A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (7 page)

There were people at the Palace entrance.

“Move, damn you,” hissed Ahasz.

They ran. Not all escaped. Stone rained down them; many fell, crushed, maimed. A cloud of dust, dancing in the beams of the spotlights, billowed over the mayhem.

He heard distant screams and wails. They could not understand, only suffer. Nor could he explain to them why.

“Problem solved, your grace,” said Tayisa.

Another bolt from the Palace. The front of the basilisk dug into the ground as the beam hit it. The rear lifted. The front detonated. Armour at the back peeled open, debris blasted out. Soldiers standing behind were chopped to pieces, incinerated.

“It seems you spoke too soon,” Ahasz remarked bitterly.

He turned away. The troop-wagons were empty now, he saw, their companies lined up by the side of the road. Eighteen companies of Housecarls.

“Where are my household troops?” he demanded. He needed more men.

“The first train should be pulling in shortly, your grace,” replied Tayisa.

“Get them up here as fast as possible.”

The empty troop-wagons were rising into the air now. A foot above the ground, they swung about, and moved over the central reservation’s shrubbery. Ahasz watched them disappear from view as they headed down the slope on the far side of the highway.

He frowned. He saw troop-wagons exiting the District garrison. “Telescope,” he said.

Tayisa pulled one from a belt pouch and passed it across. It was a sophisticated device, and compensated for the low ambient light. The duke put it to his eye, focussed on the troop-wagons by the garrison. Two hammers and a sword, over a representation of Mount Yama: Housecarls. He said as much.

“That’ll be Lieutenant-Colonel Narry,” Tayisa said.

“Then he’s done well to neutralise the Cuirassiers so efficiently. I count a full complement of troop-wagons.” Ahasz took the telescope from his eye. “But he let the Palace Artillery install themselves in
there
.” He looked back over his shoulder at spot-lit Mount Yama, and scowled.

Damn the man. A battalion of the Emperor’s Own Cuirassiers was less of a threat than directed-energy cannons. Ahasz’s own household troops were trained as well, if not better, than the best of the Imperial Regiments. And the duke had numbers on his side: over six and a half thousand soldiers… Worst case, he calculated: no more than six hundred defenders. Ten to one.

But for the damned cannons.

He handed Tayisa his telescope. “Order two companies,” he instructed him, “to rush the Palace entrance.”

“Your grace,” the colonel protested, “it’s too open. They’ll be cut to pieces.”

Night had spread its cloak across the District, but there was sufficient illumination from the spotlights to make any soldier approaching the Palace clearly visible. Especially in their red jackets. The gardens at the foot of the slope from Palace Road offered no cover, comprising low hedges bordering paths and ornamental flower-beds. The only concealment was that provided on the other side of the gardens by a pair of low basins, within which lines of fountains burbled and splashed. Beyond these, a flight of stairs one hundred feet wide led up twelve steps to the imposing arches of the Palace’s entrance.

“I am aware of that,” Ahasz snapped.

Tayisa hurried away to confer with Housecarl officers. Ahasz crossed to the edge of the highway and gazed across the gardens. Such a peaceful scene, he thought—but for the destruction caused by the basilisk: a gaping crater in the mountainside beside Edkar I’s left elbow. The duke knew the District well, was a constant visitor when on Shuto. As head of one of the Empire’s oldest families—his line stretched back to the beginnings of civilisation on Geneza, had been high nobles in the Old Empire—his was a familiar face at Imperial Court. Emperor Willim IX was a personal friend.

That friendship would not survive the day.

Movement to his left caught Ahasz’s attention. Six platoons, plus a pair of company commanders and sergeant-majors—one hundred and sixty-six men—had gathered at the edge of Palace Road. The troopers wore black helmets, red jackets, black cuirasses, and black coveralls: Housecarls.

A whistle blew. The soldiers began to trot forward. Ahasz waited for a response from the Palace.

The Housecarls were halfway to the fountains when a cannon fired. The bolt was so bright it lit up the damage it caused. It hit three-quarters along the line. Soldiers exploded. Arms, legs, heads, innards—sprayed across comrades. The Housecarls continued to advance.

More cannons fired. Gouts of dirt geysered among gaps in the lines.

