The High King's Vengeance

by Steven Poore

  She flinched as an arrow whirred into the ground to her left, but it appeared to be nothing more than a stray, a nervous shot. There was an angry exchange between two of the defenders at the top of the ridge. Cassia leaned forward to keep her balance, her breath shallow. It was too late to have second thoughts about the wisdom of her actions.

  The makeshift torch, the arrow shafts untreated and unintended for such use, burned all too quickly. She had to cast it aside before it burned her skin, but at least that freed up one hand for the rest of the climb. She dug the staff into the ground for further support.

  Now the voices above her were clearer. Northern accents, she thought. The words might still be indistinct, but the tone was not. The men were tense, terrified by the events of the day. Cassia could well imagine how the roars of the dragons would have echoed through the empty hills. At any moment they might soar overhead, searching for fresh meat, just as in the stories of the Age of Talons. Or they would drop silently from the clouds to pluck a lone scout from the rocks. Or they would walk silently through a camp, unseen and unchallenged, to make note of the disposition of their prey. It was one thing to hear the stories told; it was entirely another to know that these things were true. And Cassia knew too well how that felt.

  She reached the top of the climb. From here the ruined watchtower on the old border of Lyriss stood stark against the clouds. There were lights within the fallen walls – the fort had been occupied since last she saw it. But that was only a momentary distraction as men rose from the grasses and quickly surrounded her, short spears angled up at her chest and her neck. More than the shieldmen had counted. Others hurried to the edge of the slope with bows, arrows nocked and half-pulled. Their tension pushed hard against her, warning her to remain still. They outnumbered her own shieldmen already, but they were scared. Despite the fact that the shieldmen had not moved a single inch towards their positions, these men were more scared than Cassia herself.

  “I have no weapon,” she said loudly. She lifted her free hand, palm outwards, to lend weight to her words.

  The ring of spears wavered, but none of the points dropped. Cassia looked at the men around her, saw the thick shirts, the mismatched leatherworked armguards and the cloth caps they wore, compared their hesitancy and poor discipline to the drills she had seen Ultess conduct, and she knew these men were not truly soldiers. Yet that might only make them more dangerous.

  “Bull’s balls,” one of the men said. His voice still carried a vestigial squeak of adolescence, and that made the epithet sound ridiculous. “You came with them.”

  “They ain’t natural,” another added. “Why ain’t they talking?”

  “Because they’re made of stone,” Cassia said. “Stone can’t talk.”

  She knew differently, of course. Thoughts of Meredith touched her mind once more, but this was not the time to dwell upon it. She turned on the spot, looking more closely at each of the men. “Who is your commander?”

  “Not here, girl,” a third man said. He was older, more collected than his fellows, though even that was only a matter of degree. “And we’re asking the questions. Who in all the gods are you?”

  “Is the world really ending? Is that what that was?” the first lad asked.

  The older man glared at him, but Cassia saw a similar worry in his own eyes.

  “There was something in the sky – I know it, I saw it,” one of the younger boys insisted. And they were boys, Cassia thought.

  “Gods alive, boy, your own cock rising scares you half to death.” The older man turned his attention back to her once more. “Go on, and quick. Who are you? Who commands your force? And why should we let you pass?”

  Cassia tilted her staff forward to move one of the spears aside. Gently, but firmly. The lad behind it was so nervous that he took a step back.

  “If you don’t let me pass,” she said, “then it probably will be the end of the world.”

  The arrival of the remainder of her column at the base of the hill shattered what little nerve these men still possessed. By that time Cassia had managed to number them at around twenty, and to her surprise three of the young bowmen were not boys at all – they were girls, fresh from the hillside pastures, armed with what had to be their fathers’ weapons, just as they would be when they guarded their herds against predators. The older man acted as their officer, and it was probable he actually was a veteran of the legions, but they were a raw, untempered bunch, kept together through fear more than anything else.

