The City (68 page)

‘I go where I’m sent,’ he replied stolidly.

Led through a new maze of corridors, following Boaz and flanked by the two guards, Fell wondered at the general’s motives. He was said to be fiercely loyal to the emperor, yet if the Immortal were dead, he would be one of the men best placed to be emperor. Mason’s plan would make Marcellus emperor, yet the Vincerii were of a kind with their emperor, perhaps no better than him, perhaps worse. In all his conversations with Mason, Fell had never teased out of the man what he thought the Serafim really were. At different times he had called them more than human, and inhuman. Once he had said they were demons. Then he would become impatient with the questioning and say brusquely that the Serafim would die by the sword like any men, like all men.

Fell felt a deep uncertainty about the plot he was involved in but
there was one thing he believed deep in his soul: that the emperor would die before this day was out. That was his first, his only, duty. If he succeeded there would be many decisions to be made – but not by him.

He thanked the gods that he and Broglanh had had their brands cut away and replaced with ugly scars imitating recent knife wounds. Mason had told him the palace authorities were aware of the branded men, but not of their significance. He wondered if Riis had had his disguised too, and hoped so.

They entered the green walls of the Keep then followed a wide corridor leading upwards in a steep slope. At the end was a huge door, gilded and painted in gold and crimson. It was guarded by two of the Thousand. This had to be an important place, thought Fell, for the Thousand were not given mere guard duty. He relaxed his shoulders, visualizing the exact position of the small knife at his side, its heft and its feel in his palm.

‘This is the Hall of Emperors,’ Boaz announced, stepping inside.

Fell looked around. They were in a vast chamber, built like a vertical cylinder, round and deep. They had entered near the top. A wide staircase, carpeted with red, lit by hundreds of torches, wound round the curved walls of the hall, descending slowly towards the floor, which was red and slick like fresh blood. There was an atmosphere of dread in the place which bore down on Fell like a stinking blanket, stifling thought. He shook his head to clear it and felt a headache spring up instantly. He breathed in cautiously and tasted fetid air, the air of a charnel-house closed for centuries. His stomach roiled and he fought the urge to turn and leave the room.

Grim-faced warriors of the Thousand were stationed two steps apart all down the staircase, and Fell was almost relieved to see them. They were men like him, ordinary men with bones and muscles and blood, and if they could stand to be in this terrible place, then so could he.

When they reached the bottom of the stairway Fell realized the floor was not covered with blood – it was awash with water, less than ankle-deep, lying over red carpet. But the water looked oily and unwholesome, and Fell found himself reluctant to step into it. He did though, splashing a little, following Boaz to the centre of the high room.

‘Wait here,’ the general said. He crossed the flooded room and
disappeared through a doorway framed with a substance that reflected light like crystal, and Fell saw his image doubled and redoubled countless times as he passed through.

Fell looked around and smiled. There were more than two hundred warriors in the hall, all staring at him, but only two mattered, the pair behind him. He turned casually and grinned at them. They had their blades in hand, and were a sword’s length away, but they would not stop him killing the emperor if the man came within six paces of him. His spirits rose and he allowed himself to consider the chances of fighting his way out.

A door creaked, and he looked at the crystal doorway but no one was there. His headache had swelled, and he concentrated on relaxing his neck and shoulders, focusing on the power in his legs, his arms. I will not need the knife, he thought. I will kill him with my bare hands. I will break his neck and then, if I am still alive, snap his back – just to be sure.

A man strode out of the crystal doorway. He walked across the hall to within ten paces of Fell and stopped.

Fell’s disappointment was crushing. The man was middle-aged, tall, fair and bearded, with the bland gaze of a man who has spent his life among books, or waiting to play the part of another. A blank slate. He smiled affably at Fell. Just one of the decoys.

Fell put his feelings aside. This is just one more obstacle to get through, he thought. You have passed some test set by Boaz. Now you must pass this one, and perhaps
then
you will get the chance to meet the true emperor.

‘Lord,’ he said, bowing his head dutifully.

‘We have met before, Arish,’ the man said, his voice light and colourless.

