A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (40 page)

He banged his spine against the jamb, stumbled and took a step back to regain his balance. She was away. She spun on her heel and marched off, her boots thudding loudly on the carpeted floor. Ahasz hurried to catch up. He grabbed her upper arm, tried to turn her about. She struggled free. Her eyes flickered across his face, not seeing him.

Damn the woman! He released her arm and she strode away toward the lifts.

Ahasz watched her leave. He wondered why he felt no sorrow. He remembered Flavia as a young girl, barely ten, hair a shining gold; and he a young man in his twenties, fresh from the Swava College Annex, about to take up a subalternity in the Imperial Gold Watch on Syrena. He had brought her a gift—she idolised him and he capitalised on it. He enjoyed her hero worship, it fed something in his soul he had not known possessed an appetite. The present—some gewgaw or gimcrack, suitable for a girl somewhat older—had been blissfully received.

They were both a quarter of a century older now. He had offered her the most precious gift he had in his possession: himself. She had not just said no, she had arranged to remove herself to the very limits of the Empire. He should feel something: heartache, remorse, an aching metaphysical pain in his chest.

He felt nothing.

Ahasz sat bolt upright in his cot and flailed as its flimsy construction shifted alarmingly beneath him. He saw mud-streaked wooden walls before him, a ceiling of wooden slats and more mud leaking glutinously between them. A small square light-sheet in a corner cast a warm glow over the rude surroundings, but would persuade no one this was a rustic log-cabin. It was a hole in the ground, the dirt crudely planked in place.

He felt terrible. Half-awake, yet still lodged in his dream. Slowly, he twisted and looked across the command post. He was alone. His jacket—the jacket he had worn for the past seventy days—lay slung across a wooden chair. His sword-belt hung from the same chair’s back. Groaning, he swung his legs off the coat, fumbled around with his stockinged feet before finding his boots and sliding into them. His trousers creaked as he settled his weight forward.

The temptation came over him to take the railway to his townhouse, to bathe and shave and cleanse himself, to dress in freshly-laundered clothes. He would do no such thing, of course. Eighty-one days into his siege and the Electorate’s patience was wearing thin. Away from his army, he suspected some well-meaning noble or other would attempt to take him into custody. Perversely, he was safest here, on the front-line, on the battle-field.

He winced as he reached for his jacket, stopped and put a hand to his side. Beneath his filthy shirt, the bandages felt taut, although crusted with blood. Eight days ago, a battalion each of household troops, Housecarls and Imperial Gold Watch had stormed the front of the Imperial Palace. Every basilisk and field-piece in the duke’s army had been lined up on Palace road’s edge, tasked with keeping the Palace Artillery too busy to fire.

The assault had failed.

Knights stalwart and knights militant had met the attackers at the archways into the Palace and beaten them back. Cuirassiers had followed through, chasing Ahasz’s soldiers back to the trenches. It had been a fierce battle. Ahasz, watching the assault from a loophole, had found himself trapped in the thick of it. He had dispatched three Cuirassier officers and a pair of knight-captains before the spike of a hammer had punctured his side.

The wound was deep, but it had not hit anything vital. Small mercy. Medical supplies were running low—
all
supplies were running low. A Housecarls field nurse had packed the wound with unguent and stitched it up. It would scar—another badge of honour to add to those already decorating his torso. But those others had been earned in duels, although no one had pinked him in over fifteen years.

Where in heavens was Denever?

Ahasz rose to his feet, ignoring the shooting pain, took a step towards the chair and lifted his sword-belt. Buckling it about his middle nearly proved beyond him. His side hurt but it was his fingers which were clumsy. And then the jacket—the act of pulling it on stretched his injury, and he snapped his jaw shut.

Only then did his batman appear. The command post’s door swung open and Denever slipped into the chamber. His face bore streaks of mud and he carried a steaming mug in one hand. He crossed to the duke, alarmed, a hand out to prevent further exertion by Ahasz.

“Your grace, you should have waited for me!”

“You weren’t here,” Ahasz grated.

“I was coming to wake you. At the agreed time.”

The duke grunted. “I was dreaming. It woke me up.” Dreaming. About Flavia. The day she had left him. In a manner of speaking, that day had led to this miserable, stinking, filthy siege.

