by Tad Williams
A thick plume of gray black smoke was rising beside the ancient walls—one of the buildings along the quay of the Harbor of Nektarios.
“It must be the powder magazine, hit by some stray shot. Oh, look at it burn!” Had her forward-thinking father not moved much of the powder stored for convenience in the immense harbor magazine, parceling it out to at least a dozen different storage places all over the city, half of the city’s black powder would be gone now, not to mention the harbor itself, which would have almost certainly been destroyed. Instead, it looked as though only one building, the magazine itself, had been ruined, and if the fire could be put out quickly the loss would be bearable.
“I must tell my father,” she said, leaving Eril to catch up as best he could as she scuttled back up the stairs.
“What are you doing?” her father shouted as she came in. He looked angry, truly angry, and for the first time she realized that the city might fall—that they all might die. She was so overwhelmed by this sudden, terrifying understanding that for a moment she could not speak.
“The magazine…” she said at last. “The one in the Harbor of Nektarios. It was hit by…it’s exploded.”
His expression softened a little. “I know. There is a window in the next room, do not forget. Go, and hurry to your mother as I told you. She will be frightened—I’m sure she could hear that crash in Landsman’s Market.”
He is defending the whole city, she thought, staring at him. Her father had already turned back to the table and was examining his charts again, his big hands splayed across the curling parchments like the roots of tall trees. For a moment she found it hard to breathe.
Pinimmon Vash, Paramount Minister to the Golden One Sulepis, Autarch of Xis, did not like traveling on ships. The sea air that had so delighted his ancestors when they came out of the deserts of Xand and settled on the northern shore of the continent smelled to him of putrefaction. The rolling motion of the waves made him feel again as he had in his childhood, when he had caught the bilious fever and lain for days near death, unable to keep anything in his stomach, shivering and sweating. In fact, his survival of that fever had been so unexpected that his father had dedicated the sacrifice of an entire ram to the goddess Sawamat (something that Vash would never have mentioned to the autarch, who barely acknowledged that any other gods beside Nushash existed).
Now, as he teetered down the ramp, he was so grateful to be on dry land again that he offered a silent prayer of thanks to her and to Efiyal, lord of the sea.
The long bight of land known as the Finger, which jutted out into the Kulloan Strait parallel to the western shore of Hierosol, was almost invisible from where he stood at its southernmost tip. Billows of gray and stinking yellow smoke hung close to the ground, so that in the few places where the walled fortifications could be seen at all they seemed to float atop clouds like the palaces of the gods. The fighting, which had begun at midnight with an invasion of the autarch’s marines from both the landward edge of the Finger and the place where Vash’s ship had just landed, was almost over. The Hierosoline garrisons, undermanned because Drakava had (against the recommendations of his leading advisers) withdrawn so many soldiers in preparation for the siege, had put up a brave resistance, but the small fortresses had proved vulnerable to the missiles of burning sulfur and straw the autarch’s catapults had flung over the walls by the hundreds before the morning sun had climbed above the horizon. The defenders, choking, blinded, many of them dying from the poisonous smoke, had been unable to repel the autarch’s marines, who, protected by masks of wet Sanian cotton, were able to hoist their siege ladders and clamber over the walls almost unopposed once the worst of the smoke had blown away. The defenders had offered resistance, but weakened, breathless, and blinded, they had fallen before the marines like brave children fighting grown men.
If we could use that tactic on Hierosol itself, Vash thought, the war would be over in a few days. But there was not enough sulfur for that in all of Xand, nor enough catapults to throw it, even in the autarch’s huge army. Still, he could not help admiring how well Ikelis Johar and the other polemarchs had planned for the siege. The cannons jutting from the walls of the fortresses along the Finger might not be able to reach the walls of Hierosol, but they were an invaluable aid to its defense, able to rake the near side of any ships in the strait, or drive them in under the bigger guns of the city walls.
