The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  ‘Go!’ Bakkara shouted at Xejen, and then he turned and ran, following the other soldier.

  Xejen and Mishani stood together under the awning, the rain splattering off it and onto the cobbles. Bakkara did not look back. Xejen seemed momentarily bereft of direction. Mishani, noting his expression, guessed that things would be different if they managed to weather this battle. Bakkara, without even intending to, had taken a great step towards becoming the head of the Ais Maraxa, and Xejen had been diminished. It would serve Mishani well.

  ‘We should do as he says,’ Mishani suggested. She surprised herself by how calm she sounded, when all she wanted to do was flee towards what little sanctuary she could find. Bakkara had mentioned the safehouse once before: a small, underground complex of chambers that the Ais Maraxa had discovered while rooting through the usurped Governor’s notes. A retreat where they would be protected from the bombs and shellshot.

  Xejen spat on the ground in frustration and stalked away in the direction they had come. ‘Follow me!’ he said, his long jaw set.

  They hurried through the grim, steep streets of Zila. The tall buildings crowded in on them threateningly as they slipped off the main thoroughfares and through the narrow lanes that ran between the spoke-roads. Flaming rubble had blocked many routes, and some buildings had fire licking from their windows, burning from the inside out. People pushed past them in the other direction. Some of them recognised Xejen. A few pleaded with him, as if he had the power to stop this. He told them to get up on the wall and fight, if they had any pride in their town. They looked at him in confusion and ran on. As far as they were concerned, things were hopeless.

  The analytical part of Mishani’s mind was studying Xejen even through the fear. He was enraged by the turn of events, betrayed by the weakness of the townsfolk and by Bakkara; and yet she saw by his manner that he still had supreme faith in his plan, that no matter how bad it looked the walls of Zila would hold. He cursed as he went, muttering in fury at the sight of men shepherding their families away from the blazing buildings, genuinely unable to believe that they did not see the best way to keep them safe was to fight for their town.

  That was when she realised unequivocably that his belief in his cause had blinded him, and that was why they would be defeated. The Ais Maraxa were dangerous, not only to the Empire but to the Libera Dramach as well. Zaelis had known that from the start. They were a liability, driven by their fervour to act without caution and to stretch themselves beyond their abilities. Fortune had put them in this town at a time when it was ripe to overthrow its inept ruler, but it had not given them the resources or experience to govern it, and certainly not to face two very competent Baraks and a multitude of war-tested generals.

  She had been working towards a way to resolve this mess in her favour, a route to safety; but events had turned on her too quickly. Where was Zahn? Had he chosen to ignore her message? Gods, did he not realise how important she was to him? If she survived the night, she told herself, she might still have a chance of getting out of Zila alive. If she survived the night.

  She was thinking just that when the mortar bomb struck the building next to her with a deafening roar, and the whole frontage came slumping down into the street.

  It was only Xejen’s perpetually keyed-up reactions that saved her. He had seen the projectile an instant before it hit, and he darted into the open doorway of the building opposite, grabbing the cuff of Mishani’s robe as he went. At the instant she was stunned by the noise and light and the blast of concussion that physically pushed her backwards, she was also pulled hard through the doorway, and she fell over the step as the street where she had just been turned into an avalanche of stone and timber.

  A billow of dust blew into the room, forcing itself into Mishani’s lungs and making her choke. Through tearing eyes she could vaguely make out the shape of Xejen. Then she heard the sound of splitting wood and the terrible, ominous groan of the house all around them. She had barely realised that she had evaded death by a hair’s breadth before she heard something crack overhead, and knew that she had not evaded it at all. Her stomach knotted sickeningly as she heard the last of the beams give, and then the ceiling came in on top of her.

