The tribune was immensely grateful when the gates were opened and the party admitted but, craning to peer through the minimal eye holes, he shivered to see the steely gaze of the boy following him as he walked his horse away.
The central enclosure consisted of a circular gravel space, surrounded by heavy buildings of timber and thatch, primitive by imperial standards, and yet of a size and complexity that clearly stated their importance, the central one far larger than its neighbours. Each was accompanied by a garden containing fruit trees, which stretched from the rear of the building to the surrounding rampart.
Another spring bubbled up into a trough in the centre. Just like the main bulk of Steinvic outside its own walls, this inner sanctum seemed designed to survive a siege, self-sufficiency clearly in evidence. Impressive. The technology was considerably lower than back in the empire, but the forethought that had gone into its planning would give an imperial engineer pause for thought.
As the prince and his escort were pulled up short outside the largest building, Cantex felt the first spot of rain dink off the metal of his helmet. The rain was apparently coming sooner than he’d expected. Well, at least that might help.
His head turned this way and that, taking in their surroundings through the minimal vision of the helmet. There were perhaps a dozen warriors in evidence around the place, though a safe estimate would at least double the number for those he couldn’t see but were surely there. Odds of two to one if it came to a fight. But then if it came to a fight they would all die anyway.
The chance of making it out of Steinvic by feat of arms was infinitesimally small.
Cantex followed the lead of those around him, dismounting and tying his horse’s reins to the wooden rail that stood at the edge of the open space. He stretched and stomped his feet, trying to return some life to his backside. He was used to the comfortable, secure four-horned imperial saddle, not this arrangement of rough blankets and leather that the natives seemed to use. He would have to concentrate not to walk as though he’d had an embarrassing accident.
The door of the huge timber lodge was pulled open from within, and the party led towards the entrance, Cantex and Convocus falling in to the centre of the group. By careful and subtle shifting of positions, the party split up, the majority of the disguised soldiers moving into the building, while the remaining six of the prince’s men stayed outside in the gradually increasing rain, with the horses and four more soldiers.
The prince’s men were bound by Albante custom not to initiate a fight, so they would be more use outside, guarding the door, and the four soldiers would bulk out their numbers if trouble arose. Eleven men moved inside.
The interior was subdivided into rooms with walls of woven wattle and dried mud, and this room was lit only by windows that also created a circulating air current, giving the room a fresh, cold odour. Three doors led off. The prince fell into deep discussion with the leader of their escort, and Cantex glanced around, noting the five locals who had taken up positions around the wall like sheepdogs, herding the visitors. The two tribunes, their eight men almost vibrating with expectation, waited patiently until the prince finally turned and, barely perceptibly, shook his head at them. Cantex frowned.
The door that led towards the heart of the building was pulled open and the smell of sweat, roasting meat and choking charcoal braziers wafted from within. The prince walked through the door, and Convocus made to follow, but the warrior at the threshold held up a hand to stop him. The doors were closed once more, leaving the prince alone in the next room, presumably with the queen, and the ten thwarted imperial soldiers in the rough vestibule.
Cantex peered around at the five men watching them with bored yet tense expressions. He turned to Convocus to find the other tribune looking directly back at him. Cantex mouthed the words ‘what now?’ but realised immediately that he still had the half-moon visor thing down. He lifted it with a faint squeak, figuring that the chances of the five guards noticing his clean shaven face were minimised in this dim interior crowded with men. He mouthed the words again. Convocus’ visor went up, and it took three attempts for Cantex to guess what the reply was.
‘No choice.’
He nodded. Pretending to fiddle with his belt, he wavered his fingers at the nearest man, getting his attention. When the soldier winked at him, he nodded faintly towards one of the five guards. Another wink. Cantex moved slowly across the room, stretching nonchalantly and repeating the procedure with another man. Convocus was subtly indicating his plans to a different soldier. Moments passed, tense and almost electric, the only sound the drumming of the rain on the ground outside, where the downpour had begun in earnest.
There was a curious moment of build-up, as one experienced at the start of a horse race, waiting for the signal to be given and the race to begin.
Convocus coughed.
Cantex took two sharp steps forward and punched the nearest guard in the throat, an open area of flesh above his chain shirt. There was the unpleasant crunch of cartilage and bone as the hyoid shattered, the tribune’s calloused knuckles crushing the windpipe and vocal chords. The warrior’s eyes bulged as, completely unprepared for the blow, his hands came up to clutch in shock and agony at his ruined throat where he clawed at his own flesh, desperate to draw some air through the ruined trachea.
Ignoring the man, who was moments from death and unable to form any kind of noise, Cantex turned to the room. His men had moved swiftly and with efficiency, most of them taking a drawn blade to the guards as a hand across the mouth prevented a scream. One struggling native let out a brief squeak of panic as a soldier changed his grip mid-throttle.
And then the enemy were down. Little more than a squeak from the five. Both Cantex and Convocus hurried over to the open windows, ripping off the cumbersome helmets in the process and peering carefully out. Nothing appeared amiss outside. The remaining ten men they had brought hovered near the house and, between them and the hammering rain, the sudden violent explosion in the house had gone unnoticed outside.
