Last Argument of Kings (61 page)

The earth shook.

He stumbled, and a great noise washed over him, tore between the dead men and the living, split the world in half. He felt it knock something loose inside his skull. He snarled as he righted himself, lifted the blade high…

Except the arm would not move.

“Bastard…” snarled the Bloody-Nine, but the flames were all burned out. It was Logen who turned towards the noise.

A vast cloud of grey smoke was rising up from the wall of the Agriont a few hundred strides away. Spinning specks flew up high, high above it leaving arching trails of brown dust in the sky, like the tentacles of some vast sea-monster. One seemed to reach its peak just above them. Logen watched it fall. It had looked like a pebble at first. As it tumbled slowly down he realised it was a chunk of masonry the size of a cart.

“Shit,” said Grim. There was nothing else to say. It crashed through the side of a building right in the midst of the fight. The whole house burst apart, flinging broken bodies in every direction. A broken timber whirred past the Dogman and splashed into the moat. Specks of grit nipped at the back of Logen’s head as he flung himself to the ground.

Choking dirt billowed out across the road. He retched, one hand over his face. He wobbled up to standing, the dusty world lurching around him, using his sword as a crutch, ears still ringing from the noise, not sure who he was, let alone where.

The bones had gone right out of the battle by the moat. Men coughed, stared, wandered in the gloom. There were a lot of bodies, Northmen, Gurkish, Union, all mixed up together. Logen saw a dark-skinned man staring at him, blood running down his dusty face from a cut above one eye.

Logen lifted his sword, gave a throaty roar, tried to charge and ended up staggering sideways and nearly falling over. The Gurkish soldier dropped his spear and ran off into the murk.

There was a second deafening detonation, this one even closer, off to the west. A sudden blast of wind ripped at Jezal’s hair, nipped at his eyes. Swords rang from sheaths. Men stared up, faces slack with shock.

“We must go,” piped Gorst, taking a firm grip on Jezal’s elbow.

Glokta and his henchmen were already making off down a cobbled lane, as quickly as the Superior could limp. Ardee gave one brief look over her shoulder, eyes wide.

“Wait…” Seeing her like that had given Jezal a sudden and painful rush of longing. The idea of her in the thrall of that disgusting cripple was almost too much to bear. But Gorst was having none of it.

“The palace, your Majesty.” He ushered Jezal away towards the park without a backward glance, the rest of the royal bodyguard clattering after. Fragments of stone began to click off the roofs around them, to bounce from the road, to ping from the armour of the Knights of the Body.

“They are coming,” muttered Marovia, staring grimly off towards the Square of Marshals.

Ferro squatted, hands held over her head, the monstrous echoes still booming from the high white walls. A stone the size of a man’s head fell out of the sky and burst apart on the ground a few strides away, black gravel scattering across the pale sawdust. A boulder ten times as big crashed through the roof of a building, sent glass tinkling from shattered windows. Dust billowed out from the streets and into the square in grey clouds. Gradually the noise faded. The man-made hailstorm rattled to a stop, and there was a pregnant silence.

“What now?” she growled at Bayaz.

“Now they will come.” There was a crash somewhere in the streets, the sound of men shouting, then a long scream suddenly cut off. He turned towards her, his jaw working nervously. “Once we begin, do not move from the spot. Not a hair. The circles have been carefully—”

“Keep your mind on your own part, Magus.”

“Then I will. Open the box, Ferro.”

She stood, frowning, her fingertips rubbing at her thumbs. Once it was opened, there would be no going back, she felt it.

“Now!” snapped Bayaz. “Now, if you want your vengeance!”

“Sssss.” But the time for going back was far behind her. She squatted down, laying her hand on the cool metal of the lid. A dark path was the only choice, and always had been. She found the hidden catch and pressed it in. The box swung silently open, and that strange thrill seeped, then flowed, then poured out over her and made the air catch in her throat.

