There were twenty-one lancers—Sergeant Linciard and the third and fourth sections of his platoon—plus the colonel on his borrowed Tasgard and three white-robes on scouts' Ten-Skys. Sarovy was relieved to have their plethora of mage-lights along; he did not anticipate an attack, not in daylight, but he had come to equate those little lights with safety.
The clatter of hooves and claws resounded off tall privacy walls as they passed. This was the rich heart of the city, and though like all Bahlaerans they built low—three stories at most—the owners had not spared their coin. Mosaics covered every inch of wall with fantastical seascapes and verdant forests, eye-aching abstracts and glass cabochons; leering ceramic faces or animals stared from each corner. Beyond the gates, winter-browned trees and sculpted gardens veiled the lower floors but could not hide painted tiles, balconies and walkways, wrought iron and copper and glass. A single clear windowpane would cost a month's salary for a man like Sarovy, and seeing them in such vast array made him testy.
At times like this, surrounded by flash and sparkle, he missed Trivestes. The cold, the heights, the unadorned stone. The solitude. Even the Garnet Mountain wars. Rings and coins and political leverage could not save a man from the wild—as it should be.
But perhaps burning the governor's manor had been too much.
It stood at the end of the stately street like a rotted tooth. All the wood paneling and tapestries, the fine furniture and cushions and clothes and paintings in there had burned well, leaving brick chimneys and the heavy stone side-walls all but free-standing among the smoking rubble of the rest. The front had collapsed into the dooryard, strewing chunks of glazed brick and melted glass wildly among the blackened bushes and all the way to the open gate.
Charred tracks marred the entry, branching in all directions. Spectators, scavengers? Sarovy did not care. Seeing it now in daylight, he felt petty, but done was done and Colonel Wreth seemed to approve.
“I would have liked to take this place as my command post,” he said as he drew his horse to a halt a stone's throw from the gate. Sarovy signaled the rest of the column to come in line. “But these other manors will do just as well.”
“You mean to evict the nobility, sir?”
The colonel scoffed, turning a cold eye to the gated manors to either side. “Nobility? These are fat merchants, captain. Illane is a dirt-grubbing territory made up of laborers and parasites, possessing neither the steel to fight us nor the wit to obey. It needs the whip—and a good culling, I should think. After that, perhaps we can lure some proper nobility over to take command, but these jumped-up peasants deserve no more than a boot to the neck.”
Sarovy's brows arched. That was more vitriol than he had expected—not that it didn't echo his own thoughts. “And the occupants, sir?”
“To the Palace like the rest.”
“I fear we are overwhelming the Palace with our offerings.”
A smile twisted the old soldier's mouth, and he cast an odd, knowing look to Sarovy. “The Palace can never be overwhelmed. And it is nearly Midwinter. What better time for a pilgrimage than to see the rebirth of the Light?”
“As you say, colonel. Do you wish them cleared out today, tomorrow...?”
“The sooner the better. I have wagons and men coming up from base-camp, and by now my elites should be crossing the portals. I will need somewhere to put them. These nearest two, for starters. They look like fine pieces of property.”
Sarovy nodded and cued his earhook. “Lieutenant Vrallek, Lieutenant Arlin.”
'Yessir.'
“A half-platoon each up to our position at Old Crown. Dress for conflict.”
'Yessir.'
“Colonel, may I request two mages from your entourage to assist my men?”
“Leaving me with just one?” said the colonel, brows raised beneath the bill of his tri-crested helm. “Your own are too dear?”
“Mine are engaged, sir. My apologies.”
“Mm. I suppose I can call in a few more, if the situation is so dangerous.”
“It has...escalated beyond expectations, yes.”
“Then let us do so. Trade mages with them as we cross paths, and requisition more.”
Sarovy nodded and raised his hand to signal the lancers, and with a groan of horses and jingle of tack, they carefully turned about. Wheeling Havoc, Sarovy started to lead the colonel and the mages through the center of the formation to retake its head.
