‘Leadership is about more than swinging a sword properly,’ said Reynard. ‘You know this without me having to tell you. If a battle is well planned and executed, then the general does not even have to draw his blade.’
Rain started to fall on to the dark courtyard, sending blacksmiths back to their armouries, merchants to their wagons and chambermaids back to the keep, to resume the duties they had tried to escape for five minutes. Morgan and Reynard followed them through the great iron doors.
‘Shall I tell Mathilde that you will attend her and Kraven shortly?’ Reynard asked.
‘Say presently rather than shortly, I have to see someone else first.’
As Reynard marched brusquely through the inner oak double doors that led to the rooms of the nobility, Morgan ducked through a narrow side gateway, its aperture barely large enough to admit one man. He then ascended an equally narrow flight of steep steps, before finding himself on a broad landing of stone facing a heavily studded door of hide-covered wood. The place was poorly lit by just a slit window, but he could see enough for his purpose. He rapped the door twice and waited as the man he wanted to see eased it open on well-oiled hinges.
‘Good day to you, Baron. I have had the message to say you would be coming I trust your health is improving.’
The jailor was a man in his fifties, silver-haired, wiry and polite to a fault. He was so completely unlike other jailors Morgan had seen before that when he first met him he thought Lukas Felmere was setting him up for a jest. He then came to realise that any prisoners kept here would have so little hope of escape than even the services of a jailor seemed superfluous. An escapee would have to clear the keep unseen, breach the castle walls and then get through the city and its walls. It could be done, Morgan supposed, but it would not be easy.
‘I am improving, thank you. Now, tell me, how is our prisoner?’
‘She is so quiet, I forget she is there. She never asks for anything, never complains; just sits or sleeps. If I did not know better, I would say we had the wrong girl.’
‘And her hands are restrained?’
‘Yes, my Lord, they are bound and attached to a chain fixed to the wall. She has the freedom to move around the cell but no more. Do you want me to tighten the chain before you go in?’
‘No, that will not be necessary.’
‘But what if she tries to kill you?’
‘I will take that chance. I doubt somehow that she will try, though. She seems keener for me to kill her rather than the other way round.’
The jailor led the way down the hall past four other cells before stopping at the final one, the fifth. He opened the iron door with his great keys before shutting them again once Morgan had walked inside.
The cell was light and whitewashed; an iron grill in the wall even gave a view on to the courtyard. There was a stone platform on which lay a blanket and a thin mattress, a plain wooden table and one chair, on which sat the prisoner. She was cleaner than when he had last seen her, clad in a plain white linen robe with soft white shoes that could almost be slippers. Her hair had grown a little; it was now just over her shoulders and looked soft and recently washed. Her hands were loosely tied, as the jailor said, and were attached to a chain that ran through and around a black iron ring affixed to the wall. She looked up at him as he sat on the bed with her large blue, curious eyes.
‘I have just watched you practice,’ she said in a neutral tone. ‘It is going to take you a while, isn’t it, to get used to using your left arm.’
‘It appears that it will,’ said Morgan. ‘Do you know how to use a sword?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes never left him. ‘Daggers are good for assassinations but when we attend the Emperor’s person we carry swords. They are different to yours – the blades are light, thin and curved – but we are trained to use all such weapons.’
‘You do serve the Emperor of Koze then.’
‘I never said which Emperor I served.’
Morgan snorted derisively. ‘Come off it, there is only one Emperor whose vanity dictates that he has only female bodyguards, which brings me to my question. How did an assassin from Koze come to be involved in this war?’
‘I do not know, and if I did I would not say. Are you ready to kill me yet?’
Morgan smiled. ‘Maybe not, maybe I will let you live and keep you here.’
A most curious expression came over her. It was almost as if being allowed to live was an infinitely worse option than the alternative. Morgan continued.
‘Why so eager to die? It is not this surely?’ He pulled something from a pouch at his waist and threw it on to the table in front of her, a gnarled piece of root with shavings carved off it. revealing the flesh underneath, the coal-black flesh.
‘I see,’ she said guardedly. ‘So you know.’
‘A friend of mine pointed me towards a book in the library here. The Nature of Power in the Empire of Koze. A most interesting read. I take it you are a Strekha?’
She nodded.
‘How is it you survive the blackroot? It is usually lethal.’
‘It is a long story.’
Morgan poured himself a clay goblet of water from the jug on the table. He offered it to her, and after she waved him off, took a long draught of it himself, before stretching his legs out on the bed.
‘I have plenty of time.’
‘What exactly do you wish to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘What? About my training? My entire life?’
‘You tried to kill me not so long ago and got closer than anyone has in ten years of war. I think my demands are reasonable therefore.’
‘And if I tell you?’
‘You can have some blackroot. It cannot be long before you start getting the withdrawal symptoms now. From what I have read they are not pleasant.’
‘No, they are not. It is slow to leave the body but when it does...’
‘Yes? When it does?’
‘You have obviously read about it.’
‘I want you to tell me.’
He could tell he was vexing her; her voice had a petulant, impatient tone when she replied.
