Alone and forgotten. Imprisoned at the arse-end of nowhere. Left to rot.
She heard a gentle shuffling, and a key turning. She opened one eye, just a slit, and saw her cell door swing open. Three men, dressed in black. One carried a small glass-encased lamp, its blue light casting a cold spell on the room. Another had a crossbow trained on her, while the third held a sword.
‘Savage,’ one said, ‘lying in her own piss.’
‘Wake up!’ the second called, keeping his voice low.
Keira remained motionless.
‘Look at her arm,’ the first said, ‘that’s a lot of blood.’
‘Do you think she’s already dead?’
‘Don’t know,’ the third said, raising his sword, ‘but we’re not leaving until we have her head. Orders said we were to make sure.’
The second man raised his crossbow, aimed and loosed.
A bolt slammed into Keira’s right thigh, jolting her backwards.
‘She’s dead all right,’ the first said. ‘Never flinched a muscle.’
‘Right,’ the third said, ‘let’s take her head and get out of here.’
The three men approached.
‘She was a piece of ass,’ the first said, crouching above her, ‘be a shame to waste it.’
The second grimaced. ‘She’s covered in shit, you freak.’
‘We could wipe her down first. Just think, we could tell everyone we fucked the fire mage. We can miss out the bit about her being dead.’
He stretched his hand out to touch her.
Keira swung her right arm, ramming the nail into his eye. With her left she drew the knife from his belt, and stabbed it deep into the third’s man’s groin. As the second raised his crossbow, she leapt onto him, bowling him over. She punched the knife down into the man’s chest, just under his throat, and ripped him open to the waist. She grabbed the keys from the man’s belt, and unlocked the shackles on her wrists. The chains fell to the floor.
She looked around.
The first man was writhing on the stone floor, clutching his face, while the other was crawling to the door, still grasping his sword, blood trailing from the knife wound in his crotch.
Keira reached down into the rent corpse beneath her, and scooped out a long string of intestines. She stumbled over to the crawling man, and knelt on his back, her weight pinning him down. She wound the slimy guts round and round the man’s throat, and pulled, choking the last breath out of him.
She turned to face the last assassin. He was lying on the ground, convulsing, blood pouring from his left eye-socket.
‘So you wanted to fuck a fire mage?’ she smirked, picking up the glass lamp from the floor. She cracked the casing on the stone slabs, revealing the small blue flame beneath.
‘You’ll have to wait a fucking minute,’ she said. She gripped the end of the bolt sticking into her leg, and yanked it out. ‘Bastard.’
With the exposed blue lamp in her left hand, she wove her fingers above the flames, and directed a short burst of fire at the bleeding hole in her leg.
‘Right,’ she said, looking at the dying man at her feet, ‘your turn.’
She had drunk blood before, she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. When things got rough, and you needed to heal quick, then blood could be a great help. Rahain blood tasted foul, but she bore it, and drank her fill.
So the lizards had sent men to kill her. She shook her head as she lowered the arm she had been drinking from. She had been close to ending it herself, and now she had a small flame and an unlocked cell door.
She got to her feet. She took the sword from the dead hand of the third man. It was light, more like a long knife in her hands.
The screams of the dead refugees were singing in her head, echoing with a new song.
She opened the door. No guards, and an empty corridor, with glass lamps down one wall. There was a low roar of noise, of gathered voices, coming from the large door at the end of the passageway.
Sounded like the bastards were having a party. Could it be Summer’s Day already?
She glanced up.
A wooden ceiling. She smiled.
Within moments she had smashed every glass casing in the passageway. She backed up to the door at the end of the corridor, and raised her hand.
Blue flames began to arc down the wall, joining lamp to lamp, until they formed a single ribbon of fire. She swept her fingers upwards, and the blue ribbon burst across the wooden boards of the ceiling, sending them into a roiling mass of flames.
