“What is that?” the privateer asked.
“If these poor souls were alive during their mistreatment, they suffered horribly,” Adrian answered. “I’m talking about terrible pain, Tyranny—the kind that drives even the strongest mystics mad. What happened here is an outrage of massive proportions. I fear that a new Vagaries scourge has somehow been loosed on Eutracia. If we don’t stop it soon, more such atrocities seem sure to follow. But why bring these people here and then impale them? If they hail from Birmingham, herding them to this shore took great effort. They could easily have been tortured and killed in town.”
Tyranny cast her gaze back out across the sea. “I know why,” she said. “It was meant to be a warning. They knew that the fleet would arrive soon, and they wanted this travesty to be the first thing that we saw. It worked.”
Adrian was about to reply when she heard the flurry of Minion wings. As two warriors landed nearby, everyone hurried over to greet them. One of the warriors was male and rather young; his senior officer was an older female. They quickly approached Tyranny and clicked their boot heels together.
“We have finished the shoreline body count that you asked for, Captain,” the female warrior said. “The impaled victims number two thousand six hundred and thirty-three. There are no survivors.”
Tyranny’s heart fell. If these people came from Birmingham, it likely meant that the entire population of the town had been wiped out.
“Is there word from Birmingham?” Traax asked.
The female officer pointed toward the western sky. Everyone turned to see a cluster of dark specks approaching.
“A patrol returns from the village as we speak,” she answered.
As the figures in the sky grew larger, Tyranny soon realized that six of the twelve warriors were carrying a litter. She couldn’t tell what the litter contained, but she was eager to find out. As the patrol descended toward the shore, everyone ran over to meet them.
The newly constructed litter was about three meters square and made of freshly cut tree branches lashed together with rope. It was more like a cage than a litter, Tyranny realized. As she ran nearer, she finally saw what it contained. She and her group came to a quick stop.
The Minion warriors had captured a snarling, hissing beast. Tyranny had never seen anything like it. She approached cautiously, stopping about three meters away.
The half-man, half-serpent was a grotesque creature. The hairless skull was olive in color. A pair of twisted, sharp horns rose from either side of the skull. Long pointed ears lay on either side. The eyes were wide apart, with dully opaque whites and vertical yellow irises. Its mouth soon opened, sending a bright red forked tongue slithering forth to test the air. Before the mouth closed again, Tyranny saw sharp yellow teeth and a pair of deadly incisors flash in the morning sun.
Its upper body appeared to be human, and its muscular arms looked strong. From the waist down its body was a scaly, snakelike tail. Like the thing’s torso, the tail was olive in color, but it had dark spots all along its length and gradually tapered to a forked end. When it saw Tyranny approach, it coiled up and viciously hissed.
Without warning the creature suddenly shot forward and grasped one of the litter’s wooden braces. Hissing madly again, it used all its strength to try to rip the cage apart. The sturdy cage rocked wildly, but it held. The defeated beast then slithered toward the back of its beech wood prison and coiled up protectively. As its dark eyes bored into Tyranny’s, a quick shudder went through her.
Her mouth agape, she looked at the senior officer, who had also been one of the litter bearers. His name was Davin, and Tyranny had come to respect him during the past week’s sea trials. Although Davin was a graybeard, few warriors could outdrink or outfight him.
Tyranny pointed at the monster in the litter. “What in the name of the Afterlife is that thing?” she breathed.
Davin unsheathed his dreggan. Before answering, he shoved his dreggan blade into the cage and poked at the creature. It hissed again, exposing its deadly teeth.
“We don’t know,” Davin answered, “but most folks wouldn’t want to meet it alone on a dark night! When we found it, it was lying in one of Birmingham’s streets, unconscious. One of the citizens must have stunned it. When we tried to capture it, the thing came awake. It injured one warrior, then spat at another, blinding him. It hasn’t spat again since its capture, so we think that a certain amount of time must pass before it can do that again.” Davin pointed to the rows of impaled corpses. “We believe that this thing and many more like it are responsible for these atrocities.”