*****
From her eiyenbridge, Ardent watched them turn. Bad enough that they'd come on horseback, but now they were leaving without getting close enough to the gate.
“Pike it,” she said, and hissed a command to the eiyets on her shoulders. The captain and another high officer were in the trap; she would spring it, and salve her conscience later.
As the eiyets vanished to their tasks, she readied her crossbow. Just in case.
*****
As the lead horses passed him, Linciard heard a change in their hoof-falls—a peculiar hollowness in the bricks.
Then the road disappeared.
For a mere instant, he stared down into endless black, the cold dry breath of the Dark gusting up into his face like every nightmare in the world.
Then reality snapped back, and with it the road—chewed up and far too close. He didn't realize he had been falling until it was there within arm's reach, and then he hit it and jolted from the saddle, tumbled, scraped along the toothy ground, feeling more than seeing other shapes falling around him.
Someone screamed. An instant later, it was a chorus.
He raised his head, but what he saw made no sense. There were horses on the ground—in the ground?—and men as well, up to thigh or waist or neck in the pavings. Except the pavings had changed, like a huge maw had taken random bites from the bricks to expose underlying pipework and cistern courses or just solid rock. Linciard lay in a series of shallow gouges next to a severed arm and shoulder, which teetered at the edge of a much larger hole that cut down into some kind of tunnel. There was no sign of the rest of the man.
Incredulity made everything unreal. He got a knee under himself, pushed up and looked toward where he had fallen.
Saw his horse laying in another huge gouge, sliced with butcher's precision from the base of the throat to mid-belly, its rear legs still kicking wildly but its opened chest pouring blood, its muzzle and nostrils red. Its front legs were just gone.
A voice was shouting in the earhook but he couldn't make sense of it. Rising, he found himself staring across a panorama of blood and frenzied horses as a tide of black shapes poured from the alleys like spilled ink. Captain Sarovy and the colonel and the mages stood in the midst of the destruction, protected by panes of white light; underfoot, huge holes had opened like hungry mouths, obviously meant to swallow them.
He turned a complete circle, struggling to draw his sword with a hand gone fiery from pins-and-needles. There was Corporal Kithwick, laying halved with his horse beneath him as if they had crashed sideways into a lake and been frozen there; Lancer Landene, wet-faced as he took his mercy-blade to a horse up to its ribs in the road; Lancer Tasarune, one of the Jernizen, struggling to keep his seat as his steed danced on its hind legs, both forelegs bloody to the middle joint. Lancer Gant—or rather, Gant's head and shoulders, his slackening face full of confusion.
Lancer Karlen, crushed under his thrashing horse. Lancer Tethrick with his own mercy-blade out, hesitating over someone Linciard could barely see—someone waving a bloody hand over the side of another downed and partially disappeared horse.
Corporal Vyslin crawling out from under his, white-faced, leaving a broad red streak in his wake.
A scream caught in Linciard's throat. He started toward the corporal, then glimpsed black from the corner of his eye and turned just in time to catch a crossbow bolt across the left pauldron. The next one glanced off his gauntlet as he guarded his face.
Then they were on him: three cultists with knives and bludgeons, their faces marked with black, and
all he could do was beat at them with his fists and the hilt of his sword. Too many, too close. A knife scraped across the chainmailed gap between his torso plates, and a quick twist was all that saved him from the in-thrust, which sawed along his ribs but did not slip in. He introduced someone's teeth to his elbow, felt a knife carve his chin, bashed that one's face with the phoenix crest on the brow of his helm. Another blade carved a line along the outside of his armpit, dangerous territory.
A cavalry sword from on high cracked that assailant's forearm. The cultist stumbled away, awkwardly pursued by one of the Jernizen—Linciard could not tell which—whose horse clawed and scrabbled across the ruined brickwork to give chase. Linciard took the opportunity to kick the man he had headbutted down to the ground and throat him, then looked up.
