The blond man was just one pace away from Katerina now. He looked straight into her face, a curiously blank expression in his wide blue eyes, and said, in good Khevan, “Blessed be the Martyr! May we all burn joyously in the name of His everlasting glory.”
Then he pulled the triggers of the two half pistols.
Ari’s shoulder caught Katerina full in the stomach. The weight of his diving body, launched upward toward her like a human javelin, lifted her up and backward, the two of them sailing, clasped together as tightly as lovers, over the rail and into the empty air just an instant before the explosion caught them.
Louder than a thousand thunderclaps. A torrent of white noise. The air seemed to be filled with flame and screaming metal. She found she was screaming, too. And they were falling, falling and landing with a bone-jolting crash in the ice-cold sea.
Down she went, down and down. The impact had knocked all the breath from her body. She was flailing with arms and legs, hitting something hard but still sinking. She opened her eyes and felt her chest convulse, her body desperate to breathe, and all around her the icy darkness. Her lungs were burning. Her mind was afire, too. And she was sinking deeper, heading down to the seafloor. I’m dying, she thought, more with surprise than regret. I’m dead. This is the end. What a stupid waste.
Her chest jerked again. She closed her lips tight, gritted her teeth and fought the urge. Not yet, not quite yet. She would hold for just a little while longer—and then open her mouth and let the deadly ocean rush in and take her down into the deep.
She felt a hand, hard as a horse’s bite, grip her left forearm. She could feel her slow descent halted. She looked up and there was Ari, above her, in a faint swirling cloud of red and beyond him, far above, the light of the ocean surface. He was pulling her upward, his other three limbs stroking madly but still pulling her, drawing her up, inexorably up. Her chest convulsed again and she nearly gave in. Not yet. Instead she kicked her own legs and felt her body rise. With Ari pulling and her own limbs thrashing, even though her chest screamed and her eyes grew gray and dim, she rose. Upward, upward. And broke out through the surface into the air and the light.
* * *
• • •
It took them an age to turn the Yotun into the wind and get a boat launched. But Katerina did not care overmuch. She lay on her back in the water, her head resting on Ari’s shoulder, his strong arms clasped around her middle, and let the sun play on the wet skin of her face. She was not fully conscious and yet she realized that Ari was singing very softly to her in his own language as they waited for the boat full of Ostrakan sailors to splash their way to her. It was only as they were hauling her sopping body aboard that she came fully back into the world and saw the triangular fins in the water a hundred paces away. She called out weakly for them to hurry and get Yoritomo’s bleeding carcass over the side as soon as possible. His black kimono was ripped in a dozen places and she caught a glimpse of the red wounds where the musket bullets from the assassin’s bomb had punctured his white back.
Somebody put her into her bed. And she must have slept for a long while. But when she awoke, by the knowledge she had in her head, she also realized that she had spoken to somebody, perhaps Colonel Wang, or Murakami, captain of her Niho, at length before she passed out. Both of her attackers were dead; she knew that. The blond man ripped apart from his own blast, with only his head, miraculously, remaining intact. The redhead had been struck by a dozen bullets from his comrade’s device and killed instantly. Half a dozen sailors had been killed, and more wounded. And two Legionnaires were also dead from the blast. Her maid Sara, who had been standing on the right side of the dais, had been struck in the belly and chest by several musket balls and would not live another day.
As she lay in her bed, she thought about the words the assassin had used before he pulled his triggers. It was plain as day to her who had sent the killers, and who had arranged for them to join her crew. Her cousin—the new Emperor of Khev. Vladimir. Her suspicions were confirmed when a shamefaced Murakami came to her bedside and made his report.
“On what was left of the bodies, Lady, we found tattoos of the Burning Tree of the Martyrites. And their comrades confirmed that they were both men of the north who had come to Ostraka seeking employment as laborers and who had signed up as sailors when your expedition was announced. They kept to themselves, apparently, and were quiet and very religious, abstaining from obat and even marak. They gave their ration away which made the other sailors tolerate them. That is all we have discovered so far.”
