by Adam Corby
A thousand strings sounded their low notes; a thousand arrows flew.
A dozen guardsmen about Ampeánor uttered choked cries and put their hands to their throats, their breasts, their legs, their loins. Long feathered arrows protruded from their bodies like branches from a coslin tree; but around these branches spurted brown and purple blood. They tottered forward, death-rattle sounding from the backs of their throats; and they pitched forward over the edge of the walls. Ampeánor swung his head to both sides: all along the northern wall the same grisly scene was taking place. The bodies fell like sacks of meal to the rocky ground, and rolled down the slope to before where the barbarians sat astride their steeds. They rode laughing forward, trampling the corpses under hoof, turning what had once been guardsmen of Tezmon into muddy red pulps in armor.
Again the bows sang, and again, and more guards fell screaming to their doom; and yet again it happened. Ghastly death swarmed the long stone walls; and the barbarians laughed like Madpriests at the sight. The guards shivered, their knees swaying in terror; and those who yet lived fell to their bellies, and cowered behind the protection of the low stone parapets. Even the Carftainians sat down, only their helms and hate-ridden eyes showing above the stone. And soon only Ampeánor of Rukor stood above the crimsoned walls.
Up and down the deserted walls he stalked, his shield bristling with forty long-feathered arrows; and he stormed above the barbarians in his wrath. ‘Cowards!’ he yelled at them in their own tongue, which he had learned with Allissál. ‘Put away those things and fight us like men!’
‘Ha!’ came a husky cry.
One of the savages rode forward. The others broke and made way for him. He rode a tremendous black stallion, and his armor glittered with gilt in the autumn sun. He dwarfed all the others: his massive shoulders seemed solid as stones, and his arms like rocky reaches of coastline, the bursting veins like rivulets cutting through the stone. His black mane was grizzled and cut square about his huge corded neck; and his face, for he disdained the wearing of helmet, was a madman’s ill dream. Ampeánor, even the Charan of Rukor, felt his soul quail for a moment at the sight of this demon-sprung man. Could this be the dreaded Ara-Karn? If so, it made all the legends seem plausible.
‘Ha!’ roared the giant. ‘And do you silken bastards fight like men? Come out from behind your little walls, and then we’ll fight with sword and lance! Dogs hiding in their kennels deserve to be slain like dogs.’ He turned back to the ten thousand mounted demons that followed him. A single massive scarred arm rose and fell; a single hoarse shout issued from the bearded mouth:
‘Up the walls, men, and at them!’
Crude ladders were hurled up against the ramparts, and the barbarians clambered up, agile despite their armor. Like an army of great-beetles they seemed, as they swarmed up crumbling walls. Others sowed the walls with arrows for their reaping brethren.
The first of the barbarians reached the summit of the wall, great broadsword in hand; but Ampeánor leapt to meet him, standing so that his foe’s body would serve as a shield against any arrows from below. He drove his ash lance forward; and beneath his mail the corded muscles, so hardened by the weeks of dragging stone and mortar, twisted and bulged. The Raamba steel shot into the body of the savage, flesh burst and bone snapped, the body fell like stone to the blood-soaked rocks. He beat the next man after him, and with a mighty straining hurled back the ladder and the dozen men still clinging to it.
But even Ampeánor of Rukor was but a single man. To either side of him the barbarians overran the walls, killing guardsmen right and left. The guardsmen outnumbered the barbarians, but they could not hope to match their battle frenzy. And still were they trembling for fear of the arrows, which would pick off any man not closely engaged with one of the enemy. Some in their terror leapt from the walls, and ran back into the shadows of the city streets.
Ampeánor reluctantly fell back with them, organizing the retreat as best he could. He knew now that he had blundered terribly, in not realizing the deadly accuracy of those damnable bows.
‘We must fall back into the city,’ he rasped harshly to any who yet retained enough reason to heed him. ‘Fight where the bows will do them no good – around the corners of buildings, in alleyways – wherever you may come upon a few of them in close quarters! Give back, and the victory may yet be ours! Still we outnumber them!’
