by David Hair
Ringwald had gnostically reinforced walls, wards on every battlement to detect even veiled magi and aerial wards as well. After several days studying the defences, he’d been forced to concede that just possibly this was a place he couldn’t get his men into undetected.
Then he’d seen the obvious.
He straightened. ‘Right, lads, ladies, it’s time to go. Me first.’
‘Are you sure?’ cautious Tabia asked. ‘You being the boss-man and valuable an’ all?’
‘Allegedly valuable,’ the lanky Melicho grinned. The rest of the group smirked.
‘I wouldn’t trust any of you incompetents not to get lost halfway,’ Ramon replied evenly.
‘It’s a tunnel,’ Postyn noted. ‘You can’t get lost in a tunnel.’
‘You lot could,’ Ramon chuckled, ‘and that’s why I’m leading.’
‘Why en’t we going in at night?’ bald Moxy wanted to know.
‘Because what we’re doing is noisy and nights are quiet. Remember, it’s going to be cold, but you must not use the gnosis for heat: one, anyone nearby with magical senses may realise; two: you might melt the passage. Once we’re in, make for the barracks – you know where it is. We’re infiltrating, so be discreet, and take your time.’
With that, he turned and climbed up the ladder to where Melicho, an Earth-mage, had opened a hole in the side of one of the frozen aqueducts. Tabia, a Water-mage, had carved a tunnel into the frozen ice in the race.
Norostein lay on the slopes of Mount Fettelorn, built on either side of the Krystevoss River. It fell from the high alps in a torrential rush in spring and summer, but froze in the depths of winter. The river had been captured and tamed by a series of lochs and races that controlled the flow and supplied the city’s drinking water. It also irrigated the surrounding countryside and fed the manmade Lowertown Lake, the canals and the moat. The aqueduct was normally highly dangerous; even a Water-mage attempting to wade up it would be immediately swept away – but now it was frozen solid and as far as Ramon could tell, Governor Myron hadn’t bothered to place detection wards in the ice. For the last week he’d sent in Water-magi with labourers to slowly, carefully chip a tunnel through that ice, just large enough that men could crawl up and into Ringwald.
‘Boss,’ Melicho said, as he was about to enter, ‘good luck.’
Ramon winked back. ‘No farting in the tunnel, amici – we don’t want a collapse.’
Always leave them laughing, he thought as he pushed his head into the hole and slithered inside.
The tunnel was narrow, but none of his men would be armoured in more than a leather jerkin and the surface was slick. They’d sanded the floor smooth and he was able to move comfortably, even pulling the leather satchel along with him. The first section was easy. They were still hundreds of yards and a full loch from the Ringwald walls. Although anyone on those walls could see down into the race, the ice was cloudy enough that the guards shouldn’t see them below the surface – and hopefully, all the activity at the main gates was distracting them.
Ramon hauled himself up the gentle slope, unaffected by claustrophobia but shivering from the cold. Behind him he heard the next in line, Postyn, his best Water-mage, humming as he wriggled along.
Postyn went quiet and Ramon gave himself over to the next task. The governor’s guards were now only a dozen yards away and the ice was just a few feet thick here. He was in the lee of the loch gates, which weren’t one solid barrier but had smaller sluice-gates built in below the waterline for controlled release of water during droughts. Ramon’s magi had tampered with the cables controlling one portal, enabling it to be worked from the other side, and he slipped silently through, right under the walls, and paused, ready to enter the next race, which had only about six feet of ice in it. That would ordinarily have been too shallow to conceal them, but they’d contrived to spread a particular winter moss over the past few nights which had streaked the ice with green in a way that looked entirely natural – and made the ice fully opaque.
Let’s see if the guards up there have been paying attention . . .
The slope made it harder, but he forced himself upwards towards the top, where the ice was thinner still, just a few inches thick. He could hear the protesting crowds again, dimly reverberating from a quarter of a mile away.
A voice just a few feet above suddenly made him freeze.
‘All quiet here?’ it asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ someone answered. Ramon heard a few more muttered words, complaints about the ‘blasted mob’ at the gates that made him grin, and then boots clip-clopped away. Someone sighed in relief, followed by the pop of a cork being removed from a flask.