The Seed lay inside, nestling on its metal coils, a dull, grey, unremarkable lump. She closed her fingers round it. Lead-heavy and ice-cold, she lifted it from the box.

“Good.” But Bayaz was wincing as he watched her, face twisted with fear and disgust. She held it out towards him and he flinched back. There were beads of sweat across his forehead. “Come no closer!”

Ferro slammed the box shut. Two Union guards, clad in full armour, were backing into the square, heavy swords in their fists. There was a fear in the way they moved, as if they were retreating from an army. But only one man rounded the corner. A man in white armour, worked with designs of shining metal. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes seemed old. Ferro had seen such a face before, in the wastelands near Dagoska.

An Eater.

The two guards came at him together, one shouting a shrill battle-cry. The Eater shrugged effortlessly around their swords, came forward in a sudden blur, caught one of the Union men with a careless flick of his open hand. There was a hollow clang as it caved in his shield and breastplate both, lifted him flailing into the air. He crunched down some twenty strides from where he had been standing, rolled over and over leaving dark marks in the pale sawdust. He flopped to rest not far from Ferro, coughed out a long spatter of blood and was still.

The other guard backed away. The Eater looked at him, a sadness on his perfect face. The air around him shimmered, briefly, the man’s sword clattered down, he gave a long squeal and clutched at his head. It burst apart, showering fragments of skull and flesh across the walls of the white building beside him. The headless corpse slumped to the ground. There was a pause.

“Welcome to the Agriont!” shouted Bayaz.

Ferro’s eyes were drawn up by a flash of movement. High above, a figure in white armour dashed across a roof. They made an impossible leap across the wide gap to the next building and vanished from sight. In the street below a woman flowed out of the shadows and into the square, dressed in glittering chain-mail. Her hips swayed as she sauntered forwards, a happy smile on her flawless face, a long spear carried loose in one hand. Ferro swallowed, shifted her fist around the Seed, gripping it tight.

Part of a wall collapsed behind her, blocks of stone tumbling out across the square. A huge man stepped through the ragged gap, a great length of wood in his hands, studded with black iron, his armour and his long beard coated in dust. Two others followed, a man and a woman, all with the same smooth skin, the same young faces and the same old, black eyes. Ferro scowled round at them as she slid her sword out, the cold metal glinting. Useless, maybe, but holding it was some kind of comfort.

“Welcome to you all!” called Bayaz. “I have been waiting for you, Mamun!”

The first of the Eaters frowned as he stepped carefully over the headless corpse. “And we for you.” White shapes flitted from the roofs of the buildings, thumped down into the square in crouches, and stood tall. Four of them, one to each corner. “Where is that creeping shadow, Yulwei?”

“He could not be with us.”

“Zacharus?”

“Mired in the ruined west, trying to heal a corpse with a bandage.”

“Cawneil?”

“Too much in love with what she used to be to spare a thought for what comes.”

“You are left all alone, then, in the end, apart from this.” Mamun turned his empty gaze on Ferro. “She is a strange one.”

“She is, and exceptionally difficult, but not without resources.” Ferro scowled, and said nothing. If anything needed saying, she could talk with her sword. “Ah, well.” Bayaz shrugged. “I have always found myself my own best council.”

“What choice have you? You destroyed your own order with your pride, and your arrogance, and your hunger for power.” More figures stepped from doorways round the square, strolled unhurried from the streets. Some strutted like lords. Some held hands like lovers. “Power is all you ever cared for, and you are left without even that. The First of the Magi, and the last.”

“So it would seem. Does that not please you?”

“I take no pleasure in this, Bayaz. This is what must be done.”

“Ah. A righteous battle? A holy duty? A crusade, perhaps? Will God smile on your methods, do you think?”

Mamun shrugged. “God smiles on results.” More figures in white armour spilled into the square and spread out around its edge. They moved with careless grace, with effortless strength, with bottomless arrogance. Ferro frowned around at them, the Seed clutched tight at one hip, her sword at the other.

