Nights of Villjamur (19 page)

'Well, quite,' Eir said, clearly losing interest. 'The point being, my father urged me to learn some duelling style different enough to perhaps give me an advantage.'

'This Snow Ball . . . Is it particularly important?'

'To some,' Eir said. 'It's to take everyone's mind off the Freeze. There is an award of around two hundred Jamuns for the winning participants.'

Two hundred Jamuns. Randur tried not to show his eagerness. That was halfway to paying the cultist's fee. 'I wouldn't have thought the money mattered to people like you - at the top of the social ladder, I mean?'

'Oh, it doesn't. We can buy anything we ever want.'

Randur wondered why she had to say it with so much pride. 'Well, with so much money, the people here must have all the happiness they could wish for.'

'You might think that,' she said, then quitted the room, leaving him alone with the remnants of her melancholy.

*

Randur couldn't put his finger on what exactly, but there was a strange mood in Balmacara. Everyone talked continuously about the gates of the city being closed. It made Randur wonder how he would ever get out of this city, should he gather up enough Jamuns to pay the Order of the Equinox. At all times, in Villjamur, it seemed there was someone, somewhere, talking about the impending ice. Many people prophesized doom - the end of civilization as they knew it. Randur himself generally lived for each day at a time, so tended not to think about the future. If it was something you could not see for yourself, why worry about it? He was more concerned with how quickly he could pull a girl.

And there were plenty of them in Balmacara. Randur was soon conscious of turning the heads of the female servants and courtiers. He was used to such attention, so he smiled at the more attractive and winked at the least pretty ones. It helped that his personal guard was so ugly, too. There was a certain amount of tactical calculation in this, since a few of these women might have money he could extract with a kiss. Dartun's demands had forced such thoughts into Randur's head. Was he prostituting himself? This didn't really bother him. Sex was sex, and that was that - people made such a fuss about it.

He made sure always to be wearing good attire to mark himself out as a man of distinction, of rare breeding. He wore shirts as black as his own hair, the collar a fraction undone, breeches worn tight, boots with pointed toes - as was fashionable in this city.

A declaration of intent. Here was someone to reckon with.

The next day he was taken to a small, rather poorly lit stone chamber in which the Lady Eir was waiting for him dressed in a baggy white outfit.

Randur studied her clothing, shook his head. 'Well, for a start, you'll be better wearing something that fits to your body tightly.'

'Really?' Eir said. 'Why exactly would I need tight clothing? To enable the fetishes of your mind to flourish?'

'Lady, I'm afraid my mind gets its kicks from much wilder fetishes than that . . .' He shrugged. 'No, I meant you'll get your sword caught in such loose material.'

'I shall be wearing loose clothes most of my time. What's the use of training in things I won't be wearing when I'm attacked?'

'Whatever you wish. Now, first we'll need swords.'

The door burst open.

What now?

Two city guard troops stepped in, then bowed to her. 'My Lady Stewardess, Chancellor Urtica requires your urgent presence.'

'What is it?' Eir said irritably.

'The chancellor's pressing for a motion of war, and this step requires your presence in the Atrium.'

'War?' She frowned. 'Who with?'

'The Varltung nation, my lady. There is now evidence that it was they who slaughtered our Night Guardsmen at Daluk Point. Intelligence suggests they may well now provoke further attacks on the subsidiary nations of the Empire.'

Randur listened carefully. Would the Varltungs really dare attack the Empire? If so, his home island of Folke would be first in line.

'Tell him I'll be there immediately.' She turned her attention to Randur. 'We'll continue this practice some other time. Meanwhile, the smiths are expecting you. You can choose any weapon you like.'

'Cheers.' He bowed and watched as she left the room.

*

Out into the corridor, and he shambled around a corner into a gallery area where he spotted several richly dressed women about fifty paces away, their hair elegantly pinned up in the latest styles. His eyes lit up, a thousand opportunities flashing through his mind. For a moment he paused to watch them from behind the cover of what looked like the shell of a giant insect. At first he had taken it to be a suit of armour, but on closer inspection he realized the plating wasn't made of metal. It was the exoskeleton of some bizarre creature, pinned to the wall with a bolt, its mouth still open as if in a dying scream.

Randur shivered, regarded the women instead. He tried to listen to the snippets of conversation that echoed along the corridor.

'He's got a lot of Jamuns to his name, so I've heard . . .'

'Not quite sure he's marriage material . . .'

'Could you love him, though?'

'That's not the point, is it? He doesn't have to know what you might get up to on the side.'

'Astrid knows, I've seen better examples of a man . . . Not much physically, and he's also pretty old . . .'

'But still, there's a lot to be said for his house. I know I could be very happy living there. So I think you should go for him . . .'

Money-grabbing sows
, Randur thought.

He took a deep breath, and proceeded towards them, arming himself with a few sweet lines to deprive them of their wealth.

The horses rode in a rhythm matching his heartbeat, or was it the other way around? Brynd had done this for so many years it had become a dulled instinct, the sort of routine only noticed when he was not riding the length and breadth of the Empire. Brynd had been forcing his companions to ride until the horses were exhausted, only stopping at hamlets and villages when the wilderness proved more violent then anticipated. Bitter winds, followed by harsh sleet. The few remaining Night Guards crested the hill that overlooked the port of Gish. It was a bleak landscape this side of the island. Low clouds skimmed the horizon, undermining massive skies.