“Can it speak?” Tyranny asked.
Davin shook his head. “Not that we have seen,” he answered. “But we all know that means nothing.”
Adrian took a step closer. “A warrior was blinded, you say?” she asked.
Davin quickly raised one hand, warning the sister to stay back. “That’s close enough,” he said. “The venom it spits seems to be acid. It burns the skin and harms the eyes. We have several healers caring for the warrior that this bastard blinded. They are hoping that the blindness is temporary, but they can’t be sure.”
Adrian looked at Tyranny. “That would explain the strange facial wounds that we saw,” she said. “My guess is that many more of these victims have them as well.”
Davin turned to look at Tyranny. “If it please the captain, the blinded warrior should be seen by one of the Conclave Wizards. I request that he be flown to Tammerland immediately.”
Tyranny nodded. “See to it at once,” she ordered. “But before you go—what of Birmingham?”
A dark look crossed the warrior’s face. “Birmingham no longer exists,” he answered. “Every building was set afire. By the time we got there, most were already consumed. We saw no citizens—dead or otherwise. It seems that they were all herded here and then killed. The phalanxes are doing what they can to control the last of the flames.”
As she sheathed her sword, Tyranny looked angrily at the ground, then back at the rows of grisly corpses. She had learned all that she could from this butchery, and it was time to go home and inform the Conclave. Her task would not be a pleasant one. She cast a hard gaze toward Adrian.
“I head for Tammerland,” she said. “Traax will come with me. You, the other acolytes, Scars, and the four phalanxes will remain here until you receive word that the ships’ new cradles have been finished. While I am gone, you are in command. If more of those beasts appear, get the Black Ships and the phalanxes into the air immediately. The monsters don’t seem to have the power of flight, so being airborne will give you a great advantage. But I don’t think those creatures will return.”
“And why would that be?” Traax asked.
Tyranny sadly cast her gaze toward the rows of corpses once more. “Because if Adrian’s suspicions are true,” she answered softly, “these monsters got what they came for.”
The privateer turned to look at Davin. “Build another litter,” she ordered. “I am taking six of these corpses back to Tammerland for further inspection. After I have gone, I want the remaining bodies burned. The Conclave failed to protect these people. Immolating their remains seems the least that we can do.”
Davin clicked his boot heels together and went to carry out his new orders.
“The bodies that you take back should be preserved by the craft,” Adrian offered. “Faegan would insist on it.”
Tyranny nodded. “You’re right,” she answered. “Please enchant on six of them. Make sure that at least one of them is without a liver. But leave the impaling staffs in place. I want Faegan and the other mystics to see exactly how these people died.” Adrian nodded her agreement, then walked off to start her grisly task.
As she waited, Tyranny looked out across the Sea of Whispers. The freshening wind smelled clean, making her wish that she could go straight back out to sea. Instead, as she stood in the drying blood among the glistening entrails, her heart became heavy once more.
Reaching for her gold
case, she produced a cigarillo, then struck a match against one knee boot. As she lit the cigarillo, the first lungful of smoke calmed her. Even so, from the moment she had first seen the grisly impalements, the same question kept haunting her.
Why?
CHAPTER XII
“AS YOU CAN SEE, CONQUERING THE LANDS WHERE THE six rivers join will be of prime importance,” Lucius Marius announced. He pointed to the large azure battle map floating in the air. “But keeping these lands while the gold is being extracted is even more vital. It is widely rumored that the Shashidan mines are inexhaustible.” Pausing for a moment, he smiled and turned to look at the Suffragat.
“If we are lucky,” he added slyly, “we will learn whether the legend is true.”
As Vespasian sat in his throne before the entire Suffragat, he cast a quick glance at Persephone. The empress was seated in her usual place, and she looked splendid in a beautiful blue gown. Blood-red ruby earrings adorned her earlobes, and a matching necklace lay around her neck.
