скачать книгу бесплатно
Durdil had chewed his lip to ribbons since the siege began and winced as he bit at it now. He scrubbed a hand across the back of his head and down his neck. Erik nodded again when he looked to him for aid. Hallos was waiting, the plea clear on his lips and in his eyes. Give him what he can’t ask for himself. Help him, as you’ve helped him all your life. Serve him.
‘I’ll tell the council he succumbed to his wound,’ Durdil said eventually. ‘They know it’s inevitable, so we’ll let them think it was a natural end. Otherwise, our noble Lords Lorca and Silais are likely stupid enough to accuse us of treason in the midst of this … mess.’
Each of the priests nodded and their voices swelled louder, urging Rastoth’s spirit to begin breaking its anchors to his dying, rotting flesh.
‘Opium?’ Hallos murmured, selecting a small jar with a hand that didn’t – and Durdil felt should – shake.
‘You’ll never get him to swallow it. Will you?’
Hallos’s smile was weary and sad. ‘There are things you will never know of my art, my old friend. Don’t worry. Just … say your goodbyes, yes? We should do it quickly, now the decision has been made. We should spare him any more of this … this sham of life.’
Hallos stepped out of his way and Durdil looked again at his king, his decades-long friend, lying still and pale against the pillows. Rastoth’s breath came in tiny pants, clammy sweat glistening in the gloom. His hands were claws. From the open window came the sound of a dog-boy playing with a litter of puppies, uncaring of the dying king or besieged city.
Durdil fell to one knee by the bed, his armour clattering about his shoulders. ‘Sire, forgive me,’ he whispered, ‘I should have protected you, kept you safe …’ The man might be old and mad, but he was Durdil’s king and Durdil’s friend.
‘I will save Rilporin, Rastoth. I will save our country and our gods, our people. All of it. I swear on my hope of reaching the Light. When we meet again, I …’ He choked back a sob.
Hallos squeezed past him and an involuntary denial sprang to Durdil’s lips, a hand reaching to stop the cup on its way to Rastoth’s lips.
Erik rounded the bed and pulled him gently to his feet. ‘Your last act for your king, Commander, should be the one that brings him peace,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t interfere now. Pray.’
Durdil’s lips began moving in prayer as the priests sang, as Hallos raised Rastoth’s head with pillows and tipped small, patient sips of wine and opium into his mouth, massaging his throat until he swallowed. Rastoth’s breathing slowed as the drug stole his pain, as it relaxed his limbs, as it took his mind far, far away from the ruin of his body and the ashes of his reign.
Durdil crowded close, found Rastoth’s leg beneath the covers and rested his hand there. ‘Marisa’s waiting,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Marisa and Janis both. In the Light. Waiting for you. Tell her I said hello and … and ask her to forgive me. I failed you, all three of you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
Something that might have been a smile, or just the last twitch of dying muscles, crossed his face, and then Rastoth the Kind, Rastoth the Mad, exhaled a last, bubbling breath and died.
Durdil stared in silence at the council gathered in the war room, his fingers steepled before his lips. His eyes were red with fatigue and grief, and he’d delivered the news of Rastoth’s death into a silence that was thick with alliances and churning with calculation. As expected, both Lords Lorca and Silais were clearly vying to win the majority of the council and be the next power in Rilporin. Perhaps even to sit on the throne.
‘My lords, as grievous as this news is, I will not be releasing it to the populace or the Rank. Nor will we be flying the scarlet or declaring a week of official mourning, as is customary. We are at war, my lords, and as of now martial law is in effect. Those of us who live to see the siege’s conclusion can carry out the funeral rites with all pomp and ceremony at that point. For now, we concern ourselves only with the fight.’
‘This is preposterous; you have not the authority,’ Lord Lorca began, his silver tongue momentarily losing its sheen. ‘King Rastoth must be—’
‘King Rastoth is dead. We the living have more important things to worry about than feasting his memory or arguing about interim governments. The state of the wall, for instance. The enemy’s trebuchets have been loosing at it for days now. The Stonemasons’ Guild is inspecting it daily for weaknesses. I’ve asked them to—’
‘You do not ask the stonemasons anything,’ Silais muttered, ‘not if you want them to actually do anything. You order them. Order, I say.’