Captain Sarovy was shouting something, waving his sword the way they had come. The colonel and his mages were several yards away—fleeing! Taking their lights with them! Maybe ten horses were up, a few hobbling, some riderless; a handful of men on the ground scrambled to organize.
And a woman in black strode from the alley behind the captain, raising her crossbow with cold assurance.
He knew the warning left his mouth, but he did not hear it, still could not hear anything through the rushing in his ears. Sarovy seemed to, though, and turned in the saddle, raising his sword-arm to guard.
The bolt flew.
The bolt struck.
The captain wobbled.
*****
She saw it penetrate. A perfect shot between the gorget and the chin, eight inches of steel brought to a stop by the rear edge of his helmet. His shield-hand fluttered upward; his sword sagged. He clutched the shaft.
Yanked at it.
Something like knowledge curdled in her stomach. She had already slipped another bolt into the notch. Now she raised the crossbow, thinking to plant it in his eye. His sharp grey eye.
She saw it go blank. Not dead but erased.
Her hand jittered. The bolt skipped off the brow of his helm. He reeled back, the embedded shaft pointing at the sky, and he was still gripping it—pulling on it. His whole face was grey.
His horse, ears flattened, tucked its head down suddenly and snapped its heels out, bucking and thrashing like it had not done even when the Dark bit away the ground beneath it. The captain bobbed like a ragdoll, tethered momentarily by the stirrups, then flew from his seat. The crash of armor on brick should have been a death-knell.
He sat up.
A brilliant light flared just under the edge of his breastplate.
“Festering Dark,” she hissed, and reloaded.
*****
Sarovy thought:
Ground. I'm on the ground. I—
—white walls, white floor, white ceiling, and the Throne before him—
Fell.
—two eyes like stars, the Emperor gazing down from an unknowable height—
Why can't I see? The cultists, my men...
—that sense of being known, from the most superficial layer to that deep, dark knot of fear and anger, doubt and defiance—
Why?
His eyes flickered open. White sky, so like that ceiling. Red gauntlet.
Something in his hand.
He tugged but it wouldn't move. Tried to look down.
Crossbow bolt?
What...
—knife in the side, then his hand fell to the old woman's and wrenched it away, her wrist crunching against the door-frame—
What?
—neat slice in the fabric, thread and needle ready to make it go away despite the lieutenant's concerned face—
I don't...
—white bird circling in a white sky—
I don't understand!
A cultist approached, crossbow in hand. Strange expression. The bolt wouldn't come out. No pain, no sensation at all. Shield still attached to his arm, sword in the other hand, but nothing moving right. Obstructions. Havoc looking down from above, big old sad-eyed horse.
What do they know that I don't?
As if in answer, a tremor. White ceiling, white floor. Blue gauntlet, lacquered with the Sapphire Eye on the back of the hand. Kneeling, making the phoenix sign, and the lights kindling below, the ground unfurling, reaching with ephemeral strands to take them all into its binding embrace: all the officers waiting here, the finest in this generation of the Eye. Above them, that fatherly glow. The gaze of the Emperor chasing them below...
It won't come out. It won't come out!
Eyes opened. Her shadow fell near.
Why does she look at me like that? Am I so terrible?
A thousand faces, all screaming up at him. Fighting, thrashing, dying, eyes rolled back in their skulls, the grey wrapped around their throats and swaddling their faces, nostrils, smothering—collecting, cataloging—
—faces sketched in frenzy, ink spattering: different people, strangers, unknowns—
—white threads separating from the floor, each bearing a glow like a filament of light, and the sting of sinking into them as they slipped under every protection—
—under water made of celestial flame and coiled with agony, crowned with excruciating change, every fiber unwoven and forced to knit into new shape, and the light—
—the light above—
—the light below—
—calling with a voice never heard before, something purer and sharper like a breath of cold air, and suddenly the awareness of choking, drowning, of things Not Right perhaps for the first time ever—of things having been Always-Not-Right but never known before—
Fight. Fight back to the surface. Fight!