  Bakkara’s blade swept in a high arc, shattering the soldier’s collarbone and almost removing his head. His victim’s grip went loose on the ladder and he fell, crashing onto the men beneath him and dislodging several, who went screaming towards the upturned shields of their companions below. Bakkara and another man got the end of the ladder and pushed away; it swung back, teetered, and then pivoted in a quarter-circle and tipped over, shedding the last of the men on its back as it crashed onto the heads of the troops that assaulted Zila’s southern wall.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he cried in exasperation, racing to where another ladder was already clattering ominously against the parapet. They could have held this position with a tenth of the men attacking it, but there was barely even that. It was all the defenders could do to keep the troops from getting over the wall. In the back of his mind, he noted that Zila’s fire-cannons had gone silent, and the Baraks’ troops attacked fearlessly now.

  It was an Ais Maraxa man who answered him, a soldier as weathered and weary as he. ‘They fled the wall, the cowards,’ he grated. ‘Some to their families, some because they want to surrender. They’ll hide ’till this is through, gods rot them.’

  Bakkara swore. This was a disaster. The townsfolk had all but given up, demoralised utterly by the sight of their homes burning and the apparently overwhelming odds. They could have held out, if they had stayed together. But that required unity and discipline, and Xejen’s ragtag army of peasants had neither.

  He had no time to think further, for he was already at the new ladder, where two Blood Vinaxis men had spilled onto the stone walkway and were running at him. His sword swung up to meet the ill-advised overhead strike of the first, then he stamped on the side of the man’s foot, feeling the joint give under his heel. His enemy shrieked and clutched his ankle reflexively, and Bakkara beheaded him while his guard was down. He slumped to the ground, blood gushing from his severed neck to be washed away by the pouring rain.

  The Ais Maraxa soldier, whose name was Hruji, had despatched his opponent with similar efficiency, and the two of them tipped the ladder back before any others could get to the top.

  Bakkara glanced grimly up and down the wall. There were too few men here, too few. Almost all of them were Ais Maraxa. The peasants had left them to it. In the lantern-light, he saw small clots of soldiers rushing back and forth, desperately engaging the encroaching troops. But the troops were endless, and his men were flagging.

  There were not enough to keep the enemy at bay over such a perimeter.

  ‘Bakkara!’ someone cried, and he turned to see a dishevelled man come racing along the walkway towards him. He knew the face, but memory failed at the name.

  ‘Give me some good news,’ Bakkara warned, but at the man’s expression he knew what news he had to give would certainly not be good.

  ‘They’ve got in through the north gate! They’ve taken the north wall. The peasants are surrendering . . . some are even helping them in the streets up there. Our men are fleeing south, towards the centre.’

  That was it. There was no more time for procrastination.

  ‘We fall back to the keep,’ Bakkara said, the words like ashes in his mouth. ‘The town is lost. Meet at the rally point. We go from there.’

  Hruji and the messenger both saluted and ran to spread the order. Bakkara turned flat eyes to the scorched and damaged building that rose above the burning streets of Zila, and wondered if his decision would do them any good at all, or if he was merely delaying the inevitable. He suspected the latter.

  A moment later, a horn sounded a shrill, clear note that echoed into the battle-tainted night: the signal to give up the wall.

  The retreat was as disorganised as the rest of the defence had been. The Ais Maraxa had been the last to give up their pos
ts, but not all of them were soldiers, and the withdrawal turned into a rout as enemy troops began pouring over the vacated wall and into the town. Booted feet splashed through streets that had turned into shallow rivers of murky water, fearful glances were cast over shoulders at the tide of swords and rifles and armour cresting Zila’s parapets. The Ais Maraxa ran headlong through the glow cast by the street lanterns, flicking from shadow to light and back again, fleeing to gather in a dour square that stood at the crossing of a spoke-road and a side street.

  Bakkara stood at the square’s north end as the ragged fighters poured in from all sides, surveying them bleakly. Their expressions were disbelieving, their faith in their cause tattered. For so long they had worked in secret, and they had thought themselves invincible, righteous crusaders for a cause blessed by the gods. But the moment they had stepped into the light they had been smashed by the power of the Empire. It was a cruel lesson, and Bakkara considered what would become of the Ais Maraxa if they managed to get themselves out of this.

