Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5)

by S. J. A. Turney

  Though many of the scouts and cavalry were committed to the outlying territory, circling Steinvic with an eye out for fleeing warriors or approaching reinforcements, Bellacon’s secret weapon was now approaching the battlefield from the direction of the camp.

  A five hundred strong veteran cavalry unit, they had been armoured from head to toe in a combination of segmented plates and chain, their horses similarly encased in steel and iron down to their knees. Modelled after the Pelasian sacred guard, they were the heaviest cavalry in the world. Useless in a siege, obviously, but if they could gain access to the flat land within the ramparts, they would be appallingly efficient. And now they made their way slowly to the south gate.

  The ramparts between here and there, five hundred paces away, were largely still intact, bolt throwers constantly peppering the parapet and keeping the enemy heads down.

  ‘Tell the artillery to desist,’ Bellacon shouted to the musician. His own signaller had memorised the calls of all three legions and each supporting force in order to relay the overall commander’s orders to any position on the battlefield. The man raised a horn to his lips and blew out a series of warbling notes that cut across the ramparts. Thankfully, the artillery signaller had been paying attention and picked up the call, relaying it to his own unit.

  In short order the barrage of iron-tipped bolts ceased, and those defenders who had been pinned down behind the parapet rose with a roar, facing the force who had already gained the heights further along.

  ‘To the south gate,’ Bellacon bellowed to the men around him but, half expecting them to push past him and keep him out of trouble, he raced forward ahead of them. His adjutant blinked in surprise and ran after him, the standard bearers hurrying on among the press.

  In a matter of moments, Bellacon had moved to the forefront of the fighting, which was spreading out from their initial breach like a pool of blood on a flagstone floor. Men of his own force, the Vulture Legion, were pushing to take control of more of the ramparts, advancing with difficulty towards the south gate now that the barrage had stopped. The tribune ran on, pushing slower men aside in his urge to get past.

  Without warning, he pulled aside a soldier aside only to discover that the man was dying, clutching a ripped throat and spraying crimson into the cold morning air. The man fell away and Bellacon was suddenly facing his killer, a hulking native with a heavy axe in one hand and a curved, sickle-like knife in the other. The latter was still slick with the blood of the soldier’s throat, but it was the axe that was brought back to deal with this new officer who had reached the front.

  Bellacon reacted instantly, his battle nous taking over. Convocus had always been the thinker, and Cantex the lucky one. But Bellacon had been a born soldier – a born commander too – and his blood sang the song of battle. His sword lanced out, striking the man in the armpit below the raised axe. The blade sank deep into the soft access point, grating off the inside of the shoulder blade and severing organs as it went.

  The Albante warrior’s eyes widened as he died on his feet, the axe toppling from his fingers even as he began to crumple and fall away.

  The killing had begun in earnest. Despite having breached the walls and gained the south of Steinvic, they were still mired down in combat against a desperate, strong foe. No matter what these men might be like on an open battlefield, fighting to defend the walls of one’s home always lent a man powerful reserves of strength and determination, and the Albantes were showing both as they fought back with every ragged breath and strained muscle.

  Bellacon swept and stabbed, chopped and parried, barged and punched into the crowd of Albantes who filled the wall. Beside, around and behind him, the Vulture Legion pushed on in the fray, roaring and killing, falling and dying. And with every hundred heartbeats of violent death they moved fifty paces along the wall.

  Slowly, he could see that access point coming closer. A blade caught him on the left shoulder, and he felt the impact as it dented the bronze cuirass he wore, mangling the fastenings and hinges there. He’d taken no stitchable wound, but the bruise that would form there would be one of the best he’d ever had, judging by the sudden numbness of his left arm. He responded savagely, his sword taking the man responsible in the neck, tearing through the twin muscles that connect cranium to torso. The warrior’s head snapped round, the cords that held it in place severed, blood spraying and fountaining from the rent.