Persephone gave her husband a welcome look of support. Vespasian’s recent night terror had shaken him, she knew. Even so, he had skillfully controlled every nuance of the session.
After Vespasian had finally awakened from his terrors, he and Persephone had talked for hours. He described his dream to her in great detail. As she listened, Persephone grew more worried about him. When she asked him who the unknown boy had been, he could not answer. In the twisting maze that had been his dream, Vespasian was certain of only one thing—this latest reverie had been far more real than any of those before it.
At Persephone’s suggestion, Vespasian had reluctantly trumped up some charges against the imperial guards who had rushed into their rooms that night. He accused them of being members of the League of Whispers, saying that they had broken down the door and tried to assassinate him and Persephone. He had considered killing them on the spot, Vespasian added, but he wanted the public to witness the traitors’ executions.
His orders were carried out the following dawn. The bewildered guards had gone to the gallows loudly protesting their innocence. It had been all that the guilt-ridden emperor could do to keep from commuting their sentences at the last moment. He knew these men, and they had served him well. But the stakes were too high, so the executions went forward. With the guards dead, his secret was safe.
During his youth, Vespasian’s dreams had always been florid and often frightening, sometimes so much so that he had once confided to Gracchus about them. But none of those earlier episodes had been as alarmingly violent as this most recent one. The lead cleric had told his young student that his dreams were caused by the highly unusual strength of his endowed blood. As Vespasian grew older, the dreams would slow, then stop altogether, Gracchus had said. And until last night, they had.
Even so, something about this latest terror told Vespasian that no one other than Persephone should know of it. Not even his best friend Lucius would be told. It was vitally important that he continue to display the leadership and strength that had always characterized his reign—especially when Rustannica would soon launch her greatest campaign.
The Suffragat had been in session for the last three hours. The Pon Q’tar, the Priory of Virtue, and the Imperial Order centurions had come to learn about and vote on the war plan to take the Shashidan gold mines. Because the session was highly secret, no skeens were present.
The war strategy was everything that Vespasian had hoped for. Taking the mines would produce greater stability at home and ensure the empire’s continued ability to wage war. Conversely, it would drastically curtail Shashida’s defensive capabilities and limit her power to supply the domestic needs of her people. The tables would be turned. And if the mines could be held indefinitely, an eventual Rustannican victory in the War of Attrition would be nearly assured.
The intricate plan that Gracchus, Julia, Persephone, Vespasian, and Lucius had finally agreed on had not come easily. Intense bickering had persisted for days while Vespasian steadfastly settled one dispute after another. It came as no surprise that most of the disagreements arose between Gracchus and Lucius. The military and the Pon Q’tar had struggled for dominance since the empire’s earliest days, and little about that rivalry had changed.
The attack on the Shashidan mines would be Vespasian’s fourth campaign as emperor. His earlier crusades had been aggressive but far from decisive. During those struggles he had learned that the military and the mystical wings of the Rustannican war machine badly needed each other, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Without the legions, even the vaunted Pon Q’tar was of limited usefulness, because they were relatively few in number. Conversely, the military desperately needed advanced forms of magic to help win its battles.
Vespasian knew that once the campaign started, the military and the Pon Q’tar would likely snap at each other like the vicious dogs in his recent night terror. Once again, this would be especially true of Gracchus and Lucius. Because he was First Tribune, Lucius was also a trained mystic of notable power. Lucius mistrusted most mystics who were not military personnel, and he saw Gracchus as a particularly grasping and manipulative cleric. Gracchus thought Lucius to be a hedonistic upstart who owed his quick rise to a close friendship with the emperor. Vespasian knew that each of his headstrong servants was at least partly right. But during times of war there were no two allies that he would rather have by his side.
As he thought about the campaign, Vespasian felt the pressure to succeed crowding in on him again. It would be his responsibility to keep the peace among his forces while making war on the enemy. That was why he had demanded the right to unilaterally change any aspect of the battle plan once his forces were afield. In the end, the burden of victory would be his alone. As the days progressed it weighed ever more heavily across his shoulders.