“If you have a plan,” she hissed. “Now might be the time.”

But the First of the Magi only watched as they were surrounded, the muscles twitching on the side of his face, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. “A shame that Khalul himself could not pay a visit, but you have brought some friends with you, I see.”

“One hundred, as I promised. Some few have other tasks about the city. They send their regrets. But most of us are here for you. More than enough.” The Eaters were still. They stood facing inwards, spread out in a great ring with the First of the Magi at their centre. Ferro Maljinn felt no fear, of course.

But these were poor odds.

“Answer me one thing,” called Mamun, “since we are come to the end. Why did you kill Juvens?”

“Juvens? Ha! He thought to make the world a better place with smiles and good intentions. Good intentions get you nothing, and the world does not improve without a fight. I say I killed no one.” Bayaz looked sideways at Ferro. His eyes were feverish bright, now, his scalp glistened with sweat. “But what does it matter who killed who a thousand years ago? What matters is who dies today.”

“True. Now, at last, you will be judged.” Slowly, very slowly, the circle of Eaters began to contract, stepping gently forward as one, drawing softly inwards.

The First of the Magi gave a grim smile. “Oh, there will be a judgement here, Mamun, on that you can depend. The magic has drained from the world. My Art is a shadow of what it was. But you forgot, while you were gorging yourselves on human meat, that knowledge is the root of power. High Art I learned from Juvens. Making I took from Kanedias.”

“You will need more than that to defeat us.”

“Of course. For that I need some darker medicine.”

The air around Bayaz’ shoulders shimmered. The Eaters paused, some of them raised their arms in front of their faces. Ferro narrowed her eyes, but there was only the gentlest breath of wind. A subtle breeze, that washed out from the First of the Magi in a wave, that lifted the sawdust from the stones and carried it out in a white cloud to the very edge of the Square of Marshals.

Mamun looked down, and frowned. Set into the stone beneath his feet, metal shone dully in the thin sunlight. Circles, and lines, and symbols, and circles within circles, covering the entire wide space in a single vast design.

“Eleven wards, and eleven wards reversed,” said Bayaz. “Iron. Quenched in salt water. An improvement suggested by Kanedias’ researches. Glustrod used raw salt. That was his mistake.”

Mamun looked up, the icy calmness vanished from his face. “You cannot mean…” His black eyes flickered to Ferro, then down to her hand, clenched tight around the Seed. “No! The First Law—”

“The First Law?” The Magus showed his teeth. “Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose. The word of Euz?” Bayaz’ lip curled. “Hah! Let him come forth and stop me!”

“Enough!” One of the Eaters leaped forward, flashing across the metal circles towards their centre. Ferro gasped as the stone in her hand turned suddenly, terribly cold. The air about Bayaz twisted, danced, as though he was reflected in a rippling pool.

The Eater sprang up, mouth open, the bright blade of his sword shining. Then he was gone. So were two others behind him. A long spray of blood was smeared across the ground where one of them had been standing. Ferro’s eyes followed it, growing wider and wider. Her mouth fell open.

The building that had stood behind them had a giant, gaping hole torn out of it from ground to dizzy roof. A great canyon lined with broken stone and hanging plaster, with splintered spars and dangling glass. Dust showered from the shattered edges and into the yawning hole below. A flock of torn papers fluttered down through the empty air. From out of the carnage a thin and agonised screaming came. A sobbing. A screech of pain. Many voices. The voices of those who had been using that building as a refuge.

Poor luck for them.

Bayaz’ mouth slowly curled up into a smile. “It works,” he breathed.

Dark Paths

Jezal hurried through the tall archway and into the gardens of the palace, his Knights around him. It was remarkable that High Justice Marovia had been able to keep pace with them on their dash through the Agriont, but the old man scarcely seemed out of breath. “Seal the gates!” he bellowed. “The gates!”

