The City (63 page)

‘Have you noticed,’ said Gil, ‘that there are more rats now? For half a day we have seen hardly any. Now they are everywhere. It is a sign that we are near our goal.’

‘Rats like to be near people,’ agreed Indaro, watching a dozen or more skittering up the stairs in front of them.

At Gil’s orders the warriors started putting on breastplates and helms. Archers unwrapped bowstrings from greased packages and
strung their bows. Now the way upwards was clear, Elija was moved back to the centre of the army, and armed and armoured men stalked ahead, swords at the ready. At the top of the second staircase they entered a new maze.

At last they reached a door sunk deep in a mossy wall. Stout and riveted, it looked as though it had not opened in a hundred years. The iron handle had rusted away, and when Gil grasped the wooden nub sticking out of the hole where the handle had been it too came away in his hand. He threw it down, and put his hand in the hole and pulled. The door scraped open. Beyond it was a guard room. It was small and square, with racks for weapons on two sides and iron shackles embedded in one wall, and it was furnished with a crumbling table and chairs. They crossed the room, moving quietly, to another door. This looked newer and recently used.

A feeling of misgiving rose in Indaro’s breast. Was this the way into the Keep? After a miserable day of struggling through tunnels and floods, it seemed too easy. She drew her sword.

Gil held the handle of the inner door. There was silence in the room, as if all the soldiers were holding their breath. Gil smiled grimly. ‘If there are enemy warriors on the other side, then it doesn’t matter how much noise we make.’

He eased the door open and peered, then he passed through and his troops followed. They found themselves in a corridor, high and long, but narrow. There was a stone wall on one side and a wooden one on the other. Single file they crept along. Light, hard and bright, gleamed from myriad cracks in the wooden wall. Indaro suddenly realized it was panelling; they were behind the panelling of a room. Like rats running behind the walls. Gil had come to the same understanding, and he stopped and signalled for total silence.

‘Are we in the Keep?’ he whispered.

Elija nodded confidently.

‘This is what we came here for,’ Gil said to his troops in a low voice. ‘By my estimate it is near to noon on the Day of Summoning. Take a few moments to make peace with your gods, for we are not likely to survive this day.’ He looked around at them. ‘Remember what we are here for – to kill as many of the Thousand as possible and give Fell time. Your sacrifice will be unknown, tales will not be told of your courage. Hold on. Stay alive as long as you can. Kill them all.’

‘Let’s get on with it, then,’ Stalker muttered.

Gil grinned at him, then raised the hilt of his sword and crashed it through the wooden panelling. Light splintered into the narrow space, then other men started ripping away the flimsy wall and they stepped blinking into a wide chamber bathed in light.

Indaro looked around. The room was empty of furnishing but was decorated with murals of blue sky and white clouds. Sunlight filtered in from high windows and Indaro’s eyes drank it in – it was the first sunlight she had seen for weeks.

Gil paused, unsure which way to go, and turned to Elija. But before he could say anything a City soldier came running into the room. He skidded to a halt at the sight of the armed invaders and opened his mouth to shout, but he was felled by arrows from several bows. The Petrassi archers cheered, exhilarated by the kill.

Then a second soldier arrived and let out a yell. ‘They’re here! Here!’ He was slain too, but they could hear the sound of running feet in the distance and within moments warriors started streaming into the chamber. Indaro saw the black and silver of the Thousand. And they were fresh and eager for blood.

They’re here!
she thought. They were expected. She heard an alarm gong begin its deep boom far away.

Indaro parried a sword-cut and returned it, her sword sliding off the warrior’s breastplate. She was unbalanced and ducked away when the blade slashed again. With an ear-shattering scream she rammed her sword into the man’s groin where two pieces of armour met. The man went down, blood jetting, and Indaro stepped back, looking round for Elija. He was flat against the wall, alarm in his eyes, trying to make his way back the way they had come. Garret and the Petrassi soldier Nando were screening him from attack. As she watched, Nando took a blade to the belly, and she leaped forward and slashed her sword at the attacker’s neck. Her blade slid off armour, but the man was distracted and Garret rammed his knife into his face above the cheek-guard.

