A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (41 page)

“Get more men,” Ahasz ordered. If the charger did not implode, they would need to defend this tunnel-mouth.

Tayisa hurried off, breaking into a run after some five yards. Until reinforcements arrived, Ahasz was on his own. Wounded, winded from the run along the tunnel, sword in hand but unsure how long he would last in combat. He put a hand to the tunnel-mouth’s jamb, felt beneath his palm serrated tile, loose soil and scratchy rock. He strained to hear a sound from the chamber at the tunnel’s end.

What if the charger imploded? he thought. The energy would rush along the tunnel. He would be caught in the blast.

Yet he needed to be directly before the entrance in order to watch for attackers.

For five minutes, he waited there, worried that he would be unable to defend his position, that he would be killed in the outrush of energy generated by the charger… that his war should end this very moment and he die so ignominiously. He fretted, dragged his palm across the rock the better to feel
something
, a slicing pain that faded almost immediately. Unlike the dull ache, the occasional spears of hurt from his wounded side.

At last he heard booted feet in the passageway, too many to count, layered over and over each other, bouncing from the tiled walls, becoming thumps and claps and a shattering din. Tayisa appeared, seemed to grow in size from nothing until he was standing before the duke. Behind him, a company of household troopers hefted hammers and axes. He guessed at the number—there were too many to count, they filled the passage, a wall of red smocks topped by bobbing red helmets.

“No sign of them,” Ahasz husked.

Tayisa gestured the soldiers forward, pointed into the tunnel.

Ahasz held up a hand. “No. If the charger goes…”

No more need be said.

“We can block the tunnel, your grace,” Colonel Tayisa suggested. He looked about his feet, at the rocky rubble and soil heaped about.

“The sapper. Marutama.” Trap them within, and they would never escape.

They were likely dead already. It had been more than ten minutes since the knights militant had breached the underground chamber. The sapper-lieutenant—Ahasz had never learnt his name—must have failed. And Marutama, brought down by weight of numbers.

Tayisa said as much. There was no saving them.

The duke turned away, took a handful of steps up the passage, away from the troopers. He had sent Narry and his men to their certain deaths. And that other Housecarls officer—his name would not come. He too had been ordered to make a frontal assault. He had not survived it. For one hundred and twenty-five days, Ahasz had ordered men to die, had caused the deaths of knights militant, knights stalwart, Cuirassiers… Even on the very first day, the day he brought his army into the Imperial Household District: innocents had died when his basilisk fired on the Palace, bringing down balconies, covings and lattices.

He held up a hand, his back still to Tayisa. “Do it,” he said. “Block the tunnel.”

As the tintinnabulation of hammers hitting rock filled the passage behind him, Ahasz walked away, heading for the ladder leading up to the trenches. He knew now he was not going to win this war. The Imperial Palace would remain in the hands of the Emperor. Ahasz could only hold on, only keep up the siege until the arrival of the Admiral and her forces.

He would never sit on the Imperial Throne. The regnal and civil governments would continue on as before—corrupt, inefficient, leeching wealth from the bottom of society and concentrating it in the hands of a selected few. For a few brief weeks, buoyed by the act of taking war to the Palace, he had believed he might make something of this convoluted plan he and the Involutes had dreamt up. That he might find himself in a position to do what he truly felt needed doing.

But no. The Empire had created of itself an institution immune to force, to change, to betterment.

T
he failure of the salient beneath the Imperial Palace had struck the Duke of Ahasz harder than the hammer blow which had pierced his side. There had been no implosion, no outrush of energy. The façade of the Imperial Palace had not crumbled and collapsed floor by floor into the cellars. Although Tayisa and his men had collapsed the tunnel’s entrance, the colonel had been forced to put a pair of troopers on duty to give warning should the Palace defenders try to break through.

Success would finally have brought the siege to an end but, perversely, Ahasz was glad the plan had failed. He felt burdened enough by the deaths he had caused, and such wholesale destruction would have weighed heavy on his conscience. Perhaps, he wondered, he was not temperamentally suited to sit upon the Imperial Throne? Such decisions must be a regular occurrence for an emperor.

