Servant of the Empire (70 page)

Then came a faint hissing sound, like the release of steam from a cook pot. All in the room found their eyes drawn to the floor, where a mote of green light burned into existence. The staunchest of the warriors instinctively cringed back, and those who wore weapons reached for swords.

The glow intensified until it outshone the single lamp. Eyes burned and teared at the brilliance, and a fey energy raised the hair on everyone’s arms.

‘Magic!’ hissed Lord Bontura, the widened whites of his eyes stained sickly green by the dazzle.

The speck brightened and swelled, then smeared to a sinuous form that twisted and undulated in the air. No one was able to move, for the effect of the light was hypnotic.

The phenomenon coalesced into a horrible, glowing apparition. Scintillating eyes appeared, and a wedge-shaped head, and a deadly, tapered tail writhed against the floor.

Under his breath, Hoppara said, ‘A relli!’

Kevin knew the poisonous snake of Kelewan, but this
surpassed the biggest river viper he had ever seen. Fully two feet in length, the serpent shimmered with a green incandescence that cast an evil glow over every object in the room. The creature slithered forward a few inches, its head slightly raised and its forked tongue flickering from armoured jaws to taste the air.

Kevin glanced at Lujan, who gripped his sheathed weapon in taut fingers. Yet even a gifted swordsman could not draw from the scabbard and expect to strike before the serpent.

Still on the mat, barely breathing, Mara whispered, ‘Don’t move, anyone.’

As if the sound of her voice keyed response, a low buzz shook the air. The serpent’s head snapped toward the Lady of the Acoma. Its eyes brightened and seemed eerily to shine through the body of the soldier who knelt between, the basin by his knees and one hand raised to bathe his mistress’s face.

The magical apparition writhed to one side. The slanted head twisted toward Mara and its tail whipped suddenly into a coil. The head rose and arched back.

Lujan nodded to Kevin, who took a slow, soundless step back. Permitted room to swing, the Force Commander snapped his wrist. His blade sang free of its scabbard and descended, edge on, toward the creature’s neck.

Yet against an arcane summoning no man could move undetected. The snakelike creature arose until it towered to full height. Then it struck, blindingly fast.

Lujan’s sword sliced air, and Mara cried out in shock. The warrior by her side flung his body across hers, and the basin flooded water across the floor; the glowing apparition missed its mark. Fangs like arrows pierced through hide armour with no more resistance than cloth. The wedge-shaped head followed, vanishing into the warrior’s body like liquid sucked through a hole, and the sickly illumination poured after.

For an instant, the room crawled with shadow.

Then the warrior screamed. His hands worked and clenched in agony, and his eyes began to glow greenly. The illumination brightened, spilling across his skin in a flood that burned, then blazed, then dazzled. The room held nothing of darkness. Then flesh itself began to pucker and crumple. The whites of the man’s eyes swelled and collapsed, and his teeth glittered emerald in gums that smouldered and turned black.

Hoppara and Iliando shrank away in voiceless terror; Mara sat frozen, as if the spell held her rooted. Only Kevin, driven by love, found the will to react. He stepped aside, reached past the shining flesh that now thrashed in mindless torment, and caught Mara’s upper arm. With a tortured cry of effort he half lifted, half dragged her beyond reach of the shrieking warrior. Then he flung his own body before hers.

Lujan found his reflexes. His sword spun down in an expert stroke and silenced the harrowing screams. Smoke puffed from the corpse, and the green glow flickered and vanished. Ordinary gloom flooded back, full darkness held off by the flame of one guttering lamp.

Openly shaking, the Lord of the Bontura made a sign against evil. ‘A magician wishes your death, Lady Mara. That thing sought you out by the sound of your voice!’

Kevin wiped sweating hands on his robe, forgetful that the cloth was already sodden. He shook his head. ‘I think not.’

Lord Bontura looked irritated at the contradiction, but Mara raised herself from the floorboards without offence. ‘Why?’

The Midkemian looked back at her, his blue eyes level. ‘If a Black Robe wanted you dead, you would be, and no effort of ours could have spared you. Just one of those lightning globes we saw at the games, tossed in here, would make an end of things. But if someone wanted to scare the hell out
of you as a warning, a slow snake would turn the trick nicely.’