With the smile still on his lips, Ramon slithered up and into the next section, a fifteen-foot-deep loch through which their tunnel continued, and into the race that led to the heart of Ringwald, away from the manned walls. He crawled on swiftly until he came to a public garden, their chosen exit point, although the watercourse continued through Ringwald to the mountains. They’d left the digging unfinished here, just a foot from the surface.
Now for the gamble . . .
With Ringwald under siege, there was no reason for anyone to be in this garden, but water and ice, like stone, inhibited scrying, so he’d just have to poke his head through and trust to luck. He was a Fire- and theurgy-mage, not a lot of use with elemental magic, except for burning things, so he called Postyn forward. He’d used his Water-gnosis to create a small burrow here, where two or three could work. Postyn was a stolid, surprisingly whimsical Midrean, his sunny face belying a dark history. He was also a careful man. He patiently shaved away the ice, layer after layer, as the next few magi arrived and waited silently in the tunnel. Moon-faced Tabia gave Ramon a small, anxious wave and he held up five fingers, his estimate of how many minutes before they went into action.
Those minutes took an eternity, but at last Postyn edged backwards. ‘I left an inch to hide the digging, boss,’ he whispered. ‘Thought you might like to go first . . . an’ get your head knocked off ’stead o’ me.’ He ran a hand over his tousled brown hair.
‘Mercenaries,’ Ramon sniffed. ‘Most risk-averse people you’ll meet.’
‘The living ones are,’ Postyn agreed.
Ramon eased past Postyn, then after listening hard, gently pushed, first poking a finger through, then his head. The ice cracked into shards that slipped down his neck.
‘Hello,’ said a voice, and he almost leaped ten feet in the air.
Then he realised it was a child’s voice and he spun around, automatically fixing his most winsome smile to his face. ‘Hello to you too,’ he said brightly, his eyes fixing on a cherubic face. The little boy was maybe eight years old, with blond hair and cheeks flushed from the cold, framed by a rich fur cowl. He had mittens on, beautifully made, and he was leaning over the edge of the wall that separated the race from the gardens. Bare-branched trees hung overhead, but no other faces were peering into the iced-over channel.
‘I thought you might be an otter,’ the boy said. ‘Sometimes they swim in the race. Otters are my favourite thing.’ He peered at Ramon worriedly. ‘Are you hunting otters?’
He’s not going to be alone . . . And he’s a local, a Noros boy . . .
‘Not otters,’ Ramon replied, improvising. ‘I’m hunting the foxes that hunt otters.’ He rose slowly to his feet, half out of the hole.
‘Foxes!’ the boy exclaimed. ‘I love foxes. They’re my favourite thing.’
Make up your mind, kid: foxes or otters?
‘We don’t hurt them,’ Ramon reassured him, climbing out of the hole and staying low so that he was still below the race wall. ‘We just trap them, then release them into the wild.’ He showed the boy his tabard – one of the false uniforms he’d had some of his legion’s camp-followers whip up. ‘I’m with the Imperial Guard.’
‘My father says the Imperial Guard are a bunch of lug-tuggers,’ the
boy said conspiratorially. ‘Is that good?’
‘It’s very high praise,’ Ramon replied, slithering across the frozen surface towards the boy, fixing him with a little mesmeric-gnosis to keep him from running, though the boy was showing no inclination to do so. ‘You’re brave to be out on your own on a cold day like this,’ he remarked.
‘Oh, I’m not alone,’ the boy said. ‘My nanny is with me.’
Just a nanny, Ramon thought, relieved.
‘And my bodyguard. I think they’re sweet on each other,’ the boy said, in mystified tones.
Okay, not so good. But if I can’t fool them, no one’s going to be able to fool anyone today. Ramon stood, vaulted the wall and sat on it beside the boy. ‘What’s your name, young man?’
‘Bestie. Well, Bestyr Dainsen, but everyone calls me Bestie.’