“I want you to question every Ostrakan sailor and gunner—again, I want to know about any irregularities. Pay particular attention to those who favor the Martyrite religion. Any who come from outside Ashjavat. Ask Colonel Wang to review his muster rolls for the same in the 42nd. This must not happen again.”
“It will be done, Lady.”
Katerina felt a wave of tiredness threaten to engulf her. She was bruised in several places and her belly was sore where Ari’s shoulder had slammed into her.
“Tell me, Captain Murakami, how is Yoritomo? Is he badly wounded?”
“We have removed eight musket balls from his back, Lady, and he is now resting in his quarters. But he is young and strong. He will be ready to serve you very soon.”
“Tell him . . . tell him that I said thank you. Will you do that for me?”
“It is not necessary, Lady. He was merely doing his duty. And if he had been faster, he might even have . . .”
“Tell him anyway. You may go now.”
Katerina sank back into her cushions. When she looked up again she was surprised to see that Murakami was still standing there.
“Yes?”
“I have failed you, Lady,” said the Niho captain mournfully. “Through my negligence and that of my men you were brought into grave danger.”
“Yes, well. You could not have known what the assassins meant to do.”
“I have failed you, Lady,” Murakami said again. “I must humbly crave your permission to expunge that failure. I beg your permission to go onward to join the Seirei.”
“Absolutely not. No! I will not have you destroying yourself over this.”
“But I cannot live with the shame, Lady.”
“You shall live with your shame, Captain. That is the punishment for your negligence. Besides, I need you. I need every one of my knights. You are dismissed.”
* * *
• • •
Katerina awoke from a sweat-soused nightmare in which Vladimir was lolling in the Ice-Bear Throne with his head thrown back, his red mouth open, and his long yellow hair falling down the back of the throne almost to the floor, and he was laughing, laughing . . .
Lying in her bed, still half-asleep, she pondered what this attack truly meant. It seemed to her that with the assassins Vladimir had declared war on her personally. It was vindictive, pointless, petty—just plain murderous. True, she had sold out a seventh part of his Empire to the Celestial Republic from under his nose, but that was politics. It was not a personal attack on Vladimir. If he showed a strong enough character, and if he was sufficiently determined, he could expel the Celestial troops and take back the Province of Ashjavat. As far as he knew, she did not pose a threat to him. She was, by all the Gods, sailing away from Ashjavat, heading off to foreign parts unknown, perhaps never to return again. He could not know what she planned to do in the Laut Besar; he could not possibly grasp the scope of her ambition. Yes, she did mean, ultimately, to return to Khev with a powerful army at her back and, yes, when she did, she would unseat Vladimir from the Ice-Bear Throne and most probably have him dispatched. Yes, she was planning to do all that.
But he did not know it.
So by sending his fanatical Martyr-worshipping men to blow her into pieces, he had, at least to her mind, crossed a line of conduct that could not be forgiven. He had declared war on her. And if
he thought she could not wage war, she was going to prove him wrong.
None of them, not Vladimir, not the drunken boyar ministers nor the Khevan generals, not even her father the Emperor had ever believed that she might be able to win wars, or even command men successfully, or that her ideas on strategy and tactics might have some merit.
She remembered vividly, nearly two years ago, a state visit by the King of Frankland, a huge, red-haired barbarian from the far west, who had come to Khev with a dozen of his thuggish, mail-clad warriors. They had been lavishly welcomed by her father, feasted, and given gallons of strong marak to make them merry. The celebrations had lasted for days, and while Katerina had been formally presented to King Karol IV in the Audience Room, and had made her curtsy, and accepted gruff compliments about her looks and deportment, she had also been invited to attend a semisecret meeting with the foreign monarch, the Emperor and some of his chief ministers and generals at which the war in Frankland was discussed.
