SHIANG

by C. F. Iggulden

  As Tellius watched, Regis clapped Hondo on the shoulder.

  ‘You kept them busy while we gathered, sir,’ he said. ‘The house of Regis thanks you. Well done.’

  Regis brushed past them all. His moustache seemed to jut further forward in his eagerness to reach the enemy. When he turned and filled his chest with air, Tellius put one hand over an ear.

  ‘Regis! On me, Regis!’ the man bellowed.

  His voice was like a crack of thunder close to, and his men pressed in around him. Every one was of powerful frame and many of them had the same auburn hair and pale, freckled skin, as if they were cousins or bastards of the lord they followed. Tellius turned from them as Regis bellowed instructions.

  ‘Can you go in again, Master Hondo?’ Tellius said. ‘I would not ask, but the shield and the De Guise sword are the greatest weapons of the city. If they fail, we all go down.’

  ‘If you order it, I can fight,’ Hondo said.

  Tellius saw the acceptance of death in the eyes of the other man. He said nothing for a moment as he failed to find words. In the end, he merely nodded.

  ‘I put your companion in the last set of armour, the one we call the patchwork. It isn’t as fast as the others, but I thought, with him in it …’

  ‘Yes. Bosin is a fearsome opponent,’ Hondo said. He looked up at the armoured green giant standing behind Tellius. ‘Can he hear me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tellius said.

  Hondo bowed his head in reply. The effort to speak clearly cost him, each word wrenched from ruin.

  ‘Master Bosin, Je is dead, gone to join his brother. You and I alone remain. And … and I am sorry for what we did to you.’

  The gaze of the green and grey armour was like glass as Hondo stood before it. Regis was already moving and Lord De Guise had swung across to join him. Tellius could not wait any longer.

  ‘Galen! Take Lady Sallet out of danger,’ he said.

  Lady Sallet snapped her head around.

  ‘Captain Galen will do no such thing,’ she said.

  ‘He will, Win, because you need to live through this. Who else can … counsel the king? Go with him, please.’

  He heard his love swear under her breath and almost smiled. If Lady Sallet refused, he would not go in with the others, but instead remain at her side.

  ‘My lady?’ Galen said.

  He and Tellius had discussed any number of scenarios over the previous months, ever since the Forza prophecy. One was simply what might happen if Tellius feared Lady Sallet would be killed, when there was a threat so great he thought they would not win against it. He had made Galen swear he would disobey her orders in that event, that he would risk his own neck and smash his career to pieces rather than allow her to be hurt. In that, he and Galen were in perfect accord.

  Lady Sallet saw the determination in Galen’s face and understood what it meant.

  ‘I will not go far, Tellius,’ she said firmly. ‘Just out of this crossroads and up to the roof of one of the buildings. Do not presume further on my good will.’

  Galen waited for Tellius to nod in agreement, which would cost the man later, if they survived. Tellius saluted with the sword he held, bowing slightly to her as she walked through the ranks of men, her head held high.

  ‘Good man,’ Regis called back to him. ‘Keeping the lady safe. Geese and I have the measure of these three.’

  Tellius blanched, hoping Win hadn’t heard that bit.

  ‘Sallet guards!’ Tellius called. ‘Advance on those three men. Ready guns for step volleys. We will advance on my mark and hold position at the boundary of the yard while Regis and De Guise engage the enemy. On my mark! Advance!’

  A hundred green-coated men tramped forward towards the Bracken estate. Alongside them came Regis soldiers in red and De Guise in black and grey. They approached the strewn rubble and bodies around the Bracken estate yard, while flame poured like liquid from every window, lighting the night. Huge cracks had appeared across the front of the house, showing gold within. It looked like it could fall at any moment.

  The three men who stood watching all their preparations seemed unafraid, for all an entire army had come to that place to destroy them. Tellius marched with Hondo on one side and Bosin’s massive steps shaking the ground on the other. Tellius carried the sword his brother had worn and that was an intimacy of a sort. He swept the air with it as he walked. If there was the slightest chance to bury the thing in the neck of one of the three men who threatened everything he loved, he would take it.

