Curt Benjamin - [Seven Brothers 03] - The Gates of Heaven

by Curt Benjamin

  Llesho’s heavenly ancestors, some said, had come down from those mountains to explore their handiwork and had stayed to aid and guide the people they found struggling at the foot of their great mountains. With their breath they gave the Thebin people the power to breathe the thin air. With their thumbs they created the great passes to the west in the mountains. Then they bid their people build a great Golden City and in it two towers, one to the Goddess, whose sign was the moon, and the other to recognize the earthy power of the sun.

  When it was done, the king withdrew into his earthy palace and called the caravans for trade. The queen took her place among the priests in the temple built for her use, from where she might travel between the realms of heaven and earth. They had the mountains to protect them and the gaze of heaven to fill their hearts with joy. And they had no need of walls.

  As a child in the palace, Llesho had been too young to sort fact from legend in the tales. His experiences since leaving Pearl Island gave him cause to wonder even now where that line should fall—or if there should be any line at all. Facing that hideous wall the Harn had forced his people to build around the fading Golden City, however, a baleful anger stirred in him for the crimes the Uulgar raiders had committed against his people and against the realm precious to the Great Goddess.

  For himself that wall seemed not the devastation of his home but the setting before him of one more test. Another obstacle stood between him and the heavenly gardens that called him more powerfully than his city or his brothers or any earthly conquests. This time he was ready, with all his armies about him.

  By some magic of his own, Master Den had provided yet again the appropriate wear for a king of Thebin going to war. Llesho had set the silver fillet of the king on his head and donned not his embroidered court coats, but genuine Thebin armor, the grown version of the child’s armor that he had worn on parade before the Harn had taken all that away—the good and the bad. The armor was as uncomfortable as he remembered—a big part of the bad, that. The plates across his chest didn’t shine as gloriously as Shou’s, but those among his own people who had survived from before the raiders would recognize the challenge in the very fact he wore it.

  As Llesho had hoped, word of rescue arriving in such numbers followed them through the dry and seemingly empty lands of abandoned farms and desolate villages. Thebin bandits and freedom fighters alike crept out of hiding to join them. Women and children, refugees all, fell in with the armies. They lacked the skills of a trained army, and their numbers made scarcely a ripple among Llesho’s forces, but they were by their very presence symbols of the new resolve to take Thebin back from their oppressors in the name of their rightful king.

  By the plan he had worked out with Ghrisz, the armies under Llesho’s command marched nearly to the gates of the city in five long columns, each four soldiers across. When they had come close enough to read the grain in the wood that barred the gates, the first rank of kings and princes, gods and noble generals, with Llesho at their head, stopped. Their forces in the many uniforms of their own nations gathered with measured march around them, filling the whole expanse of land that opened out from the unwel coming wall surrounding the city.

  The raiders were cowards, preferring to make war on the unsuspecting. When the full reality of fifty thousand armed troops massed against them became more widely known the garrison would tremble with dread. Shokar had hoped that the display of might alone would bring the raiders to the point of surrender. Adar had expressed his doubts. He’d spent time as a prisoner of Markko’s lieutenant and had seen firsthand the more urgent fear of their leader that kept the Uulgar clans facing forward. Llesho had seen that for himself in the South, when terror of their master had pushed Lord Yueh’s men across the Golden Dragon Bridge that had been no bridge at all but a fierce and wily dragon.

  Noise and a great show of ferocity would certainly weaken the raiders’ resolve, Adar had conceded. Like any cornered beast, they might leap in unpredictable directions when pressed between their own deadly master and the forces arrayed against them. But leap they surely would. And so in the full light of Great Sun high overhead, they rode up to the gate under the watchful eyes of the captive city.

  They were not surprised when a general of imposing stature, his chest decorated with locks of hair taken from his many victims, addressed them from the lookout post above the gate. “Take your rabble and go!” he said, “before my Master of the Crows has you for lunch!”

  Llesho figured he meant Master Markko, who had poisoned the Uulgar khan and fed his body to a flock of crows which had themselves died in a great stinking blanket of soot-colored birds.

