“Want assistance?” a curt voice called.
The first man shook his head, the light of the keep’s bonfire catching the red-gold of his hair.
“Only if you are bored, Uncle. This fellow claims to be opening the gate for fifty men, though it’s actually twenty-seven.”
An even ruder snort issued forth from the near distance.
“Only fifty? Open the gate and let them in. I should be done moving my bowels by then.”
The blue eyes sighted on Mardel again.
“You are dressed in the colors of my regiment,” the shadowy man said slowly, his tone less bored and more threatening. “You imbeciles have broached my lands, lands that stand under a flag of peace, disguised in my regalia, and come to my home in the night, threatening my family, and you only claim to have brought fifty men? I am insulted.”
Sensing the futility of effort and the danger of waiting, Mardel drew his sword.
Before he could level it the glowing blue blade had seemed to leap forth from its scabbard and dragged itself in one clean slash across his throat. Mardel fell to the ground, bleeding his life onto the snowy grass.
Ashe sheathed his sword and strode to the gate. He took hold of the ropes of the portcullis and raised it slowly in the dark.
“Come,” he whispered in the tongue of Sorbold. “The house is asleep.”
The commander heard and nodded assent, signaled to the remains of the cohort, which quietly rode through the gate. The gate was shut quickly behind them.
Even before the cohort had had a chance to regroup, the blue glowing sword was slashing the bindings of the two closest saddles, as the shadow wielding it pummeled the falling riders with the hilt.
A shriek ripped past them and three more riders fell, pierced by crossbow bolts that came out of the darkness.
“Did you get a chance to examine the Bolg king’s weapon?” Anborn’s voice called over the sounds of the horse chaos as he fired off another round of bolts, felling three more soldiers.
“I’ve seen it before,” Ashe replied, crossing blades briefly with one of the cohort before dragging him from his saddle and slashing his throat in a blaze of blue and white rippling light. “Why?”
“Nice recoil,” Anborn commented, firing again. “Do you need any further assistance? I think I may have left my hot toddy in the library, and it’s probably getting cold.”
“No, by all means,” Ashe said as he dodged out of the way of two of the horsemen’s picks. “I’ll join you for one in a moment, once I’ve taken care of this. I saved one to talk to—you can help interrogate later, over brandy, if you’d like.” His last word was punctuated by the thrust of his sword through a Sorbold chest.
Gwydion Navarne, watching in the recesses, just shook his head as his namesake dispatched the rest of the soldiers, then took hold of the unconscious man he had incapacitated early on and dragged him back to the keep in the dark. He turned himself and followed Ashe’s shadow in the flickering light of Haguefort’s lanterns.
21
Jierna Tal, Jierna’sid, Sorbold
“Good day, Fhremus,” the regent said as the doors closed behind a tall man in the military regalia of the Dark Earth, the dynastic line of the empress who ruled before Talquist. The regent emperor winced involuntarily at the sight of the dead empress’s crest, as he always did, needing to remind himself that he had chosen to keep the military uniforms of Leitha and the dynasty of the Dark Earth until spring, when he would be finally invested as emperor. Nonetheless, like other choices he had made in the name of appearing humble, the image of a golden sun bisected by a sword always caused him to flinch in anger.
Especially given the symbol he had chosen for his own.
That same sun, rising rampant between the shorelines of two seas.
The soldier, whose bearing was still youthful in spite of his many years in command, bowed respectfully.
“M’lord.”
Talquist gestured at the heavily carved table of dark wood near the doors of the balcony.
“Sit.”
The soldier bowed again and complied, but once at the table he stole a glance at the regent as if assessing his health. Talquist noticed, but said nothing, instead making his way casually to a similarly carved sideboard where an impressive array of glassware and decanters of the finest potent libations from around the world was displayed.
“Would you care for something to drink, Fhremus?” Talquist asked, pouring himself a splash of Canderian brandy in a low crystal glass.