‘When a Strekha attempts to deny herself blackroot she is probably committing herself to an agonizing death. About one in twenty survive the symptoms of withdrawal; the others die from internal bleeding, haemorrhaging of the eyeballs, ears, mouth and genitals, putrefaction of the skin or of the liver or kidneys... Shall I go on?’
‘Please do.’
‘Those that survive that ... well, some are very lucky and can live with their newly purified body; the others, though, end up with the “screaming madness” for which there is no cure. There is a place under the Lilac Palace for such Strekha, a cell with many locks. I have never been there.’
‘Hence your eagerness for execution.’
She nodded. ‘Partly – the shame of my failure is another.’
‘There is no shame; you were unlucky.’
‘No, a Strekha should be prepared for everything. Will you cut me a piece of root now?’
‘In good time. How old were you when you first started taking it, and why didn’t you die?’
She gave an exasperated sigh. ‘You really do want to know everything, don’t you?’
Morgan said nothing but pulled out his knife and cut a sliver off the root.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that is too much; cut it in half.’
He did so and she greedily grabbed it with both hands before stuffing it into her mouth. As he watched, her eyelids fluttered, her eyes glazed over and she shrank back into her chair with a mournful sigh. Her eyes were now shut. Morgan sat there patiently and waited. She seemed asleep but Morgan knew this was not the case. Her breathing was long, deep and relaxed. Morgan kept his eye on her; it was easy to forget how dangerous she was and that chain could be used quite easily to choke someone to death.
The sky was beginning to darken when she suddenly opened her eyes again. Morgan saw the transparent black film covering them,
which Cedric had told him was a symptom of blackroot addiction. She sat back up again and drank some of the water. Then she started to talk.
‘I grew up as part of a gathering of families, a “clan” you would call it here. We lived in the foothills of the mountains, real mountains many times higher than the ones here. We would hunt elk and ox, fight off ettins and wolves and spend the nights in a longhouse, over a deep fire pit, to keep us warm. I was athletic as a child, stronger and more agile than my older brothers. There were five children, two boys and three girls. We would all share the same bed, a necessity in the cold winters. All I knew of the Empire of Koze were some occasional derogatory remarks made by my father and uncles. It was seen as distant, and cruel, but nothing more than that. No one had seen an imperial soldier for many, many years.
‘That all changed when I was ten. The main town of the Norvakko people was Palakau, which was sited on a river equidistant from many clans and so was used as a trading post. Not just for our people, for it sat on a trade route and saw many people from many different lands. I do remember looking at silks, spices, gems and textiles; as a child I thought it truly wonderful and exciting... That was before my re-education taught me the truth about coveting such idle frivolities. Anyway, when I was nine or ten I travelled there with my father and brothers in order to sell the hides of creatures we had hunted and killed. There was ettin and troll hide, both of which fetch a high price from outsiders, so we were expecting to make a good profit from their sales. We had been there two days when the soldiers arrived, dark-skinned men with tall helmets and spears. They rounded everybody up and ordered all female children between eight and twelve to come forward and stand in a line. Then some soldiers started to walk down the line with a woman wearing black armour. She went from girl to girl saying no, no, no and sending them back to their families. I thought it was really funny, this woman going from girl to girl for what seemed no reason at all. When my turn came I was poised, ready to run to my father, but she saw me and stopped. She caught hold of my chin and tilted my face up to look at hers. I remember her grip cold, hard and strong. Then she struck me. It stung but I did not cry. I stared straight back at her, defying her to do it again. It was just what she was looking for. She just said one word – ‘Her.’ And before I knew it the soldiers started to drag me away. I kicked, struggled, bit and swore, but it was no use. I was chained, put in a wagon and the door locked. It was my home for the next four weeks.
There were other girls in the wagon with me and more were added as the days passed. They told me that I was to be a bodyguard for the Emperor. It meant nothing to me.’
She stopped and drank some more water. ‘Bored yet?’
‘No,’ said Morgan, ‘you don’t get out of it that easily. Carry on.’
‘The Strekha follow a ten-year cycle. It takes that long to cover the Empire when they recruit. It was just the Emperor’s divine will that I was there when they were; otherwise, I would never have got to serve.’ She stopped for a second, lost in thought. ‘Anyhow, we were all taken to the Lilac Palace for training. I remember the heat before the wagon door was opened, and the smell of all those sweating bodies, mine most of all. You have never seen the Lilac Palace, have you? For a girl from a mountain village it was a barely comprehensible megalopolis. It is huge, built over a dozen islands linked by slender bridges; it has towers twenty or thirty storeys high, all connected by walkways. Nobody knows how many people live there, over fifty thousand say some and when we got there we were all bottom in the order of importance. We were taken to a series of lightless cells built underground for our training to start. It was just us, rats, chains, darkness and overseers. For a Strekha, training takes five or six years and we do not see natural light again until it is completed.
‘Before training starts we are given blackroot, a tiny sliver from a fresh bulb dissolved in water. Fresh blackroot is much less concentrated than the old root you have there. Tolerance has to be built up slowly.