The huge doors were heaved shut, two beams the thickness of ships’ masts swung into position behind them. Jezal allowed himself to breathe a little easier. There was a reassuring feeling to the weight of those gates, to the height and thickness of the walls of the palace compound, to the sizeable host of well trained and armoured men defending it.

Marovia laid his hand gently on Jezal’s shoulder, began to steer him down the cobbled path towards the nearest door into the palace. “We should find the safest place possible, your Majesty—”

Jezal shook him off. “Would you lock me in my bedroom? Or should I hide in the cellar? I will remain here, and co-ordinate the defence of—”

A long, blood-chilling scream came from the other side of the wall and echoed around the bare gardens. It was as if that shriek made a hole in him through which all confidence quickly leaked away. The gates rattled slightly against the mighty beams, and the notion of hiding in the cellar gained appeal with astonishing speed.

“A line!” barked Gorst’s shrill voice. “To the King!” A wall of heavily-armoured men clustered instantly around Jezal, swords drawn, shields raised. Others kneeled in front, pulling bolts from quivers, turning the cranks of their heavy flatbows. All eyes were fixed on the mighty double doors. They rattled gently again, wobbled slightly.

“Down there!” someone called from the walls above. “Down—” There was a screech and an armoured man plummeted from the battlements and crunched into the turf. His body trembled, then fell limp.

“How…” someone muttered.

A white figure dived from the walls, gracefully turned over in the air and thudded onto the pathway in front of them. It stood up. A dark-skinned man, arrayed in armour of white and gold, his face smooth as a boy’s. He held a spear of dark wood with a long, curved blade in one hand. Jezal stared at him, and he looked back, expressionless. There was something in those black eyes, or rather there was something missing from them. Jezal knew that this was not a man. It was an Eater. A breaker of the Second Law. One of Khalul’s Hundred Words, come to settle ancient scores with the First of the Magi. It seemed, rather unfairly, that their score had somehow come to include Jezal. The Eater raised one hand, as if in blessing.

“May God admit us all to heaven.”

“Loose!” squealed Gorst. Flatbows rattled and popped. A couple of bolts glanced off the Eater’s armour, a couple more thudded into flesh, one under the breastplate, another in the shoulder. One bolt caught it right through the face, the flights sticking out just below the eye. Any man should have dropped dead before them. The Eater sprang forwards with shocking speed.

One of the Knights raised his flatbow in a feeble attempt to defend himself. The spear split it in two and sliced him cleanly in half at the belly, chopped into another man with an echoing clang and sent him tumbling through the air into a tree ten strides away. Fragments of dented armour and splintered wood flew. The first Knight made a strange whistling sound as his top half tumbled to the path, showering his dumbstruck comrades with gore.

Jezal was jostled back, could see nothing more than flashes of movement between his bodyguards. He heard screams and groans, clashing metal, saw swords glinting, gouts of blood flying. An armoured body flew into the air, flopping like a rag-doll, crunched into a wall on the other side of the gardens.

The bodies swayed apart. The Eater was surrounded, swinging its spear in blinding circles. One ripped into a man’s shoulder and knocked him shrieking to the ground, the shaft splintering with the force of the blow and the blade spinning away edge-first into the turf. A Knight charged in from behind and spitted the Eater through the back, the glittering point of his halberd sliding bloodless through the white armour on its chest. Another Knight struck its arm off with an axe and dust showered from the stump. The Eater screeched, hit him across the chest with a backhanded blow that crushed his breastplate and drove him sighing into the dirt.

A sword-cut squealed through the white armour, sending dust flying up as if from a beaten carpet. Jezal stared dumbly as the Eater reeled towards him. Gorst shoved him out of the way, growling as he brought his long steel round to hack deep into the Eater’s neck with a meaty thud. It flailed, silently, its head hanging off by a flap of gristle, brown dust pouring from its yawning wounds. It clutched at Gorst with its remaining hand and he staggered, face twisted with pain, sank to his knees as it wrenched his arm around.