She had not been invited to make a contribution to the deliberations between these old allies but only to serve the marak, black bread and pickles, or golden millet beer to those who preferred that milder drink. It was an honor to be asked to serve them, the steward of the royal household had told her, but also a measure of security. There were many foreign spies residing at the Emperor’s court and she was, quite naturally, above suspicion.
Katerina had been girlishly excited. She knew all about the war in Frankland from reading the official Imperial reports and from talking to diplomats and travelers who had been in the far west. In the south of the region, where the Franks had been seeking to expand their kingdom, building new villages and grazing their cattle on unclaimed grasslands, the settlers were plagued by marauding bands of savage Kelti. These bow-wielding horse-warriors, who were native to the great southern plains, swooped down on the Frankish farmers in their settlements and killed them, raped their women, kidnapped their children, burned their farms and stole their goods and livestock. And there was little that the Franks could do. They traditionally fought on foot, in armored phalanxes, wielding swords, spears and axes, and occasionally crude firearms, and even more rarely a few cumbersome short-barrelled cannon.
The Kelti were master horsemen, almost spending their entire lives on their mounts’ backs. They had no notion of civilized warfare. They attacked in hordes, shooting their bows, riding rings around the earthbound Frankish farmers, stealing what they wished, killing from a distance and then riding away with their booty into the vastness of the plains.
When the Franks formed their phalanxes, the Kelti rode around them pouring lethal arrows into their ranks. The savages could not be made to stand and fight—it went clear against Kelti war culture—and if they could be induced once to come in front of the cannon’s mouth, they never did so twice. The Franks were being massacred, with several hundreds of civilians and warriors dying every year, yet there were always more settlers who were willing to try to feed their herds of sheep and cattle on the lush grass of the southern plains.
The King of the Franks had come to Khev to seek aid from the Emperor in his endless border skirmishes with the pestilential Kelti.
Katerina had listened with great attention to the discussion, while she poured tiny glasses of clear, pungent marak for the half dozen men in the chamber and brought round trays of sliced cucumber and beetroot. Only Vladimir chose to drink millet beer, ordering it loudly from her, and calling her “serving wench,” and sniggering so that everyone could hear him.
Katerina brought his beer, then ignored him. There were far more interesting things to engage her. It soon became plain that what Karol wished from the Emperor was Cossacks.
“With just three regiments, I could clear a hundred-mile-wide stretch then build a great fence to keep the Kelti out,” said the Frankish king. “And if they attacked us, I would have the means to follow after them into the wilderness and punish them in a suitable manner.”
It made perfect sense to Katerina. What the Franks lacked was competent cavalry. And the Cossacks were far more than competent. They were, in fact, the finest light cavalry troops in the world—according to all the textbooks and military manuals that Katerina had read. Although they were armed with lance and saber, rather than bow and arrow, the Cossack regiments were recruited from the great steppe to the south of the city of Khev, a similar terrain to the grasslands to the south of Frankland, and hailed from a similar horse-centered culture. They were not the same people as the Kelti, but their languages were related and there were other striking similarities. To Katerina’s mind, it was an elegant answer to the King’s problem. The Cossacks would be more than a match for the Kelti and could follow them anywhere at speeds the lumbering infantry phalanxes could never equal.
“Three regiments?” said the Emperor, apparently appalled. “I cannot spare three prime Cossack regiments for you to run around chasing savages. I have the Legions of the Celestial Republic knocking at my door in the east. How would I answer them if they were to invade the Empire? How, eh? Not to mention the marak smugglers in the southeast, and my own malcontents in the provinces. How do I keep them in line without my Cossacks?”
“Absolutely not! Quite out of the question,” said General Pasternak, high commander of the Imperial Cossack Division. “We cannot spare the men.”
“Two regiments, then,” said Karol. “I’ll pay you for them in wine—shall we say a thousand tuns of good Rhonos for a year’s service? I can even spare you a little gold. A hundred fingers. I do not seek charity, sire. I mean to make a fair exchange with you.”
