'Almost seven out of every ten in the camp have been sick. Dahnishev says that we have been lucky.'
'Lucky?' Roberto's laugh was short and bitter. 'I would hate to see ill-luck then.' He thought hard for a moment. 'What is the mood out there?'
'Morale is low,' said Elise. 'A hundred and thirteen stand in the stockade. The gulf in fatalities between legion and alae has led to trouble. Atreskan shrines have been set up and they are saying that it is these that spared their people and will save Shakarov and Davarov. And even some of our own speak of God abandoning us in an evil land. The tenth is a cursed legion now. So many deaths. But belief in your survival has kept the army together in the main. When you walk among them, pray God it is soon, spirits will lift.'
Roberto felt sick. The food in front of him smelled sour. He took a sip of water and forced his attentions on a piece of bread smeared with honey sauce.
'We will do what must be done,' he said. 'I'll be v/ell enough to walk tomorrow, I promise. In the meantime, prepare the papers for disbandment of the tenth legion and the burning of the standard. We must do this in the right way. All those in the legion must be released and be invited to join the eighth or the curse will continue. I am sorry for its demise. Such a proud history. The alae will stay as they are.
'Send messengers to Estorr and to the other commanders in the field of my decision and our latest numbers. W
hen we meet Atarkis, I will assume overall command of the entire force until our reinforcements arrive. Anything else that comes to me, I will send for you again.
'Elise, this is already a disaster. It is by the efforts of you and the command team that it has not been a calamity. I will be commending you all in my papers. But more than that, I want to thank you personally. I am in your debt.'
Elise smiled. 'We do it because we believe in you. There was never a thought to the contrary.'
'Now eat, eat. And when you have written the orders, you will sleep until dawn tomorrow. That is also an order.' He looked her in the eye and saw the relief there. 'Now, let's speak of something a little more uplifting. I feel the need.'
'The Games start tomorrow.'
'Games?' Roberto bellowed a laugh. 'Games! Dear God-around-us. We die of typhus and they celebrate our glory. My mother has done many stupid things in her time as Advocate but this surely is the crowning folly.' He paused. 'Mind you, it gives me an idea . . .
Something to raise the spirits and engender a bit of competition after sitting around and getting blunt.'
'You aren't serious?'
'Never more so, Elise. Never more so.'
Roberto was humbled by his reception when he walked through the camp the next morning. So much genuine affection, relief and joy at his survival that he had to keep focused to stop the tears forming in his eyes. Clean-shaven and in his dress uniform for the unpleasant business he had to carry out, he walked with ten of his personal guard along every street of the camp. He stopped to talk to as many as he could, took hundreds of salutes and thanked everyone he met for their solidarity through the plague.
Not unnaturally, the camp was a mess but there were signs of it being brought back to something approaching full working order. Quarantine had been lifted around the horses now the rats and fleas were gone and the cavalry was able to reacquaint itself with its animals. And that was not the only boost to morale. There was laughter around the camp for the first time since before he had succumbed to the infection. Cookfires roared in the late morning heat but a breeze kept the temperature very pleasant.
Roberto had gulped the fresh air greedily when he had first stepped out of his tent. He drew in more deep breaths now, reminding himself of the odours of the camp, both fair and foul. It was all like the scent of new life compared to the stale, herb-soaked air in his tent.
But as much as it was greeted with excitement by his legions, every pace hurt him. There was none of the cluttered bustle. The noise he was so used to was muted though the mood was light enough. And the energy he associated with his army was missing. Too many had died for that. Too many good men and women in the arms of God when they should be polishing armour and sharpening swords ready for battles to come. How fragile even the strongest were in the face of the smallest of enemies. How delicately God held them that one judder should cause so many to fall.
The massed tents of the ioth legion, empty of their original incumbents now, had been turned over to the surgeons as makeshift hospital dormitories. Roberto headed for them to see the extent of the disease still threatening his army. As he approached, Dahnishev walked out of one of the tents, rubbing his hands on a cloth. His face was grim but it cracked into a smile when he saw Roberto.
He strode across and clutched his general on his upper arms. 'It lifts my heart to see you walking,' he said.
'And I to
be
walking,' said Roberto. 'You look awful. When did you last sleep?'
'Don't ask me to lie to you, Roberto,' replied Dahnishev. 'Trust me to look after myself.'
'As you wish. How many are still sick?'
'It diminishes by the day. I have two hundred still in fever, a further fifty or so recovering. We are approaching the finishing line but you can expect a hundred more to die, though we might be luckier and lose fewer.'
'Work your miracles, my friend, we need them more than ever.' Roberto shook his head. 'It's so quiet here.'
'A quarter of your force has died,' said Dahnishev. 'But those who survived are stronger of will than ever before.'
'Most of them,' said Roberto, nodding in the direction of the stockade. 'Now, will I be a help or hindrance to your patients?'
'What do you think? Come with me.'