“Thank you, no, m’lord,” the commander answered rotely. “My attention to your safety forbids me to compromise my senses in your presence.”
Talquist chuckled darkly. “Nonsense,” he said humorously. “My safety is assured, not only by a retinue of palace guards, but by measures you cannot even imagine. So, go ahead, Fhremus, fortify yourself. I expect you may need it.”
The suggestion had become a command.
Fhremus rose from the table and came to the sideboard, where he selected a single malt from Argaut, a nation in the southern hemisphere far across the Central Sea, and poured himself a few fingers of it. Then he followed Talquist back to the table again.
“Excellent choice,” said the regent, watching Fhremus over the rim of his own glass. “Argaut has many excellent distilleries. I hope you enjoy it.”
“Thank you, m’lord.”
Talquist leaned closer.
“Yes, Fhremus, I am alive and whole, in spite of any rumors to the contrary.”
The commander smiled nervously. “I am glad to see that, m’lord.”
The regent settled down more comfortably in his chair. “I have always admired your devotion to the nation and the crown, Fhremus,” he said, inhaling the bouquet of the brandy. “I was greatly impressed at your wisdom during the Colloquium following the empress’s death in insisting that the empire remain united, especially in the face of the lobbying by the counts of the larger provinces to disband both the empire and the army. I will never forget what you said at that meeting, that ‘the might of the Sorbold army comes from two factors—commonality of purpose and love of our native land.’” The soldier nodded and sipped his drink.
“That wisdom is about to be proven more than anyone could have envisioned,” said Talquist seriously. “I want you to speak freely to me, Fhremus, without fear of reprisal, not soldier to emperor, but Sorbold to Sorbold. What is most common between you and I is a deep love of our nation. That nation is under dire threat, a threat that must be met with force, swiftly and overwhelmingly. If we delay or do nothing, we will lose any advantage that our terrain and military might would have given us in what will be a battle for our very survival.”
The supreme commander blinked. “Threat? What threat?” He stared at the regent. “I just reviewed all the reports of the field commanders from every one of the twenty-seven city-states, and there has been no hostile activity reported in three months—none since the empress’s death, in fact. It would seem that the Alliance is concentrating on farming and securing the trade routes, with a minimum of military buildup. Roland appears peaceful, and there have been no sightings of Bolg outside the mountains of Ylorc. And, of course, the Lirin of Tyrian are keeping to themselves, as always. We are at peace.”
“So it might seem,” agreed Talquist, taking another sip and straining it through his back teeth. “But you forget, Fhremus, that prior to being chosen as emperor by the Scales, I was hierarch of the Western Mercantile, and so my information comes not only from within the continent, but from outside it.”
“And there are indications that we are under threat of invasion?” The soldier’s demeanor changed subtly; his muscles tensed and his spine straightened, while his eyes took on a gleam in the light of the afternoon sun spilling into the room from the balcony.
“If left unchecked, it will lead to that,” said Talquist. “But consider the geography of the continent. You have to look at this land as the Creator fashioned it, rather than as it was divided by m
an, the result of the Cymrian War four hundred years ago, and then perhaps you can see what the Creator intended for it.
“Sorbold is the foundation of the entire continent in the south, granted divine protection by the Creator in the form of forbidding mountains and implacable deserts, a vast expanse of territory and a large population that is tempered in the sun, strong and relentless and proud. Our willingness for centuries to maintain our military and our defensive infrastructure has given us the upper hand from a tactical standpoint. Even our inland seacoast is protected, for the most part, by the land mass that surrounds it. We have outposts at the water’s edge from the Nonaligned States to the Skeleton Coast, outposts that incoming ships must pass in order to land in port. So we are a formidable, almost unassailable opponent under normal circumstances.”
The commander nodded; the regent had just provided the same assessment he would have himself, and it was a case for limited worry.