  Pushing the man out of the way with his left hand and hissing at the pain that caused, Bellacon struck out again with the sword in his right. Again and again he cut and stabbed, ever pushing forward. Another sword blow ripped through the decorative leather straps hanging from his shoulder and scored a narrow line across his bicep.

  Suddenly he was at the gate. ‘Get it open,’ he roared as he launched forward at the men on the parapet. He briefly saw his adjutant fall to a spear thrust, though the blades of the Vulture Legion avenged him a moment later.

  Bellacon struck on, a blow to a man’s gut, a man’s face, a man’s neck, a man’s side. And now his soldiers were past him, pushing the enemy back, for he had paused to watch the gate open. Down below the fight was still going on, the men of two different legions hammering at the Albantes who desperately defended this once-vital access point to Steinvic. But despite the struggle, his men had reached the gate and, while some kept the natives busy, others lifted the great timber bar from it and started to pull the gate leaves open.

  The heavy cavalry were moving with the first creak of wood. By the time the great gates were pulling open, they were almost at a charge. The imperial troops, eyes wide at the approaching nightmare, jumped to the sides, heaving the gates as far as they could while shouting to their allies to move aside.

  The Albantes who had been struggling against imperial soldiers in the space behind the gate stopped, startled, as their aggressors simply stopped fighting, pulling to the edges and raising their shields defensively. Then the sound of two thousand drumming hooves rose above the din and they turned as one to look at the wall of armoured death racing towards them over the causeway outside the gate.

  They fled.

  Some even escaped.

  The heavy cavalry, tons of steel and muscle, did not bother trying to spear or slash at them. They simply rode them down. Five hundred horsemen ploughed through the gate into the open space of Steinvic, between the settlement itself to the left and the fields to the right.

  By the time they had split into their five individual units of one hundred and pounded off to deal horrifying destruction to anyone they found, all that remained in the gateway was a mangle of crushed and broken corpses, some dead, others wailing and moaning, wishing that they were.

  The imperial soldiers started to move among them, finishing them off just in case, even as the forefront of the Vulture Legion moved on along the south rampart, clearing it of men, and into the streets of Steinvic.

  Bellacon heaved in a breath of cold air. They had done it. They’d achieved what had seemed impossible and taken Steinvic, thanks to Cantex’s plan which had divided the enemy and given them the advantage they needed.

  He checked himself in his euphoria. It was not over yet.

  They still had to take the queen’s redoubt at the heart of the complex. Until they had that woman bowed and cowed, they would remain in danger from her reinforcements who were already on the way. Only the undisputed right of Prince Suolceno to rule the Albantes would stop that army. Possibly not even that, though the prince seemed comfortable that he could rein them in.

  Here he was, exactly as Lissa, who stood watching the fall of Steinvic from just beyond the imperial forces outside the walls, had predicted. The victorious general standing on the walls of the fortress beneath the fluttering and snapping flag of the Vulture Legion.

  So many weeks ago, months even, she had seen this sight in her smoke and flames and, just as the men of the empire had shed blood and sweat to make this day come, so had Lissa by her own careful manoeuvring.

  Bella
con’s eyes drifted across to that enclosure.

  Something was happening on its walls.

  He frowned. There was a small pocket of fighting there. It was hard to see with any detail, since those ramparts were perhaps half a mile away across the flat farmland, but it looked to be two tiny pockets of fighting on the walls. It was hard to believe that men from the western assault had already reached the heart of Steinvic, but it was also hard to deny.

  He focused. His eyes were good, and always had been. Squinting, he tried to make out detail. His heart fluttered. The man nearest seemed an incongruous figure in battle. He was clearly unarmoured, for the glint of light on steel, iron, and bronze across the battlefield showed each man encased in metal. That man, though, wore neither armour nor helmet. He was also clean shaven and short-haired, which ruled out the natives to a man. Of course, he could be any man of the imperial army. But the lack of armour suggested it was one of the men Cantex had taken into his tunnel to breach the walls.