Dahnishev took him on a tour of every cot in which the sick lay. Some were lost to the fever and had no idea he was passing them. Those on the road to recovery he could see take heart: from his visit and he stopped by each one to give what comfort and strength he could. And in a tent of their own lay Shakarov and Davarov, both men still fevered and unconscious. Their cots were positioned close together because Dahnishev believed the old friends would take strength from each other. Roberto walked the narrow space between them and knelt so he could put a hand on either raging brow.
'Dear God who blesses this earth and all that grows upon it and walks across it, spare these fine men for the work they must do in your name. Let them feel the sun on their faces again and know your mercy. I ask this as your humble servant.' He closed his eyes for a moment before moving his hands down to their shoulders. He gripped them hard.
'Come on you two. Lazing in bed while there are still Tsardon out there. I don't know if you can hear me but I need the pair of you. Not one or the other. Both. If you must die, don't do it here. Do it in
battle and reach God on the waves of glory. Come back to me. Let's drink wine and laugh as we have done for years. That's an order.'
He pushed himself to his feet. Shakarov stirred but did not awaken. Roberto wondered if anything he had said would sink through the fever and bring them back. He turned to Dahnishev.
'Time to do what must be done,' he said. 'Then I can pray over the Chronicle of Memories.'
The stockade was a simple wooden construction of sharpened wooden stakes fifteen feet high with a single door, guarded night and day. Steps ran up to a parapet which overlooked the patch of mud and filth on which the one hundred and thirteen deserters ate, slept and walked. No shelter barring that of their prison walls. Bread and water once a day. They looked as they should, broken and ashamed.
Roberto climbed the stairs and at once, every face turned up to him in expectancy. He stared down in contempt. Atreskans, Estoreans, Tundarrans, Caraducians. He shook his head.
'What possessed you?' he asked. 'Why did you think your chances were better away from the legions? What sort of fool have I been commanding who would entertain such thoughts?' He looked around them again, recognising some. All were infantry, all hastati. Raw in the harsh truths of the campaign. 'I cannot have panic and I will not tolerate disobedience. This is my army and it operates under my rules.
'While you sought to run away from the disease, thousands of your comrades who needed your help were sick and dying. You turned your back on them as you turned your back on me. What you have done is unforgivable. You might have thought I would hand you back your swords, such are the numbers we have lost to typhus.
'But if you know me at all, you will know that I would rather face the Tsardon hordes with one strong man than ten thousand cowards. You do not deserve the embrace of God and you do not deserve to breathe His air or walk upon His earth. My army will be the stronger for your absence.' Roberto paused. Not one of them was looking at him now. They all knew what was coming.
'You will all be executed at dusk this night and your bodies burned and scattered to the devils that live on the wind. And if you feel that harsh punishment, then think on this in your final hours. There are those in this army granted less life than you who showed courage you did not. There are those who will die after you who go to the embrace of God, taken too soon.
'Don't pray for yourselves, it will waste precious breath. Pray for those on whom you turned your back in their time of greatest need. Pray for those of us who trusted you and who now stand betrayed. You may die but your shame will live on in your families. Think on that. Die thinking on it.'
He turned on his heel, hurried down the steps and away.
Chapter 25
848th cycle of God, 42nd day of
Genasfall 15th year of the true Ascendancy
'This is the core of everything,' said Kessian. 'This is not something you can teach any child to do. It is something they are born with. All we can hope to do is train them to use it wisely, if they posses it at all.'
Jhered sat in the ancient man's villa, among the ruins of a splendid dinner and in the presence of all those who termed themselves the Ascendancy Echelon. They represented
t
he ages of man from youth to near death and had given him the first inking of the true scale of the project. Vasselis had barely scratched the surface with the knowledge he had imparted in Estorr.
Jhered had come here ready to hate these people. But they accepted him, presumably because Vasselis said they must, and he was fighting hard not to begin liking them.
The door opened and the youngest of them returned under the weight of books she had been sent to retrieve from the library. Some of them were clearly very old indeed, dating back as far as the Conquord itself and perhaps even further.
'Ah, Jen, excellent,' said Kessian, this fervent, passionate man whose failing body was no cage for his enthusiasm. A man who could predict the weather more than twenty days hence absolutely without error. 'Put them down here by me.'
'So, can you put a figure on exactly how many of the population of this place have, or had, some ability?' Jhered asked, keen to keep to the subject at hand before the books were shown to him.
'At least eight out of every ten births, I would say,' said Meera Naravny, the mother of the difficult one, Gorian. She had demonstrated her complete imperviousness to fire during those moments
when he had arrived and been overwhelmed by the presence of their abilities and their apparently casual acceptance of them.
'Eighty per cent?' He gaped momentarily. 'How can this be? How can we not have heard about it before now?'
'One thing at a time,' said Willem Geste, another very old man, a Firewalker like Meera. Well-spoken. 'It is no accident, at least not now. A master cavalryman and woman who produce a child would be disappointed if that child had no aptitude for riding, yes? So it is here. The density of display of abilities in newborns has grown with every generation. It is natural selection.'
There was that phrase again and it was beginning to sound horribly plausible.
