Prince of Wrath (55 page)

Lalaas saluted and left, puffing out his cheeks mightily once he was outside in the passageway. To spy on Amne? What a poisoned chalice! He wondered what Elas would do with any unfortunate who did succumb to Amne’s amorous intentions, then decided it was best not to think about it. Elas was a very cold character and he suspected that whatever it was wouldn’t be that pleasant.

He grumbled under his breath and made his way to his own office, a smaller room closer to the entrance hall. There, he ran the guard roster, the overseeing of appointments and the security of the palace. He also received reports from the spies in the streets of Kastan City, and the comings and goings of the rival House personnel. The Fokis in particular he wanted to keep an eye on, following their bungled attempt on Amne’s life at her wedding. They had gone to ground and seemingly fled the capital to their estates, but he was convinced one or two remained in the capital, if only to keep close to the pulse of the empire.

Pieces of parchment, notes, scribbled messages, statements from witnesses. All were collected and any pattern that emerged examined and pored over in great detail. There was no sniff of rebellion at the moment, at least in the capital, and for that he was grateful. That had been a worry following Astiras’ removal of his Court to Zofela, but the councils the emperor held out in Bragal needed the heads of the various Houses to give them legitimacy, and if any plots were being planned, then they may well be down in Bragal. That wasn’t his concern.

Amne’s request that he find the Fokis responsible for the attempt on her life had come to naught; all he found now were empty buildings, or ones maintained by their retainers who had no idea when their masters or mistresses would return. They were not privy to the comings and goings of their paymasters, quite reasonably. Not even Lalaas’ spy network could uncover the whereabouts of any Fokis in the capital.

He placed the papers in a drawer and picked up the next sheet passed him by his lieutenant, Fendal, a thickset, dark haired man with a strong jaw and stout arms that looked as if they could rip statues apart. Fendal had been one of the lesser officers under Vosgaris but when his predecessor had taken most of the guard with him to Zofela, Lalaas had promoted some of those who were left and recruited men from the unemployed ranks of former soldiers to take their place as ordinary soldiers. That way many of the soldiers and officers under him were loyal to him rather than Vosgaris. It helped run things much more smoothly whenever he gave orders. Even though he had been unused to giving orders at first, he had grown into the role and his professionalism and competence had earned him the respect of both those below him, and from Prince Elas who recognised in Lalaas a man who could carry out orders faithfully and honourably. Lalaas was not one who took bribes or who had factional loyalties; he was not from any of the Houses, and Elas found that a huge comfort. Lalaas would treat all Houses equally.

Amne, meanwhile, rode along the new wide main road of Frasia. It had been one of the first contracts carried out by her father, and certainly helped in getting traffic through the province faster. It was cambered from the centre down to the sides, and rainwater drains ran along either side, all faced with stone. Unlike most of the roads in the empire, this road was paved with hard stone, and the shoes of the equines made a loud clopping sound as the sixteen trotted along eastwards.

With her were the youthful Kastanian Imperial Mounted Militia, eager, bright-faced people younger than her. They were proud of their already victorious history; rescuing Amne and Lalaas at the farm and taking part in the battle that vanquished Lombert Soul. Now these had been selected to accompany her to Zofela and to guard her with their lives. Impressionable and confident, they saw this as another indicator that they were favoured by the Koros. They had endured jibes and low comments about their calling, but now they felt they had justified their choice not to go into the infantry or navy.

Their commander, Deran Loshar, had emphasised their importance and necessity in modern warfare, and listed the battles that the Tybar had won using the mobile hit-and-run tactics of mounted archers over less flexible opposition. Their pride in their unit had been forged with their two triumphs and their flag carried the honour of victory at Gamrap, the name and the classic crossed swords at the bottom of the flag that had in black an equine’s head, a bow and arrow and the castle moniker of Kastan City.

Leading the fifteen-man contingent was a young officer, Commander Telekan, wiry, brown-haired, compact and with an air of confidence that had made him one of the choices to lead a squadron. Telekan felt very honoured to escort one of the imperial family and set about his task with enthusiasm, making sure each of the other riders knew their places and followed the expected etiquette. Scouts were sent ahead and off to the left and right, on rotation, so that none were away too long.

They passed the first of the relay stations, a collection of three buildings that straddled the road and a corralled area for spare equines. Two guards waved as they rode past, then bowed as they realised that one of the two flags being carried was that of the imperial family. Amne smiled and rode on, sometimes at the head of the column, sometimes in the middle and at others at the rear. She wished to see for herself the skill and competence of the riders, to compare them to the Mazag riders she had ridden with on her previous visit to Bragal. While they were not as adept in the saddle, they were comfortable enough and she felt reasonably happy amongst their ranks. The other factor that had lightened her mood was that of being away from the stifling atmosphere of the palace. Already she was regretting her words to Lalaas and made a mental note to write a letter to him that evening before she went to sleep. The relay station would deliver it, she knew. She had best send a letter to her husband, too, to avoid any possible problems.