  Arca brought the horses diagonally up an easier section of the hillside, while the shieldmen simply marched up in single file, each step hard and measured. The youngsters – and how ironic that she should be thinking of them as young! – gathered in a tight cluster, plainly afraid that the silent stone men would seek revenge upon them, but the shieldmen were completely indifferent. Arca watched them all warily, still more drunk than sober, and Cassia hoped he retained enough sense to keep silent.

  “Himil – you stay here. Not alone, you fool – you and your squad. Go gather up those shafts, or you’ll be spending the next two weeks cutting more.” He was an ex-soldier, Cassia decided. “Frake, it’s your command. Don’t go running off.”

  Frake was a tall, ungainly lad who looked in dire need of sleep. There was a kind of unfocused terror hidden behind his otherwise unremarkable features. Cassia knew how he felt. “Dunt know where I’d run to anywhat,” he said. “Can’t go that way no more.”

  The boys behind him were glancing back down the hill. The sky still glowed to the south, where Lyriss lay. The dragons were settling back into the land.

  “Sir,” the older man said in flat tones.

  Frake blinked at him. “Can’t go that way no more, sir.”

  “Better. Where there’s discipline, there’s hope.”

  Arca broke into a fit of coughing and the soldier glared at him for a moment before turning back to Cassia. “They’ll want to speak to you,” he said. “Up at the camp.”

  He led the way up to the old watchtower, along with a trio of spear-wielding youngsters. Cassia thought at least one of them was a girl, but they would not come close enough for her to be certain. If they were intended to act as guards then they might as well not have bothered. A column of shieldmen this large would scarcely even notice them should Cassia order them to advance and attack.

  Their officer resisted all attempts at conversation, his face set firmly in a scowl as he marched alongside her. It was as though he did not want to acknowledge her presence. Most of the men she had drawn from the Hellean towns into her rough army had been awed and astounded by the shieldmen, and her ability to command of the stone soldiers had only served to turn that astonishment into a form of loyalty. Yet while Himil and Frake and their comrades were frightened of the shieldmen, they were not struck by wonder.

  Cassia considered that for a moment. Yes, it was as if the sense of wonder had been struck from them all. Just as the sight of dragons and sorcery no longer took her own breath away as it once had done. She regarded the officer more closely, searching for a clue as to why that might be so.

  “Cassia . . .” Arca rode out on her other shoulder. She glanced over at him and saw him point towards the old fortifications.

  Now here was a sight that was hard to comprehend. Cassia blinked to refocus her sense of scale. The entire hillside around the watchtower had become a camp – a camp far larger than most villages she had ever passed through. Rough shelters constructed from blankets and cloaks struggled to hold off the wind. A few tents stood proud amongst them, like temples in a slum, but they were few and far between. And the ground teemed with people. Not just soldiers, Cassia saw as they came closer to the disordered outskirts of the camp, but herdsmen with tethered beasts, tradesmen with their goods and their families piled high on small carts, merchants and old men, smiths and carpenters, women and children . . .

  “Refugees,” she said under her breath, taken aback by the sight. Arca only nodded, his face grim and expecta
nt.

  Refugees. The North fled before Caenthell’s darkness. Pyraete’s return to power had served only to panic his own people. And Cassia knew with dull certainty where they had hoped to run.

  “Perhaps we got here just in time.”

  Arca gauged her words for a moment and then shook his head. “Hardly. Even Kebria was never like this. This is desperation, girl. Look at them.”

  People shrank away from her as she came to the first ragged clusters of shelters. Unlike Himil and Frake, they had no weapons, no means of defense. They were scared of her and the shieldmen in a way the people of Hellea had not been. Her arrival rippled visibly across the camp, and a pathway opened up to the tower even before her escort had a chance to call for one.

  Cassia pushed her shoulders back and set her gaze upon the tower itself. Better to focus upon that than to have to witness the fear and suffering of hundreds of displaced families. She could not close her ears to their misery, however, and her eyes brimmed with tears long before she reached the innermost ring of tents.