‘Thank you for your opinion, Lord Silais, but they’re working ceaselessly and providing regular reports,’ Durdil said. ‘There is little more I, or they, can do than that. I have also spoken with the pigeon-master, and it appears that while he was in the city, Prince Rivil—’
‘King Rivil, surely,’ a voice said. Durdil glanced at Questrel Chamberlain. The man simpered and smoothed down his oiled hair. ‘By right and blood, my lords, Commander, the prince is now our king. Surely we should address him as such.’
A babble rose among the nobles, ermine flying as they gesticulated, the volume increasing, the tone becoming angry, strident. Durdil steepled his hands again and leant back in his chair, waiting, the sound of arguing noblemen washing over him.
It got louder before it got quieter, but eventually more and more councillors noticed Durdil was taking no part in the debate. They loathed him to a man, but he was Commander of the Ranks and led the defence. The decision, ultimately, was his. Either he opened the gates to Rivil, proclaiming him king … or he didn’t, proclaiming them all traitors to the throne.
A fine choice. I cannot wait to make it.
Durdil waited until there was silence, and then he waited a few moments longer until they were squirming.
‘My lords, Prince Rivil attempted regicide. Before that he was implicated in his own mother’s murder and converted to the bloodthirsty faith of our ancient enemies by way of killing his brother, the rightful heir to the throne. There is no man more unfit to rule our great country than he. As I began to say, the pigeon-master confirms that all birds trained to fly to Highcrop in Listre, the home of the only surviving – and distant – member of the line of succession, were killed by Rivil or the Lord Galtas Morellis. We cannot inform Lord Tresh that Rastoth has fallen, that Rivil is cast out of the succession. Once this siege is lifted, however, I will send an emissary to his lordship with all haste, informing him that he is now our king.’
‘Tresh? Never heard of ’im,’ a voice muttered.
‘Not even a full blood,’ another whispered. ‘More Listran than Rilporian. Listran, I ask you!’
‘Tresh is a bastard, isn’t he?’
‘King Tresh,’ Durdil snapped, his temper wearing ever thinner, ‘is by all accounts a studious man and astute judge of character. He will make a fine king, especially with a council such as this to advise him.’
To hinder him, to kiss his arse and bleed him dry and blind him to all but their wants, their needs, their desires. If only the gods would allow me to put every last bloody one of them in the catapult baskets and send them out to meet their foes.
Durdil bit down on a smile as he imagined the long, drawn-out wail of outrage Lorca would make as he flew skyward. Please, Dancer, just one.
‘Until then, my lords, we remain at war. And martial law is the order of the day.’
‘I support your proposal,’ Lorca said, though they both knew it was no such thing. ‘Take steps to curb the unruly peasantry even now hoarding food from their betters and breathe new strength into our men. A good thing, too. Some of them flag already.’
Already? They’ve been defending this city for over a fortnight. They’ve done more for Rilporin and its people in that time than you have in your entire life. They spend their lives like coppers, without thought, and they do it for the city and the king. They do it, gods love them, for me. And I have to order them to … calm, Durdil. Calm.
Durdil found that his grief and his fatigue combined to make a heady, dangerous, short-tempered brew. He raised his fist to his mouth and bit the knuckle hard, focusing on the pain as the muttering swelled anew.
‘If that is all, my lords, I have a wall to defend,’ he barked, screeching his chair back over the flagstones and cutting the conversation dead.
The council rose and paused; normally this was when they’d bow to the king. A couple dipped their heads in an awkward half-salute. Lorca’s pale eyes studied Durdil for a moment too long, and then he swept from the war room with his cronies hurrying after him.
Silais remained seated, inspecting his perfect fingernails until Lorca had cleared the doorway. It just wouldn’t do for him to be held up by the man. Durdil resisted the urge to spit on the table and stalked from the room, Hallos trailing miserably behind him and Major Vaunt bringing up the rear. In the days since the siege had begun, the hour in the war room was the only time most of his officers got away from the wall or the barracks or the hospital. Durdil had taken to rotating the privilege between them so that each of them had the excuse for a bath and a change of clothes every few days.
