Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  The man was still in full armour. He rose to his feet slowly, and the two of them walked out into the brilliant sunlight.

  Inoques inclined her head.

  “Great Sword,” she said.

  Ippeas returned her greeting. He managed a smile.

  “This is the effect of hunger,” he said. “I’m dreaming that I’m having a pleasant conversation with an Apep-Duat in front of the Cathedral of Light.”

  “Exactly,” Inoques said.

  Kallinikas was crossing the square, walking quickly towards them, her coat open and a plumed hat on her head.

  She raised both hands. “Aranthur,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  Aranthur didn’t bow. “The Vicar.”

  “No violence,” she said. “Listen, Timos. There’s no food. There’s… nothing. We have nothing left. There’s no point in squabbling—”

  “The General will be here soon,” Aranthur said. “Let’s finish as we began, as an army.”

  Kallinikas was so skinny that she looked as if a breeze on her feathered hat might blow her away, but she planted her hands on her hips.

  “Fine. I agree. So go to your troops. I’ll see to it that the Vicar rescinds your arrest. No confrontation.”

  Ippeas nodded. “Sensible.”

  “One shot in anger, and the army will dissolve in chaos,” Kallinikas said.

  Aranthur thought of twenty horses in the hold of the great galley, and an unexplored tier of casks and barrels.

  Oh, Ariadne! he thought. But he was ready to allow his beloved horse to become stew.

  Including the Safians, there were about four thousand mouths to feed. A few horses and some fine foodstuffs wouldn’t even touch their hunger.

  But his own… Another spike of pain in his gut, and he was almost brought to his knees. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.

  “There is no way out,” Kallinikas said. “Unless your General comes, we start dying tomorrow.”

  Inoques smiled. “I think we should just sail away.”

  Kallinikas glared. “Who’s she?”

  Aranthur shook his head. “My wife. Very well, Myr. I will go to my troops. You know I was left unguarded.”

  “I have never, ever been described as someone’s appendage before. Your wife.”

  Aranthur smiled. “Partner, then.”

  “I know you were left unguarded.” Kallinikas rolled her eyes. “Who do you think sent your guards back to their duties? The gods.”

  As they walked away, Inoques glanced at him. Most of her tattoos were hidden; she wore a veil, and away from the power of the Black Stone, they didn’t always show through her skin.

  “You aren’t coming, are you?” she asked.

  “Now that we come to it, I find that I can’t abandon Vilna. Or Kallotronis.” He shrugged. “Or Chimeg or Omga or Kouznos.”

  She made a motion of disgust. “Do you people ever think rationally?”

  Ippeas bowed. “Well, Syr Timos. You are an idealist. I can only promise you that if they arrest you again, I’ll have the next cell.”

  Behind them, the sun hung in the west, a round ball of fire; the greater moon was already rising in the sky.

  “Weather’s changing,” Ippeas said. “That storm to the west is moving. The breeze is nice.”

  He walked off towards the Chapel.

  “I’m leaving,” Inoques said.

  “I’m not,” Aranthur said.

  “I suppose I could just make you.”

  “It’s ironic,” he said. “Because if I had time, I could probably unbind you. Which makes me more powerful than you.”

  She paused. “You what?”

  He shrugged. “Never mind. You’re leaving.”

  “You bastard,” she said. “Anyway, I have my own path to salvation.”

  “Do you really?” Aranthur saw her from a great distance. He was so hungry he couldn’t really imagine having anything else to worry about. But he said, “The black ships will still be there. One more day.”

  “Come aboard and eat a meal.”

  He shook his head. “When Kallotronis can eat, and Vilna.”

  “When did you become this holy?” she asked. “It’s fascinating, but possibly lost on this audience.”

  Aranthur smiled. “I need to sit down. Maybe I could be clean and hungry?”

  He blinked. He thought he was seeing Kurvenos, the Lightbringer, standing in front of him.

  “I’m seeing visions.”

  She looked at him, and then, like a priest, she put a hand on his forehead.

  “There,” she said. “My bride price.”