  There were other men here to meet her. Soldiers, dressed as Imperial Legionaires, yet as undisciplined as the men and women around them. Their armour was neither polished nor waxed, if they wore any at all, and they seemed a beaten, confused bunch. They had planted their standards before their tents, as all soldiers did, but those standards might as well have been stolen from elsewhere, for all that they were paid any respect. Cassia did not have to look across at Arca to know that he too had measured the camp and found it wanting.

  A couple of the men had drawn blades, taking up aggressive stances. Others had plainly looked past Cassia and Arca to the shieldmen they led, and now they stood rooted to the spot, indecisive or afraid. If the shieldmen had marched any further towards them, Cassia wondered, would they fight or run? She had to push aside the temptation to find out.

  The drums of the North sighed their disappointment in her mind and she ignored them.

  “Where are your officers?” she asked. The soldiers looked at her as though they had not expected her to speak. She asked the question again and this time one had enough presence of mind to point up at the tumbled walls of the watchtower.

  “Mallon, what in all the gods is this?” one of the sword-wielding men demanded. “Who are they?”

  The head of their escort shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “They came up the road – from Lyriss,” he added in pointed tones. “But you’re the ones leading us, Darian, sir. They’re your problem now. My responsibility is back there, on the perimeter. Where you put us, remember?”

  Arca looked down at him. “He sent children out on watch?”

  “After the hills flew apart? Aye, he did. And me. Expendable.”

  The officer, Darian, had darkened into anger. His blade was no longer held loose at his side. “My men are watching the northern approaches, you old fool. Or have you forgotten why we are here?”

  Cassia sighed as the pair descended into bickering. She climbed from her saddle, nodding for Arca to do the same. If neither Mallon nor Darian could provide her with any answers or information, then she would leave them behind.

  She started up the steep slope towards the watchtower, her quartet of stone guards lumbering after her. The rest of her column would be in no danger here, she decided. Perhaps if they stood still long enough the refugees would cease to view them as a threat.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach the tumbled outer walls of the watchtower. There were even more tents here, shelters rigged over the walls to create a network of covered walks. Men sat huddled around small cookfires; they gamed with dice, or scrubbed industriously at their equipment, or else simply lay upon the ground. Their faces were grim, expressions of hopelessness and defeat written plain for Cassia to see. This part of the camp felt even bleaker than the main body that occupied the lower slopes.

  “They should challenge us,” Arca coughed. The climb had worn him out, and he leaned heavily upon his staff.

  For a moment Cassia could not think what he meant, but then she understood. If this was a military camp, then it should be subject to military discipline. The legion based at Keskor had never allowed her father within its grounds. Yet here, Cassia had been allowed to walk right into the heart of the camp. And not alone – with shieldmen behind her.

  She marched over to the nearest cookfire. The men sat around it looked up apprehensively at her.

  “Take me to your captain,” she ordered, tapping the nearest man with her staff.

  His mouth opened as if to object, but then he saw the shieldmen and he scrambled inelegantly to his feet, grabbing at the helmet he had left in the mud at his side. Cassia followed him deeper into the camp, ducking under canvas shelters that blocked the way, until they came at last to the former watchtower’s central yard.

  The camp was rousing itself around them as news of the shieldmen spread far quicker than any wind-blown hill fire, and the officers in this yard had begun to react. Cassia heard orders for drawn weapons, and the clatter and muffled curses of men maneuvering in far too tight a space. Her unwilling guide had already fled, so she used her staff to trip the first man who came within reach. He collapsed with a thump, tangled in the over-large cloak he wore. His yelp of pain as he hit the ground shocked her into immobility and for a moment she could not draw a breath.

  Then the man turned his face up towards her, a quivering hand raised as if to fend off another attack. “Mercy!” he gasped.