“The Middle Continent in the west, comprised of Tyrian, Roland, and Gwynwood, is the breadbasket of this part of the world,” Talquist continued. “Its geography of wide plains, forests, and fields gives it some natural defense, but few places from which to launch an offensive strike. Only the forested realm of Tyrian is close enough to one of our city-states to mass an invasion without detection. And the Firbolg king on our border to the east shares the same defensive mountains that guard our north—he could mass an army of invasion, but without support from Roland we would likely be able to repel it easily.”
Again Fhremus nodded, and again he made silent note of his assessment.
“To the north lies the Hintervold, and it, as you know, is an icy wasteland only inhabitable in part, and only in part of the year. It is a treasure trove of skins and ore and gold, of peat for fuel, with a short but intense growing season that produces a small harvest of vegetables of massive size, but cannot feed itself through its own agriculture. Without the food Roland provides to it, the Hintervold would be even more barren than it already is. In short, this continent was meant to be one empire, ruled and defended by the south, fed by the middle, with pelts harvested and gold mined from the north to feed the trade stream. Alas, the wars of our ancestors have left us divided.”
“But allied, at least,” said Fhremus.
Talquist’s face lost some of its pleasant aspect. “We are friends to the Cymrian Alliance, but not a part of it,” he said shortly, his tone causing the hairs on Fhremus’s neck to stand up. “We are also friends of the Hintervold and of Golgarn, on the Bolg king’s southeastern border, but no official alliance exists between Sorbold and those nations, either. That is about to change.”
Fhremus sat forward in shock. “We are about to enter into a treaty with the Hintervold and Golgarn?” he asked incredulously. “Those three nations ring the Middle Continent on all sides. Won’t that be seen as a threat by the Alliance?”
The regent smiled humorously. “It might, if they knew about it. But what I am telling you, Fhremus, is that our generous friendship and trading practices have lulled the Alliance into believing that we are vulnerable. They believe, as the Creator did, that this continent should be united as one empire. The only difference is that they believe they should be in control of it.”
All the sound suddenly left the room save for that of the warm wind at the balcony.
“And while they know they are no match for us militarily and strategically,” Talquist continued after a moment, “the Alliance has moved ahead with acquiring weapons that they feel will give them enough advantage to start a war.”
“What sort of weapons?” asked Fhremus nervously. He put down the glass; the alcohol was irritating his throat, rather than soothing it. Everything the man who would shortly be emperor was telling him was counterintuitive to what his instincts said, but he knew the look in Talquist’s eye, and therefore knew better than to question the knowledge of someone with a spy in every doorway the world over.
Talquist pulled his chair closer.
“Bear this in mind, Fhremus,” he said, swirling the remains of his brandy in the glass, then putting it down on the table. “The man who leads that Alliance has more than one sort of power. Gwydion of Manosse is the grandson of Gwylliam the Visionary, the man who carved one of the most advanced nations in history from solid rock. His uncle is Edwyn Griffyth, the high Sea Mage of Gaematria, Gwylliam’s son, probably the best inventor in the Known World. As a result, he has at his disposal some of the most ingenious mechanical designs ever developed. He is allied with Achmed, the Firbolg king, whose unique and impressively deadly weapons we have already seen hints of through subterfuge, since the king refuses to sell them to us. Why do you think that might be? Why would the Bolg king trade arms to the Alliance, but not to Sorbold?”
Talquist watched Fhremus silently absorb the implication, then went to his desk and returned with a large piece of parchment that he laid in front of the commander. On it was a detailed sketch of a heavy machine fashioned in metal, with footpads that interlocked with gears and upright supports.
“One of our spies at the docks of Avonderre sent this quite a few months back. It was being off-loaded at Port Fallon, in from Gaematria and bound, by cart, to Haguefort, where the Lord Cymrian currently resides.”
“What is it?” Fhremus asked, studying the schematic.
Talquist was watching him intently. “It’s a walking machine, apparently,” he said, picking up his glass and inhaling the aroma, then setting it down again.