“Here’s heaven, bastard!” Jezal’s sword chopped through the last bit of neck and the Eaters’ head dropped onto the grass. It let go of Gorst and he clutched at his mangled forearm, the shape of the Eater’s hand dented into his heavy armour. The headless body slowly toppled over. “Cursed thing!” Jezal took one step and kicked its head across the garden, watched it bounce and roll into a flower bed leaving a trail of dust through the grass. Three men stood over the body, their heavy breath echoing from inside their helmets, their swords flashing in the sun as they hacked it into pieces. Its fingers were still twitching.

“They’re made of dust,” someone whispered.

Marovia frowned at the remains. “Some are. Some bleed. Each one is different. We should get inside the palace!” he shouted as he hurried across the gardens. “There will be more of them!”

“More?” Twelve Knights of the Body lay dead. Jezal swallowed as he counted their broken and bloody, dented and battered corpses. The best men the Union had to offer, scattered around the palace gardens like heaps of scrap metal among the brown leaves. “More? But how do we—?” The gates shuddered. Jezal’s head snapped towards them, the blind courage of the fight fading quickly and sick panic rushing in behind it.

“This way!” roared Marovia, holding open a door and beckoning desperately. It was not as though there were other choices. Jezal rushed towards him, caught one gilded boot with the other three steps in, and went sprawling painfully on his face. There was a cracking, a tearing, a squealing of wood and metal behind. He clawed his way onto his back to see the gates torn apart in a cloud of flying timber. Broken planks spun through the air, bent nails pinged from the pathways, splinters settled gently across the lawns.

A woman sauntered through the open gateway, the air still shimmering gently around her tall, thin body. A pale woman with long, golden hair. Another walked beside her, just the same except that her left side was spattered from head to toe with red blood. Two women, happy smiles on their beautiful, perfect, identical faces. One of them slapped a Knight Herald across the head as he charged up, tearing his winged helmet from his shattered skull and sending it spinning high into the air. The other turned her black, empty eyes on Jezal. He struggled up and ran, wheezing with fear, slid through the door beside Marovia and into the shadowy hallway, lined with ancient arms and armour.

Gorst and a few Knights of the Body tumbled through after him. Over their shoulders the one-sided battle in the gardens continued. A man raised a flatbow only to explode in a shower of blood. An armoured corpse crashed into a Knight just as he turned to run, sent him hurtling sideways through a window, sword spinning from his hand. Another ran towards them, arms pumping, tumbled down a few strides away, thrashing on the ground, flames spurting from the joints in his armour.

“Help me!” someone wailed. “Help me! Help—” Gorst slammed the heavy doors shut with his one good arm, one of his fellows dropped the thick bar into the brackets. They tore old polearms from the walls, one with a tattered battle-flag attached, and started wedging them in the doorway.

Jezal was already backing away, cold sweat tickling at his skin under his armour, gripping tight to the hilt of his sword more for reassurance than defence. His drastically denuded entourage stumbled back with him—Gorst, Marovia, and but five others, their gasping, horrified breath echoing in the dim corridor, all staring towards the door.

“The last gate did not hold them,” Jezal whispered. “Why should this one?”

No one answered.

“Keep your wits about you, gentlemen,” said Glokta. “The door, please.” The fat mercenary took his axe to the front gate of the University. Splinters flew. It wobbled at the first blow, shuddered at the second, tore open at the third. The one-eyed dwarf slithered through, a knife in either hand, closely followed by Cosca, sword drawn. “Clear,” came his Styrian drawl from inside, “if fusty.”

“Excellent.” Glokta looked at Ardee. “It might be best if you stayed towards the back.”