“I will lend you a single squadron of the Fifth Regiment. They are my finest. And I will sell you two hundred horses. You can train up your own cavalry with the Fifth to help you.”
The Emperor turned to General Pasternak. “We could spare two hundred horses from the remount pool, could we not?”
“It could take months, years even to train them,” said Karol, “and a single squadron of a hundred Cossacks will scarcely make a difference against thousands of hostiles . . .”
“Caltrops,” said Katerina, and every man in the room looked at her.
“My dear,” said the Emperor kindly, “is there something troubling you?”
“Caltrops,” said Katerina again, enunciating the word clearly. “Small spiked weapons of war that are scattered on the ground and designed to injure horses’ hooves with their sharp tines. General Sigurd Aarnold Golintski particularly recommended their use against enemy cavalry.”
The assembled men of war in that chamber just stared at Katerina. She could feel her cheeks beginning to flush and for an instant she hated everyone in that room. Including herself. But she would not be silent. She believed that she had something important, perhaps even crucial to say.
“If the Emperor cannot spare a great number of his Imperial Cossacks to aid you against the Kelti, Your Majesty,” said Katerina, looking directly at King Karol, “then I suggest that you heed the advice of General Golintski, a noted Khevan strategist, now sadly deceased, who recommends in his book Struggle and Strategy that a combatant who does not have sufficient cavalry, but who does possess a number of serviceable cannon, uses caltrops. These metal objects, no bigger than an apple and resembling a metallic twist of thorns, can be cheaply manufactured in large numbers and strewn in the field to deny that ground to horses. By this method, attacking horsemen can be funneled into what Golintski calls ‘corridors of attack’: and if the cannon are well situated, then these corridors of attack become killing zones, the horse and riders slaughtered quite easily by cannon fire . . .”
Katerina trailed off. The men were all still staring at her without saying a word. They looked at her as if she were a piece of furniture that had just begun a discourse on religion.
“You are the daughter, yes?” said Karol, frowning at her.
“She is my daughter,” said the Emperor heavily. “I think that is enough, Ka
terina. Leave the marak bottle on the side and you may withdraw. Thank you.”
Katerina felt utterly humiliated. She was quite prepared to debate her idea. It made sense to her; indeed she thought it a sensible solution, but she could be wrong. But to be dismissed as if she had not spoken at all was unbearable. She stood still, head hanging, face burning now.
“Katerina,” said her father, more sternly, “you will leave us now.”
As she made her way to the door, she heard Vladimir say to Karol, “Your Majesty, if we cannot provide you with enough Cossack regiments for your satisfaction, we could always perhaps throw in a noted Khevan general to aid you. A female general, that is . . .”
And the entire room erupted in laughter at the comic absurdity of Vladimir’s notion.
The shame of that moment two years ago was still fresh in Katerina. And her hatred of Vladimir still as strong, if not stronger now.
She would have her revenge on Vladimir. She would show him that she knew how to make war. She would make him pay. But not just yet. First she must achieve her goals in the Laut Besar. And there was nothing much for her to do until they reached that destination.
Her belly, where Ari had hit her was still paining her. She felt exhausted and sick and called for Sara—and when Ilana poked her head out from behind the curtain, she realized Sara was dead.
“Girl, bring me the obat box and the rack of pipes. They are over in that chest.”
As the smoke from the first pipe hit her bloodstream, Katerina felt the weight of her pain and worry and fear lifting from her. She had not partaken for many weeks—and the effect of the abstinence was to make the drug overwhelmingly powerful. The narcotic extended its gentle tendrils throughout her body, soothing her, lulling her senses, rendering the world soft and flat. She had the sensation that she was floating in a bath of warm, fragrant oil, deliciously sensuous but totally safe. And, in a little while, she slept. And slept. And slept.
Gates of Stone Page 23
