Vasselis began to speak but she shushed him.
‘I
know you do. And I know you will make them all see. Don't
make the mistakes I made, Arvan. Keep my Conquord safe until my son returns.'
‘I
, yes, I will but—' Vasselis paused,
‘I
don't understand.' 'Yes you do, dear Arvan. Yes you do.' She leant in and kissed his cheek again, whispering one word. 'Goodbye.' 'G—?'
Herine let go his arm, strode purposefully to the window overlooking the courtyard and cast herself out.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
859th cycle of God, 5th day of
Genasfall
Tuline's scream would live with Vasselis to his dying day. After making a half move to the window, she had turned and fled from the room, her cries echoing from the walls and stairwells. Vasselis set off after her, pausing at the door. The Council of Speakers hadn't moved. They were staring at one another, speechless.
'Now you have what you want, just go,' said Vasselis.
'This is what none of us want,' said Earth quietly.
Vasselis nodded.
'Lift the siege,' he said. 'See the damage this conflict has caused. One last time, evacuate the city. Feel the tragedy that has been sparked here today.'
He chased Tuline down the stairs. Four storeys in all, praying hope against hope that Herine might have survived. Vasselis could not begin to comprehend what had possessed her to jump. Too many hours spent brooding alone or the weight of new guilt; neither would have snapped the mind of the Herine Del Aglios he knew.
Tumult was rising in the palace as he raced through the colonnaded gardens full of the happy chirping of birds. Shouts echoed through the corridors. From a side passage burst the palace's senior doctor and three orderlies. Vasselis joined them in barging their way through soldiers on the steps of the palace craning their heads for a view.
He yelled at people to move from their path and a space opened up before them, a natural circle that none would breach. Tuline's repeated screams reached deep within him. He forced his way through the last of the vultures that had gathered so quickly.
'Mother! Mother!'
Tuline had the Advocate in her arms, Herine's head buried in her chest. Herine's arms hung limp, her hands brushing the cobbles of the courtyard. Vasselis could see blood there and, looking up into the faces of the Council of Speakers now gathered, the true distance of her fall. So high and she had dropped without making a sound.
Vasselis glared at the front line of the gawping crowd, silent but for the shuffling of feet.
'Haven't you got somewhere else to be?' he growled. 'You. Get me sheets, blankets, whatever. Something to make privacy for the Advocate and her doctors. The rest of you. Dare not look on her. Dare not pretend to feel her daughter's pain. My pain.'
Vasselis choked on his last words and turned away. He led the doctor and orderlies over to Tuline and knelt beside her, unable to do anything else but put an arm around her neck.
'Let her rest,' he said quietly. 'Set her down.'
'No!' wailed Tuline. 'Please don't let this be true. Please.'
it's over for her now,' whispered Vasselis. 'Your mother is at peace. She will go to the embrace of God, there to sit with your ancestors until her time is called again.'
Tuline was weeping. She hugged Herine harder, swaying slightly. Vasselis could not halt the tears that began to fall down his cheeks. The doctor knelt down behind the Advocate and gently, slowly, took her from Tuline's final embrace. Legionaries ran into the circle and quickly deployed sheets, holding them up in a shelter around the scene, tactfully placing themselves on the outside and looking away.
Vasselis sank back to sit on the cobbles, and drew up his knees, clutching them fiercely while he watched the doctor lay Herine Del Aglios, Advocate of the Estorean Conquord, on the ground. Blood matted her hair but her face was unspoiled, her eyes closed. There was peace about her. A silence that spread from her body and across the courtyard, quietening voices, staying footsteps, stilling the palace.
The doctor felt for a pulse as she had to, turned to look at Vasselis.
'The Advocate is dead, Marshal Vasselis.'
Tuline just sat and stared, desolate. Vasselis nodded, put his head on his knees and let the sobbing take him. His mind blanked with sorrow and he cried long and hard, not caring who heard him, hoping they did and knowing what it was the Conquord had lost. When he raised his head it was in response to a squeeze of his shoulder and the sound of someone squatting down before him.
'Oh, Marcus, what have we become?' he said.
Vasselis wiped tears from his eyes and found he was still clutching the parchment Herine had given him. He unrolled it while the doctor and orderlies tended to Herine's body, covering her with fresh sheets ready to take her to the morgue. One of them tried to comfort Tuline who was unmoving, a statue. She had seen something no daughter should ever have to witness.
Vasselis bent his head to the parchmenr and read. It was written in Herine's hand. Steady and clear, quite at odds with her bearing just before her death.
My
dear Arvan,
There comes a time in the life
of
us all when we must be accountable for our actions. There are moments that define us, shape us and those we love and those we rule. Times when our enemies press, that we make decisions that raise us to the stature
of
Gods or cast us down beyond his sight.
And when those times come, those who rule must atone for the mistakes that cost the lives
of
the innocent.
I
have reached that time and
1
am unworthy.
Do not grieve for me, Arvan, serve me after my death as you did during my life. Remember me for our love and friendship and for all the good that we achieved for our great Conquord. Forget what you see this day and make your first step on the path to restoring Estorr to her appointed destiny.
This I ask
of
you, Marshal Defender Vasselis, as my final wish and order. Rule the Conquord until my son returns to Estorr. Keep all that we have built safe from those who would tear it down. Do this for me, Arvan. You are the only one here I can trust. And look after Tuline as your own. I fear she will not understand.
Your Advocate and your friend,
Herine Del Aglios.
'Neither do I, Herine,' he whispered. 'And nor do any of us.' 'Any of us what?' asked Gesteris. 'Understand, Marcus.'