The duke’s philosophy had always been to nurture those in his care and those for whom he was responsible. His proles—not just those whose bonds he held directly, but those owned by yeomen or nobles who owed him fealty—he provided for to a level sadly unusual in the Empire. He had built model villages, refurbished town quarters, provided a standard of living which was the envy of all those proles not eligible for it. It was by no means a cheap policy, but Ahasz considered it an obligation. By law, his proletarians were in his care and it behoved him to take that duty seriously. He despised slum lords and those who mistreated members of lower classes. Stiff penalties under fief-law on Syrena had been imposed to prevent such.

And yet here he lay, on a filthy cot in a filthier command post, while outside, huddled in the trenches, those troopers and soldiers under his orders suffered in appalling conditions, beneath a constant threat of death or injury. He could do nothing to prevent it. Surrender was out of the question. All those years of planning… He
had
to see it through. And not solely for his own sake.

The door creaked, drawing his attention. He looked across to see Denever enter the command post. From the black framing the batman, Ahasz gathered it was night outside. He had lost track of the time.

Denever approached with a battered dish. “Dinner, your grace,” he said.

It was poor fare, a thin gruel mashed up from whatever meagre supplies remained to the besieging army.

“Does this have a name?” he asked.

“Food, your grace.”

The reply prompted a weary laugh. Denever was efficient and enterprising. And very literal-minded.

Taking the spoon proffered by the batman, Ahasz began eating. The food tasted exactly as it appeared. The duke tried to pretend it was something far more palatable, a game soup perhaps, or a rich and delicately spiced goulash, but his imagination had suffered in the sixteen weeks since the war had begun.

Denever left the command post and, once he had emptied the bowl, Ahasz placed it on the floor and lay back again on his cot. There was little enough to do at night. Occasionally, dribbles of soil pattered from the ceiling, telling of bolts from the Palace’s artillery hitting earth somewhere nearby. He had tried reading a book in the evenings in the past, but some innately depressing quality about the command post had seemed to hover over the words, a stinking black shadow that caused the letters to rot and decay before his very eyes. Whatever he might have read was completely forgotten. And the books themselves did not survive well in the dank conditions.

He tried to sleep. The gruel had sparked a glow in his stomach, which felt as hollow as it was warm. His wound had yet to heal fully, but he had learnt to ignore the discomfort and pain. Lacing his fingers behind his head, he stared up at the planked ceiling and played his favourite game of recent weeks:
what should I have done to prevent this?

It was an easy game. First, he should have ensured a Housecarls lieutenant-colonel with a brain between his ears was assigned to District duty. He should have had the Imperial Palace Artillery’s cannons spiked the day before he attacked. He should have…

It might have been an easy game but it was also pointless.

He glanced across at the light-sheet on the desk across by the door. It hummed just below the threshold of hearing. He had become used to it. It also was feeling the strain—it had not been switched off since being placed in the command post. Without light, the chamber was black, oppressive, frightening. The smell of earth became overpowering.

Slowly, Ahasz began to nod off. He was much practiced at it. The inadequate diet, the nerve-straining bombardment by the Palace cannons, the constant pretence of good spirits… No more than an hour or two after the sun set and he was exhausted, a lethargy that seemed to sink into his flesh all the way to the marrow of his bones—

No. He still had his final rounds to perform. He lifted up an arm, pulled back the cuff and peered at his wristwatch. It was a sturdy and functional timepiece, not flashy or hideously expensive. He preferred it above all the others he owned. Eight o’clock. Time for his rounds.

He rolled off his cot, reached for his jacket and pulled it on. It was not the Gold Watch troop jacket he had been wearing for weeks, but a borrowed Housecarls patrol pattern jacket. The other had eventually rotted from the dirt and dampness and dried blood. His sword-belt he buckled around his waist, and fiddled with the scabbard and lockets to ensure the blade hung correctly. Taking one last look around the command post, he stifled a yawn and then made his way to the door.

The trench was dark, small puddles of light leaking onto the boardwalk from sheltered lamps at intervals. Booted feet echoed hollowly from the trench walls as a trooper crossed the T-junction ahead of the duke. It was too dark to distinguish whether Housecarl or household trooper.