  The chill settled in his bones. He had no way to be sure. He suspected, for certain. But there was no way to be sure… was there?

  His head snapped round. It took him only moments to find Lissa, two hundred paces back, beyond the imperial lines outside the gate. She couldn’t see what was going on at the centre of Steinvic, her view obstructed by the defences. And yet she caught his eye and shook her head, her gaze dropping to the earth forlornly.

  No.

  His keen eyes spun back to that compound at the heart of Steinvic. He saw the unarmoured fighter disappear for a moment, then rise again to face a tall figure with red-gold hair that shone almost like a helmet in the morning light.

  Gods, no…

  He watched with cold agony as the red-haired figure took Cantex’s head.

  And then he was running. He raced so fast that he almost lost his footing on the earth bank, slipping and staggering the last few feet to ground level.

  ‘With me!’ he bellowed, not pausing in his run. A wide, gravelled track ran along the edge of the inhabited town, separating it from the fields and running from the small south gate to the open space before the royal compound. Bellacon pelted along the road, his feet sending up tiny showers of gravel.

  Men were suddenly with him, soldiers of all three legions from their uniforms, as well as auxiliaries here and there. A couple of captains pounded alongside, their expressions grim, their swords out and already bloody.

  As they moved, one of the hundred-strong heavy cavalry units raced across the fields, churning mud and flinging earth into the air with their pounding hooves until they reached the running soldiers, falling in protectively beside them. The cavalry commander nodded his head at Bellacon and kept pace.

  The royal compound was a small fortress in its own right, and a surprising number of warriors were now on its walls. Bellacon could see a gathering of the enemy force outside the compound, in the wide open space that Cantex had described upon his return. If there were men outside the compound walls, that suggested that the gate was open.

  As yet, despite the handful of men who had reached the wall top there, there did not seem to be any pressing danger to the queen’s complex. The gates would be open, he realised, to allow as many of her warriors to seek refuge there as possible now that Steinvic had fallen. In fact, as he watched, men were converging on the square from the town, the main east gate and from the fight to the west. The warriors in the square were telling them where to go and watching their backs as they entered the last redoubt of the queen.

  An opportunity had presented itself, but one that would not remain open for long.

  Bellacon turned as he ran.

  ‘Prefect?’ he bellowed at the cavalry officer. The man turned, his hearing unimpeded due to the cunning design of his helmet. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take your men and secure that gate. I don’t care what you have to do, but keep it open.’

  The man nodded and called out a series of orders to his men, who picked up their pace, racing off across the fields at a tangent. For a moment, Bellacon wondered what the man thought he was doing, making for the east, away from the compound. Then, as the cavalry reached a place far out in the open ground, as though they were heading for the lake and the walls of the main gate, they suddenly slewed round and broke into a full-tilt charge.

  Of course, a direct charge at the gate and the enemy would have spotted the immediate danger and closed it. This way, the horsemen had covered more than half the distance before making their intentions known. Still, it would be close.

  Bellacon, his breath coming in gasps as he ran, watched the cavalry reach the main square. The results were impressive – appalling even, from a point of view of human wastage. As they approached at breakneck pace, their lances dropped, the formation holding strong, twenty horses wide in five rows.

  The front rank hit, their lances impaling men and sending bodies flying like rag dolls, their churning hooves smashing flesh and bone beneath, and veered off to the sides, discarding the ruined shafts and drawing their swords. The second rank rode over the remains of the victims of the first and did the same to the next group, peeling off to the sides. It was like watching a court dance with the grisliest of results.

  In a matter of moments four ranks of cavalry had hit the gathered warriors in the square and utterly obliterated them, leaving only mangled remains, blood gushing into the white, chalky gravel and forming a pink lake. The final rank had a different objective.

  The gates had been shut. Even with their ruse to buy them time, the cavalry had been too late, the defenders wise to the danger now and forcing the gates shut even against their own people who hammered on the timbers, pleading to be admitted as the horsemen outside butchered anyone left standing.

