by Sales, Ian
The aerocraft swept across the convoy, and came to abrupt halts—one over Sword, the other above Shield. Moments later, a hatch opened on each, ropes tumbled down to the fortresses’ battlements, and figures slid down the ropes. The Roundheads, Ahasz’s elite household commandos, disappeared from sight behind the corbels of the citadels’ fortifications. The two aerocraft descended swiftly, following the troopers, dropped something, in size and shape like a field-piece’s power-cart, and then rose vertically at speed. They flew away.
“Watch,” instructed the duke.
More officers had left their vehicles. They too stared up at the citadels.
Ahasz had counted sixteen of his Roundheads to each fortress. Against one or more cohorts of knights stalwart and knights militant. Ashma was nothing if not audacious. And he was leading the assault on Shield himself.
A voice drifted from elsewhere in the convoy: “Madness. Take the knights stalwart and knights militant with a handful of men? Can’t be done.”
Great flashes lit the sky to left and right before Ahasz could respond. Moments later, a pair of shattering booms rolled across the hills and valley. Smoke and dust plumed upwards from the citadels; the sound of tumbling masonry drifted down to the watching officers. As planned, the Roundheads had used torpedo warheads—bought secretly at great cost from a corrupt Imperial Navy ordnance officer. His attention focused on Shield, the duke saw smoke begin to climb lazily into the air. It was, he noted with some satisfaction, green. A fast-acting anaesthetic gas.
Such weapons had been outlawed since the early centuries of the Old Empire, but they could not be un-invented. Years before, Ahasz had set teams of academicians hunting through ancient texts for anything that would give him a martial advantage in his attack on the Imperial Household District. They had found many chemical weapons, and the recipes for their makings; most were lethal, but some only incapacitated.
Ahasz gazed up at Shield, could make out figures locked in combat on the walls. One in grey, white tabard flapping, fell through a machicolation, left dark smears on the rocks below, and plunged to the ground. Another body followed it, again clad in a white tabard. A narrow line of red began to draw a line from a gutter down the wall.
“Dear Lords,” breathed Urnagi. “What have you done?”
The duke barked a laugh. “Taken the impregnable.” He pointed. “See.” Atop both Sword and Shield, a flag jerked and slithered up a pole. A winged snake, red, on a gold shield. The Vonshuan family device. “Now they are mine.”
The Housecarls officers scrambled back into their vehicles. Urnagi, at Ahasz’s instruction, gave the order to move forward. The convoy passed unmolested between Sword and Shield. The Housecarls controlling the gatehouses cheered as the vehicles passed.
Ahasz could not feel satisfaction yet. The greater battle was yet to come.
The sun sank slowly, painting blood-red the west-facing inner wall of the District. As crimson washed across the grass, Ahasz thought how that would be more than merely a trick of the light before the night was out. He unbuckled and, stooping, moved forward to stand beside Urnagi. Amidst hissing hoses and shunting rods, he stepped on a rung and straightened—the cupola had sufficient space for a standing observer at the commander’s side.
The Imperial Household District was a half-moon shaped valley, the inner curve of its outside arc facing the entrance. The Imperial Mile led straight towards the Residence—the original palace, now the home of the Imperial Chancery—its pearly white stone an eerie pink in the dusk. To the left, Glorina Park led the eye through trees, shrubs and pathways to the mountain-shadowed frontage of the Imperial Exchequer. To the right, the crenellated wall of the Emperor’s Division garrison ran parallel to the highway.
Traffic was light at this time of the evening. Most of those who worked in the District had already gone home. The duke had chosen the hour of his attack for precisely that reason. But even so…
“Too many,” said Ahasz. “There are too many people. I would not have a massacre.”
“They’ll run soon enough when the fighting starts, your grace,” Urnagi replied.
Deaths were inevitable. Any tactic intended to minimise fatalities would only jeopardise the attack on the Imperial Palace. But still, so many people, even this late in the day.
Two troop-wagons and an artillery carriage had taken position at the entrance to the District. They waited patiently for those vehicles departing to clear the gap between the two outcrops. Once the last of the civilian traffic had passed out of the District, the troop-wagons moved to block the highway. They settled heavily on their keels, and troops boiled from hatches at the rear.