Eyes open. Bolt in fist. A yank, clanging the helm against the back of his head. Another, harder.
Why can't I feel it?
Break it. Break it off.
A wrench, a twist. Something snapping, loosening, then gone.
A light from below...
Fumbling fingers, then the pendant of the winged light, aflame in his palm.
*****
His face stilled as he looked down at that glowing thing. A necklace charm of some sort. Ardent leveled her crossbow at the eye-slit of his helm.
His eyes snapped up. They were clear again, and the most frightening things she had ever seen.
Pike this for a bag of crap, she thought.
Still, she shot. It went through at a bad angle but should have sent up a gush of blood. Instead, he yanked it out and rose to meet her, clean-faced, a pinhole showing for barely a moment beneath his left eye.
The first sword-thrust creased a line across her belly even through her hardened leather. She stumbled backward, caught a flash and hit the ground just below a mage-bolt, which blasted a hole in the mosaic wall behind her. A glance showed her the higher officer and his entourage, the white-robes arrayed for attack or defense but the officer staring at the captain.
No surprise on his face.
The captain cut for her again. He seemed hampered somehow, his armor disordered. She avoided that attack and then just broke and ran, mind whirling too badly to handle this.
The Hammer was in town, with the Mother Matriarch.
He would know what to do.
*****
As much as Linciard had wanted to intervene, the cultists had not given him the chance. There were too many men down—too many parts, too many pieces—and he had already puked once after hauling poor Lancer Larein out only to find him cut off at the hips. He'd wiped his mouth, used his mercy-blade, and moved on to join the others being peppered by crossbow-fire.
Somehow he'd found a shield. Held it now between the enemy and Lancer Sorretis, who was trying to tourniquet Vyslin's missing leg with his belt. Linciard could not look, could not listen to the slurred voice urging them to go; he had to keep sharp for alerts from his allies, and shout his own orders back. He was the sergeant, and Benson wasn't here.
Sarovy was down.
He was the leader now.
The horses were a frenzied mess. A quarter were dea
d, many others bloodied in weird patterns. The cultists did not target them—not that they had piking spared them—which made them something of a shield as they ran in circles or stumbled across the Dark-bitten potholes. Stormfollower and Tasarune were both sheltering behind their steeds, having pulled them in to block for the group.
Linciard wanted to laugh. It was ridiculous, half a platoon of lancers being cornered in a daylit street by a pack of Shadow Cult. But it was real. He had to remind himself of that. It was real, and the colonel and his mages were sitting back.
He raised his shield against a new barrage. Heard someone curse. Felt an itch in his head, and realized he had been feeling it for some time—had been hearing a voice in the back of his mind but not registering it.
'Flaming fuck, Linciard, respond!'
Scryer Mako.
Not on the earhook. Maybe she had tried, but switched to direct mental when she could not raise him. Under attack, he thought.
'No shit! What just happened to the captain?'
He's... He was shot. I think he's...
'He's having a massive mindquake. Do they have a piking mentalist?'
No, he was shot. He—
Linciard glanced quickly toward where the captain had gone down, and saw him up again, stumbling after a fleeing cultist. His heart jumped into his throat.
'He's not all right. You have to get him back here immediately,' sent the Scryer.
I need to get us all back there immediately.
'Specialists are coming. Hold tight.'
Looking back, he saw more cultists retreating into the shadows from whence they had come. He didn't trust it, but once he could no longer see them, he dispatched able-bodied men to check on the fallen—see if any could be salvaged. The street looked like a giant had taken a tenderizing mallet to it.
When no one shot at the salvagers, he did a quick head-count. Three corporals—if Vyslin survived. Ten others in various states of mangled and stunned. That made seven dead or disappeared.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 60