  Even in the unnatural gloom of the evening, colour leeched from everything around her, Cassia could not fail to recognise him.

  “Hetch?” she said in disbelief.

  15

  Suspicion lay in the air like acrid smoke, so tangible Cassia could taste it with every breath. She moistened her lips and stared across at the men before her, returning their hostility with what she hoped was unthreatening calm. It was a pose that would have come naturally to both Malessar and Baum, though they would have had hundreds of years to practise it to perfection.

  Hostility and uncertainty, such as she had faced from Mallon and his inexperienced troop of youngsters. But this time there was a sharper edge to the emotions, and it was no hard task to understand why.

  “We thought you were dead!” Hetch said, before falling back into silence under the withering glare of the man next to him.

  The words could be taken more than one way, Cassia decided. Did they merely believe she had died, or did they actually hope that was the case? The drumming pulsed louder in her head, refusing to allow her any respite. Perhaps this was how sorcerers and warlocks approached every conversation, with no words passing unexamined.

  She took advantage of the sudden quiet to study these men more closely. It was a council of officers, she had been told; the commanders and tacticians of this sullen force camped on the borders of old Lyriss. Yet if that were so, they were as ragged as the refugees they herded. One or two she thought she might have seen at a distance, parading columns of troops through one town or another. It was difficult to be certain. They all wore wearied expressions, years of campaigning having moulded them all into one shape. Just like her shieldmen. Only the beaten plates of their armour and the different cut of their cloaks made it possible to tell them apart.

  Scattered amongst them were the faces she knew. Hetch himself, dressed as though he played at being a soldier, a short sword scabbarded awkwardly at his side. From time to time his gaze slid to the weapons she still bore – Pelicos’s blade at her hip, and the larger sword across her back – before returning in disbelief to her face. His brother Vescar sat nearby, and it was plain from his scowl and ill-concealed discomfort that the wounds he had received at Baum’s hands had not yet healed. His agenda was obvious, Cassia thought.

  Rann Almoul himself was not present, which surprised her, but his eldest son Tarves loomed large at the centre of the horseshoe-shaped council. He had never been a soldier, but it did not take Cassia long to notice how the others, including most of the long-serving com
manders, deferred to him. Rann Almoul had groomed his son well. He had the dominant nature of his mother, as well as the cunning of his father. He was the most dangerous man at this council.

  Or he would have been if not for the old man almost hidden in his shadow. Attis the moneylender. Attis the half-captain, who had been a part of Baum’s schemes since the campaign in Berdella. Exactly what that part was, Cassia had yet to discover. She had always been scared of the old man’s temper, of his heartfelt dislike for her father, and of his reputation as a man who could break another with little more than a well-placed word. Keskor was his town as much as it belonged to Rann Almoul or to the Factor himself. But now he sat in silence, his face a mask, just as he had done when Baum first introduced himself to them all in Almoul’s house. He barely even looked at her. Instead his eyes were locked upon Arca, behind her.

  “Why have you come back?” Tarves demanded.

  “To save you,” Cassia replied evenly. “From Caenthell, from Pyraete, from yourselves.”

  Oh gods, had she really said that? It was as bad as any number of hoary old stories!

  Vescar spat onto the ground near her feet. “How timely. And you come with a ready-made army too! So soon after you disappeared with that demon-blooded sorcerer! How do we know that you did not start this cataclysm anyway, to further your own ends?”

  That was close enough to the truth to hurt. Cassia bit down hard on her lip and turned away from him. She looked at the other commanders instead, at the men she did not know. What did they think of her? How did they view her? Did they see the woman she presented herself as, or as the girl she knew herself still to be? Aware of the solid presence of the shieldmen flanking her – this quartet that would not leave her alone for a single moment – she amended the question silently. Did they even see her at all? She might be Heir to the North, but she might as well name herself Heir to the whole world and Queen of all dragons to boot, for all the good those titles would do her in front of these men.