And aren’t they already seeing it as a luxury, he thought. How quickly the unbearable becomes normal. And now I have to tell my officers that Rastoth is dead and to keep it secret.
And there’s still no word from the North Rank. Where the bloody fuck are my reinforcements?
GALTAS (#u12feb8fa-f5b7-5219-8f6f-cb6a72bd368b)
Fourth moon, morning, day twenty-two of the siege
East Rank encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘The siege progresses as expected, Sire.’ Galtas handed him the distance-viewer and waited while he scanned the wall, the men scurrying across its top and around its base like ants. ‘We are making good progress.’
‘Are we?’ Rivil turned a sour look on him, slapping the viewer in the palm of his hand and no doubt shaking the lenses out of alignment. ‘Are we really? Does it feel like that to you? Because it feels to me like we’ve been sitting on our arses for three weeks while our men attempt the wall and fail. Over and shitting over again.’
‘The siege towers are making a difference now,’ Galtas began, ‘and the trebuchets are definitely having an effect. You can see the defacement of the wall to our left of the gatehouse.’
‘Having an effect. Defacement,’ Rivil sneered. ‘You realise we’re destroying my fucking city in order to conquer it, don’t you? Or at least, we’re attempting to.’ He threw up his hands. ‘Why did I ever let you talk me into this mad scheme?’
Because you didn’t have a plan and your military mind consists of how many wagonloads of luxuries you can take on campaign rather than soldiers or weapons. Because you’re a spoilt little shit who’s never done a day’s work in your life and couldn’t plan a siege if your life depended on it. Oh wait, it does.
So does mine.
‘General Skerris approaches,’ Galtas said instead of voicing any of the thoughts hurtling around his brain.
The fat general of the East Rank wobbled to attention and saluted. ‘Prince Rivil, Lord Galtas,’ Skerris wheezed, ‘we’re about ready for another push, if you’d like to give the order? The Mireces are readying their new tower after the … mishap with the first. Trebuchets will keep up the bombardment until the troops are within range, then cease fire to avoid casualties. Our target is Second Last—’ he pointed a fat finger at Second Tower and Last Bastion, the section of wall to their left of the gatehouse. ‘The Mireces will assault Double First.’ He indicated First Bastion and First Tower to their right.
Skerris’s words conjured a vivid image of the Mireces’ first siege tower bright with flame as the defenders’ fire arrows lodged in the unprotected wood. It’d burnt fast and hard, killing several of the Raiders inside it. A fucking shambles.
‘Defenders’ll have to split their forces again. If we can establish a decent bridgehead this time …’ Skerris trailed off as Rivil’s scowl returned.
‘How many men have we lost so far?’ he snapped.
‘Some hundreds, Sire.’
‘It’s too slow, Skerris. All of this is too slow. We might have destroyed the West and North Ranks, but that incompetence at the harbour two weeks ago allowed fucking thousands of South Rankers into the city to reinforce the defenders. What if they’ve sent for the rest?’
‘Sire, we are doing all that we can. Progress is steady. Yesterday we held a bridgehead for the better part of three hours,’ Skerris added.
‘What do you want, a fucking medal?’ Rivil shouted. ‘We’re running out of artillery for the trebs and a bridgehead is not a bridgehead unless it accomplishes something other than the deaths of our men.’
‘Standard divide and conquer, Sire, and the same tactics will apply if the remainder of the South Rank does come. It may not look like it, but we’re doing well. We’re winning.’
It was probably the worst thing Skerris could have said. Rivil’s face purpled and saliva flew. ‘Winning? Does this look like fucking winning to you, fat man? We’re living in tents and shitting in fields while they live off the provisions of an entire city. They have months of supplies in there, hospitals, armouries, inns and cooks and clean clothes …’
Rivil stopped talking, and neither Galtas nor Skerris moved to fill the silence. Rivil’s temper had been shortening by the hour this last week. He faced the city again just as the lead trebuchet unloaded its stone at the wall. The ground in front was littered with spent boulders and giant slabs of rock that had been cracked off the outer face, all of which further hindered the ladder teams and siege towers.