‘I’m Rai,’ Ramon said, shaking his hand solemnly while surveying the gardens. They were empty, but inside a small brick pavilion he could make out the silhouette of a person; or perhaps it was two, in a clinch. Surrounding the garden were brick walls studded with closed shutters. The noise of Vania’s riots at the main gates echoed distantly.
Bestie took his hand unhesitatingly and they walked to the pavilion along the icy path. They were almost there when two people came to the entrance, peering at him anxiously – a young man in a livery of blue and white quarters and a badge Ramon might have known if he’d bothered to learn heraldry, and a young woman with a cheery face, wearing a bonnet over somewhat mussed-up hair.
The young guard stepped forward, eyeing Ramon and opting for bravado. ‘Here, what are you doing, Imperial?’ He was wearing a periapt, which meant that Bestie’s family was important.
‘Bestie?’ the young girl added anxiously.
‘This is Rai,’ Bestie said. ‘He’s my best friend in the whole world.’
Ramon squeezed his hand then let go. ‘Go to your nanny, lad,’ he told him, while he met the eyes of the guard. They all had Noros accents, and a light scan of their minds revealed no great love of the empire or Governor Myron, and therefore no liking for the uniform Ramon wore. ‘You shouldn’t let him near the canal unsupervised,’ he told them. ‘The ice will begin to break up again at some stage and the water will flow. The lad could be swept away.’
The observation immediately made the pair defensive, as he’d intended, making them forget their concerns about him. ‘We were just about to collect him,’ the young guard said, then his eyes focused more closely on Ramon and his uniform and his face turned puzzled. ‘I thought I knew all the captains in the Governor’s Guard,’ he said. Then his eyes widened. ‘You were presented at court, but you’re not—’
His hand moved and Ramon reacted, gripping the man’s wrist where Bestie and the nanny couldn’t see. Gnostic energies flared, but Ramon was an Ascendant and his grip, physical and mental, locked the other man’s body and mind instantly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you one of Myron’s friends?’
The young man’s face was fearful, but to his credit he defiantly spat, ‘Noros voor de vrei.’
Ramon knew enough of the local dialect to understand: Noros for the free, not something a wise man would say to an imperial captain. ‘I share your sentiments,’ he murmured, conscious of Bestie and the nanny watching anxiously, sensing the confrontation but not understanding it. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Laryn Sturi. And you’re Ramon Sens—’
‘No, I’m Rai, an Imperial Guardsman,’ Ramon told Laryn firmly. ‘My advice is this: take Bestie and the young lady home. There’s rumours of mutiny, and violence may break out.’
Laryn’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll get them home,’ he promised, then he asked, ‘Is there any way I can help?’
‘No – just keep my new best friend in all the world safe,’ Ramon told him.
They left, Ramon and Bestie exchanging energetic military salutes, then he returned to the canal to find a dozen of his battle-magi now pressed against the wall. ‘About rukkin’ time,’ Melicho grumbled. ‘It’s freezing in here.’
‘Then let’s warm things up.’ Ramon looked at Tabia, who was clearly the most nervous. ‘Tabs, you’re with me. The rest of you, in pairs, one minute apart. You know the route – don’t improvise. I’ll meet you at the back of the old barracks.’ He settled his own satchel onto his shoulder, then gave Tabia a hand over the wall and the two of them set off as if they owned the streets. They met one patrol who saluted them and complained about the weather. The streets were all but empty and no one challenged them.
Everyone’s at the gates, Ramon thought, relieved.
Their route took them past the broad plaza in front of the Governor’s Mansion, where eight windships were moored, with crewmen swarming around them. The governor’s wealth was already loaded, ready for immediate evacuation if Copperleaf’s walls were breached.
The mansion itself was a multi-storeyed rectangular edifice that doubled as an administrative block and residence, much more luxurious than the Royal Palace, a dour old castle on a low rise overlooking Ringwald. Black flags still hung over the old fortress, mourning the death in battle of King Phyllios III of Noros two weeks ago. He’d died with no successor so what little powers were left to the Crown had legally devolved to Governor Myron.
Ramon nudged Tabia’s shoulder. ‘Only a dozen or so guards . . . the protests are working.’
‘But we’ll never get inside that mansion,’ Tabia breathed. ‘It’s crawling with people.’