  Now sufficient numbers had crammed into the square for him to call the order to head for the keep. Through the fires of the shellshot that were still bursting all around them, he led the crowd at a run up the steep, cobbled spoke-road that headed towards the looming structure at Zila’s hub. Maybe there they could at least give the enemy pause. New strategies could be mooted, new plans made.

  But who would make them?

  He dashed the rain from his eyes, casting his doubts away as he did so. Regroup and defend. That was the next thing he had to do, and he did not think beyond that. He had never thought beyond his next objective. That was his nature.

  They came to the end of the spoke-road, and it opened out into the great circular plaza that surrounded the keep. Bakkara slowed to a halt, and so did the men who ran with him. The stillness spread backwards, until even those at the rear of the crowd who could not see had ceased jostling, subdued by a dreadful trepidation.

  Ranked before them, at the foot of the keep, were more than a thousand men; double the amount that Bakkara had mustered.

  Bakkara took a breath and assessed the amount of trouble they were in. The space between the Ais Maraxa and the enemy troops was all but empty, a dark, slick expanse of crescent-shaped flagstones. A pair of large fires to their left – where shellshot jelly still burned against the downpour – cast multiple yellow glints across the divide. The troops were a mixture of all the Bloods who had arrayed themselves against the revolt; but he also saw peasants there, townsfolk of Zila, eager to buy their own lives by abetting the invaders. He tried to feel disgust, but he could not. It seemed petty now.

  There above them, on the steps leading to the keep, he picked out the dimly shining Mask of a Weaver. The face of precious metals was an obscenity against the ragged robes that he wore. Bakkara did not need to look up any further to know that the keep had already been breached.

  Men were murmuring in fear behind him. The very thought of facing a Weaver was enough to make them balk. Yet the enemy forces that had scaled the southern wall were catching up to them with every wasted moment. Bakkara sensed that he had to act now, or he would lose them.

  Their lives were forfeit if they were captured. He knew that, with the certainty of a man who had seen war over and over. He also knew that there were worse things than dying.

  ‘Ais Maraxa!’ he roared, his voice carrying over the crowd. It sounded like someone else’s voice, someone else’s words. ‘For Lucia! For Lucia!’

  With that he raised his sword high and cried wordlessly, and as one the men that followed him did the same, their instant of weakness passing at the sound of Lucia’s name, reminded of the faith that had brought them here in the first place. Bakkara’s chest swelled with an emotion so glorious that he could not put a name to it, and he swung his sword forward to point at the enemy who waited to receive them with better weapons, better guns, and greater numbers.

  ‘Attack!’ he bellowed.

  Rifles cracked and swords rang free of their scabbards as the last of the Ais Maraxa surged forward to the death that awaited them, and in his final moments Bakkara knew what it was like to be a leader at last.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  When Nuki’s eye rose over the eastern horizon, it looked down on a very different Zila.

  The Surananyi in Tchom Rin, the rage of the pestilent goddess of the desert at the murder of the Empress, had blown itself out by now, and left the successive mornings with a brittle and crystalline quality. It was such a light that fell across the broken crown of Zila, its rooftops blackened and timbers open to the sky, trailing dozens of streamers of thick smoke into the air where the gentle wind blew them northward. No longer grim and defiant, it was a carcass of its former pride, and those townsfolk that walked its streets went shamefaced and terrified of the consequences of their insurrection.

  Everywhere was the slow, lazy movement of an aftermath, like tired revellers cleaning up after a festival. As the sun climbed to its zenith, camps were being broken and repitched closer to the hill. Some troops were departing altogether, their presence urgently needed elsewhere. Corpses of the shot, impaled or incinerated were cleared away from the foot of the town wall, and a steady stream of carts rolled from the south gate carrying the dead from within.