He took the mug from Denever and sipped its contents. It was hot and tasted disgusting. But it was all they had. The supplies he had stockpiled had run out in the first two weeks. Enterprising merchants had sold his quartermasters provisions at inflated prices for a week or two following. But the Electorate had brought pressure to bear and that soon dried up. Ahasz had sent to Syrena for supplies. The Imperial Navy, damn them, had blockaded his ships.

“Where’s Tayisa?” Ahasz demanded.

This morning they were to inspect their latest try at breaching the Palace. A sapper-lieutenant had suggested the idea three weeks ago: tunnel from the railways to the Palace’s basements. Today, if their calculations had not gone awry, they should finally reach their intended position. They were not going to break into the Palace. Fighting their way floor-by-floor to the Imperial Apartments would be no easier than storming the Palace entrance. No, instead they would force a charger to implode beneath the Palace.

Ahasz wanted this war over. And if he had to kill everyone in the Palace to do that, he would. Fifty days ago, he wanted Emperor Willim IX taken alive. He wanted him to capitulate before him. To hand him the Imperial Throne and weep at its loss.

Now, he would settle for removing the Shutans from the line of succession and acknowledgement of his usurpation by the Electorate.

“Colonel Tayisa is in the railway station, your grace,” Denever replied.

“Anything happen while I was asleep?”

“No, your grace. Just the usual.”

An almost constant barrage from the Imperial Palace Artillery, in other words.

After downing the last of his coffee, Ahasz handed the empty mug to his batman and crossed to the command post’s exit. Walking still hurt, and it would be several weeks before the pain went away. Just outside the command post, some ten feet further along the trench, a niche gave onto a lighted shaft leading down to the railway beneath. Ahasz thought about taking the long way: walking out via a defile onto Palace Road’s back-slope, making his way down to the roundabout and then taking one of the entrances to the railway station beneath the Pacification Campaigns monument. Climbing down a ladder in his condition…

No, the other route would take too long. He stepped onto the ladder, pulled in a deep breath and began to descend.

Ahasz found Tayisa and a handful of household troops gathered about the entrance to the tunnel the sappers had dug. It led at a downward angle of some ten degrees from an outer pedestrian tunnel of the railway station. The tunnel mouth was a ragged rectangle six feet wide and eight feet in height. The height was important: if men were to run in the tunnel, they should not have to do so stooped. A sapper-lieutenant appeared in the opening. He grinned, though his face was plastered with mud and rock dust.

“All ready, your grace.”

“They’re certain to have worked out what we’re doing, your grace,” put in Tayisa.

“I realise that,” Ahasz snapped. The pain from his wound had him feeling light-headed and edgy. He put a hand to the wall, felt cold tiles beneath his palm. The odour of pulverised rock filled his nostrils.

More calmly, he continued, “That is why we shall not break through into the cellars. They will be expecting that.” He gave a feral grin. “With luck, they’ll have a cohort or two lined up for when we break through.”

The charger would see to them. And, if placed as calculated, should bring down much of the Palace’s façade. That which remained, that is. They were hoping that fracture lines within Mount Yama would spread the damage, cause more of the Palace to collapse. With fortune—a great deal of fortune—they could wipe out the bulk of the defenders in one fell swoop.

“Where is the charger?” Ahasz asked.

“It should be here soon,” Tayisa replied.

“Who will be setting it?”

“Lieutenant Marutama.” A Roundhead.

“Good, good.” Ahasz nodded absently.

It was a good fifteen minutes before four figures appeared, pushing a large black slab floating some four feet above the ground. The implosive properties of chargers were well known. Dial them up to a certain level, so high that anything immediately above them was squashed flat in a field of intense gravity, feed a little power in and… The whole device collapsed in on itself in a split-second. The outrush of energy was powerfully destructive.

A thick cable connected the charger with a field-piece power-cart. It would provide sufficient energy for their purposes.

“It’s big enough,” Ahasz remarked. “Where did you get it?”

“We cannibalised an aerolaunch at the aerodrome,” Tayisa explained.

That boat would never leave Shuto’s surface until the charger was replaced.

