Mordraud, Book One (80 page)

Asaeld
descended the throne steps mustering a defence chant at the top of his voice. It had all happened too quickly, but he wouldn’t give up. He could still escape, the men were still with him. ‘Perhaps not all, but most of them...’ he thought, feverishly. He turned to depart. He released a sprinkling of notes, as a true expert. He raised his hands towards the Lances approaching with unsheathed swords, the Emperor behind him. Loralon’s men were the wall to scale in order to get away.

His
chant had almost reached its peak, when his breath was throttled by a lacerating pain.

Asaeld
touched his back. His fingers were soiled with blood.

His
blood.

“
I won’t kill you straight away, only because I want the names of your accomplices
one by one
...” Loralon whispered in his ear. His hands clutched the gem-encrusted stiletto. A dress trinket, good for display on parade alone. But it was more than plenty for this man’s guts, vulnerable as they were between the joints of his useless ceremonial armour.

“
And you can rest assured... I won’t be touching your favourite plaything for now... You’ve driven everyone to idolise him, you’ve made him untouchable... But just imagine what he’ll think when he finds out who you really are... you venomous viper... First he was your little doggie, and now he’ll be
mine
!”

“
He’ll NEVER believe you!” Asaeld growled. He tried to turn round, but Loralon twisted the blade with extreme enjoyment. The brutal pain kept him nailed within the Emperor’s talons.

“
Oh, yes, he’ll believe me. When your most faithful servants have all been killed, and there’s nobody to defend your name, I’ll explain everything to him. He’s a bright lad, very bright. You should have chosen someone less able, Asaeld. Dunwich will work out at once which side he should take. And the army will be back in my hands!”

“
I’LL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF!” Asaeld screamed in murderous rage. “I’LL FINISH YOU OFF WITH MY OWN HANDS, LORALON!”

“
I doubt that,” the Emperor replied, triumphantly. “Men! Take him to the dungeons! Give him a working over, before the torturers arrive! Ah, and please, Parro...” Loralon pulled his stiletto out and left Asaeld in the Lances’ hands. It had taken so little to convince them to talk, and switch to his side. A coveted position here, a fistful of gold there... The Lances’ honour was worth less than muck, Loralon considered, exultant.

“
Yes, my lord?” the chancellor returned.

“
Draft a nice recall letter. I want all those whose names come out of Asaeld’s mouth here in the city, with the utmost urgency. And ensure that nobody and nothing sets off for the front. Dunwich must know nothing.”

“
What shall we do about the rebels? We no longer have a leader for the army, without Asaeld...”

“
Eldain has other taxing problems to deal with for now. You’ll see the plague will quell any ardent spirit he might have,” Loralon replied.

“
And if Dunwich asks for new orders? What should we tell him?” Parro went on.

“
Draw up a lovely letter signed by Asaeld in person. His commander says he is not to return to the city, not for any reason.”

“
Excellent idea, sir,” the chancellor responded, with a bow.

“
I know, Parro,” Loralon replied, chuckling heartily.

***

What I had to do I have done.

This winter too has drawn to an end. One of the many in
my life. After the Long Winter, the worst of snowfalls seems pretend, as if depicted in a painting. Nothing will ever be as aberrant as the Long Winter. My people perish every day, of hunger, hardship, and steel. But those who survive have witnessed the furthest boundaries of horror. They have smelt it, touched it, lived it on their skin. They have felt death upon them for months, the same foreboding death tasted by the condemned man on the gallows, awaiting the pull on the fatal trap-door lever.

My people are as tough as aged
timber. They don’t bend, and even if they snap, a good branch reaching towards the sky always remains. I am one of them. I am the bough that breaks, after shielding the others from the snow’s burden.

From the uppermost window of my castle, I can discern the signs of
the spring all about. Eld seems to be pulsing with new life, the streets are alive with carts and womenfolk, busy with heavy blankets to wash in the river. The children play until late on the paving in the square. The market is a bed of vibrant colour. Even if many have died, Eld has not fallen. Even if many homes have be deserted, left in ruin and gutted, many others have been filled with new life-sap. Let Cambria besiege us forever, if it can manage. Alliances come and go: for each one that burns out, another just awaits its kindling elsewhere. But it is the population who must withstand, the population alone. And my people can still hold fast. With or without me.