She gave an exhausted nod. “I was thinking the same.” He limped painfully over the threshold, black-clad mercenaries pouring through the doorway behind him, the last of them dragging Goyle reluctantly by his bandaged wrists.
And along the very paths I took the first time I visited this heap of dust, so many months ago. Before the vote. Before Dagoska, even. How lovely to be back…

Down the dark hallway, past the dirty paintings of forgotten Adepti, tortured floorboards groaning under the boots of the mercenaries. Glokta lurched out into the wide dining hall.

The freak-show of Practicals was scattered about the dim chamber just as it had been when he last visited. The two identical men from Suljuk, with their curved swords. The tall, thin one, the dark men with their axes, the vast Northman with the ruined face.
And so on.
A good score of them in all.
Have they been sitting here all this time, I wonder, just being menacing to each other?

Vitari was already up from her chair. “I thought I told you to keep away from here, cripple.”

“I tried, indeed I did, but I could not banish the memory of your smile.”

“Ho, ho, Shylo!” Cosca strolled out from the hallway, twiddling at the waxed ends of his moustache with one hand, sword drawn in the other.

“Cosca! Don’t you ever die?” Vitari let a cross-shaped knife tumble from her hand to clatter across the boards on the end of a long chain. “Seems a day for men I hoped I’d seen the last of.” Her Practicals spread out around her, swords sliding from sheaths, axes, maces, spears scraping off the table. The mercenaries clomped into the hall, their own weapons at the ready. Glokta cleared his throat. “I think it would be better for all concerned if we could discuss this like civilised—”

“You see anyone civilised?” snarled Vitari.

A fair point.
One Practical sprang up on the table making the cutlery jump. The one-handed mercenary waved his hook in the air. The two heavily-armed groups edged towards each other. It looked very much as if Cosca and his hired hands would be earning their pay.
A merry bloodbath I daresay it will be, and the outcome of a bloodbath is notoriously hard to predict. All in all, I would rather not take the gamble.

“A shame about your children! A shame for them, that there’s no one civilised around!”

Vitari’s orange eyebrows drew furiously inwards. “They’re far away!”

“Oh, I’m afraid not. Two girls and a boy? Beautiful, flaming red hair, just like their mother’s?”
Which gate would they go through? The Gurkish came from the west, so…
“They were stopped at the east gate, and taken into custody.” Glokta stuck out his bottom lip. “Protective custody. These are dangerous times for children to be wandering the streets, you know.”

Even with her mask on Glokta could see her horror. “When?” she hissed.

When would a loving mother send her children to safety?
“Why, the very day the Gurkish arrived, of course, you know that.” The way her eyes widened told him that he had guessed right.
Now to twist the blade.
“Don’t worry though, they’re tucked up safe. Practical Severard is acting as nurse. But if I don’t come back…”

“You wouldn’t hurt them.”

“What is it with everyone today? Lines I won’t cross? People I won’t hurt?” Glokta showed his most revolting leer. “Children? Hope, and prospects, and all that happy life ahead of them? I despise the little bastards!” He shrugged his twisted shoulders. “But perhaps you know me better. If you’re keen to play dice with your children’s lives, I suppose we can find out. Or we could reach an understanding, as we did in Dagoska.”

“Shit on this,” growled one of the Practicals, hefting his axe and taking a step forward.
And the atmosphere of violence lurches another dizzy step towards the brink…

Vitari shoved out her open hand. “Don’t move.”

“You’ve got children, so what? Means nothing to me. It’ll mean nothing to Sult eeeeeee—” There was a flash of metal, the jingling of a chain, and the Practical staggered forward, blood pouring from his opened throat.

Vitari’s cross-shaped knife slapped back into her palm and her eyes flicked back to Glokta. “An understanding?”

“Exactly. You stay here. We go past. You didn’t see nothing, as they say in the older parts of town. You know well enough that you can’t trust Sult. He left you to the dogs in Dagoska, didn’t he? And he’s all done, anyway. The Gurkish are knocking at the door. Time we tried something new, don’t you think?”