  That remaining wall of twenty men, fully armoured, hit the gates at full pace, heedless of the damage to themselves or their mounts, treating the timbers as they would a line of infantry and simply smashing into them. The gates swung open with the pressure, the defenders who had been trying to drop the locking bar into place thrown aside by the blow.

  The cavalry were in the inner ring of walls now, and already they were going to work with their swords, cutting down anyone they found near the gates, making sure no one could close them.

  Bellacon and his men reached the open square and pounded across it, their feet slipping and squelching on the ground-in human remains as they raced for the open entrance. His eyes rose to the gate top and rage filled him as he recognised Cantex and Convocus’ heads on spikes above it.

  The bitch would pay for this.

  As the tribune approached, he spotted a second force converging on the compound from the west and recognised the face of Prince Suolceno leading them. Bellacon clenched his teeth. Oh, no. The queen was his.

  The soldiers with him were killing now, spreading out across the compound and climbing the earth banks to take on those atop them. Bellacon’s eyes raked the walls for that red-headed figure, but she was no longer there.

  His gaze dropped once more to the horseshoe of fine houses that formed the nobles’ homes gathered around a central space. A dozen warriors were lined up outside the largest at the centre, armoured almost as well as the imperial force.

  ‘Got you.’

  The tribune stormed across the open space, more and more men joining him now. Even a couple of the iron-clad cavalry who had either dismounted or lost their beasts pounded alongside, swords out and ready. The warriors in front of the house roared their defiance in the face of the vengeful tribune and his men.

  Bellacon was shouting something as he hit them, though he could not later have said what it was. His mind was filled with red hate and sable death, fuelled to dreadful vengeance by the sight of his friends’ heads above the gate. He would kill the queen slowly, make her suffer for what she had done.

  His sword bit into an eye socket and wrenched back out, then cut down diagonally, cleaving another Albante arm down to the bone. It whirled and whipped round again, slamming into a man’s groin
below the edge of a chain shirt, tearing back out in a flood of urine and blood before whirring and taking another man in the throat.

  Killing had become all.

  Bellacon raged and was suddenly at the door, smashing it open with his foot. Another dozen men waited in the vestibule beyond. His sword robbed the first of life and then his men were suddenly all around him again, engaging this new reserve of veteran warriors.

  Bellacon, his mind churning in the black-and-crimson fog of hate and loss, simply threw open the next door and marched into the queen’s hall. Yet more warriors were gathered here, but his attention was on the single, central figure.

  The queen stood beneath the smoke hole in the room’s roof, which acted as an oculus, admitting a shaft of pale light that surrounded her, giving her and almost other-worldly, divine glow. She was armoured and armed for the fight, and she was alone, her men at the room’s edge. Behind Bellacon, more soldiers poured in and began to move around the periphery, taking on those warriors.

  Bellacon stepped into the centre.

  The queen eyed him impassively, her face oddly striking, almost beautiful despite the maimed nose and lip.

  ‘And again the gods send me gifts in threes,’ she said, her voice cold and commanding, somehow cutting across the sounds of fighting at the room’s edge.

  ‘I am a gift you will regret receiving,’ Bellacon snarled as he stepped forward towards the light-bathed queen, his face contorted into a mask of hatred.

  ‘Come now, soldier. You cannot think I will fear you. I personally took the spirit of your other friends. I shall do the same to you. If I am to lose my kingdom and my life, I will make sure I have three of you to take before Ardrath of the silver moon. I will be rewarded in my next world.’

  Bellacon was beyond words.

  He had never been a man of them. Not like eloquent, clever Convocus, or funny, beloved Cantex.

  He was a man of action and steel. His first strike would have killed most men, a lunge to the right that was a mere feint and switched to left even as he struck. The queen twisted out of the way with the grace of a dancer and the speed of an athlete, her own blade coming back in a sweep at astonishing speed.