Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4)

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘Don’t kill him,’ hissed Quintillian.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s one of us. An imperial citizen. Don’t kill him.’

  ‘Bollocks, my prince.’

  ‘And he might be missed.’

  ‘While that’s true, he’s less likely to rat us out to the guards for an extra meal if he’s cold and grey.’

  Quintillian gave his friend a hard look, but Asander met his gaze with steely indifference as he squeezed until there was a crunch from the slave’s neck and his head lolled to one side, the life fading from his eyes.

  ‘There was no need for that,’ accused Quintillian.

  ‘I disagree. Princes can afford fancy morals and principles, but slaves can’t. It was him or us, whether you believe that or not. Come on.’

  Asander moved off along the shadowed corridor, the lamps burning only at very sparse intervals against the danger of fire in a wooden palace. There had been a moment when Quintillian had contemplated the potential of firing the entire palace in order to create the chaos required to effect a convincing escape. But the sad truth was that the most likely outcome of such a course of action would be the pair of them burning to death rather than escaping. The treated timber would go up just a little too easily.

  As the former scout carried the old man’s body with relative ease, Quintillian stooped and scooped up the bucket, following on. One more turn, and they entered a small timber room. Quintillian breathed a sigh of relief. Here was a barrel of water, a table with a stone slab, presumably used for preparing meat, and a wooden door, heavy and basic, held shut with a single bar that slid into sockets on either side.

  ‘That looks promising.’

  Placing the bucket on the slab, Quintillian crossed to the door and as quietly and carefully as he could, lifted the bar from its place, standing it to one side. Asander joined him as, very slowly, he inched the door open, enough to apply an eye to the gap.

  It took a moment after the dingy corridors to adjust to the bright daylight of late morning.

  Outside, he could see the high palisade wall of Ual-Aahbor, with one of the watch platforms almost directly opposite, the guard atop it and a ladder reaching from there to the grass below. There were perhaps 40 paces of open ground between the palace wall and the palisade. At this time of day there would be little hope of crossing from the one to the other without drawing deadly attention.

  At night, though?

  And then there was the pit.

  The palace’s small door was, after all, here for a reason. Immediately outside the door stood another pit, not unlike the one that lurked below the latrines. This one didn’t smell quite so bad, since it seemed that no one defecated in it. But waste had been poured into it continually for months, and very likely urine had gone into the mix. And the pit was large, stretching some 10-feet-by-10-feet and at least 3 feet down to the crusted surface, which now swam with recently added bath water.

  They might be able to get round it…

  ‘I wonder how solid that surface is?’ Quintillian murmured, pulling the door open wider so that Asander could also assess the situation.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ the scout replied casually, and dropped the body of the bucket slave into the pit. The corpse hit the unpleasant surface with a squelch and a crack, and then, with revolted fascination, the two men watched the crust open up like a wound and give vent to the most godawful stink. The body slid with disgusting finality into the mire below the surface, vanishing with a gloopy noise that Quintillian suspected would revisit him in his dreams for the rest of his life.

  ‘Then we’ll have to get round it. Shouldn’t be too much trouble, though we’ll have to do it at night, obviously.’

  ‘Do we go tonight?’ Asander asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. We can’t really afford to delay, but then we also can’t afford to go without adequate preparation. How do we get up the ladder without simply being picked off by the man at the top? How do we get down the other side? That’s almost a 50-foot drop. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never jumped that far in my life. Sounds like a broken leg waiting to happen.’

  Asander shrugged. ‘We bring our blankets from our rooms. Tie them together, anchor them at the top of the palisade and use them to get most of the way down the outside. That should make it safer.’

  ‘Good. Though each platform is within sight of the next, so we’ll have to figure out how to do it without being seen by the guards to either side. And still we need to actually get up there and deal with the man at the top first. He’s unlikely to let two slaves climb his ladder unchallenged.’

  ‘True.’

  The two men paused for one last look out of the door, then closed it and slid the bar back into place. The slave might be missed but given his resting place it seemed highly unlikely he would ever be found. Slowly, they padded back to the bathroom, bringing the bucket with them to reduce suspicion that anything had happened in that small chamber. Fortunately, as they passed the more open area, the two guards had now gone, and the pair reached the bath suite unobserved. There they finished dressing and slipped their footwear back on.

  ‘We don’t smell of that pit, do we?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Time to head off to our meeting with his noble majesty, then,’ Asander muttered.

  The two men slipped from the bathroom and made their way through the more familiar ways of the palace. As they passed into the large hallway which contained the doors to the Khan’s throne room, Quintillian suddenly grabbed hold of Asander’s shoulder, arresting his movement.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘What is it?’ Quintillian grinned. ‘It’s the answer. Look.’

  The two weary guards at the Khan’s door were busy shouldering their weapons and then strode off out toward the outer vestibule as two fresh, energetic men took their place, readying their own pole-arms.

  ‘Guard change,’ the two men said in unison.

  ‘They swap four times a day on the walls,’ Asander muttered quietly. ‘I remember seeing them from the slave compound. Noon, dusk, midnight and dawn, or near enough.’