Ahasz made his way along the zig-zag trench to the end nearest the Knot. He would work his way along the defile and then drop down a ladder into the railway station to inspect the officers quartered in its tunnels. Troopers at loopholes, keeping sentry on the Palace, ignored him as he passed. Despite the hour, and the mind-numbing boredom, vigilance remained high. That lesson had been learnt. Other troopers squatted with their backs to the revetment, sharing morsels of food, bottles of water, or quiet-voiced gossip. Some acknowledged Ahasz with a nod or a wordless grunt. Household troopers and Housecarls were mixed, had been mixing for several weeks now. Ahasz’s troops had earned the regimental soldiers’ respect, even though they were the better fighters. But the Imperial Regiments had always considered themselves better than noble militias.

Reaching the end of the trench, Ahasz climbed up to peer through a loophole. The Knot glittered like a fanciful jewel in the night. Beyond, formless shapes of light danced just out of recognition, their true forms disguised by the spotlights directed at their facades—the Chancery and Exchequer. Tonight, all looked as it had the previous night.

Disappointed and relieved, Ahasz stepped back and down. He turned, nodded at a group of eight troopers—half with black cuffs—crouched nearby. A faint rattle of something small and hard against wood told him they were engaged in some gambling game. He reflected ruefully that each day in the trenches was a gamble.

As if to proof the thought, a bolt sizzled overhead, lighting up a section of the trench. Somewhere to the rear, it hit dirt with a muffled boom. The smell of scorched earth drifted past the duke, a smell he was more than used to now. The gentle rain of soil on road-surface, interspersed with the hard thumps of larger debris, drowned out the troopers’ dice game.

A thud sounded behind him. Thinking a chunk of road-surface had been thrown further than expected, he glanced back. Or perhaps a section of revetment had collapsed, spilling earth onto the boardwalk.

At first, he saw nothing. Then a shadow shifted and glided smoothly to a new configuration. More thuds. A pool of darkness in a corner some ten yards from him seemed to deepen, its edges to grow suddenly sharp. Squinting, Ahasz stared, not understanding what he was seeing. A muted jangle came to his ears—

That sound he recognised. Lockets. He pulled his sword from its scabbard in one smooth motion and adopted a martial stance. His free hand he held up and gestured to the gamers behind him, adding “Psst” to gain their attention.

The shadows were moving. Slowly, gracefully, they uncoiled from the corner. A formless shape in the darkness became… an arm, clad in black. Another limb, a sword, the blade stained black, in its hand. A leg. A head, swathed in black. More.

Assassins!

Ahasz felt a presence at his shoulder, risked a glance back. The eight troopers had gathered behind him. Dirty and silent, they loomed at his back, maces and hammers and axes held menacingly in hands.

The planks beneath his feet vibrated rapidly. He turned back. The masked assassins were rushing silently towards him.

The first led with his sword, body angled to present a narrow front. Ahasz, mindful of the troopers behind him, stepped to one side. He caught the assassin’s blade on his quillons, knocked it down. A blackened blade swung round, gripped in the attacker’s other hand. Spotting it in time, Ahasz pivoted in towards the assassin, presenting his back to him, grabbing the arm with the dagger, bending, pulling the attacker forward, straightening and throwing. The man flew over his shoulder, hit the planks before the troopers.

As Ahasz turned to face the next attacker, he heard the wet thwocks and thuds of maces and hammers and axes raining down on the assassin.

This next one was cannier. He waited for a fellow to join him and the two advanced together. The trench was six feet from wall to wall. Stepping to the nearest wall, the duke immediately prevented one assassin from pressing forward. The other darted his blade in. Although it was dark, Ahasz had an instinctive understanding of the sword’s location. He parried, used the move to riposte. Flicked his sword-point up, straightened his arm. The assassin fell back as the blade pierced an eye.

The second attacker had drifted too close to the troopers. An axe swung down and buried itself in his head with a meaty thwack.

“Your grace,” said a voice behind him, quietly, hoarsely.