  “My rabble has no intention of leaving until your wall is torn down and Kungol is returned to its rightful king,” Llesho answered him. “Tell your master that the lost king of Thebin has returned to reclaim the throne for his people. Open these gates and lay down your arms, or suffer the consequences.”

  “Thebin has no king,” the general jeered. “The old king died on his knees, which is what the people of Thebin do best!”

  Llesho wasn’t sure if he meant the dying part or the kneeling part. Ghrisz had run them a merry race, however, something the Harnishman doubtless knew.

  The general continued his bombast: “That’s why Kungol is ruled by a khan more powerful than any mortal man!”

  Llesho didn’t let his anger show, but made his claim in a loud, clear voice: “Tell your master that the holy king of the Kungol people has returned. With him comes the emperor of Shan with his armies and the khans of the Qubal and the Tinglut with their armies and the Daughters of the Sword from Bithynia and the Gansau Wastrels out of legend. Tell him the mortal gods are knocking at his door, and the gods would see justice!”

  The Harnish did not recognize the mortal gods, but one name among them must shake even these hardened warriors. “Tell Master Markko that the mortal goddess of war has ridden against him. Tell him she seeks satisfaction for deaths in the South and for the terrible end of all things he draws down upon all our heads. His armies will find only disaster on this field.”

  At mention of the mortal goddess of war, the man looked out over their company with a disdainful sneer. He drew a breath to sharpen the cut of his next insult, when his eyes lit upon the Lady SienMa. Llesho turned his eyes also to the lady. Terrible judgment set her icy white features in chiseled lines of marble, nothing living but the death in her eyes. The general trembled so that his sword knocked against the thick plaster of the wall behind which he hid.

  “You think your master has terrified you with wonders,” Llesho said, and raised his hand. “You have not seen wonders yet.”

  Master Den had slipped from the bare back of Marmer Sea Dragon, who had carried him in the form of Bluebell the giant horse. At Llesho’s signal, the dragon took his natural form, rising in flight above the combined armies in a spiral of coils the color of a stormy sea. Higher and higher he rose, until he could be plainly seen inside the city walls. Then, with an elegant snap of his tail, he straightened to his full length. Without leaving his place at the northern gate his head looked down on the unbroken southern wall.

  Llesho could hear voices from within the city walls rising in terror like the rumble of a storm. From his own troops there came not a sound or a stirring from their places. Marmer Sea Dragon had shown himself to the combined armies as part of field training so his monstrous appearance came as no surprise to them. It helped knowing the dragon-king was on their side, of course, but the Harnish general had no such comfort. He turned a shade of green that rivaled the dragon’s scales and disappeared. A moment later a Thebin prisoner showed his face above the gate, no less terrified than the guard who commanded him. A little smile of triumph fought its way to his lips in spite of his fear. Dragons certainly made convincing allies.

  “They want to know if you can make it go away.”

  Marmer Sea Dragon had made a lazy circle around the city, so that he faced back the way he had come. That was part of the pla
n, too. Llesho held his spear up over his head, so that the bladed head pointed skyward. He willed blue flame to shudder along its length. The flame arced overhead, snapping like lightning in the clear blue sky. The man fell back as the guard had done, but the dragon-king had seen the signal.

  With a deep, powerful stroke of his wings, Marmer Sea Dragon lifted higher still in the air, until he was no larger, to the eye, than a butterfly. Then, as swiftly as a streak of lightning, he was gone, heading south. He would travel by magical routes to gather the other three worms promised in Menar’s prophecy. Pearl Bay Dragon, Golden River Dragon, and Dun Dragon would return with him for the great battle with the demon for the gates of heaven. The taking of Kungol belonged to humans and their mortal gods.

  The crack of light from his spear had been a signal to his troops as well. As they had agreed, the Daughters of the Sword divided into two columns, one heading east, one west to encircle the city in preparation for attack. Mergen-Khan’s Qubal warriors did the same, matching the women warriors pace for pace. If the Apadisha’s daughter decided to take on the winner in the coming battle, with Kungol her prize, Llesho had wanted his closest ally watching over her shoulder.