  She brushed his lips with hers and walked away.

  He sat on the steps of the cathedral, watching her. The square was quite large, and he watched her go, saw the little swirl as people unconsciously got out of her way. Then, with a massive act of will, he got to his feet and started to walk to the billets where the Twenty-second and the Arnauts were living. He knew the way; his feet were having difficulty getting there.

  She had walked away.

  She had come back for him and then walked away.

  It was the strangest relationship of his life, and he was clear-headed enough to realise that he didn’t really have enough experience to know… anything.

  He stopped, leant against a whitewashed wall, and swore.

  When his head cleared, he walked round the corner and found Kallotronis and Kouznos rolling dice. They weren’t really playing. Each man would name a large amount of money, and roll the dice, and then the other would take the dice and the cup and do the same.

  “Aranthur!” Kallotronis shot to his feet.

  “Back on duty,” Aranthur said. But again he could see Kurvenos, and the man was waving—yelling…

  Kallotronis laughed. “Good! Let’s attack the fucking Pure and take their food. That’s my plan and I think it’s brilliant.”

  “I concur,” Kouznos said, sounding exactly like Kallinikas.

  Aranthur smiled. “I am not the General or the Vicar.”

  The manifestation of Kurvenos scared him. Or he was losing his mind.

  Kallotronis looked around, then reached into the bosom of his fustanella and his hand came out with a length of garlic sausage.

  He cut a piece and handed it to Aranthur.

  Aranthur found that he’d eaten it before he even wondered where it had come from.

  Kallotronis, who was a good host, cut a small piece for Kouznos and then a smaller piece for himself.

  Aranthur sat with them. “Where’s Vilna?”

  “There was an alarm on the desert wall,” Kouznos said. “He volunteered.”

  “The Eastern wall?”

  Kallotronis shrugged his huge shoulders. “I agree. No one should be coming at us over the eastern desert.”

  Aranthur drank some water. The piece of sausage hit him like a drug; he felt immeasurably better, at least for a moment. He heard a roaring in his ears.

  It wasn’t in his ears. He heard roaring.

  “Gods!” he said.

  “Ten thousand hells,” Kallotronis spat. “General alarm.”

  “It was a feint,” Kouznos guessed. “The Eastern wall.”

  Men and women ran in every direction, collecting weapons. Daud, the biggest of the Keltai men, had been in a bath. He emerged naked, his tattoos covering most of him in a brilliant woad blue, carrying a snaphaunce rifle and wearing a bandolier of horn cartridges and a bullet bag as his only raiment.

  But Aranthur was proud of how fast his companies turned out. He left his breastplate and his helmet by the whitewashed wall; he was too tired to bear them. Kallotronis handed him his puffers.

  “Kept ’em for you. Both loaded. One of your fancy rounds in the pretty gonne.”

  Aranthur checked the prime automatically, and put both puffers in his belt, locks out.

  Kallotronis was on his feet and grabbed his long jezzail.

  “That’s not cheering,” Kouznos said.

  Aranthur didn’
t want to believe it—or rather, was afraid to believe what he thought. So instead, he ran with the rest of them, up the long street and steps to the ruins of the seaward bastion at the head of the street, and then, heedless of enemy sniping, up on the wall.

  Off to the left, a thick column of enemy was assaulting the Black Bastion.

  “They have reinforcements,” Aranthur said, stunned.

  But he didn’t hesitate more than a moment, although Inoques’ comment haunted him.

  “The first to get reinforcements…”

  “We must hold!” he shouted. “Follow me!”

  He ran along the top of the wall, and a dozen rounds struck around him, but the wall top was ten times as fast as the back alleys. He ran as fast as he could manage, cursing any number of things, and then pushing it all away to raise his new shield structure. It rose not as a single aspis, but like a factory making the round, red shields. Faster than he could actually imagine them, they rolled out of him and each joined the last, like a vast interlocking wall of round scales, or knit maille.

  The Keltai cheered. Lang Cleg screeched a war cry and yelled “Warlock!” Other men and women took it up.