For a while the invaders held their own, but more defenders kept pouring into the room. Finally there were so many they were waiting two and three deep for a chance to get at the army. Gil went down, a slashing sword wound to the thigh. Indaro made her way through the melee to him and knelt down.

‘I’ve got to find Fell,’ she said.

‘Take Elija,’ he gasped, blood gushing from his leg, ‘and Garret and Stalker, and try the Hall of Watchers. We’ll keep them busy.’

She nodded. She had no words for him, but clapped him on the shoulder before making her way back along the wall, behind the fighting. She told Elija and Garret to retreat and they obeyed, but when she ordered Stalker to follow he shook his head.

‘You’ll leave these brave men here to die?’ he argued, skewering his man and pausing to draw breath.

Instantly fury rose in her breast. ‘I’m here for Fell, not for Gil Rayado!’ she shouted above the noise of battle. She grabbed him by the front of his jerkin. ‘A handful of us can make no difference here. Our mission is to stay alive until we have done what we are here for.’

Stalker ducked under a blow to his head, and Indaro leaped to stab the attacker. Yet again her blade slid off the breastplate, but she had winded him and as the man bent forward she held her weapon two-handed and rammed it down above the armour, through his neck to his heart. She abandoned the blunted sword in his body and grabbed his. Then she turned to Stalker, who nodded.

‘Ay,’ he conceded reluctantly, ‘but I was enjoying myself.’ He limped after her as she ran along the wall and back out into the guard room.

‘Elija, take us to the Hall of Watchers,’ she ordered, and the young man nodded, then set off at a run.

Dol Salida was not a religious man. This did not stop him praying to the soldiers’ gods when he was in mortal danger, and when he was in the prison camp he took part in the religious rituals of other, more devout, men. But it was his belief that a person’s lot in life was fixed, maybe from the moment of conception, and calling upon the gods for riches or for rescue could not change that. He thought they were either indifferent to the pleas of men, or non-existent, and it made no difference either way.

But when he was a new cavalryman, all of sixteen and eager to taste the dizzying pleasures of the world, he had attended the ritual of the goddess of summoning, Rharata, called the Radiant. He was invited by a girl he had hoped to impress, whose family were devotees of the winter goddess. The Feast of Summoning celebrated the birth of Rharata in human form, on the first day of winter, when the Families were summoned to bring gifts to the divine child. Rather to
his surprise Dol Salida found he enjoyed the ceremony of songs and dances, and the warmed spiced wines which accompanied it, and he had attended each year since, when he was able.

Since he had been at the Red Palace he had made a point of it, for the Day of Summoning was specially significant to the Families, and no one who cared for their good opinion, particularly that of the Vincerii, could afford to ignore it.

So Dol was limping towards Rharata’s Tower in the west wing when he heard in the distance the deep boom of the gong which signalled alarm in the palace. Moments later a century of the Thousand raced by him, armour clattering, mailed boots striking sparks from the floor. He backed against a wall to let them pass, and called out, ‘What’s happening?’

‘Intruders!’ someone shouted.

‘Where?’

But they had gone, and Dol followed. He was pleased to find the information he had passed on had been correct. He wanted to see what would happen.

They were heading away from the west wing towards the centre of the palace, and Dol quickly lost them. Then he heard boots marching and he followed the sound down two levels before he saw another century he recognized as the Warhounds heading towards the Keep. It was commanded by Leona Farr Dulac, a boot-faced woman with ginger hair.

‘Where are the intruders?’ he asked, but she ignored him.

Dol could not keep up with the soldiers, but when they reached the doors of the Keep he was close behind. He had never been within the green walls, but he did not hesitate to enter, and looked around in wonder. He had heard stories that the walls of the Keep were carved of gold and gems and the floors made of deep crystal, but had never believed them. On the contrary, the Keep’s reputation of death and horror conjured in his mind an austere place of hard stone and cold metal. But he was walking through high halls and sumptuous rooms filled with rich furniture, carved woods and gold leaf, jewel-coloured draperies and muscled statuary.

More soldiers ran past him on the soft carpets, and he followed them down two more stairways. He could hear the clash and crash of arms and armour now. He wondered how deeply the Keep was built, and why it was not awash with flood water.