But few had the wits to heed him. Not even the Carftainians would listen; but leaping upon the rising barbarians with a hatred that knew neither bows nor fear, they came at last to bloody grips with their hated Enemy. Bleeding from a score of wounds would they fall upon the barbarians; cursing, they threw aside shattered weapons and fell fist and knee upon the invaders. The last of them died horribly, mutilated, one-handed, one-footed and driven through with seven arrows. Shrieking he died, with a howl as fearsome as any of the barbarians’.
The savages cried raw victory on the walls now, holding them now alone. They swung down over the gates and swept them open. A surge of black-maned, wild-eyed, demon-horsed men poured through, the giant Ara-Karn at their head. They hacked and slashed with blood-thirsty gusto until there was none to face them; then they laughed, and began to ride the streets of the forced city.
Ampeánor fell back before them through the hushed, shadowed stalls of the deserted bazaar. He could still form a core of resistance in the block of merchants’ houses in the acropolis. There they might give battle at each building, chamber and alleyway, where the bows of the enemy, more suited to open combat, would be of little use. It was still not too late to save the city if only enough stout men could be found.
But before him, all were fleeing. They were running down to the docks, there to ship on whatever sails remained. Already he could see the masses leaping off the stone quays, swimming after ships already out to harbor. Screaming panic ran before him, armed guards thrusting old women from their path in their haste. And behind them came the steady, inexorable thunder of the barbarians swarming through the city.
Ampeánor paused. He was out of breath; his sword weighted his arm as if it had been made of solid gold. He leaned against the side of a building in a darkened alleyway, regaining his breath. Men and women ran past him, but they did not see the man in the shadows – the man who had come to defend their city.
He thrust himself away from the wall. He flexed his muscles, and twisted his neck back beneath the heated metal of his armor. Then it was that the son of the house of the Torvalen and hereditary ruler in the Imperial province of Rukor turned. Not for him was flight. The ancient fighting spirits of his ancestors had been reborn with him: he was no indolent, weak old fool in the thrall of a debauched woman, as his father had been. Unknown generations back, a Torval had fought at Elna’s side in the siege of Urnostardil. That man’s spirit had been reborn in him now; and he would do it justice, even if it meant his death.
He thought of all that he had to live for: young Elnavis, his land of Rukor, the sense-maddening Allissál. He wanted to live; but he would not, could not, flee from his enemies. He began walking back up the street, his strides devouring the cobblestones. His eyes were dark with fatality in the shadow of his visor. He would fight, and kill; and killing, die. He asked no more of fate or God than that.
Three barbarians turning the corner all but ran into him. Their surprise at finding anyone who would still stand up to them made them pause stupidly: before they could collect themselves they lay dead on the cobblestones. Ampeánor wiped his blade of blood, and strode on.
More barbarians came. He fought them all. Not a step did he give back. On the steps of an ancient temple of Goddess, he put his back against the stone pillar, and gave death to all those who dared ascend the steps. The image of the burning, pillaged city and the mad harbor swam before his eyes. He was near madness with battle and death. His limbs moved of their own accord, hacking and thrusting. The bodies began to pile about his feet; he grunted, and kicked them down the steps to gain footroom. His arms were leaden with weariness
. The salt sweat, mixed with acrid blood, dripped stingingly into his eyes, and oozed between his lips. He saw Allissál then, in his last moments of life: golden and soft and scented, fresh from her luxurious bath, a great soft towel draped about her glorious body for a moment, then falling tauntingly to the mosaic tiles.
A harsh laugh roused him. He looked up, even as his arms dealt the death-blow to one of the barbarians.
In the street below, the dark-haired giant Ara-Karn was sitting casually upon his stallion, regarding Ampeánor amusedly.
‘Come hither!’ he croaked through mashed and horrible lips. No one in all the lush South, not even Allissál herself, would have recognized the Charan of Rukor in this blood-spattered, sweating, swearing, ferocious swordsman before whom even the fierce barbarians fell back in awe. ‘Come hither, Ara-Karn, and I will give you some of what I give your men!’