The Housecarls began to dodge and weave, trying to avoid the bolts from the Palace emplacements. Some jinked right into shots from the cannons, disappearing in eye-searing brightness, bodies detonating, blood jetting, limbs flying. Severed heads, still buckled into black helmets, rolled through ornamental borders. Hammers, hands still wrapped around shafts, fell to the ground.

Ahasz tried to persuade himself it was a necessary slaughter. He needed to know how many of the Palace’s defences remained intact.

Colonel Tayisa was back.

“Send a platoon down to the garage gates,” Ahasz told him. “See if they’ve closed them.”

A road depending from the roundabout at the end of Palace Road led towards the mountain, and disappeared into the rock through a pair of great arches. High nobles and members of the Imperial Court used that route.

Tayisa pulled a battlefield caster from his belt and murmured into it. A minute or two later, the syncopated tramp of boots sounded from further down the road. Ahasz glanced to his right, toward the monument, and saw troopers in red smocks and red helmets. Household troopers. The first trainload must have arrived, marched up from the station beneath the roundabout. It was unlikely they’d be able to effect entrance to the Palace via the garage, but it had to be checked.

The Housecarls on the slope below had reached the fountain basins. Cannon fire had reduced their numbers. Of the one hundred and sixty-six men Tayisa had sent to attack, Ahasz counted less than half that number remaining. They crouched behind the low parapet of the basins, hammers hugged to armoured chests, waiting for an opportunity to charge. Directed-energy beams from the Palace cut flashes through the mist and spray, detonated stone and earth where they hit. The fountains’ spume roiled and steamed, lit hellishly by the bright impaling bolts. Water in the basin geysered skywards as cannon bolts fell short, spouts springing up left and right.

Visibility degraded further. Mist and steam drifting through the darkness between spotlights obscured the Palace entrance and hid the Housecarls from the Palace cannons.

An officer leapt to his feet, sword held high. At a run, he followed the basin’s parapet to the left, around toward the steps leading up to the Palace entrance. His platoon followed. As soon as they were out of the concealing clouds, the Palace cannons fired. Two Housecarls went cartwheeling into the water, seemed to break apart as they flew, creating a line of splashes. The survivors ran on, but were cut down as they reached the steps.

“Tayisa,” Ahasz said. “Get some field-pieces unlimbered. Have them fire into the water and create more cover.”

In short order, the colonel had three cannons unloaded from an artillery carriage and pushed on their floating sleds to a position at the edge of the highway. On command, they fired into the fountains. A cloud of concealing steam formed. The soldiers hiding at the parapets looked back up to the highway and waved in gratitude. The firing stopped. The Housecarls below clambered into the water, began wading through it—

Something punched a soldier backwards. He hit the ground on his back. Another soldier stumbled backwards out of the mist. And another.

Advancing shapes appeared, insubstantial in the spray and mist.

“Telescope,” Ahasz snapped.

Tayisa once again proffered it to the duke. Ahasz yanked it open and put it to his eye. One of the ghosts in the mist swam into focus.

“Damn.”

A knight stalwart. Bucket helm, tabard emblazoned with a blank shield. A serjeant from the stave he wielded and the waist-length tabard he wore.

More serjeants appeared, wading through the fountains, punching away at the Housecarls with their staves. In knee-deep water, surrounded by spray, staves had the advantage over hammers. The Housecarls could not swing their weapons with sufficient force or speed. The spiked end of a stave took a Housecarl in the chest, puncturing his cuirass with such force it lifted him from the water. He landed on his back, sending up a great splash and did not resurface.

Ahasz swung the telescope from left to right: the two basins were each one hundred feet long, and knights stalwart were appearing every five or six feet in them. And behind them, another line. And again two more lines.

“Damn!”

More materialised out of the mist. There was too many of them—far more than Ahasz had expected. A Martial Order troop comprised fifty-five men, yet almost twice that number were now visible, reaching the edge of the basins, stepping up onto parapets, swinging their staves—some, the knight-lieutenants, with swords—down at the few surviving Housecarls.

“Get troops here now!” Ahasz stepped back and began pointing. “I want them lined up along the edge of the garden. Stop the knights from advancing. And use the field-pieces to take out those damned spotlights.”

At barked orders up and down the convoy, soldiers ran forward, down to the garden and formed an orderly line. It was enough to cause the knights stalwart to fall back.

Someone bellowed, “Charge!”