‘When I was a child. Yes, lord,’ Fell replied. He thought,
You had only one eye in those days, lord
.

‘Amazing what they can do with glass,’ the man told him. Neither eye looked to be made of glass. Both were black, and warm as a skull. One eyelid drooped slightly, as if the man were about to wink. Fell knew Mason had told him something about the eyes, but he could not remember what.

The feeling of dread and confusion wrapped him in stifling folds.
Can he read my mind?

The man smiled. ‘No, I can’t read your mind, Arish. But I
remember you, a child of six or so. I showed you your father’s severed head. It was green with rot by then, yet you were brave and did not cry. I remember that, though I had just lost the eye and was in great pain. It was your mother who destroyed it, the eye. Did you know that?’

Fell was trying to think, but the pain in his head was agonizing, and the man seemed so reasonable, so friendly in fact, that he was starting to believe he had made a terrible mistake coming here.

The man stepped forward, close to Fell. Through the pain and confusion Fell could smell the stink of him, like something long dead, slowly rotting, and he saw that his clothes were filthy, as if he had worn them all his life. A spasm of revulsion ran through him and his mind cleared a little. The creature was standing close to him. Fell knew that was important but he could not remember why. It took all his courage not to turn and run away.

The man said, ‘You are not my son, are you, Fell? We have always known that. You came here to kill me, like all the others.

‘We know all your plans,’ he went on, after a pause. ‘Your friends betrayed you. And you will all die, die slowly. Because they will come to this room, one by one, all the little plotters. They will throw themselves at me and break, just as all those small nations, those insignificant cities, threw themselves at the City and broke upon its walls.’

He seemed to have grown taller, and Fell felt like the child Arish again. He lowered his head and raised his hands to his face, covering his eyes from the pain and bafflement, trying to hide. In the distance he heard the sound of a gong beating brassily, over and over, echoing the pulsing pain in his head. He pressed his right index finger into the depression in his skull where the lance had caught him so long ago. Sometimes this gave him respite from the pain. He pressed hard and felt his mind clearing a little.

Then he remembered why he was there. He looked up. The creature had turned his back and was striding back to the crystal doorway. Fell blinked hard, trying to force his way out of the miasma in his mind. He reached inside his jerkin and touched the smooth hilt of the dagger. His fingers were like thumbs. It would not come out. Then suddenly he pulled it clear and in one smooth movement, compelled by memory rather than skill, he threw the knife with all his strength and saw it thunk deep into the creature’s back.

No one had stopped him. No one had moved. The emperor paused. He reached around, awkwardly crooking his elbow, and dragged the bloodstained knife from his lower ribs. He dropped it on the floor, and only then turned.

‘Don’t kill him. I want him alive and undamaged,’ he ordered his warriors.

Then he stepped from the room, and the soldiers seemed to breathe again. All around the walls they were stirring, as if from a dream of ice. Fell heard a whisper of metal on leather behind him, and he ran across the room and picked up the small knife, then turned to defend himself.

THE GREAT WALL
of water from the broken dam roared down the hillsides, scouring the ground before it. Trees which had stood for longer than the ages of man were snapped off like twigs. The animals remaining in those parts, a few starving deer and scrawny foxes, ran before it but were overtaken, overwhelmed. Nothing was left in its wake but bare rock and dead earth.

The Adamantine Wall had stood facing south, a symbol of power and arrogance, for more than eight hundred years. It was built when the young City was at its zenith and was a trumpet-blast of defiance to the kingdoms of the southlands, themselves wealthy with trade and proud with armies. It replaced the older Sarantine Wall, four leagues to the north, and was more than forty spans tall in places, wider at the base than the top, with deep towers every hundred paces. It was built of limestone blocks, cunningly shaped to fit together without mortar. It had just one set of double gates, and was considered impregnable, for in all its near thousand years it had never been breached.

