Authors: Paul Kearney
In the powder-smoke, the surviving Knights heard the officer’s voice again.
“Rear rank, present your pieces.”
The surviving Knights turned as one to the enemy and savagely urged their terrified horses into a canter. Shrieking like fiends they charged down the street into the smoke, determined to avenge their fallen brethren.
They were met by a second storm of gunfire.
All of them went down. The momentum of the two lead riders carried them into the ranks of the arquebusiers, and the horses collapsed through the formation scattering the Hebrian soldiers like skittles. One of the Knights was flung clear, clanging across the cobbles. As he struggled to his feet in the heavy armour that the Knights wore, two Hebrian soldiers flipped him on his back again, as though he were a monstrous beetle. They stood on his wrists, pinioning him, then ripped off his casque and cut his throat.
A final shot as a moaning horse was put out of its pain. From the doors of the houses the people emerged. A ragged cheer went up as they saw the riddled corpses which littered the roadway, though some went to their knees in the clotted gore, cradling the head of a butchered friend or relative. The keening cries of women replaced the cheering.
The citizens of Abrusio rebuilt their barricades whilst the Hebrian soldiers methodically reloaded their weapons and resumed their hidden stations once more.
“I don’t believe it!” Presbyter Quirion said. Abrusio stretched out mist-shrouded and sun-gilded in the morning light. He blinked as the sound of arquebus fire came again, echoing over the packed rooftops to the monastery-tower wherein he stood.
“So far three of our patrols have been ambushed,” the Knight-Abbot said. “Skirmishing goes on even as we speak. Our casualties have been serious. We are cavalry, without firearms. We are not equipped to fight street battles with foes who possess arquebuses.”
“And you are sure it is the Hebrian soldiery who are involved, not civilians with guns?”
“Yes, your excellency. All our brothers report the same thing: when they try to force the barricades, they are met with disciplined gunnery. It has to be the garrison troops; there can be no other explanation.”
Quirion’s eyes were two blue fires.
“Recall our brethren. There is no profit in them throwing themselves under the guns of rebels and heretics.”
“Yes, your excellency.”
“And have all officers above the rank of deacon assemble in the speechhall at noon. I’ll address them myself.”
“At once, your excellency.” The Knight-Abbot made the Sign of the Saint on his armoured breast and left.
“What does this mean?” the Presbyter asked.
“Would you like me to find out for you?” Sastro di Carrera said, one hand fiddling with the ruby set in his earlobe.
Quirion turned to face his companion squarely. They were the only occupants of the high-ceilinged room.
“No.”
“You don’t like me, your excellency. Why is that?”
“You are a man without much faith, Lord Carrera. You care only for your own advantage.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Sastro asked smiling.
“Not everyone. Not my brothers…
Do
you know anything about these developments then?”
Sastro yawned, stretching out his long arms. “I can deduce as well or better than the next man. My bet is that Rovero and Mercado have somehow had a communication from our ex-King Abeleyn. They have come down on his side at last—another reason why they postponed the viewing of the Pontifical bull scheduled yesterday. The army and the fleet will hold the Lower City against us until Abeleyn arrives in person, then go over on to the offensive. It is also my guess that your Knights were not meant to be slain; they pressed too hard. Obviously the general and the admiral meant this to look like a popular uprising, but they had to use national troops to defend their perimeter when your brethren tested it.”
“Then we know where we stand,” Quirion snarled. His face looked as though invisible strings had pulled chin and forehead towards each other; fury had clenched it as it might a fist. “They will be excommunicated,” he went on. “I will see them burn. But first we must crush this uprising.”
“That may not be so easy.”
“What of your friend Freiss?” And when Sastro seemed genuinely surprised, Quirion’s bass gravelled out a harsh laugh. “You think I did not know of your meetings with him? I will not let you play a private game in this city, my Lord Carrera. You will pull alongside the rest of us, or you will not be a player at all.”
Sastro regained his composure, shrugging. His hand toyed now with the gleaming, scented point of his beard. He needed to toy with his features constantly, it seemed to Quirion. An irritating habit. The man was probably a pederast; he smelled like a sultan’s harem. But he was the most effective of the nobles, and a necessary ally.