She lowered herself to the ground, as the flames grew above her head. Smoke belched down, and she covered her mouth. Cries and shouts came to her ears, and the sound of thumping boots. When the flames and smoke were almost too much, she kicked open the thick door, revealing a large hall, with long tables, and a high wooden roof. Sitting at the tables were dozens of Rahain soldiers, drinking and feasting, maybe a whole company’s worth. Most were looking up, to see what was causing the commotion.
‘You wee pricks having a party without me?’ Keira said, rising to her feet.
An officer yelled, and soldiers began falling to their knees, pushing the tables over, and unshouldering their crossbows.
‘Happy Summer’s Day, ya scaly fucks,’ Keira cried. She swung her right arm over her head, firing a vortex of spiralling flame into the hall, smashing it down into the mass of Rahain soldiers. The fire ripped through them, funnelled and directed by Keira’s right hand. Wherever she pointed was incinerated. Her fuel was now almost limitless, as the hall started to burn.
She pointed at the large set of double doors at the end of the hall, blowing them out in an explosion of metal and wooden fragments.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the dark night sky through the doorway. Outside. So close.
She walked across the hall, clearing a path through the flames before her, and firing bolts of fire at any soldiers who still moved. She heard a great crack, and part of the huge ceiling fell, crashing down onto the floor of the hall behind her.
She reached the door. Mountain air. She breathed deep.
All around were shacks and out-buildings, and she recognised some from similar places the lizards had built in Kell.
A mine. They had been holding her in a mine.
A crossbow bolt whistling past her nose brought her back to the present. She whipped her arms around, gathering a thick and towering pillar of fire above her head. She swept her hand in a long low arc, and the flames followed, sending every building into flames, and turning any living thing out in the open into ash.
With half the compound ablaze, Keira shielded her eyes and walked round the burning hall. No one stood up to her. Every lizard within sight ran, and she laughed as she sent little spiralling rods of flame after them, burning through each like spears.
She reached the gaien paddock, and hitched a wagon to a pair of the beasts. She loaded some gaien feed and water barrels behind the driver’s bench. What was good enough for them would do for her.
She clambered up, and took hold of the reins.
‘Right,’ she nodded at the beasts, ‘Betsy and Bobby, off we go.’
She heard a rustle from her left, and a squad of Rahain soldiers ran out from behind a building, their crossbows aiming up at her.
She shook her head, and directed a long stream of flame tumbling from the roof of the burning hall down into their faces.
The soldiers screamed, she cracked the whip, and the gaien began to lumber through the gates of the paddock, and onto the beginning of a mountain track.
Keira glanced over her shoulder at the conflagration she had unleashed.
She smirked. ‘Fucking amateurs.’
Chapter 2
Cartography
Broadwater, Sanang – Summer’s Day 505
‘Chane,’ said Agang. ‘Get up.’
The Holdings woman groaned, but remained sprawled over his bed.
‘Hodang will be here any minute,’ he said. ‘You need to put some clothes on.’
‘Fuck off,’ she mumbled into a pillow.
Agang shook his head. He took the corner of the blanket in one hand, and whipped it off the bed, exposing his slave’s naked body.
‘You bastard,’ she said, sitting up and rubbing her head. ‘You know I’m not a morning person.’
‘Maybe if you didn’t get drunk every night.’
She gave him a scowl and pulled a robe from the back of a chair.
‘How long have you been up?’
‘Hours,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sleep, not with what’s happening today.’
‘No one will be arriving for ages,’ Chane said, standing and slipping the robe over her shoulders. ‘Why is Hodang coming over so early?’
‘I want to go through the details one more time.’
She raised an eyebrow, yawned and walked over to the dressing table.
‘How about doing something of actual use,’ she said, ‘and making me some coffee while I get ready to greet your chief minister.’
Agang frowned. He went over to a cabinet, and pulled out a cup and a flask. It was day-old concentrate, but he had no time to waste brewing a fresh batch.