The autarch’s pavilion had already been mounted on the slope beside the gangplank of his flagship, the Flame of Nushash, a towering four-masted warship painted (in defiance of any secrecy about its semi-divine passenger) in blindingly bright shades of red and gold and purple, with the great, flaming god’s eye on either side of the bow and the autarch’s royal falcon spread-winged in gold across the red sails. The recently erected pavilion was no more restrained, a striped cone almost fifty paces across flying two dozen falcon banners. Vash limped toward it, angrily waving away the offers of help from his guards. Sulepis, the Golden One, had already made it clear he suspected his paramount minister’s loyalty: the last thing Vash needed was for the youthful autarch to see him staggering in on the arms of soldiers. He might as well announce himself old and useless and be done with it.
The autarch, dressed in his fanciful battle-array of golden armor and the flame-scalloped Battle Crown, was sitting on his war throne atop a raised platform at the center of the tent, talking to the Overseer of the Armies. Dozens of slaves and priests surrounded him, of course, along with a full troop of his Leopard guards in armor, muskets in hand, their eyes as brightly remorseless as those of their namesakes.
“Vash, welcome!” The autarch spread his fingers like claws, then scratched himself under the chin with the figured tip of his golden gauntlet. “You should have stayed on the ship a little longer, resting yourself, since we are going back to the landing spot soon anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Golden One, I don’t understand.”
The autarch smiled and looked to Ikelis Johar, who nodded but maintained his customary stony expression. “The Royal Crocodiles are coming ashore.”
For a moment Vash was completely confused, wondering what bizarre new plan his impulsive master had conceived. Was he going to put some of the massive reptiles from Xis’ canals into the strait, or even introduce them somehow to the waterways behind the Hierosoline walls? The great beasts were certainly fearsome enough, even the younger adults longer than a fishing boat and armored like a siege engine, but who could make them do anything useful?
It was a mark of how strange and impulsive the autarch was, and how unpredictable life was in his service, that Vash was still trying to understand how crocodiles could be used in warfare even as he and Ikelis Johar and a crowd of servants and soldiers followed the autarch’s litter back toward the ships. Only as he saw the monstrous thing being swung up from the hold of one of the six biggest cargo ships did Pinimmon Vash remember.
“Ah, Golden One, of course! The guns!”
“The largest, most beautiful in the history of mankind,” said the autarch happily. “Each crafted like exquisite jewelry. What a roar they will make, my crocodiles! What a fiendish, terrifying roar!”
The immense bronze tube was six or seven times the length of a man, and even without its undercarriage, its weight was clearly staggering—several pentecounts of seamen were pulling on the ropes, trying to steady it as they swung the cannon barrel out over the side of the boat, the massive winding-wheels and pulleys creaking with the strain. The weapon had indeed been cast to resemble some monstrous river reptile, with inset topaz eyes and fanged jaws stretched wide to make the cannon’s mouth, and the creature’s rounded back ridged with scaly plates. This one and its brothers would fire huge stone balls, each missile ten times the weight of a man, and if the autarch’s engineers were correct (they had been informed they would die painfully if they were wrong) they would easily be able to reach the far side of the strait from the forts along the Finger.
“Come,” said the autarch after they
had watched the sweating sailors lower the gun onto a giant wheeled wagon. “How fortunate for us that the old emperors of Hierosol made this fine, paved road for their supply wagons, otherwise we would have to drag the guns through the sand and the waiting would be even more tedious. I will have my morning meal, and then perhaps about midday we will be able to hear our first lovely crocodile speak. Come, Vash. We will attend to all other business as I eat.”
The autarch had rather conspicuously not said anything about his paramount minister being fed. An hour on dry land had settled Vash’s stomach and he was feeling extremely hungry, but he effortlessly stifled a sigh: all of the autarch’s servitors either mastered the art of hiding their feelings and stifling their needs, or else their cooling bodies were picked clean on the vulture shrines.
Vash bowed. “Of course, Golden One. As you say.”
