The Complete Empire Trilogy (126 page)

The Midkemian looked back at her, his blue eyes level. ‘If a Black Robe wanted you dead, you would be, and no effort of ours could have spared you. Just one of those lightning globes we saw at the games, tossed in here, would make an end of things. But if someone wanted to scare the hell out
of you as a warning, a slow snake would turn the trick nicely.’

‘Snake?’ said Mara. Then comprehension dawned as she pulled her arms around her knees in a huddle. ‘You mean the relli. Yes, perhaps you are correct.’

‘There is another possibility,’ Hoppara offered, blotting sweat from his brow with the back of one wrist. ‘Lesser Magicians and priests can work magic, and unlike any member of the Assembly, they might be susceptible to bribes.’

‘Who?’ Kevin fought to keep the shiver of reaction from his voice. ‘Who would have the means?’

Hoppara regarded the corpse left dead by the spell, its lips pulled back in a haunting rictus of pain. ‘If a man could consign a nation’s wealth to the Hamoi tong to buy assassins, might he not also stoop to paying off the priests of a powerful temple, or hire the services of a renegade Lesser Magician?’

‘Do you accuse Minwanabi?’ said Iliando, his ham hands still clenched in his sleeves.

‘Perhaps. Or else the party who sent us the soldiers in black.’ Hoppara surged to his feet, as if further stillness might burn him. Armoured, blood-streaked, and left haggard by stress, he looked the image of Chipino. ‘We may know tomorrow, if we survive to return to council.’

No one spoke.

Four more attacks came.

Throughout the night the Acoma soldiers and their allies endured assaults by dark warriors without house badges. The Hamoi tong troubled them no more, but the armoured soldiers came in waves.

On the last influx the defenders were forced to retreat into the small back bedroom that had no outside door. Jammed in the narrow area, they beat back enemies who sallied from the hall, and others who pressed for entry through the shattered window. Kevin stationed himself before Mara at all times and fought like a man possessed. By the third attack, almost no one remained without injuries. The most tradition-bound Tsurani was too tired to look twice at the redheaded, loud-mouthed barbarian, as he rested with sword and shield in hand after the latest struggle. His blade had stood ground with the best warriors’, and let the gods determine the fate of a slave who refused to know his place. While the night wore on, and men died, no hand that could still grip a weapon could be spared.

After the fourth attack, Kevin could barely move. His arms ached with fatigue and his knees shook uncontrollably. When the last black warrior fell under his sword, his legs folded and he hunkered on the floor, while the nervous energy that had sustained him drained away.

Mara brought him a cup of water and he laughed at the reversal of roles. He drank deeply as she moved on to tend to the others able to drink. Kevin surveyed the carnage. The floor, the cushions, the walls, every cranny of the chamber glistened red, and hacked bodies lay sprawled in grotesque
positions. The once pleasant room now looked like some nightmare charnel house. Of the thirty Acoma soldiers and two dozen Xacatecas and Bontura who had joined ranks the night before, only ten Acoma, five Xacatecas, and three Bontura warriors stood. The rest lay slain or wounded between heaps of black-clad corpses that no one had energy left to clear. Dully Kevin said, ‘We must have killed a hundred of them.’

‘Perhaps more.’ Called from the pantry cupboard by necessity, Arakasi knelt beside the slave. The sling that supported his arm was splashed red, and the dagger in his left hand seemed glued to his fingers with gore.

Kevin inclined his head. ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’

Arakasi glanced at the splinted arm and nodded. ‘Of course it hurts.’ He looked out the door. ‘Morning is almost here. If they are to come one last time, it will be soon.’

Kevin heaved himself to his feet. He would have dropped his sword, could he have done so without cutting his ankles. Bone-tired, and shivering from stress, he crossed unsteadily to where Mara knelt, comforting Hoppara’s wounded Force Commander. She looked up at Kevin’s approach. She looked painfully thin by the light of the one lamp left burning, her eyes too large in her pale face, and one of her hands was scraped raw across the knuckles. ‘Are you all right?’ Kevin asked.

She nodded absently as she struggled against weariness to rise. ‘So much … waste,’ she said at last.

Somehow Kevin mustered the will to hold out a hand and pull her to her feet. ‘Don’t let the others hear you, my love. They’ll drum you out of the council for un-Tsurani attitudes.’