Frasia was a gently rolling country, made up of large farms of pastureland. It was the food basket of the kingdom and supplied both Kastan City and Turslenka with much of the meat that was to be found for sale in the markets there. In the distance hills loomed, purple smudges on the horizon, and here and there small stands of woodland could be seen, a remnant of the larger forests that once existed before the farms came.

The fork in the road approached close to the evening and here stood the second relay station, a larger one, made of five buildings. Two corrals could be seen, and one of the buildings was a small version of the watchtowers that were being thrown up in Bragal. Amne pointed at the station to Telekan. “We stay here tonight, Commander.”

“Ma’am,” the young officer thumped his chest and indicated to three of his men to circle wide and make sure there were no unpleasant surprises in the vicinity.

The five men at the station had been forewarned of the visit and all came out to stand to attention, led by a sergeant. They bowed as Amne arrived and dismounted, handing her reins to one of the young archers. “We are honoured, your majesty,” the sergeant said deferentially.

“Thank you, Sergeant. I require sleeping quarters for the night, and will be sending messages back to Kastan City. The men here have tents and sleeping equipment so they shall spend the night out under the stars,” she looked up at the deepening blue of the sky. There were no stars visible yet but they would appear fairly soon.

“Very good ma’am. A room has been prepared already, along with a bath. We have been heating water.”

Amne looked at the soldier in surprise. “Really? That is impressive. I had no idea that this was part of the accommodation at these places.”

“The emperor arranged it at the larger stations such as this one, ma’am. There are no servants, I regret, but once the tub is sufficiently full you shall be advised.”

Amne thanked the man and was shown to her room. The building was a standard sleeping hut, made to accommodate six in separate rooms, but for Amne nobody else would be permitted to stay there. The bath was being filled by a relay of the garrison from a burning fire outside, utilising a large kettle. The bath itself was of bronze and would allow Amne to sit comfortably in it. She silently thanked her father for such planning.

The next day, after a good night’s sleep, they resumed their journey, taking the right hand fork and riding south. The day was cloudy and a wind was blowing in off the distant Balq Sea, a sign of autumn. Amne recalled the winter in Bragal and shivered in memory. This time it would not be so bad – at least she fervently hoped so. Her plans for Bragal were not long, a stay of perhaps five days before the return leg. She preferred to ride in the open, and she cared not that she may travel two or three times as long as her intended stay. Here at least she felt free.

Marriage to Elas was a prison.

The shouts of drunken men filled the tavern, and roars of approval rose as one man received a solid blow to the jaw and was sent staggering back towards the door. Another hefty punch to the stomach was followed by one last full-blooded swing into the face and the luckless recipient crashed to the ground, accompanied by cheers, jeers and laughter.

The winner smiled in triumph and dragged the loser out of the door and left him, bloodied and battered, in the street outside. The patrons of the saloon resumed their conversations before the fight had started, the fisticuffs already a thing of memory.

Most of them were rough, tough seamen, pirates and cutthroats. A few, though, were different. One or two were dockers, big men with huge hands and arms, and able to take care of themselves. They were natives of the town and to them it mattered not whether they worked on merchant vessels or pirate warships, as long as they were paid. A few others sat quietly in corners, drinking by themselves, not wishing to associate with the raucous sailors and dockside vermin. Occasionally one may be picked upon by someone bored with their company, or because they had drunk too much and wanted to beat someone up, and someone quiet was probably a safer bet than one who made lots of noise.

Kiros Louk sat at the back of the room, his back to the wall. His hood was up over his head and he sipped his ale slowly, observing without making it obvious. Kiros had been in Romos for the entire winter, spring and summer, and had become a figure people were used to seeing around the docks and inns. He worked on the wharves as a stevedore, fetching and carrying cargo or equipment, and was paid a paltry coin. Only the poor or otherwise unemployable took that kind of job and were looked down upon by the rest. Kiros took it so to give him a cover for his spying activities.

Over the year he’d amassed quite a detailed picture of the pirate organisation in the island. He knew how many ships they had, who captained them, roughly how many crew each ship had, what the garrison was comprised of and who commanded them all from the small wooden fort sat on the edge of the timber walled town.