  ‘Midnight’s our time, then,’ Quintillian nodded. We can take the place of the relief guard, who can climb the ladder without arousing suspicion. We’ll have to be ready and in position at least an hour before, in case we miss him. I’m thinking now that we might be better going tonight.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  With speeding hearts and a sense of palpable expectation, the two men crossed the room to the guards, who nodded to them and swung open the door. They were expected.

  The following hour represented a new height of strangeness for the two slaves as they answered banal questions on the nature of life in the empire. As they discussed various crafts and factories that dealt with goods entirely unheard of by the nomads, Quintillian maintained as blank and plain an expression as he could manage, though all the time, his brain threw questions and images at him.

  How would they bring down the relief guard and take his place unnoticed?

  Could they guarantee moving through the palace to the slave door without being seen?

  How would they deal with the makeshift blanket rope from the platform without being noticed by others?

  Once they were down the other side, how would they get away without being caught by riders?

  And, periodically, his mind would furnish him with unsought images. The slave in Asander’s grip, his head tilting unnaturally with a crack. The body sinking into the oozy surface of the refuse pit. Ganbaatar’s expression of barely suppressed lust at the thought of their execution as he fingered his flaying knives.

  From the look on Asander’s face, he also was struggling with similar images and ponderances. Quintillian hoped he was managing to look less troubled and distracted than his friend, though he was less than sure he had managed.

  This time, the Khan was a little more forthcoming with his own thoughts, though not of the intended invasion itself. Conversati
on had drifted to the subject of fishing. The Khan was familiar with fishing fleets from his time in the Jade Emperor’s lands, but the nomads, including his council of elders, were entirely uncomprehending of the subject. The closest the clans had ever come to the subject of fishing fleets was dropping a net or a baited line into one of the high mountain rivers and catching occasional freshwater fish. The Khan even chuckled as he described how the nomads had reacted when he’d first explained the sea and ships to them.

  ‘They could not comprehend the very idea of an ocean. I had to describe it as being like the endless grass of the steppe, but made instead of water. I used the analogy of horses and carts as ships and the clans as fleets. The conversation went on for many days, and even now I do not think they believe what I told them. When they see your Eastern Sea and Nymphaean Sea, they will be collectively baffled. I have to admit to looking forward to that.’

  He went on to explain that just as the craftsmen who worked in things with which the nomads were unfamiliar would be exalted among the conquered and would have a special place in the new world, so also would the empire’s sailors. Because there would be none among the conquerors who could even understand a boat, let alone handle one, the sailors would be greatly treasured by their new overlords.

  By the time the session had been completed, Quintillian had answered only one of his own questions:

  Once they were over from the wall, the main danger would be from archers on the platforms. On the assumption that by the time they hit the ground running, their escape would be noticed, they would need to zig and zag across the grass to reduce the risk of taking an arrow, and hope that the gods were looking favourably upon them, given the acknowledged high level of archery skill among the nomads. It would take precious moments for the unprepared riders to grab their horses and open the great gate in the wall, which was kept sealed at night. Then they would need to circumnavigate the outside of Ual-Aahbor to get to the point of the escape which, fortunately due to the rear position of the palace, would be diametrically opposite the gate. That would take time. They could ride fast, but Quintillian had been in battle more than once and knew the turn of speed of which a human was capable when desperation nipped at his heels.

  It would be touch and go, but he believed the two of them could make it to the lip of the great depression before the riders were in the right area and ascending to pursue. Once at the top they would lose themselves among those twisted rock formations, and gradually circle round to the southeast. Quintillian had been thinking long and hard on their estimated location. He had estimated the distance they had come and the direction since their capture, and he was fairly sure that a south by southeast route would bring them into the edge of the eastern provinces not far from the border with the Inda. There, they could find an imperial outpost, acquire horses, and move fast along good metalled roads to the heart of the empire. With luck, two things would happen. The Khan and his men would believe that Quintillian had gone directly west, that being the shortest route to the capital. And the Khan’s army would move slowly, rather than with the traditional swiftness of the nomads, due to the need to protect the slow siege engines. If all worked out the way he hoped, he would have time to take the safest, most circuitous, route home, and yet could still get there in time to warn his brother of what was coming.

  Finally, the interview was over, and the two men were escorted out, as usual, by Ganbaatar. As the doors swung to behind them and the two guards moved to block the entrance once more, the big warrior fell in behind them as they walked.

  ‘My father believes there is something troubling you. He thinks you are distracted. He tasks me with discovering what weighs upon your mind. In myself I think you are sly and untrustworthy and are planning something. My father is too trusting and womanly sometimes. He cannot see the darkness in you, because he seeks only the light. Give me your lie, that I might take it to him and tell him what it truly is.’

  Quintillian shrugged as naturally as he could manage, his heart racing.

  ‘I am nervous. You are ready to move against the empire. We have seen that the engines are complete and the clans are almost fully assembled. I am looking at the end of my world gathering around me. I would challenge you to feel any different.’

  Next to him, Asander nodded and tried to convey a similar fear through his expression.