  Closest save one. Llesho sheathed his spear and returned to the army he had come to see as his own. The emperor of Shan had led his forces from the heart of the empire across half the world to aid him in his quest. Now he would buy Llesho time—for his armies to get in place, and for Llesho himself to enter the city in secret by the hidden tunnels that Ghrisz had shown him. If they were very lucky, he might divert slaughter yet.

  “Tell your general to come out,” he shouted to the Thebin captive at the gate. “My champion challenges fair duel for your gate.”

  At that, and by agreement, Shou marched his great war steed forward. He had changed his sword for a long spear, but his armor shone as it had when Llesho had first met him on the field of battle on the outskirts of Shan Province.

  “Come down and fight, or be ever called a coward!” To emphasize the call to single combat he struck a shivering blow against the gate, which shook under his assault.

  In council, Shou had protested the archaic call to arms. “Why don’t I just set fire to the gate?” he’d said, “If they don’t come out to put out the flames, we can walk in through the ashes when it’s done.”

  “It’s not just about one battle,” Menar had explained. As a poet he knew about such things. “We need the people inside the wall, who have been oppressed all these season by the Harn, to believe they have a chance to win if they fight. For that, we need to put legend to work in our cause.”

  “Then you need a legend to make your challenge,” Shou had protested further.

  Only ChiChu, the trickster god, had the nerve to laugh at that. “You are a legend; that’s why it must be you!”

  In all the faces around that map-spread table he had found no dissenting voice. And so Shou pounded on the well-made gate, drawing the attention of all who might view him from above, while Llesho faded quietly into the ranks, where he slid off his horse and quickly shed the armor that had already done its duty. Immediately his cadre surrounded him at the center of a protective circle of Imperial Guardsmen disguised in uniforms of a less prestigious service. They didn’t want to call attention to the very figure they were trying to protect. Well accustomed to spycraft, Llesho slipped from his place at the center of the crowd to one off to the side where Bixei waited for him with a change of coat.

  “Master Den usually sees to my wardrobe.” Free of the heavy chest plate, Llesho rotated his shoulders in a few tight circles and took his first deep breath of the day. He had only a moment to enjoy his freedom before he slipped the short spear in its sheath over his shoulder and plunged his arms into the rough hooded coat.

  “And you’ll need this.” Bixei handed him a small bag that held a few herbs for tea and the jade marriage cup that almost matched the poisoned one of the Lady Chaiujin. It was a rare treasure to use as a wayfare cup, but he didn’t think the demon-king would have much experience with such things. With a nod of thanks he looped the bag over his belt, next to the sheath that held his Thebin knife. He kept the circlet of silver—he would need it in his confrontation with Master Markko—but he pulled the hood low over his brow. The coat would hide his identity as well as the weapon while they made their way to the Palace of the Sun, where Master Markko had set up his own evil court.

  Around them, soldiers were moving out. “Are we ready?” Kaydu glided up beside him. Prince Tayyichiut had stayed behind when his uncle the khan had led his troops into position and he fell in line with Llesho’s cadre as if he had always been there, which seemed to suit them all.

  Llesho nodded. “Adar agreed to stay with Lluka, since his madness is growing.” That was no surprise. Lluka now traveled bound so that he didn’t hurt himself. Soon they would have to muffle his voice as well, or risk unnerving their own troops.

  “Balar wished to stay with Menar to study the prophecy in greater depth,” Kaydu reported. “Musician to poet, he said.”

  “And Little Brother?” Llesho asked. The monkey usually rode with the troops to battle, in a sling that hung from Kaydu’s saddle. “With us as always,” she said. “He is looking forward to seeing Master Markko fall almost as much as we are.”

  He seemed to have fooled his cadre, who gave no sign of any suspicion that his own battles would be longer, and lonelier, than he had reported to his council of war.