Injured soldiers were carried past him, away from the battle, and he realized for the first time that it might be wise to be holding a weapon other than his old silver-topped stick. He came at last to a high doorway. Beyond it was a chamber with sky-blue walls decorated with white clouds. Blueskin soldiers were battling an overwhelming weight of the Thousand. As he watched, Dol wondered that so small an enemy force, perhaps fewer than fifty, could still be fighting. They had retreated to a corner, behind a wall of their dead and dying. The warriors of the Thousand were hampered by so many bodies, including their own, and it could, to Dol’s veteran’s eye, be a long and bloody task to winkle out the last of the enemy force.

Suddenly he was aware of a presence at his back, and he turned to see the Vincerii. He pressed against a wall and the two men passed without a glance. There was a faltering of the battle, then silence, punctuated only by the sounds of warriors drawing breath and the moans of the dying. Dol saw some of the Thousand grin and relax, as if the battle was already over. A few sheathed their weapons.

Marcellus spoke with Leona, then looked round assessingly at the embattled Blues.

‘Gil Rayado!’ he said in his amiable way. ‘I hardly expected to see you here.’

A tall, lean fighter, crippled by a deep sword-slash to one leg, stood and eyed him.

‘Did you not, Marcellus?’ he said pleasantly. ‘As I recall, the last time I saw you I said we would next meet in your City.’

‘If I remember correctly,’ Marcellus said courteously, ‘you said “in the ruins of your City”.’ He looked around him. ‘Of all the thousand halls in the Red Palace this is perhaps not one of the most magnificent. Its statuary was never very fine even before this day’s work, and the murals are by journeymen. Yet I would not call it a ruin,’ he said with heavy humour.

Rayado sighed. ‘Get on with it, man. I have come here to fight, not to hear you talk.’

‘You have come here to die,’ corrected Marcellus.

Rayado shrugged.

‘And we are not fooled,’ Marcellus added, ‘by this diversion. Your assassin is already dead, or he wishes he were. Your men achieve nothing by dying here, and we do not wish to lose any more of our
warriors. Put down your blade, Gil, and I promise you my soldiers will not touch any of your men.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Marcellus smiled. ‘I am speaking the perfect truth. And I assure you that you yourself will die in this palace anyway.’

Dol felt sympathy with the Blueskin leader. Given the choice of surrendering himself to probable torture and certain death, with the slim hope of saving his men’s lives, or dying with them, Dol was not certain what he would do. If he elected to die with his troops it might appear that his fear of torture, which all men share, was stronger than his concern for their lives.

‘Would you like to discuss it among yourselves?’ Marcellus asked solicitously. ‘A vote perhaps? I believe that in your land many decisions are made by the will of the people.’ Dol could see that the man was in high good spirits.

Rayado spoke to a warrior at his side, then came forward, climbing awkwardly over the pile of bodies. ‘Who betrayed us?’ he asked.

‘It is called intelligence,’ Marcellus replied. ‘Something you clearly know nothing about.’

‘Then I have nothing more to say to you.’

Marcellus clapped him on the back. ‘Now, we both know that’s not true,’ he said cheerily. ‘By this day’s end you will be babbling everything you know to anyone who will listen to you.’

‘I ask one thing of you, Marcellus.’

‘Name it.’

‘That I be allowed to meet the emperor.’

‘We can arrange that,’ Marcellus answered. ‘The Immortal will want to see you. He has had a busy day today, yet he is still eager for company.’ Then he ordered Leona and a small detachment to take the prisoner away.

Dol Salida wondered if Marcellus would be true to his word, but he never found out, for at that moment Rafe Vincerus noticed him hovering in the doorway. He nodded his head in acknowledgement of Dol’s part in the day’s business, then gestured to the doorway. Dol obediently turned from the hall and limped away, back towards the west wing and the revels of Rharata. He was quickly overtaken by warriors marching away from the hall, so he guessed that, with their leader gone, the remaining Blues had been quickly and efficiently despatched.

The water was rising faster than Indaro thought possible. Together with her three companions, she hurried along gloomy tunnels, ever east. She was starting to recognize places as they loomed out of the gloom – the corner of a wall here, the top of a staircase there. But she was always past them and moving on as her memory slowly caught up. She marvelled that Elija knew so certainly where he was going.