Adraman will do an excellent job, I am sure o
f it. Now he has a greater goal than a soldier’s honour. He has a family to protect. A future of peace that must be built, not for him – he’s forgotten what it means for himself. For Deanna, for his son. I’d very much have liked to leave him free of this. Let him live his last years as father and husband, and not as warrior. But I have no one else I can place my trust in. He is the soul of Eld, just as I have been. And with Mordraud at his side, just as I have had him.

You
’ve chosen to blinker your eyes in the face of reality, my friend, and I understand. Perhaps I’d have done the same. They are all nuances at our age. Events that might make the blood boil in rage in youth can lose their overbearing surge in later years, and invite us to contemplation.

Would you ever have had an heir without him,
Adraman? I think not, and I know you’ve posed yourself the same question. You opted not to confide in me, but I believe I know you well enough. It was what you dreamt of, and although many might criticise your choice, you accepted the way your son was brought to you. I don’t blame you for that.

I can only hope you
’re happy.

My chest hurts.
For years I’ve gradually felt my heart crumble beneath the weight of all the decisions I’ve taken. Many good people have perished through my choices. Men, women and children who still had long lives ahead, like those kids down there trying to work the earth bordering the town walls, to make it into a vegetable plot. They’re still too young to handle a sword, and I hope the day never comes when they have to. Sometimes, I wish I had never stood up to Cambria. Others, I’m proud of it. In all honesty, I’ve never had much time to spend on pointless regrets. I’ve had to think about my land and my people. Not about me, and my snivelling.

But
now, I believe I’ve earned it – a little time just for myself. For commiseration. To convince myself I’ve led a good and true life.

I never thought I
’d make it through to spring, not this time. My legs feel like glass stalks, my chest squashed by an anvil. Breathing is a challenge. At least up here I can once again see the green of the meadows. It was your favourite colour, wasn’t it, Rania? The green of the spring meadows... I hope Elder is there with you, somewhere, even if I doubt I’ll be joining you. I’d so have liked to see him as a grown man, sitting on my throne, governing the lands of his father and his grandfather.

The
world’s colours seem far more vivid now. I thought dying would be more painful, and yet... I feel nothing.

What I had to do I hav
e done. It’s only a pity I could not do more.

Farewell, my
friend.

“What is it, sir? What are you looking at?”

“
I saw something, in the sky.”

Gwern
lifted his nose to the air and scanned the azure slotted between the gauzy white clouds. He noticed nothing strange, up there. Instead, Saiden was smiling, as if satisfied with something. They were spending a lot of time on the roof to the tower, in the open air, with the return of the warm season. He was making progress, but slowly. Since they’d come back from their expedition to the border with the Empire, Saiden had shifted attitude towards him. He was actually teaching Gwern practices that were easier to apply. As if his sole interest before that experience with the two brothers had been to play for time, teaching him notions that went beyond the mere application of harmonies. His master was also calmer, and stared at his chest with less intensity. Gwern was unaware of what he’d found so fascinating there. But the Long Winter was over, a year had passed, a new spring had come, and the boy was finally studying something good and useful. Resonances for fire and wind. The harmonies that stood as the essential building blocks to reality.

‘
Now I have to work out what pushes his Flux to react... how it can move so independently of his will, as when it shielded both he and his brother from the explosion,’ Saiden considered. ‘I need him to learn to sing decently... I want to see what happens. Then I’ll turn my attentions to unveiling Mordraud’s secret. To how he can be totally lacking in any form of Flux... It must all be connected – it has to be. The two brothers are a mystery that can’t be untangled from each other.’

“
But what is there in the sky?! I see nothing!” the youngster burst out.

Saiden
slowly lowered his eyes and Gwern noticed, in fear, that they were entirely black, without irises and without pupils. Within them writhed faint caterpillars of light, which balled up and stretched out, wriggling into the air and dissolving into the bluish white of the crystal skies.

“
Saiden, sir... Your eyes...”

“
I saw history curl round on itself, dear Gwern,” the tutor murmured. That wonderful occasion had provided him with the unique opportunity to investigate Flux aspects he’d never come across in his lengthy Aelian life. An unmissable yet astoundingly casual chance.

“
It’s not the first time it’s occurred, my friend. It’s already happened in the past. Moments when men lose control of the plots they’ve woven. It happens – it’s normal. But this time, and I know not why yet, I feel as if it’s different to the previous cases. Something important is about to take place, Gwern. A
first sign
of even more radical change. The Long Winter was the zenith of this historical moment. Other signs will come. And then, who knows. Can’t you feel the excitement pressing down on the skies? Look...”