“Very well,” Sastro said casually. “My friend Freiss, as you put it, says he has won over several hundred men of the garrison, men who cannot stomach heresy and who expect to be rewarded for their loyalty once the Church has assumed full control of Abrusio.”
“Where are they?”
“In barracks. Mercado has his suspicions and has segregated them from the other tercios. He is probably having them watched also.”
“Then they are of little use to us.”
“They could stage a diversion while your brethren assault these absurd barricades.”
“My brethren are not equipped for street fighting, as you have already heard. No, there must be another way.”
Sastro regarded the ornate plasterwork of the ceiling with some interest. “There are, of course, my personal retainers…”
“How many?”
“I could muster maybe eight hundred if I called out some of the lesser client houses as well.”
“Their arms?”
“Arquebuses and sword-and-buckler men. No pikes, but then pikes are no better at street fighting than cavalry.”
“That would be ideal. They could cover an assault by my brethren. How long would it take to muster them?”
“A few days.”
The two men looked at each other like a pair of prize-fighters weighing up each other’s strengths and weaknesses in the ring.
“You realize I would be risking my house, my followers, ultimately my fortune,” Sastro drawled.
“The Hebrian treasury is in the possession of the council. You would be amply compensated,” Quirion growled.
“That is not what I was thinking of,” Sastro said. “No, money is not my main concern. It is just that my men like to fight for the betterment of their lord’s situation as well as their own.”
“They would be defending the True Faith of the Ramusian kingdoms. Is that not reward enough?”
“It should be, I know, my dear Presbyter. But not all men are as… single-minded, you might say, as your brethren.”
“What do you want, Lord Carrera?” Quirion asked, though he thought he already knew.
“You are looking through the archives, are you not, trying to establish who should take the throne now that the Hibrusid line is finished?”
“I have Inceptine archivists working on it, yes.”
“You will find, I think, that Astolvo di Sequero is the most eligible candidate. But he is an old man. He does not want the kingship with all that it entails. He will refuse it.”
“Are you so sure?”
“Oh, yes. And his sons are flighty, vicious young things. Hardly Royal material. You will need the next king of Hebrion to be a mature man, a man of abilities, a man who is happy to work hand in gauntlet with the holy Church. Otherwise the other noble houses might get restless, mutinous even, at the idea of one of Astolvo’s brats ruling.”
“Where might we find such a man?” Quirion asked guardedly. He had not missed the threat in Sastro’s words.
“I am not sure, but if your archivists delve deep enough I believe they may find the house of Carrera closer to the throne than you think.”
Quirion laughed his coarse laugh—the guffaw of a commoner, Sastro thought with disgust, though nothing of his feelings showed on his face.
“The kingship in return for your men, my lord?” the Presbyter said.
Sastro raised his carefully trimmed eyebrows. “Why not? No one else will make you a similar offer, I’ll warrant.”
“Not even the Sequeros?”
“Astolvo will not. He knows that were he to do so his life would be hanging by a thread. His sons are champing at the bit beneath him; he would not last a year. How would that look? The Church-sponsored monarchy of Hebrion embroiled in murderous intrigue, perhaps even parricide, within months of its establishment.”
Quirion looked thoughtful, gauging. “Such decisions of moment must be referred to Himerius in Charibon. The Pontiff will have the final word.”
“The Pontiff, may the Saints be good to him, will no doubt follow the recommendations of his representative on the spot.”
Quirion repaired to the table on which sat a host of decanters. He poured himself a dribble of wine and drank it off, grimacing. He did not imbibe as a rule, but he felt the need of the warming liquid; there was a chill in the room.
“Get word to your co-conspirator, Freiss,” he said. “Tell him to prepare his men for action. And start gathering your own followers together, Lord Carrera. We must work on a combined plan.”
“Will there then be a messenger sent to Charibon with your recommendations?” Sastro asked.
“There will. I will… advise my archivists to look into the genealogy of your house.”
