empty. One of Vazul’s favourite Temerian concubines, Nymeera, waited for him, soft and pliant and willing. Her lovely, heart-shaped face was further enhanced by paints and cosmetics, her sweet musk an invitation to pleasure.

  Yet Vazul could feel no desire for her. “No,” he said, ushering her out of bed. “Go and sleep elsewhere. I must conserve my strength.”

  She pouted and took herself off, leaving him to spend a restless night, his exhausted mind churning over different possibilities. Secretly he was afraid, though the Dragon could never admit to fear to anyone. In the still hours of early morning, when men are always
at their weakest, Vazul had to admit to doubt.

  His natural arrogance and self-confidence soon reasserted itself. By the time the skies had started to lighten, Vazul’s mind was at peace. Victory was assured. Defeat was unthinkable. Impossible.

  The golden light of morning spilled over placid seas, revealing the jagged profile of Hardway, and more besides: the dim, barely perceptible outline of masts, a seemingly endless forest of them, crowding the horizon to the south-east.

  “The Callisteans are in sight, lord,” the captain informed Vazul, quite unnecessarily. “I make out a hundred sail, maybe more.”

  “There will be more,” said Vazul. “The Grey Queen means to overawe us.”

  And betray us, he said to himself. As soon as our combined forces have taken Hardway, she will take the place for herself. I know her. We will be left with nothing.

  He smiled thinly. I will get my strike in first, and teach her what it means to meddle with the Dragon.

  “Break out the oars,” he ordered. “Bear south-east. Ramming speed. Signal the same order to the rest of the fleet. We are going to attack.”

  14.

  A storm gathered on the horizon to the west. There it loomed pregnantly, much as the pirate sails had, and gradually grew wider and darker. Limpet wondered how they would make it through this new peril. No amount of Hardway's most bloodthirsty villains would be a match for nature's fury. Even the Kraken would have fled to its inky depths before this livid tempest. No, Limpet was truly powerless. He cursed. He had always maintained at least the illusion of control as he scratched a living in the Sandpit and protected his sister from the ravening human detritus that haunted that hopeless waste, but now he and Liss were utterly at the mercy of fate—a damnably cruel and fickle mistress. He would have to rely on luck alone to survive this night, and the Gods had blessed him with precious little of that in his short life.

  As the charcoal clouds thickened, the air grew heavy and oppressive, and Limpet felt as though he bore the very weight of the atmosphere solely on his weary shoulders. Even though the wind was beginning to tug insistently at his clothes, he couldn't seem to draw sufficient breath, and his relief at coming through the pirate's attack unscathed was dragged beneath the shimmering black surface, just like their helpless, ruined bodies.