  Ganbaatar sneered. ‘I think you are made stronger than that, prince liar. I think you are planning something. But I will take this lie to my father. It is as good as any other. Know that my eyes will be upon you and when you prove me right I will first strip the flesh from your bodies and salt the raw pink, and then explain myself to my father.’

  With a last glare of hatred, the warrior turned and made his way back to the throne room.

  ‘That settles it,’ Quintillian muttered, as they turned the corner into the slave quarters. ‘Now we have to go tonight.’

  Chapter VIII

  Of Plans and Their Execution

  The palace still thrummed with faint sounds of activity even now that many of the occupants were abed. The Khan himself and some of his cronies would likely be awake, since it had come to Quintillian’s attention that the overlord of the clans slept little and late, planning or conversing with those of like mind far into the night. Fortunately, the route from their rooms to the slave door skirted around the noble areas of the palace and would at no point come into proximity with the Khan.

  ‘How does it look?’

  Quintillian peered out from the corridor left and right and then pulled his head back in sharply.

  ‘Shit. There are people in the main hall.’

  ‘No chance of getting past them, I suppose?’

  The prince rearranged the blanket rope that hung across his shoulder and peeked out again. In the brighter-lit area, where the vestibule was wider and higher and contained more lamps, four figures were in conversation with a fifth, who he couldn’t quite see, out of sight around a corner.

  ‘Five of them at least. Too chancy. I suppose we could be slaves carrying fresh blankets, but it’s not worth risking everything now. I say we wait for them to go first.’

  Asander nodded and the pair lurked in the corridor, casting up prayers to the gods that no slave came along the shadowy passage and happened upon them in such a suspicious position. Quintillian focused on the conversation in the room. He’d picked up at most four or five basic words of the nomad tongue, but it was often interesting how easy it was to determine the nature of a conversation just from the tone of voice of the participants.

  His blood chilled. ‘I know that voice.’

  Asander squeezed his eyes shut as he listened. ‘Ganbaatar,’ he muttered. ‘He’s rearranging the guard. Why?’

  ‘Could be to do with the fact that they’re preparing to move in the next few days? The clans are probably already being readied. Could be just a freak thing, maybe. Or it could be the bastard’s suspicious mind. For a big, lumbering man, he’s not as daft as I expected.’

  Asander listened some more. ‘He’s distributing men around the palace. That can’t be a coincidence. We should have gone yesterday.’

  ‘Very helpful.’

  They stood in nervous silence for a moment, and then the conversation broke up. The unseen figure of Ganbaatar moved off, taking three of the four others with him and leaving one guard in the vestibule.

  ‘That tears it. If we commit now, we have to be really fast,’ Quintillian sighed.

  ‘I guess there’ll be no bare-facing our way past him.’

  The prince shook his head. ‘If Ganbaatar is setting extra guards because he’s sure something’s up, then those men are going to question every unexpected move. We’ll never get past him by stealth. We’ll have to take him out on the way past, quickly and quietly.’

  Asander fixed him with a calculating look. ‘You realize what that means? They’re bound to check on him every now and then. As soon as they find him gone, the alarm will go up and the whole palace will be looki
ng for us.’

  ‘So we go now and we go quickly. That way we buy ourselves the longest possible breathing time before they know what we’re doing. Come on.’

  As they prepared to duck out of the corridor, the prince gestured to Asander to move first and to head along the left hand wall of the room. The scout frowned for a moment but nodded and, with a deep breath, strode from the passage into the brightly-lit vestibule. The guard barked something in his raspy, harsh language and spun, levelling a spear that had a strange, almost sickle-shaped, tip, at the scout. Asander stopped dead and turned to face the nomad, an expression of surprised innocence plastered across his face.

  ‘Sa’ath vahra uhdich gradhu?’ the scout asked, appearing perplexed.

  The guard started to rattle on in the awful dialect, challenging him, and Quintillian briefly noted Asander’s eyes flash up over his opponent’s shoulder to pick out the figure of the prince silently emerging from the corridor, a human shadow detaching itself from the gloom. An almost imperceptible nod, and Asander was busy chattering in nervous tones to the guard again. Whatever he said didn’t impress the nomad, for the spear dipped and flashed forward threateningly, coming within a hand’s breadth of taking the scout’s eye. Asander started to speak more urgently.

  Quintillian was biting the inside of his lip. The nomad was a big man, while the prince was strong, but smaller and wiry. It had to be quick, and very, very quiet. As silent as any Pelasian assassin, Quintillian slipped close behind the guard and reached up. His left hand shot round the man’s face and covered his mouth. His right grasped the nomad’s throat.

  The guard let out a stifled gasp and started to wrench his head this way and that. Quintillian fought to keep tight hold of the man. If his mouth became free they were lost. Yet he could feel his grip slipping. The nomad was both big and powerful. As he clung on for dear life, trying to squeeze the man’s throat apple for a silent kill, Quintillian saw Asander take a step forward and grab the wavering spear just below the blade. With relative ease, given the big man’s distraction, he yanked the spear from the man’s hands, turned it and tried to match the weaving of the man’s head with the gleaming sickle-tip.