‘Despite that, many of us died, including friends I had just started to make. Only one in four survives an encounter with blackroot. For those of us that did, though, there are benefits, enhanced senses, strength and speed. That was used when our training started.
‘There are three aspects to our training. The first aspect is to take the love we have for parents and family and redirect it into love for the Emperor, for to be a Strekha our devotion must be absolute. The second aspect is weapons training; you have seen the effectiveness of that for yourself, and the third is privation training – resistance to thirst and pain and the like.’
‘Pain resistance? Love of the Emperor? How can they do that?’ Morgan looked intrigued.
‘Love of the Emperor is achieved by reciting litany after litany in his praise, again and again, until it is all known word for word and your mind is full of nothing else. In the darkness, deprived of sleep and often chained to walls or from the ceiling, you forget your family, especially if the only rest and food breaks you get are if you denounce them and praise the Emperor instead. It affects your sanity, you know, your ability to reason – the lack of light, food, water; if it is only the Emperor that can release you from this torment, then, yes, you do come to love him. We would lick the walls for the moisture or chew the moss off them, such was the deprivation we had to endure. I held out a long time until I suppose my mind snapped in a way. I was hallucinating, hysterical. “The Emperor is divinity made flesh; only he provides food, warmth, comfort. Those that sired me are merely his vessels; their purpose is no more important than that of the cow that gives birth to the prize bull. I am the Emperor’s child, no one else’s, and my devotion to him and him alone will endure into infinity.” That was part of the litany I spoke before they finally released me. From that day forth I was the tool of the Emperor. Once the overseers are convinced that you harbour nothing but love for him and would happily die for him, then you can start your weapons training. Then it is pain tolerance that we learn. You wish to know how?’
Seeing Morgan nod, she continued.
‘You are chained again and the chains are pulled up to the ceiling so you can only stand on your toes. Then one of the Emperor’s mages enters with the orb. The orb is a sphere with six stones, or crystals, embedded into its black surface. The mage can make the orb float around you and with a word he can cause light to shoot from a crystal.’ There was a tremor in her voice. ‘The light causes a pain I cannot describe; it is something akin to having your skin slowly pulled off with a hot knife until you are nothing but exposed flesh and raw, bare nerves. You are naked, of course, and by the time the orb is finished with you, you are little more than one of the sides of meat you see hanging in a market. Except that you are still alive – quivering, shaking, trembling in your agony but still alive. When you can endure three of these beams for ten minutes at a time your training is completed. To become one of The Ten, the Strekha elite, it is six beams for twenty. Even when the training is complete, once a year we have to undergo it again, just to keep us sharp. Without blackroot, our hearts would give out.’
‘And you? Are you one of these Ten?’
‘Yes, when I was aiming to join The Ten it was between me and another girl. We both managed six beams for twenty minutes, so we added another orb. Eventually I bested her by enduring twelve beams for half an hour. It almost killed me; it did kill her. But I was one of The Ten, so it was worth it.’
Morgan looked at her impassively as she continued.
‘When I was five years a Strekha, that is fifteen in your years, I was deemed trained. I was allowed into the light, given my armour and taken to guard the Emperor, just one of over a hundred. In those five years I was allowed out of the training rooms only on a couple of occasions, the purpose each time was for me to ... meet the Emperor. I was still not allowed to see the light, though, even then. The final step of my training was to complete my first mission successfully.’
‘You were sent to kill someone? They don’t give you much rest, do they?’
‘Both?’
‘Yes. My mission was to kill an alleged leader of Norvakkor resistance to the Emperor. I knew he was an innocent man but I had been commanded. So I did it.’
‘But how did you know he was innocent.’
‘It was simple enough for me to know. He was my father.’
‘By the Gods!’ whispered Morgan. ‘Were you seen?’
‘No ...yes. I did the job quickly and painlessly, but as I left I saw my sister. It may have been over five years since I last saw her but I recognised her. And she saw me, too. Just for a second when I lifted my head above the place where I was hiding she caught my eye and saw me. Then she went to the longhouse where she would find him. When she looked at me, though, it was as if she already knew it, already knew what I had done. I have not been back up there since.’
It was nearly dark now. A solitary candle flickered in an alcove over the bed. Morgan stood and stretched his legs. ‘This blackroot,’ he said, ‘does it have side effects?’
She started, as if coming out of a dream. ‘Side effects? One or two,’ she said with a bitter laugh. ‘It is a poison, Baron; you may tolerate it but it will get you eventually. No Strekha makes it to forty years; few make to thirty-five. I have, if I am average, eight more years to live. Also, if you conceive a child, the blackroot will kill it within a day or two. This is a good thing, though; the Emperor can use us without fear of our being spoiled. A pregnant Strekha would be little more than useless.’
‘And what happens to one who has failed? Say I was to send you back home in chains.’
She swallowed. ‘I would rather you didn’t. It is a humiliation for the Emperor, a failed Strekha, so we are put to death in a matter the Emperor deems fitting while the rest of us are forced to watch. Boiling, or skinning alive, are the usual punishments; I have watched both being practised.’
The Forgotten War Page 101