The giant on the stallion scowled momentarily, then laughed. He gestured with the iron hand, a casual, insolent gesture.
‘Take him alive,’ the giant said.
The barbarians climbed again those crimsoned, gut-strewn steps.
Ampeánor leaned wearily against the broad, cool pillar, awaiting them.
Driven by fear of their leader and a desperate desire to prove themselves a match for this lone Southron, the barbarians came. They swarmed over him all at once, and his burdened arms fought back with ever lessening speed and strength; but still he began to move and force them back, and work his way achingly toward the giant on the black stallion. Yet in doing so he must needs leave the protection of the pillar of the temple of Goddess. Two engaged him on the right, another on the left; his sword in one hand and a long, murderous dagger in the other, he fought them off. A fourth man stood behind him, bringing a heavy war axe turned flatways. Ampeánor saw it but an instant; then the weapon crashed against his helm, denting it inward, bringing sparks glittering before his eyes. His tongue lolled in his mouth, dry like linen; he could not swallow. Still he fought on, as in a dream: as under water, his limbs waving languidly like seaweed beckoning by the sides of the great white breakwaters.
Again the war axe fell, and again; and with it fell Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor.
VII
A Far-Off Note of Anvils
THERE WAS TO BE a staging of the Ilazrius by the satirist Metrobal at the Chiral Theater, the largest and finest in the city; and as it was rumored the Divine Queen herself might attend, most of the court also appeared. The play featured Alcibarin in the title role, and presented, beneath a transparent veil of the story of Ilazrius the Swift’s first journey to the city of Vapio, a bitterly mordant assault upon the morals and characters of most of those present. It was immensely well received.
Between plays the highborn presented themselves before her majesty, among them the Chara of Corthio.
‘No, there is still no word from Mersaline of Elnavis, Ilal,’ Allissál answered her. ‘Be sure, you will hear of him as soon as we.’
‘Surely not earlier than Dornan Ural?’ the lady asked mischievously.
‘Not if he continues to pursue you about the city like some graying, fat huntdog on the blood,’ rejoined the Queen, laughing.
‘I confess, he is making affairs rather difficult for me,’ Ilal said with a show of pretty ruefulness. ‘Though not, of course, so difficult as things have been for the Chara Ruma and a certain gentleman dancer from the Thieves’ Quarter. You have perhaps already heard?’
‘Have you mind for nothing but such dancings, Ilal?’ Allissál asked shortly.
‘Why, is there anything else?’
‘Philosophy – art – power – history – glory.’
The Chara of Corthio laughed. ‘Shadows of dreams, all! Those two orbs in heaven are the origin of all our coming to light. Goddess and God are my paired master elements, and all that passes between them my philosophy. All else is mere contingency.’
Having presented the prizes, Allissál returned to the Citadel, where she met with her agents in secret, in a chamber whose walls and ceiling were painted with happy pastoral scenes of handsome young shepherds and beguiling dairymaids. It matched well her mood, for she too had enjoyed the Ilazrius; besides which, early that waking a letter had arrived from Ampeánor, explaining his delay and his hopes for Tezmon.
Attending this meeting to offer her the news of their latest journeys on her son’s behalf were Tersimio, Bistro, Fentan Efling, Kornoth and one or two others. Last to arrive was Qhelvin of Sorne, in deep purple and pale gold of the latest fashion, all smiles and good cheer. He settled himself upon a cushioned sill and began to stroke a silver-clasped aliset, singing to their great delight: for progress in all the lands had been excellent, and the League of Elna now all but given fact. Only the fear with which the little nations regarded Tarendahardil’s ambitions now delayed it. And that would surely be dispelled by the commitments of Pelthar, once known as Aruna when part of the Empire, and now leader of those onetime provinces. And thither the new agent from Gerso had recently been sent, to gather King Orolo’s signature upon all the articles of the concords with Tarendahardil.
Allissál grew merry to hear their words of cheer, and Qhelvin’s witty songs; and much laughter and many jests were passed back and forth. She gave the contents of Ampeánor’s letter, at which they all expressed confidence that all should be prepared for the prince well in advance of his taking of the Ivory Scepter. It was into the midst of these happy notes that a slave came to abase herself and announce the appearance of the Gerso.