‘Sometimes, Chane,’ he said, ‘I wonder if I should gag you each morning, and only allow you to speak when your hangover’s worn off.’
‘Fucking try it,’ she said, as she applied her make-up. ‘See what happens.’
He brought over her coffee.
She leaned back and took the cup, and lit a cigarette.
Agang walked away, avoiding the clouds of tobacco smoke. He pulled a rope, and the long curtain which divided the room opened, allowing daylight to flood the end where the bed lay.
Chane puffed out her cheeks and sighed.
She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Sorry for being a grumpy bitch.’
‘You keep me grounded, Chane. With all the bowing and saluting I get every day, I need you around. Someone I can be myself with.’
She looked like she wanted to say something, but kept silent. She picked up a brush, and pulled it through her long dark hair.
He needed her for more than that, he knew. Her instruction in Holdings training methods and military organisation had revolutionised his army, making it the best in Sanang. Her relentless drive and optimism about his cause had prevented him from veering off course on many occasions, and she had shown him complete loyalty. When Daphne Holdfast had run away from Beechwoods over a year and a half before, she had left Chane behind, gifting Agang the ultimate proof of her fidelity.
And, for over a year, she had shared his bed.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Enter,’ Agang called.
Chane got to her feet, transformed from the sleepy and dishevelled woman he had awoken into an apparition of regal beauty, her robes shimmering, her slender figure tall and graceful, and her expression serene.
And that, he thought. He needed her for that. Her beauty often gave pause to visitors, once they had got over the surprise that a woman was even present, and an unveiled one at that. Not that Agang ever allowed her to leave his quarters, unless on an escorted trip to see some of the other Holdings slaves in the citadel, when she would be fully covered head to toe. Only here in his rooms would he let her be seen, and the rumour of the stunning foreign slave serving his desires helped enhance his reputation among the common folk in the town.
The door opened and Hodang Tipoe entered, a pale middle-aged man.
‘My lord,’ he said, bowing as a guard closed the door behind him. His eyes flickered over to Chane, and she gave him a knowing smile.
‘I know what you’re both thinking,’ Agang said, as he walked to a large table at the end of the room. ‘You’re asking yourself what, after we stayed up half the night studying the plan, we could possibly learn by going through it one more time.’
‘I do have rather a lot on today, my lord,’ Hodang said, ‘what with two dozen allied chiefs arriving this afternoon.’
‘I won’t keep you long,’ Agang said. He unfolded a large map, and his thoughts went back to Chane. Another thing he needed her for. She was a gifted map-maker, and had drafted many copies of maps of the Holdings, Sanang, and the Plateau for him. She had also trained some of his best scouts in the art, and together they had created what he believed to be the only collection of accurate maps that existed in the entire country.
The two people he trusted most gathered at his shoulder as he set the map down, smoothing its edges on the table-top.
‘Let’s start with the setting-off points for the regiments, and the provisioning along their routes.’
He heard a soft sigh behind him, and a smile touched his lips.
Muffled and distant, the drums and cheering began.
Hodang glanced up at Agang and nodded.
In the great feasting room of his hall, decorated with garlands of fresh flowers on every table, Agang sat on the raised throne, trying not to fidget. This was the part he hated. Not the meetings, not the confrontations, but the waiting.
‘Drummed in by the third regiment, my lord,’ Hodang said from below his shoulder, pitching his voice so that only Agang could hear. ‘All the folk of Broadwater are lining the streets, all the way up River Road, thronging the kerbside, cheering and celebrating the arrival of the war-chiefs, who have come to make council on Summer’s Day with the great and mighty Agang Garo, Lord of the Beechwoods and Master of Broadwater, commander of eight thousands swords.’