A company of Housecarls to the left broke from the line and ran forwards.

“Hold!” yelled Ahasz. The fools!

The rest of the line held.

The retreating knights stalwart stopped, turned back. The melee did not last above a minute. Serjeants ducked hammers, slipped within their guards, punched Housecarls with the ends of their staves, moved quickly back. Eighty men in red jackets lay dead or wounded; not a single knight stalwart was harmed. The officer responsible for the attack—a lieutenant-colonel, Ahasz saw when he focussed his telescope on the man—had hung behind his line. As they fell, he scrambled about and fled.

“Get me the name of that damn idiot,” Ahasz commanded.

The field-pieces fired, a ragged volley. Two aimed for the spotlight and were close enough to cause them to explode with a thunderous bang and hot sprayed glass. The bolt from the third hit some of the retreating knights stalwart. The defenders were too spread out for a single shot to cause many casualties. One serjeant disappeared as the bolt vaporised half of his torso. Another, also caught in the beam, fell to the ground.

More bolts hit the lights. Soon the only illumination was that spilling from the Palace’s windows and balconies. A sharp eye would likely still spot troops approaching through the garden, but it would not be so easy.

The serjeants had retreated back into the Palace. Now the cannon emplacements within the mountain opened fire. The line of Ahasz’s troops moved back. Hot dirt rained down on them

but no one was killed.

“We think on our next move,” Ahasz told Tayisa. “There’ll be no forcing our way in there at present. Get the men pulled back, and call the battalion commanders together for a planning session.”

In the darkness, the line of grounded troop-wagons resembled a fortified wall and the grassed area behind them a castle’s bailey. Palace Road itself was a rampart, hiding Ahasz’s makeshift citadel from the Imperial Palace. The highway’s embankment was not high enough to hide the duke’s forces from the Palace’s upper levels, but those floors, he knew, were the Imperial Apartments. No cannons would be emplaced there.

Sappers had erected a pavilion against the Housecarls’ headquarters car, and set up a battlefield-consultant beneath the canvas. Wan red light leaked from the entrance slit. Ahasz pushed between the curtains of cloth, reflected sourly that the scarlet-jacketed officers were made indistinct in the crimson lighting, and stepped forward to the battlefield-consultant. Its table-top glass displayed a map of the environs, but no new intelligence had been added.

Leaning forward, hands flat on the glass, he looked up at his officers—Housecarls lieutenant-colonels and regimental-majors; captains of his household troops. For one brief moment, a black shroud seemed to settle over the faces gazing back at him, causing features to blanch and ossify, shadows to gather beneath noses and eyes. He blinked. And it was gone, the bloody light back once again.

He took in their expressions of martial eagerness, not the least blunted by the earlier carnage, and was momentarily offended by it. Some of these, he told himself, would die within the next few days. Yet they clearly felt they were invulnerable, immortal. They were driven as much by a desire for glory as by loyalty to the duke and his cause.

Cannons were indiscriminate killers, but in combat the enemy was personal. An ineffable belief in their prowess with a sword was all the armour these men and women required. They knew themselves to be skilled—amongst the best, even. Yes, the Imperial Regiment of Housecarls enjoyed a reputation as a fearsome fighting force. It was also large: twelve full-strength battalions. Ahasz knew the reputation to be historical—the Housecarls had not fought a real battle in over four hundred years. The size, he suspected, was more a result of the regiment’s duty to protect Shuto, its proximity to the Imperial Court, than of its reputation.

“Gentlemen, ladies,” Ahasz said, slowly, a little tiredly. “You know the situation. We had not anticipated such fierce resistance. Or so many defenders.” The thought reminded him. He paused, peered through the red gloom, scanning each officer’s face. “Narry?” demanded. “Where are you, man?”

A tall lieutenant-colonel with a long face, and pendulous lips hidden beneath a moustache in need of trimming, raised a hand and smiled inanely.

“You’re Narry?” The duke stared at the Housecarl. His likeness prompted a surge of anger—the foolish features, the tremulous mouth. The man looked a buffoon. Ahasz welcomed the fury: he could not win this battle with officers such as Narry under his command. The sooner the others realised that, the better for all. “Tell me, Narry,” Ahasz said, striving for a conversational tone, “where is the battalion of Cuirassiers which was stationed in the garrison?”