  Sniper shots sparkled against his shields and ricocheted away.

  Aranthur paused at the sallyport. Two terrified Getan militiamen stood guard; the quarter guard had already charged into the rubble of the Black Bastion.

  “Gods, syr!” the dekark said. “Do we close the gate?”

  Aranthur looked at Vilna, but for once, the little Nomadi dekark had nothing to offer, and Aranthur thought of it—the doom of the city.

  “Lock it after us,” he said.

  Every man and woman in his two companies heard him say it, dooming them all to death.

  He got up on the trellis that supported the gate’s chain.

  “Listen up,” he snapped. “I’m going to try and hold the Black Bastion.” He shrugged. “I’d rather die out there than wait in here. Make your own call. I don’t think we’re coming back.”

  Before he was done speaking, Kallotronis jumped up on the wall.

  “Die or fucking win!” he shouted. “Let’s stop talking and go!”

  Lang Cleg licked her lips, as if this was a party. Kouznos showed his fear, but fear only made his resolve plainer.

  “Ready, then?” Aranthur turned to the Getan dekark. “Lock it behind us, mind. Password?”

  “Niobe’s Children,” said the terrified dekark.

  There were other soldiers coming down the alleys, but no officers.

  Aranthur’s smile was dark. “Of course.”

  The mother who committed hubris; the mother and her children murdered by the gods in revenge for a very small sin.

  It was a sign. Not a pretty one, but an apt one.

  “Let’s go,” Aranthur said.

  He ran out of the gate, and across the covered way. There in the ditch to the right were ten mortars, all dug in; no one was manning them.

  He grabbed the militia drummer.

  “You. Run to the citadel. Tell anyone you meet that the Black Bastion is under attack. And get me…” He shook his head. “Dahlia Tarkas and some Magi.”

  “Yes, syr,” the man squeaked.

  Aranthur took a breath and dashed across the covered way. He had to run about seventy paces in the broiling sun between the massive Black Bastion’s walls and the towering red brick of the city walls, unmarked because no gonne could touch them until they’d battered the bastion to flinders.

  He turned towards the low gate to the bastion. The bastion’s front was, of course, battered away to non-existence, but for ten days the Imperials had dug a new wall and trenches behind it inside the old bastion, and the trenches started at the old back gate.

  Aranthur made himself run up the ramp, although fatigue, insufficient water and too little food had caused every injury of the last month to burst into pain. His face hurt where the bursting kuria crystal had flayed him, and his broken ribs hurt, and his leg. Everything hurt, and every muscle seemed to scream as he ran, but nothing hurt as much as his inner despair.

  He kept going. Then through the gate, and he had all the militia at his heels, led by the Keltai, and they flew along the zig-zag trench. Just from the sound, Aranthur could feel the fight. And when he turned into the third line trench behind the new wall, he could see tall soldiers in blue khaftans coming over the parapet; they seemed endless.

  The men and women in front of him were the same Getan Militia as held the gate behind him, or perhaps the hastily summoned quarter guard. They fought with exhausted desperation, with the butts of their matchlocks, with rapiers and side swords. The enemy were taller, stronger—implacable…

  “Clear this line.”

  Aranthur pointed to the left to Kallotronis. The Arnaut went left, leading his own company. Aranthur looked back at Lang Cleg.

  “We have to win this trench. Now!”

  He led himself. There was no thought. He merely pushed his shields out over the edge of the third line trench to wall off the enemy and then turned right, where half a dozen Getans were fighting with a determination and desperation that kept them alive.

  Aranthur burst past them, the enhancement already burning. The tall warriors were murder victims—no faster than any other mortal—and this time, without hesitation, in despair and anger, he used all his power. His stream of saar broke bones and crushed flesh. He misused it, cruelly—saar as a flail, saar as a club—and his sword finished the wounded. At the angle of the trench, well down the line, he paused. The Keltai were right behind him; anyone he left alive, they finished.

  He turned, facing the distant wall and the flood of new foes. The third line was cleared and retaken.