Gesteris pushed himself back to his feet and held out a hand which Vasselis took.
'She's left you in charge?'
'Yes,' said Vasselis, gazing down at the parchment. 'Until Roberto gets back.'
'A sound choice. You can count on my total support and that of the Senate, such as might be out there in the city. The army too will be behind you, Arvan.'
'We need them,' said Vasselis. 'All of them. This has gone on long enough, Marcus. I won't let this situation bring our city down. This siege has to end and it has to end very soon.'
'Any ideas.'
Vasselis brightened just for a moment. 'One or two. Herine wouldn't have liked them but you might. Come on. We need to talk to Elise. But first I need to make the Council of Speakers agree to conduct our Advocate's burial. I'll see you in the Academy as soon as I can.'
Gesteris thumped his right fist into his chest.
'My arm and heart are yours, Marshal Vasselis,' he said.
'Marcus, I am more thankful to hear that than you can know.'
By Roberto's reckoning it was the tenth of genasfall. Th
eir boat was not far from Lake I
yre, not far from the wall and gates of the Jewelled Barrier. The three of them were exhausted, bruised, blistered and aching all over. Too little wind. They'd had to row too much and the River Kalde had a good flow to it this close to the lake, and all in the wrong direction.
Even Harban had begun to suffer though he didn't look like the others. Roberto's breastplate and weapons were stowed in the bow and were safe from harm but everything else he wore, his shirts, skirts and boots, were filthy and torn. Speaker Barias was no better and the sickness that had gripped him the last couple of days gave his face a deathly pallor. Roberto had seen in him then the first signs of fear. That he might die and find he was wrong about so many things.
There had been no time to debate it, no energy either. Harban's sharp eyes had picked out riders cresting the low line of hills that ran up to the Kalde Mountains and all the way down to the lake. They were heading for the river bridge a couple of miles north of the lake's outflow, or he presumed they were. It had to be survivors of the Bear Claws. Roberto had demanded one last effort and they had rowed themselves to the lonely old bridge and waited, hands and feet in the cold water in glorious respite.
The riders were only a mile or so away when Roberto got his first good look at them. They counted twenty and lines of spare horses, thirty in all. He saw Bear Claw cavalry livery and he saw Tsardon armour and faces. All survivors of Gorian's crime. Somehow it didn't surprise him at all to see them together. Indeed it gave him a tiny measure of hope.
Roberto, Harban and Julius stood on the bridge in full sight of the approaching riders. Roberto waved them to a halt, gazing over them as they pulled up. Shuddering horses, riders on the point of collapse. Tsardon and Conquord in equal numbers.
'Ambassador Del Aglios,' said a man Roberto recognised as Dolius. He was gasping in breath. 'We thought you surely lost. Speaker Barias too.'
'Amazing stories of escape will have to wait. What of Kell and Dahnishev? Nunan is gone, I know. What of the dead? Where are they?'
Dolius signalled and the twenty of them dismounted. Roberto watched them grouping together, Tsardon and Estorean, as friends. He nodded to the lead Tsardon. A prosentor.
'Kell is dead and will walk as one of them. Nunan too walks with the enemy. About Dahnishev and the rest of the crag-runners, we don't know. We sent scouts to find them but they picked up no trace. And in the end we had to run as hard as we could to keep ahead of the dead.' Dolius stepped forward. 'He killed them all. Conquord and Tsardon alike. He has artillery and engineers, taken from Hasfort. Kell and four hundred soldiers sacrificed themselves to give us the room to escape and warn you. And to get Prosentor Ruthrar to the king. The dead are scant days behind us and only because they slowed after we attacked. I—'
Roberto held up his hands. 'Hold on, hold on. Some I know, some I don't. The king? Khuran?'
Ruthrar nodded. 'My king marches through Atreska to death and not to glory. I must speak with him.'
'We will all go to Neratharn. But first, we will sit and you will tell me all that you know.'
Davarov was waiting for the scout reports. He had seen the smudge on the western horizon denoting an approaching force and assumed it to be either Neratharnese reservists or his artillery from the yards of Hasfort. Either would have been very welcome. But there was always lingering doubt. No refugees had come in from the west which was encouraging but he couldn't help but feel a twinge of anxiety.
It was probably nothing. More likely his ongoing irritation at the state of preparations at the Jewelled Barrier. There were simply too many displaced citizens to cope with and the Tsardon force backed by the dead would be on them in something like six days. Right now he could maintain the slow move through the gates once processing was done but sooner or later, he'd have to throw them open and let the flood roll over him. 'General?'
He groaned and looked up from the relief map table where he was studying the latest muster times following the morning's rehearsal.
'Give me strength and peace from interruption. Yes, Centurion, what is it? And please don't tell me it has anything to do with catering for the refugees. We've been through this. If they don't like the foraging round here, or the prices of those bastard traders, then they can up sticks and go. It is a big Conquord and it's mostly empty.'
The centurion was nodding his head furiously. 'Yes, sir, and no, it isn't that.'
'Well? You want to tell me how it is it took the Rogue Spears an hour to get from their camp to the walls this morning?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm all ears.'
'We did not receive the order at the allotted time, sir. I've been through the communication chain and our papers were delivered late.'
'That isn't possible,' said Davarov. 'I despatched all the riders at precisely the same time. I do not believe yours got lost on the way. It is only a mile and a half across open ground.'
'Yes, sir,' said the centurion. 'But the horse stepped on an animal trap in the undergrowth. One left there by, well, refugees. The rider had to run the rest of the way and he was injured in the fall. The horse is lame.'