Mara was too beaten to manage even the ghost of a smile.

‘You’re not safe in here,’ he added. ‘We’ll get one of the servants to bring Hoppara’s officer along.’

Mara shook her head. ‘Too late.’ She buried her face in the sweaty hollow of her lover’s neck.

Kevin looked down and saw that the Xacatecas Force Commander had ceased to breathe. The quiet strength and leadership that had kept men on the march through the burning sands of Tsubar were only a memory now. ‘Gods, he was a grand soldier.’

Kevin guided his Lady back to the small room that had proven the most defensible. There Lujan, two warriors, and Mara’s remaining house staff were trying to clear away bodies. Those loyal soldiers who had fallen were carried to another bedroom, waiting a time for honourable cremation, while the black-armoured corpses were kicked or rolled through the outer screen into a heap in the garden.

Mara leaned into Kevin. ‘I don’t think I shall ever get the stink of this room out of my nose.’

Clumsy with weariness, Kevin stroked her hair. ‘The reek of a battlefield is not easily forgotten.’

A crash from the outer doorway echoed through the apartment. ‘Lashima, they won’t stop,’ cried Hoppara in a note of desperation. Lord Iliando stood hunched over his sword, wheezing painfully, while Lujan signalled two soldiers to take position close to their Lady. Then the Acoma Force Commander shouldered into the corridor, Kevin hard on his heels. There were no longer enough able-bodied defenders for him to hang back beside Mara. As he stepped into the gloom of the hallway, a voice soft as velvet touched his ears.

‘Don’t worry for her. Just fight as you can, Kevin of Zun.’ The barbarian managed a nod over his shoulder at the still presence of Arakasi; then a pair of black soldiers were bursting through the makeshift barricade Xacatecas men had raised in the hall. Kevin charged, while to one side more enemies shoved at the debris that blocked an adjoining doorway.

A man could not think, but only react by reflex; Kevin lashed out, feeling the jar as his metal blade sliced into the
arm of an enemy. Another foe took his place. The pressure of attack did not ease. Slash, backstep, slash again – Kevin moved by ingrained instinct. He was aware of Lujan at his side, and somebody else shouting curses in monotone. Then the warriors at the side door smashed through the rubble, and defenders started dying. Somebody went down under Kevin’s feet, and he stumbled, caught from a tumble by the blood-slippery hands of a Bontura warrior. He could only nod swift thanks, for another assailant was upon him. Crazily he wondered where in the Empire anyone had found so many sets of black armour. Or had somebody just lacquered over house colours to loose such an army against them?

The attackers stormed into the first chamber as the defenders flagged. Numbers prevailed. Lujan and his last survivors were driven back, and back. And yet they were not beaten. The Tsurani possessed mulish courage, and they gave no ground freely in retreat.

Kevin felled a black warrior. Behind, an exhausted Lord of the Xacatecas helped the Lord of the Bontura into the second chamber. The heavier man was battling for air, and one leg appeared to be dragging. Kevin felt desperation close around his chest. But the ugly, fearful vision of Mara with a sword through her heart hardened his resolve to keep going. He spun, raised his sword, and attacked with reborn fury. The interval gained the two Lords enough time to make their escape. Another pair of live bodies between Mara and death, thought Kevin with callous practicality. He almost laughed as he recalled Arakasi’s words of encouragement. His sword rose and fell, parried and thrust. The fury was gone now; only the pain of exhaustion remained. Then his shoulder slammed against a door jamb, and his clumsy misjudgment cost. An enemy sword scored his ribs. He hacked it away, metal hammering brittle laminate. The black warrior’s sword shattered at the grip. Kevin shoved
steel into the man’s stark, surprised face, then stumbled over a body and landed on one knee inside the door.

Too slowly, Kevin recovered. A black soldier leaped behind him, turning a backhanded blow upon the barbarian’s unarmoured back. Pain burned his skin, but a fast parry from Lujan cracked the sword away. Kevin whirled and delivered a heavy-handed thrust to the stomach. The enemy folded.

Beyond stood Arakasi, a sword clutched in his left hand as a boy might threaten with a club. ‘Are you all right?’