“A wise decision, Presbyter. You are obviously a man of sagacity.”
“Perhaps. Now that the bargaining is done, can we attend to the more mundane details? I want rosters, equipment lists.”
The man had no style, Sastro thought. No sense of the moment. But that was by-the-by. He had secured the kingship for himself; that was the main thing. He had negotiated a path to power. But he had not arrived at its threshold, not yet. There remained much to be done.
“I will have everything ready for you to peruse this afternoon,” he said smoothly. “And I will have couriers sent to my estates and those of my vassals. The men will begin assembling directly.”
“Good. This thing must be done quickly. If we cannot storm the Lower City before Abeleyn arrives, it will be the work of several campaigns to secure Abrusio, with all the destruction that entails.”
“Indeed. I have no wish to rule over a hill of ashes.”
Quirion stared at his aristocratic companion. “The new king will rule in conjunction with the Church. I have no doubt that the Pontiff will wish to maintain a garrison of the Knights here, even after the rebels are extinguished.”
“They will be an inestimable help, a valued adjunct to Royal authority.”
Quirion nodded. “Just so we understand each other. Now if you will excuse me, my Lord Carrera, I must prepare to address my brethren. And there are wounded to visit.”
“By all means. Will you give me your blessing before I go, excellency?”
Sastro rose, then knelt before the Presbyter with his head bowed. Quirion’s face spasmed. He grated out the words of the blessing as though they were a curse. The nobleman regained his feet, made the Sign of the Saint with mocking flamboyance and left the room.
O VER five hundred leagues away, the Thurian Mountains were thick and white with midwinter snows. The last of the passes had been closed and the sultanate of Ostrabar was sealed off to the west and the south by the mountain barrier, itself merely an outlying range of the fearsome Jafrar Mountains farther east.
The tower had once been part of the upland castle of a Ramusian noble, one of the hundreds which had dotted the rich vales of Ostiber in the days when it had been a Ramusian kingdom. But it was different now. For sixty years the Merduk overlords had possessed the rich eastern region. Its ruler was Aurungzeb the Golden, the Stormer of Aekir, and the people he ruled had come to accept the Merduk yoke, as it was called in the west. They tilled their fields as they had always done and by and large they were no worse off under their Merduk lords than they had been under the Ramusian ones.
True, their sons must serve a stint in the Sultan’s armies, but for the most talented of them there was no bar to ambition. If a man had ability, he might rise very high in the service of the Sultan no matter how low his birth. It was one of the cunning ways in which the Merduks had reconciled the people to their rule, and it brought continual new blood into the army and the administration. The grandfathers of the men who had fought under the banners of Ahrimuz the Prophet at Aekir and Ormann Dyke had struggled against those same banners two generations before. For the peasantry it was a pragmatic choice. They were tied to their land and when it changed owners they would change masters as a matter of course.
Most of the upland castle was in ruins, but one wing with its tall tower remained intact and it gave a fine view of the valleys below. On a clear day it was even possible to see Orkhan, the capital of the Sultan, glittering with minarets in the distance. But the castle was isolated. Built too high in the Thurian foothills, it had been deserted even before the Merduks came, its occupants forced out by the severity of the upland winters.
Sometimes the local inhabitants lower in the valley would remark upon the dark tower standing alone on the wintry heights above. It was rumoured that strange lights could be seen flashing in its windows after dark, and there were tales of inhuman beasts which roamed the fells around it in nights of moon. Sheep had gone missing, and a boy herder had disappeared. No one dared to approach the old ruin, though, and it was left to its malignant contemplation of the dales below.
T HE beast turned from the window and its monochrome world of white snow and black trees and distant lights. It shuffled across the circular tower chamber and sank into a padded chair before the fire with a sigh. The endless wind was moaning about the gaps in the roof and occasional confettis of snow would flutter in the glassless window.
A beast was dressed in human robes, and its head was like some grotesque marriage of humanity and reptile. The body was awkward and bent, and talons scraped the flagged floor in place of toes. Only the hands remained recognizably human, though they were treble-jointed and slightly scaled, reflecting back the firelight with a green tint.