  “Shokar will lead our Thebin forces,” Kaydu added. “They’ll be entering the city by the escape routes hidden along the wall, so we’ll have reinforcements if we need them. All you have to do is not get killed.”

  “Sarcasm,” he noted with a twist of his mouth. “I guess we’re ready then.”

  Joining the crowd in apparent aimless wandering, the cadre with Llesho at its head worked its way closer to the wall, nearer to the hidden entrance that Ghrisz had sketched with a finger against a map. As Ghrisz had predicted, the guards on the city wall had gathered with drawn bows to watch the emperor of Shan challenge their general in single combat. They would expect the attack to come from the armies gathered below as soon as Shou abandoned his taunts and disappeared again into his own lines. Safe, as they must think, behind their defenses, they would assume the armies surrounding them intended a siege. And so they didn’t notice when small groups of soldiers stationed here and there along the wall began disappearing inside.

  Shokar led his troops, including two hands of Gansau Wastrels with him to represent the Dinha, to the northwest ern corner of the city where resistance fighters in Ghrisz’s command waited to sneak them in through a secret passage in the wall there. Llesho turned to the northeast. With his cadre, under Bixei’s command, came a small band of mercenaries disguised in Harnish dress. They had pledged to regain their honor, lost, they believed, with the fall of Kungol. Their clan had sworn to defend the palace all those seasons ago and they meant to make good on that promise by recapturing it now.

  Five thousand out of their fifty thousand in all found their assigned places along the wall, where Ghrisz’s spies waited to sneak them into the city. Each band had its assigned task. And Llesho had his. Ghrisz hadn’t wanted to risk Thebin’s young king in the fighting but there hadn’t been time for a debate: Llesho pulled rank.

  His brother was waiting for them in the tunnels that riddled the Harnish wall. When the panel hiding the secret entrance slid out of the way, Bixei led his small band into the darkness, first to die if they had been betrayed. A ragged beggar with sharp, intelligent eyes waited for them with a torch in his hand. Mgar one of their own waiting to guide his brothers into the city. Llesho greeted him with a quick tilt of his chin.

  “This way,” Mgar instructed, and started moving the mercenary guardsmen farther down the tunnel.

  Other resistance fighters waited with their own torches until they were all hidden inside the wall with Stipes the last to protect their backs. Someone in the dark slid the panel back in place, and
Ghrisz stepped out of the shadows. He wore the usual castoffs that marked the oppressed population, disguise perhaps, though Llesho wasn’t clear if the resistance had any better clothes if they had wanted them. Years of Harnish rule had been hard on all the people in the city, not least the oldest of her seven princes.

  “We won’t be entering the city here,” Ghrisz said, and gestured for them to follow him. “We have tunnels that can get you closer to the magician. Or to one of our hideouts, if you’ve changed your mind. We can protect you there until the fighting is over—”

  “You know that won’t work,” Llesho reminded him. “Somebody has to take on Master Markko. I’ve survived against him before, I can do it again.”

  “And what makes you think he won’t kill you this time? I thought that was the point, at the end of the day? To kill a prince as a blood sacrifice to his demon lord?”

  Llesho said nothing about the poisoned cup he carried in the spell-box hidden on his knife. Now that he had met the demon, he had begun to doubt that any of their plans would work against it. He didn’t think his brother would appreciate the only answer he had to give, though—that his life belonged to his Goddess to save or not as she pleased. He thought she might, this time. More importantly, he thought they would all die and their worlds with them if he didn’t succeed.

  He said none of this, but Ghrisz must have seen some of his determination in the flicker of torchlight.

  “All right.” He let out a disgusted sigh. “You’ll want the raiders to have their eyes turned outward tonight. Your champion can’t beat his chest all day out there. I assume you have your diversions as planned?”

  “A full-scale attack on the outside of the wall will come soon.” As the cadre’s captain, Kaydu answered for them. “Shokar is bringing his forces into the city through the tunnels. When the raiders are fully engaged with the siege forces outside, we’ll spring the trap. Shokar will take the gate and let in the army that will be waiting to enter on his signal.”