“Caster,” Ahasz ordered.
The regimental-major tapped a box fastened to the cupola’s inner surface. Ahasz selected a circuit, flicked a switch, and spoke into the grilled speaker/microphone. “Tayisa.”
The colonel responded quickly: “Your grace?”
“The railway?”
An underground spur of the railway served the District, with stations near the Exchequer and Imperial Palace. It was the chief mode of transport to the District for proletarians.
“All going to plan, your grace. We control the necessary signal-points, and the troop trains will be rerouted.”
It was the easiest way to get troops into the District. Basilisks and artillery carriages, of course, could not be transported via the railway.
The duke’s convoy reached the “Knot”, a complex junction of under- and over-passes with mesh road-beds, bridges spun of silver, insubstantial against the backdrop of blockish palaces and precise gardens. The Knot split the highway into four: Palace Road, Exchequer Road, Chancery Road, and Park Road. The convoy kept to the lanes which led to the Palace.
Palace Road swooped down from the Knot to run along the top of a wide and low hillock bisecting the southern half of the District. It traversed the Imperial Palace’s frontage, ending in a great roundabout, the centre of which featured a monument to the Pacification Campaigns. It was telling, Ahasz felt, that the monument honoured not those killed in the Campaigns, but the victories won. Beyond the roundabout, the Ruins occupied the most southerly end of the valley. Little more than a collection of time-battered walls, mosaics and pillars, the Ruins were believed to have been the palace of an ancient king of the region, but after ten thousand years little could be known for certain.
Ahasz turned to gaze at the Imperial Palace. Carved from the very substance of Mount Yama, it presented a cliff-face of carved balconies, turrets, colonnades and archways. Shadows pooled in the nooks, crannies and lattices, rendering the various carvings in stark relief. Night crept across the District but had yet to reach the Palace. Nevertheless, spotlights sprang into life, illuminating the statues to either side of the Palace entrance—Emperor Edkar I to the left, Poer I to the right; each fully one hundred feet high and also cut from the rock, their blank gazes watching beneficently over the District. Between them, six archways led into the Palace’s great entrance hall, with its forty-foot-high ceiling, its thirty-nine pillars. Each pillar held a twenty-foot-high statue of a Shutan emperor or empress in a niche. Everywhere in and about the Palace, a visitor was under the gaze of the Imperial Throne.
The duke looked to the right… Beyond the low shrubbery of the central reservation, and the other lane of the highway, almost invisible in the near-darkness, squatted the obsidian cube of the Imperial Admiralty Fort. Deep within it could be found the Office of the Navy Bursar, the controller of the Imperial Navy’s wealth. Ahasz planned to hold those funds hostage to the Navy’s non-interference. Two platoons of his commandos were tasked with invading the Admiralty Fort. With them they had a former Navy officer knowledgeable in the operations of the Navy Accounting Mechanism. While Ahasz occupied the Bursar’s office and controlled its Mechanism, the Navy would do his bidding.
It was the duke’s intention to line Palace Road with his troop-wagons, and then send his army into the Palace to seize it floor by
floor. He expected to meet little resistance: two troops of knights stalwart and two troops of knights militant within the Palace—fierce fighters, but few. Ahasz’s greatest menace lay off to his right: the garrison, where a battalion of the Emperor’s Own Cuirassiers, and a company of Imperial Palace Artillery, were stationed. But the Housecarls sharing duty with them should see they presented no threat.
A bright flash lit the view ahead. Sound battered the command car.
“Stop!” Ahasz bellowed. He scrambled back down into the body of the vehicle, and yanked the hatch open. He leapt out onto the road. Behind him, Urnagi yelled, “Your grace!”
His troop-wagons came to abrupt halts. A Housecarl basilisk manoeuvred through the central reservation into the oncoming lane, and flew past to the head of the convoy. The lead troop-wagon was burning. It lay canted on the road, chargers inactive. A huge hole, edges blackened and bent, pierced one slab-side. Bodies and body-parts lay scattered on the ground beside it. Housecarls, coughing, faces seared and sooty, stumbled from the wreckage. In the failing light, injuries appeared terrible—limbs missing, flesh black and featureless, darkness welling from open wounds…
Ahasz pulled his sword from his scabbard and ran forward, brandishing it. “Tayisa! To me!”