He again regarded the azure battle map. Lucius was still speaking—overstating, as expected, the military’s importance to the plan. Never to be upstaged, Gracchus would surely ask for equal time to emphasize the critical role of the Pon Q’tar. Beneath the map hovered hundreds of script-laden columns that detailed the attack and listed the vast hordes of legionnaires and the huge amounts of war materiel that would soon be needed. The requirements were staggering.
Save for a few legions left behind to keep order in Ellistium, all the empire’s land forces would attack Shashida in a huge thrusting movement and take the mines. While the legions advanced, great barges would cruise down the six majestic rivers that stabbed deep across the Borderlands and into Shashidan territory. The legions would ruthlessly take one Shashidan riverside town after another and secure the surrounding territories. According to Vespasian’s intelligence, the precious mines lay farther south, where all six waterways joined to form one torrential force of nature called the Alarik River. It would be there that Vespasian’s legions would stop, at least for a time.
Once all six rivers were secured, the gold would eventually be sailed to Ellistium on legion cargo vessels. But before he could allow that, Vespasian needed every Shashidan town along the twelve riverbanks to be firmly under Rustannican control. This would ensure that the mines stayed in Rustannican hands while the cargo vessels spirited the gold to Ellistium.
Special groups of legionnaires trained in mining and engineering would bear the responsibility of taking the purloined gold from the ground. Shashidan miners who survived the attack would become Rustannican slaves and be forced to help supply their enemies with their own gold. Those who refused would be killed. It was a brazen, complicated plan that would need precise timing. If it worked, Shashida would be weakened and Rustannica strengthened beyond all precedent. But if it failed, all of Rustannica might go crashing down to final defeat. With her treasury nearly empty, she would never again be able to mount such a massive campaign.
Vespasian returned his attention to Lucius’ presentation. The vote had already been taken and the battle plan overwhelmingly approved. Therefore, Gracchus’ previous suggestion to take another vo
te to quash the entire concept proved unneeded. Then Lucius had asked Vespasian for some extra floor time to make several additional points on the military’s behalf. As Lucius’ self-aggrandizing talk progressed, Vespasian smiled. He knew that he badly needed Gracchus. But Lucius was his closest friend and had always been a greater confidant than his mentor in the craft. They’re such an odd but effective pair of allies, he found himself thinking.
Vespasian then regarded the Pon Q’tar as a whole. As they listened to Lucius’ specious talk, many of the imperious clerics were wriggling uncomfortably like a mess of trapped eels. Vespasian soon found himself wondering whether any of them had done one day’s worth of manual labor in their entire lives. One never finds dirt under a Pon Q’tar cleric’s fingernails, he thought.
Lucius soon finished his talk. After bowing to his emperor, he took his customary seat beside the empress. Wishing to regain control of the proceedings, Vespasian lifted his gold scepter from its nearby holder and banged it against the floor.
Before Vespasian could speak, Gracchus stood. Vespasian noticed that the cleric held a gold diptych in his hands. The emperor’s eyes narrowed. The Oraculum, he realized.
“With all due respect to the emperor, I wish to approach,” Gracchus said.
Vespasian beckoned the lead cleric forward. Gracchus neared and handed the gold diptych to Vespasian. As Vespasian broke the red seal and read the beeswax pages, a wide smile spread across his face. Puzzled, the Suffragat waited in silence.
“Can this be true after all these years?” Vespasian asked of Gracchus. “As you know, I too am familiar with the legend.”
Gracchus nodded. “The Oraculum dares not lie,” he answered. “She knows that her life is in my hands.”
Vespasian was overjoyed. The Jin’Sai would be suddenly preoccupied just as the Rustannican siege of Shashida went forth. It was a huge stroke of luck. He smiled at Gracchus.
“I suggest that you explain the Oraculum’s latest vision to everyone,” he said. “It is news worthy of this fine session.”
Rise of the Blood Royal Page 14