Because of the recent deaths of his comrades, at nights when they rested he sometimes stared at his sword blade and at the white-skinned man reflected back, and tried to make more sense of himself. Perhaps he had grown used to the luxury of command, standing so far back from any direct combat. He had wanted this, an opportunity to prove himself a true man - because of his unusual skin tone as much as his sexuality. People always judged him in unspoken terms, so he had to respond with action only because that was expected of him. And look where that action had taken him - many good soldiers and friends, dead.

Maybe there was too much time to think on these journeys.

The estuary was crowded with sailing vessels of the Jamur Second Dragoons. Brynd's own first regiment. Two dozen longships were blocking off one side of the harbour, allowing only a few fishing boats to pass out to sea. He could see the raised standards of at least two divisions - the Wolf and Eagle Brigades - on the shore this side of the port town. Gish had only become a military port in recent years, following assessments of how the ice age might affect the navigational channels of the major island of Jokull.

Blink while reading the history of this region and you might miss that it had become a significant commercial centre too, based upon supply and billeting of the army. It was now humming with armourers licensed directly from Villjamur, innkeepers, fishermen, wool merchants. And, below the gloss, the side of life that respectable people always looked away from: brothels, gambling dens involving big dogfights or dice, slaves beaten senseless over a chore forgotten, and brawls between soldiers over a spilt tankard.

Brynd looked back towards the ships, deciding after his recent encounters that he wanted as many vessels as possible to escort them on the return voyage. If nothing else, it would provide a positive statement: Here she comes, the new Empress, and she's well protected.

*

Two hours later, they boarded the
Black Frieter
, the largest of the longships docked at Gish. An old boat, once thought to house souls of the damned, it had been recovered from pirates decades ago, and now took its place in the Empire's fleet. Sea Captain Sang greeted them, if it could be called a greeting, then made sure the carriage would be well protected on the adjoining shore by several women of the Wolf Brigade. These quieter moments of travel always forced Apium to analyse the current status of the military.

Apium was always suspicious of the Dragoon Marines, despite them being a focal component of most military campaigns. They were a crucial force across the entire Archipelago, having developed effective techniques for short raids, and larger-scale invasions. A formidable reputation preceded them, even though it hadn't been put to good use in recent years. An air of arrogance surrounded them; they assumed nothing could be done without their participation. Sang herself was the embodiment of this, a low-born, in cultural terms, who had achieved great things. And even Apium was certain she was more vulgar in her manner than most male soldiers he'd known. She'd boasted to him once about all the islands she'd visited - travels around the entire Archipelago that no one else had managed. Said she'd even circumnavigated the Varltung islands, but he wasn't so sure, since there was no proof of such a voyage. She would customarily employ mainly women sailors, using the few men simply for raw physical chores. And he could make a good guess as to what services these might include.

Apium had joined Brynd, Lupus and Nelum on deck. Brynd was commenting on the salt refinery recently built, and that as yet stood as nothing more than a precarious shack on the quayside. He was clearly unimpressed.

Gish was altogether a decrepit place. No major division of the army had been deployed from here for a good while, so many soldiers were rotting away here - their time taken up with gambling, brawls, casual sex. That, he reflected, was what you got from doing nothing more rigorous than training exercises.

Brynd was exceptional in taking the opportunity of using cultists to develop training strategies on Kullrun, an islet off the opposite coast of Jokull. Cultist technology was normally used to scare men senseless, to drive back arrows, form illusions of troop movements, create phantoms that followed them long into their dreams at night. Any threatening scenario could thus be recreated, played out again and again, until the soldiers learned how to kill their enemy in the most efficient manner. A time-consuming business, but essential for producing the best soldiers. When it came down to it, when a soldier aimed an arrow at another man's face for the very first time, releasing it could prove difficult. And many of the soldiers currently in the Dragoons, Marines or Regiment of Foot were fresh recruits who had signed up to avoid the hardships of the ice age since the military provided a guaranteed wage.

Boys and girls from the poorest parts of the Empire fighting for the richest.

Was that how all armies had been recruited throughout history?

*

A few hours later, Brynd was the first to step down off the
Black Frieter
and onto the main island of Southfjords, under a massive sky filled with fast-moving cumulus, looming over a landscape littered with small wind-ravaged trees tilting at an angle. Terns arced over their heads, heading off towards their high cliff colonies further along the shore.

The four guards set off along a gravel track that cut up through a green hill, and Brynd suspected that those black-clad strangers, carrying swords and axes, would be an intimidating spectacle for a young woman who had been told nothing of why she was summoned home.

Even in decay the temple was an imposingly beautiful building, with its limestone arches and soaring spire flanked by two smaller ones. As Jorsalir structures went, this was certainly one of the more extravagant temples, more sizeable than the churches Brynd had seen back in Villjamur. Maybe several hundred years old, so not remotely ancient by the Archipelago's standards, obviously it had been constructed in a period when the Jorsalir had commanded phenomenal power and wealth, unlike now, when the Council even levied tax upon them.

As they approached the building, three women stepped out, their green gowns whipping around their bodies in the wind like banners of war. The looks on their faces were just as grim, and Brynd asked his companions to remain still while he moved ahead alone.

Two of the women were ageing slightly, greying hair framing their delicate features. The third was younger, but the graceful way she walked and her general demeanour made her appear ageless. He noticed a white dryas attached to her breast.

'Sele of Jamur,' Brynd greeted them. 'Commander Brynd Lathraea of the Night Guard.'

There it was: that shocked look on their faces as they took in his skin, his eyes - always the same reaction.

'Ah, the albino? Sele of Jamur, commander,' said the youngest of the three. 'My name is Ardune, and I'm a priestess here. These two are my clerics.'