  Regis rather enjoyed the company of De Guise. The chap admired him, which was always gratifying. Young dog, looking to the old one for how to bark, sort of thing. The current head of the De Guise family was twenty-two and was delighted by the world he’d found around him. Of course, in private, Regis thought the man he called ‘Geese’ was as ruthless a killer as his father had been. The line ran true, as it had to when it came to the Twelve Families. They had not floated gently to the top of a city like Darien by feeding orphans and whatnot. No. Regis and De Guise had been two of the twelve founders of the city on the river, so it was said. According to the family records, the first men of that name had been friends for thirty years. Perhaps that sort of thing meant nothing to some, but Lord Regis believed in tradition as an almost holy thing. In time of war, when a De Guise called, a Regis always answered – and vice versa. He could never have been the first to let the side down, after Goddess knew how many centuries. That sort of infamy survived a fellow. Far longer than bothering other men’s wives, or arranging murders. Being shy in the face of a threat was about the worst thing Regis could imagine.

  ‘These are tricky sods, as I heard it,’ he called behind. ‘I’ll be ready to block whatever they throw, Geese. Use me as cover and take one of them off his heels. Dealer’s choice which one.’

  He felt the younger man’s hand rest on his shoulder and they went forward as a pair, with the long red shield held before them. It gleamed as if alive, shining with the colour of war, rage and blood. Regis did wear a sword, but the shield was his first care and greatest weapon. He hadn’t even drawn a blade and didn’t expect to.

  ‘Company in good order!’ Regis bellowed. He’d always had a fine voice for the field. In that place, it echoed back from the houses around the crossroads. ‘Now do keep up, lads. I can’t do everything.’

  His men grinned as they readied weapons and shields of their own. Regis was utterly against the idea of the common citizens of Darien being armed with the new pistols. That did not mean he rejected their use. Each of his lads carried two guns in a belt or in holsters, as well as sword, shield and dagger. Most wore mail or limited armour that protected chest, back and neck and left the arms and legs free to move quickly. They clanked as they ran. Regis chuckled at the sound. He saw the three interlopers cease their private chat and turn to face the threat.

  ‘Ready, Regis! Ready, De Guise!’ he roared at them. ‘Clear shots only, gentlemen. If you can’t see the enemy, don’t take the shot. Do not shoot me in the back.’ They’d lost a few men in training before that rule was well established, unfortunately.

  Regis raised his shield a little higher as he went forward. The three men didn’t look like much, he thought. Yet he could see the broken remains of two Sallet Greens lying on the rubble, one of them in pieces. For all he’d always disliked those green monsters, it was hard to imagine anything that could take them down.

  ‘Ready, Geese?’ he said over his shoulder.

  One of the three was gesturing to the green armour, as if … Regis swore. Limbs or panels of green metal were rising into the air, spinning in silence with a cloud of rubble.

  ‘Hit him, Geese!’ Regis yelled.

  A hail of metal and stone accelerated towards their advancing line. Regis sensed the crack in the air as De Guise did whatever he did to trigger his black sword. He roared as the leader of the three was smacked flat by the impact. Rubble and armour dropped as if strings had been cut. Only a few rattled against the Regis l
ines.

  ‘I can do this all day, son!’ Regis yelled. ‘Gunners! Supporting fire!’

  He held position as the ranks of guns swept up, rather than risk wandering across the line of fire from those behind. It was unnerving, even so. The thought that just one of his men with a grudge would mean being killed or crippled always crossed his mind and made him sweat, though he did not show it. A nobleman had to lead, his father had always said – and a leader had no fear, no weaknesses. No crisis of faith in the middle of a battle. Regis could imagine the old man’s derision all too easily. He had experienced it many times before putting him in the cold ground.

  The front rank knelt to fire, so that bullets poured out in a rolling hail from two ranks. They swept the Bracken yard with shot. Grey smoke billowed, making De Guise curse.