‘That’s it,’ Cantex whispered. ‘We’re committed now.’
‘We certainly bloody should be,’ Convocus replied in a quiet murmur. ‘Right. You look for the ambassadors. I’m going for the queen.’
Cantex nodded and gestured for four of the men to join him. The others ran over to Convocus, who approached the door through which the prince had recently stepped.
This was it.
Chapter 24
Convocus stepped through the door into the queen’s hall, his four men immediately behind him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark interior after the outer room with its wide windows. This huge chamber was gloomy and sooty, lit and warmed by half a dozen braziers set around its periphery.
The first he knew of the danger was when something dropped over his head and jerked back, constricting his throat. His sword came up ready for trouble, but something smashed into his knuckles and the blade fell from his grip, two of his fingers broken from the blow. The cord around his throat tightened slightly in warning. He could not turn his head in this position, but he heard the stifled murmurs of his men being subdued and the thud of the doors being closed behind him.
Betrayal.
His eyes searched the gloom of the hall, trying to find the man who had clearly sold them out.
To his surprise, he located Suolceno quickly, only to realise that the prince was in as much trouble as he was, a spear levelled at the man, the tip at his sternal notch and ready to punch forward, ripping the life from him at a moment’s notice.
There was a low growl, and his gaze roved across the shadows to find a figure emerging from the gloom at the rear of the hall.
The queen was a striking figure. More than six feet tall and with a lithe, wiry frame, she moved with the grace of a hunting cat. Unlike women of the native tribes Convocus had seen previously, she was wearing the same woollen trousers as the menfolk, her tunic hidden beneath a chain shirt with bronze fasteners. A cloak of da
rk blue, edged with silver, fluttered behind her, and a simple circlet of bronze held back a mane of red-gold hair. Her face was pale, almost alabaster. She would have been almost breathtakingly beautiful, had not her lip and one side of her nose been ruined by a blade in the distant past, the two rents connected by a thin scar.
‘How does an empire that is so concerned with ruining itself manage to conquer such a vast swathe of land?’ the woman said, her accent sharp and odd, but her speech perfectly formed in the imperial tongue.
‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ Convocus said quietly, swallowing with some difficulty. His mind was racing. He had to do something to regain control of the situation, and quickly, but whatever he could do to keep this woman talking in the meantime would help buy him time.
‘Yes,’ she replied simply.
‘Who betrayed us?’ Convocus asked, hardly expecting an answer. The man behind him was very close. He could feel the warrior’s warm, pungent breath on the back of his neck, making the hairs there waver. He needed him even closer, though. The throbbing of his broken fingers was insistent, but he forced the pain aside, thinking on his desperate situation.
‘No one, you fool,’ the woman snorted. ‘I am no simpering moron, reliant on soft southern menfolk. I am Verctissa, queen of the Albantes, chosen of Ardrath of the silver moon, daughter of the stag god. You seriously believed you could simply walk into my fortress and kill me, even with the aid of my ungrateful spawn over there? He believed the old ways would save him, for it is forbidden for our people to draw a blade upon our own. But he is not one of us, any more than you are. My mother watched as your armies came close a generation ago and then fell like wheat to the sickle before our warriors.’
‘And now you wish to repeat that with us,’ Convocus said, inclining his head forward so very, very slowly, that it would be barely noticeable by the man with the garrotte.
‘Sadly, not.’ The queen rolled her shoulders. ‘My deal with the senator requires that you fail in your task and leave the island in ignominy and shame. He would like as many soldiers as possible to return to your shores. I am half inclined to annihilate your army, anyway. I suspect he would not argue too loudly.’
Prince Suolceno snarled. ‘You ally yourself with a dissenter in the empire and yet have the audacity to call me traitor, Mother? You hypocrite.’
The queen’s head snapped round to her son.
‘And you? I took information and equipment, gold and war machines from our enemy to use against our enemy. That, boy, is called strategy. And when we throw them back into the sea, we will continue supreme towards our destiny… to rule here, not to serve, begging for scraps from the emperor’s table.’
‘Father was right about you, Mother. You see a future that can never exist. The Albantes are like a room full of male lions. If there is no one else to fight, they will tear into each other. Father knew that. And he knew that unless things changed there would be wars in my time on that throne, and more in the time of my own children, and so it will go on until the Albantes simply end.’
‘Your father was a coward, and a dreamer. He should have spent less time with a bard’s harp and more with a sword. I shall make no such mistake.’
Convocus was still inclining his head slightly, almost infinitesimally slowly, while the man constricting his throat had become slightly distracted as he tried to follow the conversation between queen and prince in a language of which he probably had no grasp. The tribune’s eyes dropped to the right, low. His sword was still by his feet.
The senator, he thought through the throbbing of his hand.
So… Anicius Rufus had been in contact with the queen. And the queen ruled the northernmost tribes. She must have paid them with imperial gold and armed them with imperial weapons and brought them south. And even though those tribes had been beaten and sent back north, she was far from weak herself.