‘Actually, I broke into it when I was a student mage here,’ Ramon replied, smiling at the memory. ‘But that governor wasn’t at home at the time. Anyway, we don’t have to get inside there today. Come on.’
They took to the backstreets again, making their way down silent snow-clogged streets winding between the high walls of rich men’s houses, scrawling arrows in the snow every few turns, in case any of his people got lost. Inside five minutes they were loitering near the old Royal Palace, where a few sentries huddling in blankets were staring into space in a semi-doze.
‘Are you sure the people you want are inside?’ Tabia whispered.
‘I’m sure. Relax, Tabs, it’ll all be fine.’
Over the next few minutes, the rest of his team arrived, led by Postyn and Melicho. ‘Some prick tried to order me to the main gate,’ Melicho reported. ‘He was only a bloody serjant. I flashed my periapt and he backed right off.’
Governor Myron had cultivated a regime of secrecy and favouritism, but that didn’t always help security: left hands often didn’t know what right hands were doing and people feared to ask questions. Ironically for someone who often dealt in secrets, Ramon found openness paid off.
Once his full group had arrived, he quickly reminded them of their roles, then turned to his smallest battle-mage, Jeno Commarys. The skinny, sour-faced woman unpacked a powerful shortbow from her satchel, strung it and tested the pull as the rest of them studied the building before them. The old Royal Palace had been converted to a barracks for the Royal Guard, which Myron had disbanded when King Phyllios died. Ramon had discovered that when the Royal Guards had refused to be stood down, they’d been stripped of arms and armour and locked up in their own barracks, pending trial on whatever trumped-up charges Myron was in the mood to level at them. Most were ordinary men, but the few magi among them had had their powers Chained.
‘Right, lads,’ Ramon told them, ‘we can’t get enough of our own men inside the walls to take on Myron, but in there are men enough for the job. Our task is to break them out on the quiet. Everyone ready?’
They growled assent. Ramon looked up at the sky: the clouds were heavy, but for now there was no rain or snow and the sun was glowing behind the dark shroud, low to the south and soon to be lost in the alpine peaks.
He was about to give the order to move when ther
e came a massive rumble of drums: not from the main gates but further afield, down in Lowertown, where the Shihad were encamped.
‘What’s that?’ Postyn wondered aloud, voicing the question on all their lips.
‘That’s the Noories up to something,’ Ramon told them. ‘I don’t know what, but I take it as a sign that the truce is soon to end. So let’s get on with this.’ He patted Jeno on the shoulder. ‘Amica, we’re in your hands.’
*
The drums were just a dim murmur inside the stone building where Waqar Mubarak was concealed in a cellar with the hatch covered in straw and an elephant sitting on top of that. But he heard them and pulled the flask of water from his lips.
‘Hear that?’ he said softly. ‘They’re crowning Xoredh right now.’
‘Salim was anointed before all the people,’ his companion replied bitterly. ‘Even Rashid did so openly.’
‘That’s not Xoredh’s way: he is treacherous, so he fears treachery.’
Waqar scratched at his beard: he’d always gone clean-shaven, but keeping up courtly appearance wasn’t easy when hiding in a hole. He was clad in a boiled leather breastplate and greaves designed for flying. He didn’t know the whereabouts of his roc, but he’d sent Ajniha a mental impulse to fly away and he hoped she’d obeyed. Since then he’d hidden here, because if Xoredh had the power of the daemon-possessed magi, he was truly to be feared.
‘The drums signal the end of the mourning,’ Waqar noted. ‘The fighting will resume soon.’
His companion, Latif, nodded grimly. He’d once been a court impersonator of the late Sultan Salim Kabarakhi, whose murder had led to the ascension of the Mubaraks. Since then, Latif, his past unknown, had been living as an enslaved archer in an elephant crew. Right now, Waqar’s life was in Latif’s hands; it was he who’d warned him what Xoredh was.
Rashid allowed his second son to be possessed by a daemon, in exchange for the help of Ervyn Naxius to gain the throne and launch a Shihad against the West. I can still scarcely believe it.
‘Will you be joining the assault?’ Waqar asked.