“I ask your pardon for disturbing you, King Olin,” said Count Perivos.
The bearded man smiled. “I am afraid I cannot entertain you in the way I could have in my old home, but you are welcome, sir. Please, come in.” He waved to the page, who was watching with trepidation: Olin was only a foreign king, but everyone knew his visitor was of an important and ancient Hierosoline family. “Be so good as to pour us some wine, boy,” Olin said. “Perhaps some of the Torvian.”
Perivos Akuanis looked around the king’s cell, which was furnished in moderate comfort, though not exactly overlarge. “I am sorry you must live this way, Your Highness. It would not have been my choice.”
“But Ludis wished it so. He must have some hidden qualities, the lord protector, that he has a man as famous as you in his employ.”
Perivos began to say something, then looked over to the guards standing on either side of the door. “You may wait outside, you two. I am in no danger.”
They eyed him for a moment before going out. Count Perivos cleared his throat.
“I will be honest with you, Olin Eddon, because I believe you are an honorable man. It is not so much loyalty to Ludis that keeps me here, although the man did pull the country back into stability after a long civil war, but loyalty to my city and nation. I am a Hierosol man, through and through.”
“But you are of high blood yourself. Why is it that you yourself did not try to take the throne, or support someone more to your liking?”
“Because I knew with things being as they are I could do more good this way. I am not a king or even a king’s counselor. I am a soldier, and of a particular kind at that. My science is siege war, which I learned from Petris Kopayis, the best of this age. I knew I had no choice but to use that knowledge to try to save my city and its people from the bloody-handed autarchs of Xis. Thus, I could not afford to take sides in the last throes of the civil war.”
“I remember Kopayis—I met him when we fought the Xandian Federation here twenty years ago. Gods, he was a clever man!” Olin smiled a little. “And everything I have heard suggests you are his true successor. So you do not bear a grudge against Ludis, you say—and he bears none against you?”
Perivos frowned. “Never underestimate him, King Olin. He is a rough man, and his personal habits are…are disturbing. But he is no fool. He will employ any man who can help him, whether that man admires him or not, whether that man fought for him or not. He has servants of all shapes and religions and histories. Two of his advisers fought against him in the civil war, and came to their new positions straight from the gallows-cells, and one of his chiefest envoys is a black man out of Xand—from Tuan, to be precise.”
Olin raised his eyebrow in amusement. “An unusual choice, but not unheard of.”
“Ah, that is right—you had a Tuani lord as your retainer too, did you not? But things have not gone so well with him, I hear.”
The March King’s face twitched with pain—it was almost shocking to see in a man so controlled. “Do not remind me, I pray you. I have been told he murdered my son, although I can scarcely believe it, and now there is talk he has taken my daughter as well. It is…agony to hear such things and be able to do nothing—you are a father, Akuanis, you can imagine! Agony beyond words.” Olin rose and paced for a moment, then returned to take a long swallow of his wine. When he lowered the cup his face was precisely expressionless again. “Well,” he said at last, “we obviously have some measure of each other, Count Perivos. If for no other reason, I would give you whatever assistance I honorably can because of the kindness your daughter has shown me. So what do you wish?”
Akuanis nodded. “It is about Sulepis of Xis. You have fought against one of the autarchs before, and you have warned about the Xixian menace for a long time. Your suggestions were canny and I am skilled enough at what I do that I have no shame in asking others for help. What else can you suggest that will help me save this city? You must know that the strait is full of his warships, and that already he has made two different landings on Hierosoline soil.”
“Two?” Olin looked puzzled. “I had heard about his assault on the Finger forts—the guards were full of talk about it this morning. But what else?”