‘Snake?’ said Mara. Then comprehension dawned as she pulled her arms around her knees in a huddle. ‘You mean the relli. Yes, perhaps you are correct.’

‘There is another possibility,’ Hoppara offered, blotting sweat from his brow with the back of one wrist. ‘Lesser Magicians and priests can work magic, and unlike any member of the Assembly, they might be susceptible to bribes.’

‘Who?’ Kevin fought to keep the shiver of reaction from his voice. ‘Who would have the means?’

Hoppara regarded the corpse left dead by the spell, its lips pulled back in a haunting rictus of pain. ‘If a man could consign a nation’s wealth to the Hamoi tong to buy assassins, might he not also stoop to paying off the priests of a powerful temple, or hire the services of a renegade Lesser Magician?’

‘Do you accuse Minwanabi?’ said Iliando, his ham hands still clenched in his sleeves.

‘Perhaps. Or else the party who sent us the soldiers in black.’ Hoppara surged to his feet, as if further stillness might burn him. Armoured, blood-streaked, and left haggard by stress, he looked the image of Chipino. ‘We may know tomorrow, if we survive to return to council.’

No one spoke.

Four more attacks came.

Throughout the night the Acoma soldiers and their allies endured assaults by dark warriors without house badges. The Hamoi tong troubled them no more, but the armoured soldiers came in waves.

On the last influx the defenders were forced to retreat into the small back bedroom that had no outside door. Jammed in the narrow area, they beat back enemies who sallied from the hall, and others who pressed for entry through the shattered window. Kevin stationed himself before Mara at all times and fought like a man possessed. By the third attack, almost no one remained without injuries. The most tradition-bound Tsurani was too tired to look twice at the redheaded, loud-mouthed barbarian, as he rested with sword and shield in hand after the latest struggle. His blade had stood ground with the best warriors’, and let the gods determine the fate of a slave who refused to know his place. While the night wore on, and men died, no hand that could still grip a weapon could be spared.

After the fourth attack, Kevin could barely move. His arms ached with fatigue and his knees shook uncontrollably. When the last black warrior fell under his sword, his legs folded and he hunkered on the floor, while the nervous energy that had sustained him drained away.

Mara brought him a cup of water and he laughed at the reversal of roles. He drank deeply as she moved on to tend to the others able to drink. Kevin surveyed the carnage. The floor, the cushions, the walls, every cranny of the chamber glistened red, and hacked bodies lay sprawled in grotesque
positions. The once pleasant room now looked like some nightmare charnel house. Of the thirty Acoma soldiers and two dozen Xacatecas and Bontura who had joined ranks the night before, only ten Acoma, five Xacatecas, and three Bontura warriors stood. The rest lay slain or wounded between heaps of black-clad corpses that no one had energy left to clear. Dully Kevin said, ‘We must have killed a hundred of them.’

‘Perhaps more.’ Called from the pantry cupboard by necessity, Arakasi knelt beside the slave. The sling that supported his arm was splashed red, and the dagger in his left hand seemed glued to his fingers with gore.

Kevin inclined his head. ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’

Arakasi glanced at the splinted arm and nodded. ‘Of course it hurts.’ He looked out the door. ‘Morning is almost here. If they are to come one last time, it will be soon.’

Kevin heaved himself to his feet. He would have dropped his sword, could he have done so without cutting his ankles. Bone-tired, and shivering from stress, he crossed unsteadily to where Mara knelt, comforting Hoppara’s wounded Force Commander. She looked up at Kevin’s approach. She looked painfully thin by the light of the one lamp left burning, her eyes too large in her pale face, and one of her hands was scraped raw across the knuckles. ‘Are you all right?’ Kevin asked.

She nodded absently as she struggled against weariness to rise. ‘So much … waste,’ she said at last.

Somehow Kevin mustered the will to hold out a hand and pull her to her feet. ‘Don’t let the others hear you, my love. They’ll drum you out of the council for un-Tsurani attitudes.’

Mara was too beaten to manage even the ghost of a smile.

‘You’re not safe in here,’ he added. ‘We’ll get one of the servants to bring Hoppara’s officer along.’