'But we don't trumpet the gift we have been given,' said Genna Kessian, the charming wife who could identify the source of any pain in the human body with a single, effortless touch. 'The Order would not see things as we do, as you are very well aware. No one would display their ability in the presence of a stranger. No matter the temptation to boast and gain profit. Successive generations here have learned loyalty and understand the price of indiscretion to themselves and all whom they love. And those strangers that have seen what they shouldn't, well . . .' She glanced at Vasselis. 'We cannot have careless mouths whispering dissent in the wrong ears.'
Jhered raised his eyebrows and caught Vasselis's eye. Even paradise had an iron border. He nodded minutely. He understood the need for security as much as he thought he understood the reasons why the veil had to be lifted now.
'But why here?' he asked, unsure for a moment whether he had spoken aloud.
'Because this is where Gorian lived,' said Kessian, his eyes alive with his passion,. He patted the books at his right hand. 'It's all here and I leave these with you to read during your stay which can be for as long as you have questions to ask.
'There have always been people born with ascendant abilities, mostly transient in nature. Gorian wrote all their stories, brought them together. People shunned by their own citizens and needing a new home; those who felt apart from their families and friends and needing an explanation; or those scared by the strangeness they felt and wanting comfort.'
'Gorian?' asked Jhered. 'Not . . . ?'
'No, no. Our young Gorian is named after the man who started it all around five hundred years ago,' said Kessian. 'And everything he learned, he recorded. The Order killed him when they caught him but they couldn't destroy his work, much though they believed they had. You have never heard of him, have you?'
Jhered shook his head.
'It isn't a surprise,' said Kessian. 'Dangerous information for them and something that gives a lie to their determination that the Ascendancy is a perversion or witchcraft. It is not. It is as natural as the turning of the tides or the leaves on the trees.'
Jhered shook his head. 'Be careful with your words, Father Kessian,' he said. 'Whether or not the law should have been passed by the Order, it is on the statute. I am sworn to uphold the laws of the Order and the Conquord.'
'Then what is the purpose of this investigation, if not to expose whether the Ascendancy is heretic or should be accepted?' asked Willem. 'Surely you need us to be honest with our feelings and our opinions. Unjust laws need to be repealed.'
'As I explained to your Reader, I find myself in an invidious position. I am not impartial. A crime has been committed, about that you should have no doubt. The question is, what will we do with you and what have you learned? I am here to try to uncover your purposes and your desires.
But that doesn't mean you are without allies. Orin D'Allinnius is fascinated by your processes and Captain Harkov sees only the pure thought in everyone. I, on the other hand, am troubled that you have developed your Ascendants under the banner of the Order. There is your crime and it is serious. Should it be turned over to the Order, you would suffer severe penalties.'
Silence. But Kessian was not a man to be cowed. And his enthusiasm was infectious. Jhered could not help but warm to him.
'Then read what Gorian has written. Speak to the town and to any of us. The root of everything we have done is in nature and so is the will of God. It is the repression of the Ascendant strand that is unnatural. That is a decision taken by men and women for their own ends, pure or otherwise. I might ask you where in the scriptures the repression of nature is deemed either necessary or acceptable.'
Jhered smiled. 'The Order leads as it sees fit and is given that responsibility by the Advocate. A fracturing of the Conquord's central faith would be a disaster.'
'We do not wish that,' said Genna quietly. 'We have never wished that. It is an enduring sadness that we know the Order would have us all burned for our work.'
'How wonderful it would be if everyone could feel what our Ascendants feel,' said Kessian, his fervour boiling over. 'Think, Lord Jhered, of the joy of being able to feel the growth of your crops. To understand your horse so minutely that you would never cause it harm. To open your eyes on the new day and experience the energy of the earth beneath you throughout your body. To be one with nature and the elements. To come closer to God.'
Jhered leaned back and let Kessian's words sink in. And through the glory of his suggestions there came dread.
'But what, Father Kessian, if the powers of all are so great that they can control the sea, the weather and everything that grows. It is a gift to evil, should they choose to use it as such. How far will your Ascendants be able to reach?'
Jhered didn't meet the Ascendants alone until the fifth day of his investigation. It had been the most extraordinary time. Westfallen was unlike any place he had ever been despite being in the heartland of his favourite country. He felt like he had been inside a bubble, cosseted from the rest of the world. But a bubble in which events potentially as important as those in Tsard were unfolding.
The citizens and Ascendancy of Westfallen had been honest, welcoming and after the first couple of days, unafraid. He had seen at first hand how careful they were around traders and visitors to the town, and how naturally those with fledgling abilities accepted what they had. He talked to so many of them, along with those whose abilities had faded with time.
There was no doubting their belief in the purity of their intentions but he couldn't shake off the worry that the naivety that their insular lives had brought them had blinded them to the ramifications of what they were doing. Jhered was a career soldier and understood that for every good intention there was an enemy who would reverse it for you. The Ascendants were dangerous, no question.
He had wrestled with the conflict in his discussions with Harkov and D'Allinnius, and had written of it extensively in his notes. Was it