Count Perivos looked to the door, then back to Olin, his thin face with its two-day growth of beard pale and troubled. “You must speak of this to no one, King Olin. The autarch, although only the gods of war know how, has managed to land a sizable force at the northern mouth of the strait, near Lake Strivothos. King Enander of Syan sent a force of twenty pentecounts led by his son Eneas to reinforce the garrison on the fort at Temple Island north of the city, and on their way they met a Xixian army on the Kracian side of the strait. The Xixians fired on them, but luckily for the Syannese the autarch’s men had not set their cannon yet and were able to use only muskets. Some of the Syannese escaped and were able to send us the news.”
“And grim news it is,” said Olin. “How could the Xixians have got there? Did they slip unnoticed up the strait?”
“I am cursed if I can tell you.” Akuanis scowled. “But you can see my desperation. If they conquer our forts on the Finger we cannot keep more of their ships from sailing up the western side and reaching the great lake. They will be able to seal in our allies there, especially the Syannese. We will face this siege entirely alone.”
Olin shook his head. “I would not dare to tell you your craft, Count Perivos. Your reputation has traveled where you have not, and I knew your name before I began my…visit here in Hierosol. I have studied this autarch a little but not fought him, of course—the southerners I fought here twenty years ago were a loose collection of Tuani and others, and although Parnad’s troops fought with them, it was a very different sort of battle.” He raised his hands. “So you see…”
“But you have been studying him a long time—is there anything you can tell me about this Sulepis, any weakness my spies have missed I might exploit? It goes without saying I will honor my end of the bargain with any news of your family and home I can discover.”
“To be honest, I bargained only when I did not know you and feared you would not trust me otherwise—I would not knowingly aid the autarch and will do anything I can do to help.” He frowned. “But I am certain a man like yourself has explored every angle.” Nevertheless, Olin spent much of the next hour describing what he remembered of the Xixian military at war and everything he had heard about this young autarch, Sulepis.
When he had finished the count sat silent for a while, then put down his wine cup and smacked his hands on his thighs in frustration. “It is this news about Xixian marines in Krace that frights me most. He has ten or twenty times our numbers, and if we cannot be reinforced except over land, up the steep, steep valley roads, I fear that Hierosol will fall at last, if only from starvation.”
“That will take months,” Olin said. “Many things may change in that time, Count Perivos. Other ideas will come, or even new allies.” He looked at him keenly. “If I were free, it is possible I could bring a northern army to help break the siege.”
Perivos Akuanis laughed without anger. “And if I could persuade Ludis Drakava to d
o something he so profoundly does not wish to do, I would be a god and could save the city by myself.” He reached down for his cup and finished it with a swallow. “I am sorry, King Olin. Even with our enemies all around us, the lord protector still has hopes for using you to make some useful bargain—if not for your daughter, the gods protect her, then for something else. I cannot imagine any trade the autarch would make that Drakava would agree to, despite his strange offer for you. Whatever the case, our lord protector is not done with you yet. Apologies, your Highness, and thank you for your time. Now I have work to do.”
Before he could reach the door, Olin had sprung from his bench and grabbed the count’s arm. “Hold! Hold, damn you!”
Akuanis had his knife out in a moment and pressed it against Olin’s throat. “I will not call the guards because I still believe you a gentleman, but you abuse our hospitality, King Olin.”
“I…I am sorry…” Olin let go and took a clumsy step backward. “Truly. It is just…you said something about the autarch trying to bargain…for me…?”
“Hah!” Count Perivos stared at him carefully. “I assumed your sources had told you already. Sulepis offered the lord protector some piddling promises in exchange for you. Drakava was not interested.”
“But that makes no sense!” Olin held up his fists before him, not as someone who planned to use them, but as a man searching for something to grasp to keep himself from falling. “Why would the autarch be interested in the king of a small northern federation who has never even met him? I am no threat to him.”
The count stared at him for a long moment, then sheathed his knife. “Perhaps he thinks you are. Can you guess at why? Perhaps there is something you have forgotten—something I can use.” The weariness and desperation of Count Perivos became evident for the first time. “Otherwise we will have the siege, and fire, and starvation, and perhaps worse.”