He had been surprised when the Duras appeared, and now there were four of them, all housed in the fort, surrounded by a small retinue of guards. The pirate commander was wary of them but tolerated their presence because they were, like him, enemies of the Koros, and they added a bit of political kudos with their presence there. Lord Duras had tried to swing some weight around but the pirate commander, Volkanos, had slapped him down, pointing out, quite rightly, that he had three hundred men to Lord Duras’ eleven and who would decide matters in a fight? Kiros grunted to himself; two louts, street brawlers, bullies. It always came down to who had the bigger fists. From what he could understand, Volkanos had been a minor captain in the imperial fleet when the revolt had come, eight years or so previously. Fed up with the constant civil war and deposition of one emperor after another, the fleet had sailed into Romos harbour, hung those officers and men still loyal to the empire, then had taken control of Romos, executing the imperial governor and his loyal troops. Many of the troops had gone over to the rebels as they had been given no pay for some time.

Kiros had been picked on by one aggressive fool once, a brawler of a sailor, and Kiros had sat at his table ignoring the drunken braggart’s loud, spitting promises of what he was going to do to the man. Like all bullies, he had taken Kiros’ silence for cowardice and fear, and had reached out to pull the quiet man up by the throat. Kiros had made one swift movement and the brawler had staggered back, his throat slit and spurting blood, before collapsing to the stained wooden floor to drain his lifeblood away.

The shocked patrons had looked at Kiros, one or two with vague thoughts of revenge for the death of their comrade, but Kiros’ firm look at them had persuaded them perhaps this was one who should be left alone – at least for the time being.

Kiros was no fool. He had been alert for the next few days and when the back street attack had come, he had left the two would-be muggers as trash in the alley, to be picked up by the town refuse collectors. They would be thrown into the dock before the next morning. Since then Kiros had been given a wide berth. He was someone not to mess about with.

This day he was keen to leave early, for he had an appointment on the coast. His comings and goings had been covered by an eccentric habit he’d thought up, that of collecting different types of plant that grew around the island. On his days off he would get on his elderly retired pack equine and ride out into the interior of the island to find new kinds of plant to take to his small one-room abode where he arranged the plants in a neat row along the wall, held there by a combination of string and nails.

People regarded him as an odd kind of man and often grinned behind their hands when he came back, a bag of flora over his shoulder. He even showed people what he had collected, and most laughed it off and ignored him, which was what he wanted anyway. In reality he was scouting out places for Prince Jorqel to approach the town from. Ever since he’d got the message that an invasion of Romos was being planned, he’d begun to seek out firstly a landing place for the Kastanians, and secondly routes they could take to the town. He had drawn plenty of maps and now had them under his tunic.

He rode his animal along the single track road that ran from Romos town into the interior of the island. There were a couple of villages in the hills and a boating village on the other side, and farms dotted about here and there. The pirates didn’t bother them too much, merely being contented in sending out the less than enthusiastic garrison troops to gather food supplies. A couple of farmers had resisted, complaining that the amounts they had to hand over would leave them with precious little to see the winter through, and they had been hung up on the roadside as an example to the others to co-operate. After that there had been little complaint – at least to the faces of the soldiers.

Kiros knew that the farmers were hoarding food in secret places, and had spoken to one or two particularly bitter men. One had lost his daughter to the pirates – she had been taken when they had seen how pretty she was, and the farmer had been informed she was now servicing Volkanos as his sex slave in the town keep. The farmer had been too ready to give Kiros any information he needed, in return for Kiros sending word to the girl. He’d managed to locate her but had as yet not been able to speak to the girl, since Kiros was not one of the people privileged enough to enter the fort.

The other had lost most of his herd to the rapacious demands and his mutterings had been picked up by Kiros one day while observing the farm from close by, so Kiros had approached him and suggested that the return of Romos to Kastanian rule may well be beneficial to the farmer. In return the farmer had passed on all the information Kiros needed on the loyalties of the farmers, which ones to trust, which ones not to.

He had become an information conduit between the various disaffected people on the island, and felt much safer out in the countryside than he did in the town. A right hand fork led down to the shingle beach he had found as a good place to take messages, and as night began to fall he arrived, tying the beast to a tree so it could graze happily about.

There was a steep path down to the beach which was dotted with flotsam and detritus, and old wood was in plentiful supply. He made a small pyre and lit it, the glow visible only out to sea because of the steeply shelving terrain elsewhere. After a short delay an answering glow began across the straights on the mainland, and he knew that a boat would now be setting out from the outpost Jorqel had set up on the Lodrian mainland.

It took a little while but finally a small rowing boat materialised out of the dark, two figures sat inside, and it crunched onto the shore. One of the figures leaped out and trod heavily up to the line of pebbles beyond the high water mark, passing a dark line of dried out seaweed.