Kevin gasped. ‘Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.’ Against a pearl-grey light that filtered through gaping screens, he saw black warriors massed for a charge down the corridor. He bit back another crazy laugh. ‘Did I say live?’

Behind, grunts of effort from Lujan and the bang and hammer of swords sounded warning; once again foes had breached the wall between Mara’s quarters and the next-door apartment. Kevin muttered, ‘Guard this door!’ and raced to reach Mara’s location. There two Acoma soldiers stood at bay, their mistress behind them, while a half-dozen dark warriors pressed to overwhelm them.

Hoarsely Kevin shouted, ‘You bastards!’ He threw himself against the rearmost. The men he struck carried forward into those ahead. Legs tangled, and sword arms flailed, and the whole mass tumbled to the floor. Kevin slid and rolled on the slick floor, forcing fatigued muscles to respond one more time, and one more time again. He came up sword foremost and staggered a step. Three foes yet survived the sally. Kevin hamstrung the nearest. Another he hacked across the back of the neck, and the blow carried barely enough force to wound. As the two Acoma soldiers rallied to kill the last attackers, Mara cried out, ‘Kevin! Behind you!’

Kevin spun, peripherally aware that the hamstrung man had a knife. That one he had to leave to fate, because a
sword sang down at his head. He jerked right, caught a foot upon the outflung leg of a dead man, and crashed hard into the corpse. The attacker’s sword carved a glancing line along his upper left arm. Howling with anger at the pain, Kevin twisted. His blade caught the dark warrior just above the groin. He shook blood out of his eyes. One of the Acoma soldiers jumped to his side, a foot raised in a thrust against the dying man’s shield. The enemy crashed back, thrashing, into the narrow hallway, hampering another dark warrior behind him.

Kevin gasped a searing breath. ‘Gods! There’s more of them!’ He struggled to stand against a terrible, ringing noise. Trumpets, he realized dully. His back was aflame and his left arm dangled. Wetness dripped off his fingers. Still he staggered upright and dragged after the first Acoma soldier toward the outer door. At his back one last man waited, sword poised in protection before Mara. Kevin managed a lopsided smile of farewell before he stumbled into the hall. The end was upon them. Lujan, Arakasi, Hoppari, Bontura – all were nowhere to be found, though sounds of struggle issued from the second bedchamber. Without outside help, their numbers were too depleted for them to survive.

As he reached the last doorway, Kevin sighted two soldiers in black armour fleeing out of the hole in the wall toward the garden. Their rush struck him as funny, but tears came instead of laughter. Again a trumpet sounded, louder.

Then the apartment was silent, save for the groan of a wounded warrior and, from somewhere, the laboured wheeze of the Lord of the Bontura. Lujan stumbled out of a doorway, his helm gone and blood streaming down his face from a scalp wound. He gave a silly grin at Kevin and rocked to an exhausted halt. ‘The Emperor! He’s here! Those trumpets are the garrison of the palace. The Imperial Whites have returned!’

Kevin collapsed where he stood, and only the wall that
banged his shoulder prevented him from hitting the floor. Lujan sank down beside him. A nasty cut on his temple bled freely, and his armour was hacked to scraps. Kevin un-cramped his fingers from his sword, groped after a shredded cushion, and used that to staunch the flow of blood. Hoppara stumbled out of the bedchamber door, Lord Iliando leaning on his arm. But Kevin had eyes only for Mara. As weary as the rest, she came to kneel by his side and said, ‘The Emperor?’

Before Lujan found his voice, a pair of white-clad warriors marched smartly through the door. One of them demanded loudly, ‘Who claims this place?’

Mara drew herself erect. Her hair in tangles and her robe smudged scarlet, she recovered a Lady’s haughty poise. ‘I, Mara of the Acoma! This is my apartment. The Lords of the Xacatecas and Bontura are my guests.’

If the imperial warrior found anything incongruous in her choice of terms, he made no comment. ‘Lady,’ he addressed her in formal tones, his brows raised as he glanced around at the carnage. ‘My Lords. The Light of Heaven commands all house rulers to attend the High Council at noon.’

‘I shall attend,’ Mara replied.

Without another word the Imperial Whites reeled around and departed. Kevin thumped his head back against the wall. Tears of exhaustion ran down his face. ‘I could sleep for months.’