Fhremus nodded. “Perhaps for Anborn, the Lord Marshal of the Great War,” he said. “He is lame—and Edwyn Griffyth is his brother. No doubt Anborn’s brother is seeking to help him recover the use of his legs, or at least some mobility.”
“No doubt,” Talquist agreed. “But why do you suppose that the Lord Cymrian ordered the supplies to build five hundred thousand of them?” Fhremus looked up from the parchment. “Do you imagine that there are a half million cripples in Roland?”
“Five hundred thousand?”
Talquist smiled grimly. “I’ve seen some of the manifests of the ships arriving every day from Manosse and Gaematria. If this is revealed in the few I’ve seen, imagine what else he is importing, and to what end?” He watched Fhremus carefully, looking to see if his own lie had been detected, but the soldier was not observing him.
The commander tossed the parchment sheet into the center of the table.
“I can’t imagine, but I hardly think that machines to allow lame men to walk need give the army of Sorbold cause for alarm.”
“On their own, you are correct,” said Talquist patiently. “But think more broadly, Fhremus. Consider with whom the Lord Cymrian is allied, and what you know of his activities. Not long ago, the entire top of one of the inner peaks of the Teeth exploded—all of the Western Command felt the reverberations. A mountain peak, Fhremus—it was not a volcano, no lava flow was reported. Do you have any idea of the power required to blow a mountain peak into shards?”
Fhremus didn’t, but he understood the implication.
“The Bolg king is developing powerful explosives,” he said, “and so are we. I don’t understand what that has to do with the mechanical walkers for the lame, m’lord.”
Talquist’s smile became cruel. “It disturbs me that the commander of the entire nation’s army cannot put pieces together better than that, Fhremus. Think back for a moment; you returned to Jierna’sid at great haste not in response to my summons, but because of what you had heard in the streets—is that not so?”
The commander’s face went rigid.
“That’s all right, Fhremus—if I were you, and had been informed that the regent emperor had been the target of a titanic stone assassin, a statue twice as tall as a man that moved under its own power, and had destroyed half a brigade as it waded through them on its way into Jierna Tal, I would have come in all due haste as well. I assume you have seen the carnage firsthand; although the streets had been cleansed of the human litter by the time you arrived, you must have see
n the shattered carts, the broken gates, yes?” He gestured to the newly repaired wall in the staircase leading up to the southwestern parapet.
“Yes,” said the commander.
“Touched as I am by your concern for my well-being, I am happy to assure you that not a hair on my head was harmed. Would that I could say the same for the eighty-eight troops and uncounted bystanders.”
“How—”
The regent raised a hand, and the soldier lapsed into silence. “I thought by now you knew that my ascension to emperor was foreordained by the Creator,” Talquist said haughtily. “The Scales themselves anointed me; I am divinely protected, as I believe I mentioned to you before.” His dark eyes took on a wicked gleam. “There are many things you do not yet know about me, Fhremus—and many more which you do not realize I know about you. But trust in this—Sorbold, the land we both love, is in more capable hands than you realized.”
“Indeed, m’lord,” murmured Fhremus. He took another swallow of the single malt.
Talquist’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Come,” he ordered. “I will show you what our enemy is capable of, both in power and intent—and what we are preparing to do about it.”
He rose, turned, and strode to the inner reaches of his chamber. The commander leapt to his feet and followed him, leaving his glass on the ornately carved table, where the dregs caught the light of the waning sun in the bottom like a stain of drying blood.
22
It did not particularly surprise Fhremus to learn that the recesses of the Emperor Presumptive’s chambers held a series of vaults and tunnels; the dynasty of the Dark Earth and the dynasty of the Forbidden Mountains before them, the rulers of Sorbold for more than seven centuries, had built into Jierna Tal as many mysteries and escape routes as they had fashioned into the empire itself. He had occasionally been allowed entrée into such hidden places in the time of the Empress Leitha, but had not been shown this series, in what had once been her bedchamber.