‘Skerris, send the men, ours and the Mireces. Full assault. Galtas, you’re going with them.’
Galtas sputtered a laugh. Go into the city? As part of a ladder assault? ‘Sire, I’m not Rank-trained. I’ll be too slow up the ladder. I could better serve—’
‘The gods will watch over you,’ Rivil interrupted. ‘So you need not be afraid. If the Mireces have the balls for it, I’m sure you do too. I want you in Rilporin and I want definitive proof that my father is dead. These bastards are too motivated for my liking; the king clinging to life might be enough for them. Then I want you to do something to get us in, either frontal assault or a quiet infiltration. Either will suit.’
‘Do something?’ Galtas echoed. ‘Such as?’
Rivil snarled at him: ‘Improvise.’
Galtas’s face was wooden, unresponsive, but he managed a bow and plastered an insincere smile across his mouth. ‘As you command, Sire,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ll see to the orders immediately. General, shall we?’
He stalked across the field towards the half of the Third Thousand whose turn it was to die today, his ears straining behind him for Rivil’s voice telling him he was joking. It didn’t come. Galtas would be running up the inside of a siege tower and out across a gangplank on to the wall while archers loosed shaft after shaft at him, or he’d be scaling a ladder along with the Rankers, up into enemy territory with arrows, rocks and boiling oil being poured down on his head, to roll on to the allure and face a thousand defenders.
Galtas was going to die.
‘His Highness is getting a little fractious, eh, milord?’ Skerris said as they marched towards the assault teams. On his right, Galtas could see a swarming mass of blue-clad Mireces readying themselves, their second siege tower, this one covered in fire-proof animal skins, already rumbling towards the wall.
‘Fractious?’ Galtas said, and then bit down on his response and chose other, less volatile, words. ‘He chafes at the delay. He is of course too valuable to risk at the wall, and so there is little he can do until we have forced an entry. He wishes to fight alongside his men, to lead them in battle.’
Galtas suspected Rivil wanted no such bloody thing, but he couldn’t exactly put forward his theory that Rivil just wanted the big chair and the shiny crown and someone else to do all the actual governing for him.
‘If it is the Lady’s will, he will get that chance,’ Skerris rumbled. ‘As for you, what’s your preference? Tower or ladder?’
‘I suppose a quiet way in through a gate is out of the question?’ Galtas quipped and Skerris laughed, slapped him on the back and knocked him off balance. ‘I would value your opinion on this one. Which is more likely to get me killed? And of course, there’s the matter of my disguise for once I’m in the city.’
‘Disguise?’
Galtas tapped his arm, the blue of his shirt visible between the half-sleeve of his mail and the thick leather vambrace. ‘Not sure I’ll get access to the king’s quarters or anywhere else dressed like this.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I’ll need the shirt off one of your corpses,’ Galtas said. ‘Clean, preferably.’
Skerris nodded slowly. ‘I understand. As for the way in, if you’re quick and the gods love you, the ladder’s your friend.’
I suspect the ladder’s my death, Galtas thought sourly. Still. The Lady’s will.
THE BLESSED ONE (#u12feb8fa-f5b7-5219-8f6f-cb6a72bd368b)
Fourth moon, morning, day twenty-two of the siege
Mireces encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands
There was a crackle to the air, and the fine hairs on the nape of Lanta’s neck and along her forearms stood erect. The gods were so close now, ever-present, like the scent of a lover on skin. She didn’t need to be in a sacred space to hear Them now; Their voices were everywhere and Their commands were simple: take the city, slaughter the inhabitants, burn the temples. Kill or convert, but leave no one alive who held the Dancer and the Fox God in their hearts.
Commands that filled Lanta with joy and holy fire. There would be thousands for sacrifice once the city fell, thousands whose blood would wet earth dedicated to the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood.