The four troopers followed the sapper-lieutenant into the hole, pushing the charger and power-cart ahead of them. Ahasz waited until they had passed and then entered after them. He did not like it in the tunnel. Although not a tall man, the roof felt uncomfortably close. The walls certainly were. Wooden props shored up the roof at intervals; planks of wood fulfilled the same role along the walls. Small square light-sheets had been fixed to the rock every twenty feet. Their light left puddles and pools of darkness, and Ahasz stumbled frequently in these on the rough footing.

The tunnel led down at a constant angle for a thousand yards, before disgorging into a circular chamber, also chiselled from the rock itself. The ceiling was dome-shaped, the better to direct the charger’s outburst of energy. The troopers pushed the charger to the centre of the chamber, dialled down its power until it settled on the floor, and then stepped back.

Marutama was already present, prowling about the rock room’s circumference. He had removed his air-hood, the better to see in the dim lighting. Spotting the duke, he turned, sketched an abbreviated bow and then continued with his inspection. Once he was satisfied, he approached the duke, Tayisa and the sapper-lieutenant.

“How far below the Palace are we?” he asked.

“No more than eight feet from the cellars,” the sapper-lieutenant replied.

“And how far beneath the mountain?”

“We’re about ten feet in.” The sapper-lieutenant glanced across at the duke, before continuing: “We’re hoping that if we cause the face to slip, fractures in the rock will bring the rest of Mount Yama crashing down.”

There were thousands of people trapped in the Imperial Palace. Some of them were likely non-combatants—and that included the Imperial Family and their numerous staff. If the charger performed as the sapper-lieutenant described, they might all die. The carved out rooms and passages of the Palace would collapse beneath them, leaving the mountain hollow, its contents nothing more than a pile of rubble. And the Palace’s inhabitants crushed among the rock and dust.

Only desperation could have created such a tactic. Wholesale death on such a scale would never be excused. Perhaps, he mused—and wondering at his own foolishness—once he was on the Imperial Throne, he could claim the ten weeks of battle had simply weakened Mount Yama’s structure. Rewrite the history books to reflect that.

He frowned. There was still time to call it off—

Plink, plink, plink
.

“What was that?”

Ahasz held up a hand for silence and strained to hear. There had been something. A tinny clacking of something against the rock; a faint “thwock” of something more substantial striking.

Plink, thwock
.

There it was again.

The sapper-lieutenant identified it immediately: “A pick,” he said. “Someone is tunnelling towards us.”

No sooner were the words spoken, then a section rock wall opposite the chamber’s entrance crumbled. A figure loomed into sight through the dust, stumbling on the rubble, a hand out to steady its scramble into the chamber.

Ahasz swore. There was no mistaking the coveralls and tabard, despite the dirt. A sword emblem—so a knight militant. A serjeant: he wore a bucket-helm and held a metal stave in one hand.

Marutama pulled his sword from its sheath, crossed to the knight at a quick pace and swung two-handed. The sword’s edge cut into the serjeant’s torso beneath one upraised arm. He stumbled and fell from the top of rubble. Blood crept across his tabard, a red tide overwhelming the Order of the Sword’s coat of arms.

More serjeants pushed their way into the chamber. Marutama took position facing the newly-formed hole, sword held in one hand and now a dagger in the other.

“Your grace,” urged Tayisa, tugging Ahasz’s arm. “We must leave.”

Ahasz reached for his sword, but knew his wound would hamper him. “The charger,” he asked. “Who will set it off?”

The sapper-lieutenant stepped forward. He gestured for the duke to leave, clearly volunteering for the job.

Ahasz turned and ran. He heard Tayisa’s boots behind him. They stumbled and lurched up the tunnel towards the railway station. Behind them, the clang of weapons meeting echoed. He heard rock fall. Perhaps they had widened the hole. Marutama was a fierce fighter; all the Roundheads were fierce fighters. But the numbers would overwhelm him soon enough. And the tunnel the duke’s sappers had created to undermine the Palace now gave the knights militant a route directly beneath the trenches.

At last, they staggered out into the tiled passage. Ahasz looked back, Tayisa by his side, but saw no one else approaching. The sapper-lieutenant was still in the chamber. Or dead. As were his four troopers.