Agang grinned at his friend’s words. Dispensing flattery was a traditional role of the chief minister, and Hodang did it well, skirting the edge of irony. He caught the eye of his nephew Echtang Gabo, who was standing next to his older brother a few steps below the level of Agang’s throne. He flattened his smile into something more appropriate and nodded at the boy. He noticed a door open to his right, and Mandalecht Naro, the one-eyed commander of the two regiments of soldiers garrisoned in the town, strode into the hall. He bowed low in front of Agang, then took up position alongside the others of his inner council on the steps below the throne.
‘By now,’ Hodang continued, whispering up to Agang, ‘the chariots of the allied chiefs will be reaching Castle Road, where they will dismount and be escorted by the fourth regiment up to the citadel, where the great lord awaits his guests. The war-chiefs, who are more used to hamlets and hovels, will no doubt be gawking in stupefied awe at the mighty works of the great Agang, to have built such a city, the likes of which have not been seen in Sanang since the days of the accursed Seulitch.’
Agang felt a surge of pride. The words might be ingratiating, but they were still true.
‘Home to five thousand souls,’ Hodang went on, his voice a mesmerising whisper, ‘a population exceeding ten times that of its nearest rival. And a place of law, order, and civilisation, eked out of the forest by Agang the Enlightened One, the Protector, who guards the common folk. The wonders brought into being by the Master of Broadwater are thought incredible by those who have not witnessed them, a school for the sons of the common workers, an infirmary for the sick, temples for the pious, a courthouse and jail to shield the people from wickedness, and to administer justice to the lawless robbers that haunt the forest. A training ground for the renowned army of Agang, a forge to make steel weapons, a market where all-comers may safely and fairly trade their goods, and the high citadel, where the Lord and Master sits.’
Agang could no longer tell the difference between flattery and the truth.
‘The allied chiefs ascend Castle Road on foot, past the exposed bodies of crucified bandits, two hundred captured from a recent raid into the forest, for such is the grim determination of the Lord Agang to rid Sanang of outlaws, that he will not rest until all the lands within his wide reach are free to walk without menace.’
Agang knew that wasn’t entirely true. The town jail had been emptied to bring the number of executions up to two hundred. Still, the effect of the scene was impressive. A hundred crucifixions on either side of the road, all the way up the slope to the g
ates of the citadel. He hoped a few were still alive, groaning out their death agonies.
‘At last the chiefs set eyes upon the great hall, a tower, a bastion, the largest and most wondrous building in all Sanang. Within awaits the Summer’s Day celebration in the great feasting room, for all the war-chiefs and the nobles of Broadwater, and the Lord and Master himself in person. After the feast lies the hard business of politics for the chiefs and their lord, but until then, let the old grudges be forgotten. The men of Sanang shall drink, and feast, and smoke together.’
The great doors of the hall swung open, and a gust of noise from outside billowed in, shouts of welcome mixed with the cries of the crucified. A crowd was in the doorway, and Agang could see it stretching all the way through the citadel, and down Castle Road. At its head were the allied chiefs, two dozen of the most powerful lords and leaders of Sanang.
Hodang Tipoe faced the crowd, and spread out his arms.
‘The great Agang Garo, Master of Broadwater and High Chief of Sanang, welcomes you to his hall, and bids you to feast.’
‘We all know,’ B’Dang D’Bang said, waving his stick of dreamweed at the other chiefs gathered in the council chamber, ‘that Lord Agang has only ever won a single battle, despite the hero-worship heaped on him by the peasants. Indeed, so pleased was he with his victory, that he built his little town upon the battlefield.’
There were a few laughs at the little town remark. Agang remained passive, sitting at the high table with his closest advisors, while the war-chiefs filled the benches before him. Most had brought in their drinks and narcotics from the feasting room once the banquet had ended, and many were already intoxicated.
‘If I were in charge,’ B’Dang went on, ‘I’d gather all of our forces, and lead the greatest assault ever seen, upon the Wall of the Holdings.’
Drechtan Goe, a warlord from the west, snorted. ‘And get slaughtered like last time? I thank the gods daily that you are not in charge.’
The Magelands Box Set Page 46