The invasion had been doomed from the start, even had its three generals not been twisted by years of bitterness and intent on mutual destruction, and all because one senator could not afford to have someone succeed where he had failed. Thousands of men had died or been wounded because of a senator’s pride, and likely thousands more to follow, too. Rufus would have to pay for his actions. But first they needed to get out of their current predicament.
‘When it gets back to the empire that a senator sold out the invasion to you,’ Prince Suolceno growled, ‘the emperor will take it as a slight. He will send another army. And another. As many as it takes. And if you kill me, there will be others who take my place and seek a settlement with them for the mutual future of our peoples.’
The queen paced away for a moment, tapping her ruined lip, then turned swiftly.
‘I do believe that you are correct on this matter, boy. The senator thought his secret safe, and you will clearly not reveal it, but inevitably someone will find out, and the emperor will not take the news well. So no matter what deal I struck with the man, I cannot afford to let any of you live. I will have to skin the hide from every last soldier on that hillside after all.’
Convocus’ head was almost bowed now, and the man with the garrotte suddenly seemed to realise what had happened and leaned into the cord, preparing to tighten it and yank his head back again. The hot, acrid breath washed over the tribune’s neck again.
He struck.
Throwing his head back, now that he’d built up the space and momentum, he head-butted the warrior with all the force he could muster. He felt the nose shatter under the blow and heard what sounded like teeth breaking. The man screamed, the pressure suddenly gone from his neck.
Convocus was on the floor in a heartbeat, grasping his blade and turning, ignoring the pain lancing up from the two fingers with which he could not grip the hilt. Prince Suolceno had clearly seen what he had been doing, for at the same moment the tribune struck, the prince dropped backwards away from the spear point and lunged forth again at waist height, delivering a powerful punch to his captor’s groin.
The chain shirt tore into the prince’s knuckles and dampened some of the blow’s force, but there was still enough strength in it to ruin him. The man bent double, whimpering, as the prince ripped the sword from his scabbard.
Convocus swung with his blade even as he turned, cleaving into his own attacker’s leg just above the ankle and driving so deep he almost severed the foot. As he ripped the blade back out and the crippled, ruin-faced man fell to the floor screaming, Convocus took in the situation behind him.
Two of his men had died instantly, their captors’ blades stabbing into their backs and robbing them of life before they could fight back. Another was engaged in a struggle of mutual destruction as he and his opponent stabbed one another repeatedly with knives, both crying out in agony even as they snarled curses and oaths at one another. The fourth man had managed to throw off his captor and was busy beating him senseless.
The queen. His men were in trouble, but the queen was the objective. Gritting his teeth, Convocus turned away from the struggle of his overpowered men and stepped across the room. His face fell as he realised his mistake. The queen had never been in any danger. Her son was advancing on her from the far side, but six heavy, veteran warriors stepped out of the gloom at the room’s periphery and moved forward to defend their queen.
Suolceno yelled something in his own tongue and raised his sword threateningly as he advanced.
‘No,’ Convocus yelled. ‘Get out of here. Find Cantex and flee. You have to survive or all this is for nothing!’
He leapt forward angrily, waving his free hand at the prince. Suolceno wavered for a moment, his Albante blood up at the betrayal and failure, his desire to kill his own mother paramount, but he was nothing if not astute. Realising the truth of Convocus’ words, he turned and ran for the door, where the two men were still busy struggling with their captors.
Convocus straightened and rolled his shoulders.
‘Fight me, queen of the Albantes.’
It was bravely said and, in
all honesty, Convocus did not feel particularly brave. His fingers were extremely painful and despite his blow to his captor’s leg, they really did hamper his skill with the blade. Oh, to be like Bellacon and able to switch hands with equal skill, but Convocus could use only his right with any talent, and that now was ruined.
The bearing and appearance of the queen made it abundantly clear that she was a warrior of note in her own right. The tribune’s chances of beating her were minimal and, given the numbers in the room, his chance of leaving the building non-existent.
But anything he could do might buy time for the prince and for Cantex, and even if the queen lived there was still a chance of a different victory.
‘You?’ The queen laughed, but thrust out her arm and snapped her fingers. One of the warriors handed her a sword, hilt-first, which she took, then twirled it a few times, testing the weight.
The menfolk of the room were watching the face-off with tense, expectant expressions. As the queen turned slowly, drinking in the hunger of her people, Convocus risked a quick look over his shoulder. There was a struggle still ongoing as three locals beat the last imperial soldier down to the floor. Of Prince Suolceno there was no sign, though the door to the rear wavered a little in the breeze from outside.
With as much of a sense of relief as he could hope for in the current situation, Convocus turned back. The queen was looking at him oddly. She had obviously not yet noticed the absence of her son, her attention centred on the tribune before her. Good. He had to keep it that way as long as possible.
‘A good blade,’ he said, nodding at the long sword in the queen’s hand. ‘Well-wrought.’
‘We are not cattle, outside your empire,’ she hissed. ‘We sing songs and farm lands and forge blades as well as you.’
‘Blades to use upon your own tribe.’
Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Page 28