‘Word from Pelthar so soon? He must have sprouted wings.’ The Queen smiled eagerly. ‘Hurry then and let him in.’ The maid fell again to the floor and backed from the presence.
‘He was quick about it at least,’ said Fentan Efling.
‘Well, but,’ shrugged the Ancha, ‘it was only the task of a messenger after all. Orolo had already been convinced, by me and others; needed but be shown the documents guaranteeing Bordakasha declaration of Pelthar’s independence to give his signature.’
‘Yet my lord, even you must admit it argues good horsemanship,’ said Qhelvin mockingly, stroking the strings of his aliset. The doors opened, and the Gerso entered.
All heads were turned to him, but those of Tersimio, Bistro, and Fentan Efling had lost their smiles. Kornoth looked upon the newcomer with a touch of faintly disdainful curiosity. Only Qhelvin of Sorne seemed glad to see him. To each of them the Gerso inclined his head, with an ironical smile upon his cruel lips; then approached the Queen.
‘Well, Charan Kandi,’ she said, raising him, ‘you were swift on this first mission in our son’s behalf. What news from Pelthar?’
‘Exceedingly good, your majesty. His Majesty Orolo is prepared to sign all documents.’
‘That was the state of the thing before you left,’ she said. ‘Do you mean that Orolo has yet to sign them?’
‘Regrettably yes, your majesty.’
‘Damn your regrets!’ swore Bistro. ‘I was last to see this little monarch, and then he was all eagerness to give seal! Why, his country is impoverished since the wars – they all depend upon a supply of bandarskins to put into cloaks and rugs.’
‘His majesty remains eager,’ replied the Gerso coolly. ‘Yet his people still recall the rule of Tarendahardil and the high tribute they were forced to pay with some bitterness, it would seem. They fear nothing more than the shadow of this Black Citadel.’
‘We instructed you in this when you left us,’ Allissál said, perplexed. ‘It was no different when Bistro or Tersimio went to meet with Orolo. You did not say anything that might give him pause, did you, Charan?’
‘All I did was pay homage to the beauty, subtlety and ambition of your majesty. He seemed to have had the notion your majesty was no more than some vain pleasure-adoring Vapionil lady, which might have given him doubts on your majesty’s abilities to oversee so vast and deep an enterprise.’
‘Well, what did you tell him?’ asked Tersimio.
‘Why, my lord, I mer
ely spoke of the craft of kings as I understand it: how it is always best for a monarch to seem less able than he is, and his ambitions be underestimated, so that he may always deliver to his people more than they expected while at the same time never raising hopes that he will do things that later turn out to be beyond his power, or interest, to accomplish: and how this mask of idleness will serve to delude his enemies. Well, we spoke of several things, I cannot recall them all. I was generous in my promises to his majesty – indeed, I rather exceeded my instructions in my eagerness to sway him.’
‘Such as?’ asked Fentan Efling.
‘Why, only that Pelthari troops would ever be in the place of honor, fore- and center-most, in all the battles of the League; and that if too many Pelthari fell to glory, the Empress would be only too glad to provide Imperial lancers to protect the peace and borders of her honored friend. I also assured him that the Empire has never considered the tribute levied from Aruna in the past to have been vital, though I understand it was considerable: and that the Empire would never consider anything more than to ask a small loan from them.’
‘What was this of a loan?’ she asked. ‘Did we not explain that the bankruptcy of Pelthar was the prime reason for her desire to join the League?’
‘Of course; but I know these merchants, your majesty. I was raised in a city of them, after all: not a one but pleads poverty with vaults piled high with gold. Pelthar has monies enough, and Orolo was a poor fool if he thought to deceive us – which he did not. He understands payment will be demanded, and would grow suspicious if I misrepresented the case to him. In truth, I fail to understand your concern. Orolo is as eager as ever to sign the concordat; it is rather his people who worry. So soon as others have openly joined the League, Pelthar will also.’