“Hail,” the figure said softly.

“Hail. I have papers here.”

Kiros passed the bundle to the man who slipped them into his jacket, a rough vestment of leather. The man next searched in a small bag he had and passed to Kiros a few coins. “The Prince will let you know when he is to land on Romos. Have you identified a good place to land?”

Kiros pointed to the bulging vestment. “It’s all in there.”

The man grunted. “The pirates lost two ships in the past few sevendays. How are they reacting to that?”

Kiros snorted. “Annoyed – but they don’t seem to be that bothered. To be honest I think they have little ambition beyond plunder and blowing it all on drink and women. Discipline has gone to the black pit of oblivion. At least on the ships anyway; the garrison is a little more organised – it’s their home after all, and they’ll fight to stop everything being burned to the ground.”

The man nodded, then he passed a hunk of bread to Kiros who took it and bit a chunk off it and chewed slowly, savouring the sweetness of the dough. “Think it’s possible to take the town with one surprise attack?”

“Depends on the size of the attacking force. You’d need to knock over the walls. Forget any approach from the sea – the pirates will have that route blocked. They have archers and spearmen inside the walls.”

The man sucked in his breath between his teeth. “I’ll pass that on – that’s no surprise but I think his highness was hoping for a more demoralised garrison.”

Kiros jerked his head inland. “You’ll have support amongst some of the farmers, I’ve noted which ones. I think it best to blockade the town and starve them into surrender. They rely on raping the farms for supplies.”

“I’ll let the Prince know that – this is good stuff to know. Are you in danger of being discovered, by the way? His highness is concerned your long stay here could compromise you.”

Kiros shook his head. “They think I’m a little crazy; I collect plants,” Kiros half-smiled in the light of the flickering beacon. “They leave me alone.”

The man nodded, then turned and made his way back down to the boat. “We’ll be watching again in thirty days.”

Kiros nodded, then began kicking the beacon into extinction. Although the pirates and their militia allies didn’t often come this way, he didn’t want to take the risk of leaving evidence that here had been a fire. The branches sparked in the night air and still crackled with flames even after being bashed against the pebbles and shingle. There was no other way but to douse the blazing ends in the water, which he did. The light on the beach died away, and all that remained was the distant beacon on the far shore, acting as a guide for the rowboat.

He scrambled up the narrow path, cursing under his breath at the loose surface, but finally got to the top and located his equine, placidly standing by the same tree it had been tied to. A few moments later Kiros was riding it away from the beach area, along a narrow defile, and then out onto the grassy inland area that eventually led to the farms.

There was one farm not too far away and he made his way towards it, using the distant flickering light from the house as a guide, and trying to keep to the narrow track. It was a difficult feat, however, what with the intense darkness due to the lack of a moon. The wind blew across his face, bringing a touch of coolness, another sign that summer had gone and winter was on its way. Romos wasn’t given to the severe winters further south, and being surrounded by water meant that its climate was much more temperate, but the high mountain backbone often collected snow in deepest winter and when the wind blew from there down to the valleys, it did bring a little extra bite.

Snow on the lowlands was almost unknown, though, and the farms could grow foodstuffs all year round if they planned sufficiently well. The nearest farm was one of these and Kiros knew the farmer to be a steady, unruffled type, taking the change in master with equanimity. To be honest, he had stated it was no different now than what it had been under the latter emperors before the pirate takeover. He hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about the prospect of an imperial resumption of rule when Kiros had engaged him in idle conversation, wondering whether he would prefer the current regime or a Kastanian seizure of Romos.

“As long as they leave me alone, that’s all I care about,” he had grumbled. Fat chance of that, since taxation was a way of life and one of the most certain things anyone could expect. The other was death.

Kiros approached and halted; there were more people milling about than he had expected. He slid off his mount and walked it along the boundary road of the farm, identifiable from the double split plank fence that marked the end of farm property. There were a couple of trees by the roadside so Kiros tethered the equine there and made his way across a field of high foodstuff plants, ripe and ready for harvesting. It was arranged in neat rows so he could walk fairly evenly along towards the farm without becoming lost or making a noise.

The edge of the field was marked with another fence, this one a low single planked construction. He eyed the group of men standing by the doorway and crouched behind a barrel full of rainwater standing at the corner of the main house. Kiros was still in the dark but could hear the farmer speaking to the leader of the group.

“I have yet to harvest,” the farmer was complaining loudly. “How can I judge what my tithe to your leader will be until then?”

“You should have harvested by now,” spoke the leader in a deep, gravelly voice. “Duke Volkanos is not a happy man – he has sent me to collect. Your food is needed by the Duke.”