More troop-wagons settled onto the highway’s surface and disgorged their soldiers. Officers formed up the men in lines and squares.
“Get the damned wagons off the road!” Ahasz yelled. He gestured with his sword, wanting the vehicles to be moved across the highway and onto the back-slope of Palace Road.
Another fat bolt of directed-energy shot from an upper level of the Palace and lit up the twilight. Dirt, grass and concrete geysered into the air.
A short man, stocky, balding and full-bearded, ran up, his helmet tucked under his arm, his free arm keeping his sheathed sword close to his leg. “Your grace.” He snapped a salute.
“Colonel Tayisa. What in heavens was that? Cannon in the Palace?”
The colonel, commander of Ahasz’s household troops, took a moment to regain his breath. “It must be the Imperial Palace Artillery, your grace.”
“They’re supposed to be in the damned garrison, Tayisa. With the Cuirassiers.” Ahasz turned about and peered across the highway at the walls of the Emperor’s Division garrison. “And in the custody of the Housecarls.” He could see no shadowed silhouettes on the battlements, in the corner watch-towers. Nor any standard on the headquarters flagpole.
“Get someone over there. Find out what in heavens is going on.”
He turned back to the Palace. “Can the basilisk take that gun in the Palace out?” he asked.
The basilisk, a cannon chariot, had bedded in near the burning troop-wagon. Orange from the flames danced on the basilisk’s grey sides. The barrel of its four-inch directed-energy weapon lifted from its roof housing. A loud hum filled the air. A line of eye-searing incandescence stitched the air between the basilisk and Mount Yama. Stone exploded outwards where it hit. Ornamental carvings, balustrades and balconies tumbled down.
There were people at the Palace entrance.
“Move, damn you,” hissed Ahasz.
They ran. Not all escaped. Stone rained down them; many fell, crushed, maimed. A cloud of dust, dancing in the beams of the spotlights, billowed over the mayhem.
He heard distant screams and wails. They could not understand, only suffer. Nor could he explain to them why.
“Problem solved, your grace,” said Tayisa.
Another bolt from the Palace. The front of the basilisk dug into the ground as the beam hit it. The rear lifted. The front detonated. Armour at the back peeled open, debris blasted out. Soldiers standing behind were chopped to pieces, incinerated.
“It seems you spoke too soon,” Ahasz remarked bitterly.
He turned away. The troop-wagons were empty now, he saw, their companies lined up by the side of the road. Eighteen companies of Housecarls.
“Where are my household troops?” he demanded. He needed more men.
“The first train should be pulling in shortly, your grace,” replied Tayisa.
“Get them up here as fast as possible.”
The empty troop-wagons were rising into the air now. A foot above the ground, they swung about, and moved over the central reservation’s shrubbery. Ahasz watched them disappear from view as they headed down the slope on the far side of the highway.
He frowned. He saw troop-wagons exiting the District garrison. “Telescope,” he said.
Tayisa pulled one from a belt pouch and passed it across. It was a sophisticated device, and compensated for the low ambient light. The duke put it to his eye, focussed on the troop-wagons by the garrison. Two hammers and a sword, over a representation of Mount Yama: Housecarls. He said as much.
“That’ll be Lieutenant-Colonel Narry,” Tayisa said.
“Then he’s done well to neutralise the Cuirassiers so efficiently. I count a full complement of troop-wagons.” Ahasz took the telescope from his eye. “But he let the Palace Artillery install themselves in there.” He looked back over his shoulder at spot-lit Mount Yama, and scowled.
Damn the man. A battalion of the Emperor’s Own Cuirassiers was less of a threat than directed-energy cannons. Ahasz’s own household troops were trained as well, if not better, than the best of the Imperial Regiments. And the duke had numbers on his side: over six and a half thousand soldiers… Worst case, he calculated: no more than six hundred defenders. Ten to one.
But for the damned cannons.
He handed Tayisa his telescope. “Order two companies,” he instructed him, “to rush the Palace entrance.”