Mara shook her head. ‘Too late.’ She buried her face in the sweaty hollow of her lover’s neck.

Kevin looked down and saw that the Xacatecas Force Commander had ceased to breathe. The quiet strength and leadership that had kept men on the march through the burning sands of Tsubar were only a memory now. ‘Gods, he was a grand soldier.’

Kevin guided his Lady back to the small room that had proven the most defensible. There Lujan, two warriors, and Mara’s remaining house staff were trying to clear away bodies. Those loyal soldiers who had fallen were carried to another bedroom, waiting a time for honourable cremation, while the black-armoured corpses were kicked or rolled through the outer screen into a heap in the garden.

Mara leaned into Kevin. ‘I don’t think I shall ever get the stink of this room out of my nose.’

Clumsy with weariness, Kevin stroked her hair. ‘The reek of a battlefield is not easily forgotten.’

A crash from the outer doorway echoed through the apartment. ‘Lashima, they won’t stop,’ cried Hoppara in a note of desperation. Lord Iliando stood hunched over his sword, wheezing painfully, while Lujan signalled two soldiers to take position close to their Lady. Then the Acoma Force Commander shouldered into the corridor, Kevin hard on his heels. There were no longer enough able-bodied defenders for him to hang back beside Mara. As he stepped into the gloom of the hallway, a voice soft as velvet touched his ears.

‘Don’t worry for her. Just fight as you can, Kevin of Zun.’ The barbarian managed a nod over his shoulder at the still presence of Arakasi; then a pair of black soldiers were bursting through the makeshift barricade Xacatecas men had raised in the hall. Kevin charged, while to one side more enemies shoved at the debris that blocked an adjoining doorway.

A man could not think, but only react by reflex; Kevin lashed out, feeling the jar as his metal blade sliced into the
arm of an enemy. Another foe took his place. The pressure of attack did not ease. Slash, backstep, slash again – Kevin moved by ingrained instinct. He was aware of Lujan at his side, and somebody else shouting curses in monotone. Then the warriors at the side door smashed through the rubble, and defenders started dying. Somebody went down under Kevin’s feet, and he stumbled, caught from a tumble by the blood-slippery hands of a Bontura warrior. He could only nod swift thanks, for another assailant was upon him. Crazily he wondered where in the Empire anyone had found so many sets of black armour. Or had somebody just lacquered over house colours to loose such an army against them?

The attackers stormed into the first chamber as the defenders flagged. Numbers prevailed. Lujan and his last survivors were driven back, and back. And yet they were not beaten. The Tsurani possessed mulish courage, and they gave no ground freely in retreat.

Kevin felled a black warrior. Behind, an exhausted Lord of the Xacatecas helped the Lord of the Bontura into the second chamber. The heavier man was battling for air, and one leg appeared to be dragging. Kevin felt desperation close around his chest. But the ugly, fearful vision of Mara with a sword through her heart hardened his resolve to keep going. He spun, raised his sword, and attacked with reborn fury. The interval gained the two Lords enough time to make their escape. Another pair of live bodies between Mara and death, thought Kevin with callous practicality. He almost laughed as he recalled Arakasi’s words of encouragement. His sword rose and fell, parried and thrust. The fury was gone now; only the pain of exhaustion remained. Then his shoulder slammed against a door jamb, and his clumsy misjudgment cost. An enemy sword scored his ribs. He hacked it away, metal hammering brittle laminate. The black warrior’s sword shattered at the grip. Kevin shoved
steel into the man’s stark, surprised face, then stumbled over a body and landed on one knee inside the door.

Too slowly, Kevin recovered. A black soldier leaped behind him, turning a backhanded blow upon the barbarian’s unarmoured back. Pain burned his skin, but a fast parry from Lujan cracked the sword away. Kevin whirled and delivered a heavy-handed thrust to the stomach. The enemy folded.

Beyond stood Arakasi, a sword clutched in his left hand as a boy might threaten with a club. ‘Are you all right?’

Kevin gasped. ‘Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.’ Against a pearl-grey light that filtered through gaping screens, he saw black warriors massed for a charge down the corridor. He bit back another crazy laugh. ‘Did I say live?’