Aranthur forced a laugh. ‘I guess you had other things on your mind.’
The centark glanced at him, and just for a moment, Aranthur appreciated what the other man had experienced: command, and loss; fear, and victory.
‘Someday, perhaps, some history will say I only lost six,’ Equus said. ‘But I knew every fucking one of them.’
He turned away, spat, and looked back with his usual face of bland gentility.
‘No more of that, what?’ he said. ‘Let’s ride.’
In early afternoon, they found the Imperial Army. The Imperials were camped on the western slope of a long, shallow ridge, facing south, with a pair of redoubts being dug to cover their flanks, and an impressive dust of cavalry screen to the south and east.
Equus rode down his own column, as soon as watchwords had been exchanged and thumbs came off snaphaunce hammers. He found Aranthur with Sasan.
‘You are Imperial Messengers, and I’m your escort,’ he said. ‘We’ll try not to mention how I used you as flankers in a desperate skirmish, what?’ He pointed up the long ridge. ‘General’s up there. We should go. Immediately.’
Aranthur was on Rasce, but he switched to Ariadne and the five of them cantered away from the column. Aranthur found his messenger’s wand and waved it at the mounted sentries as they went up the hill. About a hundred paces from the summit, they were surrounded by the Black Lobsters, and there was Jeninas, and there, under the Black Rose banner, was the Jhugj, Ringkote.
‘Now we’re in for it,’ Ringkote said hollowly. ‘Timos the raven is here.’
Some of the troopers laughed.
Alis Tribane emerged from a huddle of officers. She wore a black coat and a white shirt, and she was tanned and didn’t look as if she’d been in the field for a week.
‘Companions,’ she said with a smile, using an old word, a military word. An Ellene word: Hetaeroi.
Equus saluted, and Aranthur, who’d grown more accustomed to life in the army in five hard days, also made a passable salute.
‘Syr Equus,’ the General said.
He swept his hat off his head. ‘I fought an action yesterday. Red-clad Safians and some Armean light horse. A vanguard – refugees everywhere, and perhaps as many as thirty thousand horse coming at us from the south. A vast army.’
‘Excellent.’ The General smiled with what appeared to be satisfaction. ‘Aranthur Timos. You do appear in the most unlikely places.’
‘Majesty,’ he said.
‘Speak!’ she ordered.
‘My lady, the Emperor has executed the Duke of Volta. I was to tell you this first.’
Her head flashed around, and shock was writ plain on her face.
‘Where? When?’ she asked.
‘He attempted to kill the Emperor by means of sorcery. I was there.’ He handed her the Imperial Message.
‘Gods, what an idiot,’ the General said. She straightened up. ‘Anything else dire?’
‘The Emperor was concerned lest …’ Equus glanced at Aranthur. ‘Lest some of your troops or officers had … other loyalties.’
‘I appreciate the Emperor’s concern,’ she said. ‘But no one here will have time for mutiny.’
‘I have dispatches, and Myr Tarkas has a whole bag of military—’
‘Good. And mail?’
The General snapped her fingers, and servants ran.
Prince Ansu nodded. ‘Two bags.’
‘Excellent,’ the General said. ‘So – we are still on schedule. Syr Timos, my mages will want anything you can tell them about Safian casting. I believe you have been working the Ulmaghest?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Aranthur was stunned.
‘I knew you were the right person for this. Well done, Centark. Still on schedule.’
‘I brought you sixty wagons of food and powder—’
‘Schedule?’ Aranthur asked, feeling stupid.
Tribane smiled. ‘The war. We have a schedule.’
‘With Atti?’ Aranthur asked before he could clench his teeth on his questions.
‘They don’t know,’ Equus said.
‘Quite right,’ Tribane said. ‘But Aranthur and I are old friends, and I know the prince all too well, and Dahlia is family. Sasan and I have stood together as sword companions, have we not? So let me show you all something.’
She had a white baton in her hand, and she waved it at her officers, all of whom were on horseback. A groom handed her a helmet of gold with a single, tall black plume. She put it on, and made her horse rear to the cheers of soldiers nearby.
She trotted up the hill, posting occasionally, and Aranthur followed her with his friends.
As they crested the ridge, the breath left him as if he’d been punched.
Laid out on the other side of the ridge were hundreds of silk pavilions, and a mile of horse lines, and a long, deadly row of bronze cannones. Big men in turbans stood guard.
The Attian army.
Aranthur had trouble controlling his horse.
‘Draxos!’ spat Dahlia. ‘But we are … at war … with Atti.’
‘I’m so pleased you are surprised,’ the General said. ‘In the morning, we’ll see how surprised the Master is.’
Her grin was feral.
Down in the Attian camp, a magnificently mounted man waved, and then he and his jewelled companions began to ride up the slope.
‘We’re not going to fight Atti?’ Aranthur said.
‘No, my dear,’ the General said. ‘We have lured the Master, or one of his senior servants, onto a battlefield with most of his forces. He thinks he will face a divided Atti and a handful of Imperial cavalry, while his pawns topple our government.’ She waved her arm. ‘He’s not omnipotent. And we had to keep his eyes focused elsewhere.’
‘The City,’ Aranthur said.
The General nodded. ‘All those busy plots … We will not win by defending ourselves. We will triumph by destroying the Master.’ She waved her baton over the plains of Armea. ‘And we will start here, tomorrow.’
The End
Of ‘Cold Iron’ Book One of Masters and Mages
To be continued in Book Two and completed in Book Three.
Also by Miles Cameron from Gollancz:
The Traitor Son Cycle
The Red Knight
The Fell Sword
The Dread Wyrm
A Plague of Swords
Fall of Dragons
Writing as Christian Cameron from Orion:
The Chivalry Series
The Ill-Made Knight
The Long Sword
The Green Count
Sword of Justice
The Tyrant Series
Tyrant
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows
Tyrant: Funeral Games
Tyrant: King of the Bosporus
Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities
Tyrant: Force of Kings
The Long War Series
Killer of Men
Marathon
Poseidon’s Spear
The Great King
Salamis
Rage of Ares
Tom Swan and the Head of St George Parts One–Six
Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade Parts One–Seven
Tom Swan and the Last Spartans Parts One–Five
Other Novels
Washington and Caesar
Alexander: God of War
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Gollancz
an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2018 by Gollancz.
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Copyright © Miles Cameron 2018
The moral right of Miles Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprodu
ced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 21769 0
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Cold Iron Page 52