‘Your will, Red Ones. All this to your glory, all this in your names. Rilporin will fall and your children will rise in its place. Gilgoras will be yours.’ Lanta knelt in the grass of a spring morning, surrounded by the stink of thousands of warriors waiting their turn to fight and die.
No cave-temple rock walls lit with fire watched her prayers, no cold stone dug into her knees, witness to her ritual pain. Lanta knelt in the light of the world and the gods were there with her, in a country from which They’d been forced a millennium before. A shiver ran across her skin. They were under the same sun as her, no longer separated by an impenetrable veil but merely its tattered remnants. Gilgoras trembled beneath Their presence and Their vengeance would be terrible and beautiful in its glory.
She waited, but the Dark Lady did not summon her. Lanta’s disappointment was keen but she could understand the gods’ delight in being back in Gilgoras, free to roam Rilpor, Listre and Krike and visit those pockets of true believers that Lanta was convinced must still exist. The gods would speak when They needed to. They came when They chose, not when Lanta wished it. A lesson hard learned many years before. Until then, the children of the Dark Path knew what they had to do.
The Blessed One finished praying and eased herself to her feet, the sun warm on her scalp and the breeze gentle across her cheek. The gods may not have spoken, but still They hovered close, Their bloody wings outstretched across the army, shrouding it in divine right. Victory was promised, and Lanta would pay any price to ensure it was so. Pay it gladly, gleefully, secure in her righteousness.
She gazed at the city, and then around the vast expanse of the Wheat Lands. They called this place the bread basket of Rilpor, and this year those crops that hadn’t been trampled into the mud would feed Mireces bellies. More wheat than she’d ever seen. More crops, more grass, more flat farming land than Lanta had believed existed stretched around them and the city nestled in the embrace of Rilpor’s mighty rivers. All theirs soon enough.
‘As the gods will.’ Lanta sighed and looked back at the city again, grey walls looming over the plain like a storm front, scarred and battered and still imperious, intact and mocking their efforts. She brushed grass and flakes of dirt from her skirt. Of all she had expected of the holy war, the possibility that the siege would be boring hadn’t occurred to her. But the days had stretched, one into another, with no significant gains and more than a few losses.
Lanta’s thoughts strayed to Eagle Height and the women and children waiting in the snow and rock of the mountains. The snowmelt would be flooding down the narrow channels carved into the rock now, taking the unwary, driving carcasses, branches and stones before it, leaving the land behind cleansed. The slaves would be planting their own poor crops now, carrots and turnips in the hard ground, coaxing them to life with goat manure and prayers. Pask would sacrifice a man for their victory, and a woman that the crops would not fail, that there would be no late storms.
Eagle Height – home. She sighed, staring around the camp filled with the chatter of Mireces. It would be good to summon the women, children and priests after they had secured victory, to send them into the towns and villages like a sacred flood, driving all before them who would not live beneath their rule. Rilpor would become Mireces, and Rilporians would become their slaves. Once the city fell and the Flower-Whore and Her bastard Trickster son were dead, there was nothing they could not do.
Once the city fell. Lanta’s smile was grim. So much work still to do, even once all Rilpor was theirs.
‘What did you learn?’
The words startled her and Lanta returned to her surroundings. She faced Gilda and sneered. ‘Many things,’ she said, ‘things you would not understand, lost in your petty delusion that life is anything other than brutal and full of pain. You fail to see how, in accepting those things to honour our gods, that we become stronger.’
Gilda folded her hands over her stomach and gazed into the sky for a while. ‘You’re right,’ she said eventually, her eyes twinkling as they met Lanta’s, ‘there’s little I understand about your religion, about why you would choose a life of fear and an eternity of pain over a world of life and light and beauty and an afterlife of joy and oneness. Because life is hard, aye, but it isn’t brutal. Brutal’s what we do to each other. Hard is what the seasons do to us. But I meant, did you learn anything about the siege? Been going a while now, hasn’t it?’
‘I would not tell you if I did,’ Lanta snapped. ‘That is between the king, Rivil, myself and the gods.’
Gilda’s mouth quirked. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly, ‘you said “if I did”. So you didn’t, then. Learn anything. Gods not chatty today?’