  The process of restoring order and meting out punishment would not be short. Zila had defied the Empire, and an example had to be made. That was Xejen’s downfall, in the end. He had not accounted for the Baraks’ ruthless determination to keep the status quo in these times. A famine was coming, was already biting at the edges of Saramyr and gnawing its way inward. Society teetered on the brink of chaos. In such a climate, any dissent had to be stamped on as hard as possible. Only with rigid order could the Empire make its way through the hard times ahead. The peasants had to learn that revolution was impossible. And so the high families had assaulted Zila with force far beyond anything Xejen or the townsfolk had expected, caring nothing for the sanctity of non-combatants or the structural damage to one of Saramyr’s most important settlements. If they had not been able to breach the wall, they would have burned Zila to embers or smashed it flat with explosives.

  Rebellion was unacceptable. The people of Zila had learned that now, and they would learn it again and again over the next few weeks. The message would carry. The Empire was inviolable.

  But to the Barak Zahn tu Ikati, it felt like trying to blow life into a cadaver. The Empire, to him, had died long ago. He had been instrumental in the planning of last night’s attack, but his contribution had been emotionless. He did not burn with zeal for the preservation of their way of life like Barak Moshito tu Vinaxis did, or the generals sent by the other high families.

  Yet he had felt that way once. Before Mos usurped the throne, before Anais tu Erinima was killed. Before his daughter died.

  It was midday when he walked from the doors of the scorched keep, down into the plaza where the last of the Ais Maraxa dead were being cleared away, their slack limbs and gaping faces sundered by scabbed wounds. The congealed blood on the crescent flagstones was cooking in the fierce heat, a sticky and sickly-sweet odour that cloyed in the back of the throat. The grey and shattered streets of Zila had dried already, and now they were dusty and quiet, a maze of bright sunlight and harsh black shadow in which cowed men and women skulked and would not meet his eye.

  He was a lean, rangy man, with spare features and pox-pitted cheeks that had become lately gaunt and hollow. His trim, prematurely white beard hid most of it, but not around his eyes, where the toll of his long suffering was easy to see. Over fifty harvests had passed him by, but none had been as hard as the last few. Not since Lucia was lost.

  The moment of their meeting was engraved upon his memory as if it had happened yesterday. He had lived it every day since, recalling over and over the fundamental shift that he had experienced when he first laid eyes on the Aberrant child. Suddenly he had been aware of a level of feeling that he had not known existed, something deeply primal and irresi
stible in force, and he knew then what a man must know when he watches his wife give birth: an overwhelming introduction into the mysteries of the wonderful and terrible bond between parent and child. He saw her, and he knew. Every instinct blared at him at once: she is yours.

  She knew, too. It was in the way she threw her arms around him, and he saw it in those pale eyes, and in the gaze of pure betrayal she gave him as tears welled in them.

  Where were you? they asked, and they tore his heart into pieces.

  The fact that he had not known he had a daughter did not make it any easier for him. Of course, her age and the time of her birth corresponded with the short, tempestuous affair he had conducted with the Blood Empress all those years ago, but then he had known that Anais had still been sleeping with her husband during that period, and when it was announced that she had become pregnant it had simply seemed impossible that it might be his. The idea had occurred to him only briefly, and then been dismissed. If she suspected it was Zahn’s issue, he was certain that she would have either told him, or poisoned it in the womb without ever letting anyone but her physician find out that she was with child. They were the only politically expedient courses of action. When she did neither, Zahn reasoned that it was nothing to do with him: he had already surmounted the bitterness that he had felt when she had broken off their dangerous relationship, and was happy to be out of it now that an heir had become involved. Children were simply something that Zahn had no interest in. Or so he thought.

  But in that instant when they had met, the grief and loss and regret crushed him. He felt like he had abandoned her at birth.

  He had retreated from the Imperial Keep, stunned by what had happened, but he had not intended to retreat for long. He would have confronted Anais, even amid all the civil unrest that was going on at the time, even though he had no proof beyond the simple certainty that he was right. He would have demanded to know why she kept Lucia from him. He would have done all sorts of reckless things, like a hot-headed youth, if Anais and their daughter had not been killed first.