“Your grace,” the colonel protested, “it’s too open. They’ll be cut to pieces.”
Night had spread its cloak across the District, but there was sufficient illumination from the spotlights to make any soldier approaching the Palace clearly visible. Especially in their red jackets. The gardens at the foot of the slope from Palace Road offered no cover, comprising low hedges bordering paths and ornamental flower-beds. The only concealment was that provided on the other side of the gardens by a pair of low basins, within which lines of fountains burbled and splashed. Beyond these, a flight of stairs one hundred feet wide led up twelve steps to the imposing arches of the Palace’s entrance.
“I am aware of that,” Ahasz snapped.
Tayisa hurried away to confer with Housecarl officers. Ahasz crossed to the edge of the highway and gazed across the gardens. Such a peaceful scene, he thought—but for the destruction caused by the basilisk: a gaping crater in the mountainside beside Edkar I’s left elbow. The duke knew the District well, was a constant visitor when on Shuto. As head of one of the Empire’s oldest families—his line stretched back to the beginnings of civilisation on Geneza, had been high nobles in the Old Empire—his was a familiar face at Imperial Court. Emperor Willim IX was a personal friend.
That friendship would not survive the day.
Movement to his left caught Ahasz’s attention. Six platoons, plus a pair of company commanders and sergeant-majors—one hundred and sixty-six men—had gathered at the edge of Palace Road. The troopers wore black helmets, red jackets, black cuirasses, and black coveralls: Housecarls.
A whistle blew. The soldiers began to trot forward. Ahasz waited for a response from the Palace.
The Housecarls were halfway to the fountains when a cannon fired. The bolt was so bright it lit up the damage it caused. It hit three-quarters along the line. Soldiers exploded. Arms, legs, heads, innards—sprayed across comrades. The Housecarls continued to advance.
More cannons fired. Gouts of dirt geysered among gaps in the lines.
The Housecarls began to dodge and weave, trying to avoid the bolts from the Palace emplacements. Some jinked right into shots from the cannons, disappearing in eye-searing brightness, bodies detonating, blood jetting, limbs flying. Severed heads, still buckled into black helmets, rolled through ornamental borders. Hammers, hands sti
ll wrapped around shafts, fell to the ground.
Ahasz tried to persuade himself it was a necessary slaughter. He needed to know how many of the Palace’s defences remained intact.
Colonel Tayisa was back.
“Send a platoon down to the garage gates,” Ahasz told him. “See if they’ve closed them.”
A road depending from the roundabout at the end of Palace Road led towards the mountain, and disappeared into the rock through a pair of great arches. High nobles and members of the Imperial Court used that route.
Tayisa pulled a battlefield caster from his belt and murmured into it. A minute or two later, the syncopated tramp of boots sounded from further down the road. Ahasz glanced to his right, toward the monument, and saw troopers in red smocks and red helmets. Household troopers. The first trainload must have arrived, marched up from the station beneath the roundabout. It was unlikely they’d be able to effect entrance to the Palace via the garage, but it had to be checked.
The Housecarls on the slope below had reached the fountain basins. Cannon fire had reduced their numbers. Of the one hundred and sixty-six men Tayisa had sent to attack, Ahasz counted less than half that number remaining. They crouched behind the low parapet of the basins, hammers hugged to armoured chests, waiting for an opportunity to charge. Directed-energy beams from the Palace cut flashes through the mist and spray, detonated stone and earth where they hit. The fountains’ spume roiled and steamed, lit hellishly by the bright impaling bolts. Water in the basin geysered skywards as cannon bolts fell short, spouts springing up left and right.
Visibility degraded further. Mist and steam drifting through the darkness between spotlights obscured the Palace entrance and hid the Housecarls from the Palace cannons.
An officer leapt to his feet, sword held high. At a run, he followed the basin’s parapet to the left, around toward the steps leading up to the Palace entrance. His platoon followed. As soon as they were out of the concealing clouds, the Palace cannons fired. Two Housecarls went cartwheeling into the water, seemed to break apart as they flew, creating a line of splashes. The survivors ran on, but were cut down as they reached the steps.