  ‘Stop shooting! Hold position!’

  With only three targets, the young lord cursed the smoke that drifted across. He needed to be able to see, to hit. De Guise caught a glimpse of a shadow and stepped out of the cover of the shield with his sword held straight before him. Something black and impossibly fast smashed across the yard from that blade, as if an eclipse had sprung out in a single line. Rubble sprayed into the air and then the young lord De Guise sensed someone standing by his shoulder. He began to turn, but Gabriel cut his throat in one swift move. The De Guise sword fell to the stones with a clang that reverberated a long way.

  Regis turned in shock. They moved so fast! He was still bringing his shield round as the man flickered his sword out to kill again. The Regis shield rang like a bell, but Gabriel vanished backwards and Regis was up and after him in an instant. He’d known what would happen – the shield reflected blows, doubling their force. No normal swordsman could … He felt the air thicken around him, so that suddenly the sounds of the yard died away. Sound was carried on air, he remembered weakly. When the air became still, it was as if the entire city had been muffled. He tried to turn the shield to face the furious mage coming slowly closer, but he was held like a fly in grease, for all he struggled.

  Thomas dragged one leg, where it had been broken. The pain and sense of sickness was appalling, but he recognised the shield-bearer and swordsman as the main dangers in that place. Gabriel had been sent tumbling and some sort of black bar had knocked Thomas head over heels into rubble. He’d seen his ankle catch and his leg twist until it snapped. It was not even a clean break. Shards of bone were already poking through to the surface and blood leaked in spots along his shin. He needed Gabriel to heal him quickly before the pain made him pass out.

  Thomas saw the Sallet Green coming, turning to it in dismay as it clambered over rubble and bodies to launch itself against him. He saw its panels flashing grey as well as green, and yet it was still horribly, sickeningly fast, like a spider that could jump.

  As the patchwork Green reached him, it swung a silver sword. Thomas dropped his control of the red shield to protect himself, thickening the air so that the monster was trapped and held. His leg was jolted by the turn so that it sent a fresh spike of agony, like white light through him. He felt dazed and ill, but they would not let him rest. With a grunt, he began to turn the flickering grey head slowly round as if he held it in a vice, waiting for the crack.

  23

  Patchwork

  Marias walked the path the others had taken since coming through the gate. She saw the bodies of thousands of crows littering the street, with children picking them up in armfuls and dogs fighting over them. Some of the golden animals wagged their tails as Marias passed by with Lord Ran and the Fool. It was not hard to know where to go. As darkness descended on the city, Marias could hear gunfire down one street and see the light of a burning house. Thick orange embers floated through the air and householders were already throwing buckets of water onto doors and roofs wherever she looked. They were a determined people, she thought.

  ‘You said it was just to look, Marias, remember?’ Lord Ran wheedled, sniffing.

  He had been offered a sword by the woman who had given them tea. He held it awkwardly, an archaic-looking thing with a curved blade, more suited to hanging above a fire in a tavern than actual use. The Lord of Trade in Shiang still clutched his blanket around his shoulders with his other hand and rubbed a dripping nose. Marias did not answer him. She wanted to see Taeshin again, even if it was to watch him die, even if she would die herself in that moment. She was not sure if what she felt was love, or exhaustion, or just the sense that she was so very far from home and would not see it again. Yet she knew she could not just watch Taeshin snuffed out for ever and go back to whatever life she had waiting. She would not be sold again, not in Darien. The woman who had given them tea had confirmed that much. Marias knew she could find work, but she hadn’t crossed mountains simply to wash clothes or scrub floors in a strange city. She’d come to see that Taeshin survived, no matter what the cost.