  All around him the black sihr pooled, ready for uptake. With sihr, he could kill faster, more efficiently…

  He wouldn’t do it. He told himself that, but it beckoned—more efficient.

  War is just killing. Who cares what means you use?

  He could use it. Morality melted away like sand before an incoming tide of foes. He was unwilling to lose these people who had followed him, and he was damned…

  Damned.

  Damned if he was going to lose the bastion if he could keep it.

  “No!” screamed the sword in his hand.

  He ignored the sword, and he opened himself to the Aulos, dark sihr and bright saar together.

  “Come and get me, Disciple!”

  He screamed it into the Aulos. Then he cast through his shields, because of course, when shields are layers of little overlapping round crystalline shapes, you can also order them to open and close, like the port-lids on a line-of-battle ship.

  Do not do this.

  Aranthur stood balanced on the knife’s edge, his soul full of saar and sihr. For a hesitant eternity, he wrestled with himself, the desire to kill and the desire not to kill perfectly balanced: the tools to retake the bastion; the knowledge that retaking the bastion might itself be a meaningless gesture.

  But Lang Cleg and Vilna and Kallotronis were real. Omga and Chimeg and Daud were real.

  He struck, and the sihr rolled from him like black fire, efficiently harnessed and efficiently released, and the blue khaftans died. Aranthur, who a moment before had been exhausted, still had the power and the time to identify the Magi among them: to isolate them; to crumple a shield here; to push a Magos off a rock there; to detach a mind from the Aulos; to strip another’s shields. He was a fountain of raging power, and he burned them like an inferno.

  But by the time he was closing on their Magi, he was also advancing; his militia threw grenados. They sailed through the air with laughable slowness and exploded, and the two companies were in the second line. Aranthur ignored the blue khaftans to concentrate on their Magi.

  Some fled, and others wailed their despair in the Aulos, and ever Aranthur felt the draw, the seductive pull to draw more power, to be a Dark god of the battlefield.

  The shock of his attack began to bleed away. The blue khaftans were terribl
e in their stubborn strength. They didn’t give back or break, as Aranthur had hoped, and they had an incredible proportion of Magi; he felt like a boar surrounded by dogs. The attack cleared the second line with an effort that cost his people twenty lives. Then they were done, and more blue khaftans were coming down the inner face of the wall of rubble.

  Even in the grip of an eldritch rage, even throwing all caution and all morality to the winds, Aranthur wasn’t going to retake the redoubt. And people were dead—his own people.

  Damned.

  “Back,” Aranthur ordered.

  They ran back down the sap, and more grenados sailed into their attackers as the second trench was won and lost. But they made the blue khaftans pay, and pay again. Cleg fell at the corner of the sap, her axe broken in her hands. Omga died loosing one last arrow off his horn bow as the second line was abandoned.

  Aranthur saw both of them die.

  Damned.

  It was clear that no help was coming. The Getans, the handful of survivors, were exhausted. Somehow, in fifteen minutes of fighting, Aranthur’s people had shot away all their ammunition, and still the enemy came on.

  “Back,” he said.

  “Gates locked behind us,” Kallotronis said, as if this was an everyday problem.

  “Go to the Sea Gate,” Aranthur said.

  His fire was gone. He had little interest in watching Chimeg and Kallotronis and Vilna follow Omga and Cleg into death.

  Kallotronis looked at him. “And you?”

  “I’ll hold the little sallyport here. Long enough for you to go.”

  Kallotronis narrowed his eyes for a moment. Then he nodded.

  Vilna had taken a thrust through his gut. Chimeg had him over her shoulder.

  “Don’t do it, Bahadur!” Vilna shouted. “Come with us!”

  Aranthur ignored the small Nomadi dekark, despite the constant quality of his advice.

  Kallotronis looked back at him. There were already blue coats prowling along the walls.

  “This is really what you want?” he asked.

  Aranthur took a puffer from his belt. “Yes.”

  Kallotronis smiled. It was an enigmatic smile.

  “Stupid,” he said very clearly. And called “Follow me!” in Souliote.

  The third line began to empty.