The soldiers on the ramparts that day were the last survivors of the Fourteenth Celestine infantry, called the Shovelheads. They had been on duty since daybreak, and were grumbling among themselves, as soldiers will. They complained about the poor food and the woeful lack of supplies, particularly armour and weapons. They resented manning a wall which clearly needed no one to guard it. They resented their commanders, the rain, the lazy pigging
Sevens – the Seventh Light infantry, who had been due to replace them at noon but unaccountably hadn’t turned up – and the cancellation of their ale ration. Most of all they resented the Nighthawks, whose place they had taken only a handful of days before when the horse-shaggers had been undeservedly promoted to the Thousand.

They could not see the wall of water coming, for the grey cloud hung low over the City, and the rain cut visibility to a few paces. But they heard it, and one by one they fell silent. It sounded like thunder, but no thunder had ever grumbled on for so long. It sounded like the rumble of a cavalry charge, but even horsemen were not stupid enough to attack the City wall. When it finally broke through the cloud and mist before their eyes, they couldn’t believe what they saw and many of them died in ignorance.

When the leading edge of the waters hit, travelling at twice the speed of a galloping horse, it was higher than the wall and everyone standing on the ramparts was wiped out in a heartbeat. The wall shifted, groaned, then crumbled in many places, although many of the towers defied that first blow.

The water, diminished but not halted by its attack on the Adamantine Wall, flowed on over and through the Sarantine Wall. It carried a lethal load of branches and other debris picked up on its way. Everyone in its path died. The houses and shacks of the poor in the quarters of Barenna and Burman South were swept away, and the people died, crushed by the weight of water or drowned. It dived downward wherever it could, flooding the sewers once again and destroying the final remnants of the ancient machinery there, drowning the last of the Dwellers, although there were few left to die. By the time it reached the Red Palace it was running out of power, and the guards there watched first with horror then relief as the wave lapped harmlessly against the wall beneath their feet.

When they heard the sound of thunder they thought it was a distant storm and did not realize the Blues had unleashed the second reservoir.

Fell spun on his heel and slashed the knife through the chin-piece of one soldier, slicing it on through the throat of another. Blood sprayed hotly over him. As the two warriors fell back he snatched one of their swords and revelled in the snarls of anger from their comrades. The Thousand were hampered by the command not to injure their prey,
and he guessed their dread of their lord was so great they barely risked bruising him.

But he knew it could not last long – sheer weight of numbers would bear him down within moments.

He twisted, sliced and spun. He had to keep moving; he could not afford the luxury of a lunge, a thrust to groin or eye. He used the sword two-handed, keeping it always in motion, slashing, slicing, ripping.

‘Stop him! Stop him now!’ a deep voice commanded, and he grinned to himself. He revelled in their frustration. He could hear curses raining upon him as they tried to reach him without grossly harming him. In the distance he heard the sound of a gong. Two gongs now, beaten in an alternating faster rhythm. He wondered if he were the cause of it.

The hilt of a dagger glanced off his head and he stumbled. He could not fall. They would be on him in a heartbeat. He danced forward and sideways, slicing off half a hand, dodging back as the victim howled. He thanked the gods of ice and fire that the Thousand kept their weapons so sharp.

‘Kill him!’ he heard someone shout in rage, and the deep voice countermanded, ‘You know your orders.’ Fell grinned in exultation. But then the same voice ordered, ‘Encircle him. Locked shields.’

Surrounded and defended by the bodies of his enemy, he took the moment to snatch a shield from the floor and settle it on his arm. ‘Who’s next?’ he asked. He looked round, then deliberately stepped up on to two piled bodies. He heard growls of anger at the offence, but they had their orders and he could no longer hope to lure them into coming at him one at a time.

The warriors spread out evenly around him, locking their shields in a wall of metal. Inexorably they started moving in. He knew his brief run was over. They would bind him and take him through the crystal doorway to whatever hideous fate the emperor planned. But he could still kill the creature, given a moment’s chance.

Suddenly there was a change in the air. Some of his attackers glanced up. Fell risked a look. At the top of the winding staircase the warriors of the Thousand had turned towards a new enemy. He heard the crash and slide of weapons, saw the sparkling glitter of moving metal. Then he caught sight of a flash of red hair, flowing like water in torchlight. Indaro!