  Despite the darkness, the street was thick with soldiers, talking and laughing together, secure in the knowledge that some other poor sods were in the thick of it at that moment. Armed men in a dozen different colours blocked the road. Marias saw two officers almost come to blows as they argued over the order of march. With Lord Ran and the Fool in tow, she took alleyways around two of the closed positions, working always towards the cracks of gunfire and flickering lights. No one questioned them. The soldiers had no orders to stop those behind coming through. Unnoticed, the three of them slid along walls and twice through a tavern, excusing themselves as they went. The Fool beamed the whole time and something about him calmed what angry glances came their way.

  Marias held her hand to her mouth as she saw massed ranks across the road ahead, made black against the glow of forty windows, all hissing flame. In that destructive light, dark figures lunged and struck, too fast for the eye to follow, so that they seemed to flicker. She had reached the heart of it, and the city trembled around her, with good reason.

  She jumped as another fusillade of shots rang out, followed by furious orders to hold fire. Smoke rolled over broken stones and dead men, obscuring the open ground. At her side, Lord Ran sniffed miserably once more. When she went to go closer, he put his arm across her chest, thin and weakened by fever as he was.

  ‘You said you only wanted to look! Whoever he was to you, he’s gone. You can see that now, surely?’

  ‘Take your hand off me, Ruin,’ she said, using the name she’d heard on the docks of Shiang. ‘You said he can’t kill me.’

  ‘I meant … don’t!’ he said, but she was moving towards the flame-light before he could grab her.

  The Fool looked back at him and smiled, following Marias. Lord Ran rubbed his nose hard, almost angrily, then stepped back, leaning against a wall in shadow. He knew the Returners rather better than most. He would not have gone into that maelstrom for a crown and an estate on the river.

  Regis gasped as he found he could breathe again, recovering slowly. The air had been like porcelain in his throat. It was not that he’d been choked, but that he hadn’t been able to move his lungs at all. He knew he had begun to die in the first moments, and to feel that awful constriction shatter to pieces around him was almost an ecstasy. He heaved in breath after ragged breath, but as he did so, he could see the Sallet Green being held in place in the same way. Panels flickered grey amidst the green and the thing clawed the air, trying and failing to reach its tormentor.

  Regis didn’t want to face a man who could thicken air into something he could not breathe. He had never known such helplessness in his entire life and the prospect of encountering it again was hard. He thought of his father’s scorn then and grinned weakly. Perhaps it helped to imagine that. The old devil had never found much to praise in his son, except when he battered one of the guards unconscious in training.

  Regis stood up and raised the red shield. Smoke drifting thick all around, two threats nearby – Goddess alone knew where the third had gone. The one before him stood on a broken leg and was the weaker of the two he’d engaged. The one the shield had se
nt flying moved like a damned hummingbird – and he had killed Geese. Regis heard himself growl and shook himself.

  He had built a frame of muscle and hard bone on the training field and in sparring, every day of his life. He had done so for just such a moment. He raced forward, driving on with the red shield held before him. Most men thought of a shield only in defence, to hold a line or fend off an enraged enemy. Yet when the thing reflected and magnified impacts on its polished surface, it brought an entirely different effect to the battlefield. Regis was a heavy man, with powerful legs. He drove himself to accelerate, running at an enemy who could steal even breath.

  Thomas was engrossed in his torture of the patchwork armoured figure. He’d already crumpled one of them that day – and broken the neck of another. Of all the Returners, he was the most experienced in dealing with the armoured green things. He had the patchwork figure up on its toes as he strained to break its grip on life. This one seemed to resist with greater strength, so that Thomas had to focus and double his effort.

  He raised one hand and slowly turned it, as if he held a lever only he could see. With satisfaction, he heard a grunt from the warrior inside as the strain made his neck creak. The stillness in the air spread around the green and grey armour hanging in his grasp.

  With no warning, Thomas heard running steps and caught a flash of red coming at him. He let the Sallet Green drop and tried to duck, expecting a sword blow. Yet his broken leg betrayed him and Regis hammered the red shield into him at a sprint, the lord’s shoulder braced against the inner curve. Thomas flew back with a clang, tumbling over the rubble with his broken leg flopping horribly. When he lay still, he was on his back and he took a breath only to scream.