Saiden
lifted Gwern’s chin. The boy blinked his eyes innocently and in despair admitted he could not.

“
All I see is a clear azure expanse... cloudless blue...”

Saiden smiled. T
he Flux trapped within his eyes enabled him to see anything. The sky was a chessboard, a knit of perfect mesh, made up of squares and parallels of light. The horizon was a straight line drawn along a carpenter’s ruler. And in the distance, towards the Rampart and the lands disputed over by Cambria and the rebels, rose monstrous pillars of swirling Flux. The war of all wars was underway – and it was just at the beginning.

“
One day, perhaps you too will see what I see, Gwern.”

It was a moment
Saiden wished to control. He would decide how to shape that magnificent power concealed within Gwern’s chest, a Flux as vibrant and aggressive as he’d ever seen in his life. Saiden wanted to study it, prune it and take custody of his secret, to move closer, pace by pace, to the knowledge that nobody – no God, no Aelian, no Khartian – had ever possessed.

To understand what reality
really
was.

“
One day, you’ll also look at these skies and you’ll feel you can uncover them, simply by wanting to. You have to be patient...”

Saiden
beamed wildly, observing the Flux columns glint on the horizon towards the north. It was the light of the living, perishing by the cartload, on the Rampart. A splendid spectacle, he mused.

“
History has begun, only
now
.”

***

“How many are you to collect today?”

“
Eight, maybe nine.”

“
Great... You’ve become worse than the plague. You’re wiping me out, Griserio.”

Dunwich
had lost the will to protest. Since he’d been commander at the central front, he’d been able to rouse three or so meagre assaults on the Rampart, always with halved numbers, demoralised troops and inadequate means. The disease was spreading through the camp, cornering him into extreme decisions: isolate suspected cases and leave them to their own ends, shut within compounds guarded on sight by archers. No help came from Cambria, and it sent no replacements to bolster out the army. With the onset of winter, all initiative had been suspended. Further attacks were impossible, and counter-productive. Supplies had been rationed, to the point of being cut entirely for the dying. An atrocious end, and something Dunwich carried fully on his own shoulders.

He
’d almost felt the need to pray, in the hope that a benevolent God might be merciful in the form of assistance from the capital. And it was true that someone had come from Cambria in the spring, but with quite different motives.

To take away his best pieces.

Griserio, the Lance used by Asaeld as his personal messenger, had returned to the camp with another precise list of names. Dozens of young Lances, fresh out of the academy, but also experienced adept veterans, all urgently called back to Cambria by Asaeld in person. A mass withdrawal involving his best. Such an absurd decision that Dunwich contested it, threatening not to carry out orders and demanding clarification. However, no one had the faintest idea what plans Commander Asaeld had in mind, and so he too found himself obliged to give in. Griserio explained simply that the raids by the Rinn family had opened several breaches along the front, and that the Lances were the only platoon relatively untouched by the pestilence. A reasoning received by Dunwich with utmost perplexity. The Rampart was the hub of the whole war. It was essentially the only stretch of the border lacking in geographic obstacles. Scattering forces did nothing other than push any hopes of victory further into the distance.

“
Let me guess, Griserio... Asaeld requests a unit of Lances to enforce order in the city. Trouble with public unrest... or am I wrong?!”

“
Well done, Dunwich. Knocked it straight on the head!”

“
Wasn’t I clever...?” he grumbled, opening out his arms in frustration. “They’re dismantling my army, piece by piece, for love of the Gods! How can I expect to see any progress like this?!”

“
Nothing to do with me, Dunwich. I’m just the messenger...” Griserio responded, with an innocent smile. The captain had always had the feeling that man was actually hiding something from him. But how could he? They’d known each other for years, and he was one of Asaeld’s most trusted. “I’m getting too uptight...” Dunwich muttered to himself. ‘I must just be patient... Sooner or later, someone in Cambria will remember us, and the war underway...’

The air was
balmy and pleasantly scented. The soil seemed to have regained fertility, finally, one year on from the Long Winter. Not entirely everywhere, but already a promising sign of improvement. Dunwich had given orders for a wall of his tent to be removed, so he could savour the sun’s first warmth and the clear bold-blue skies. He hated living in those stinking dark sacks. That day, the sunset was remarkably beautiful and rich in nuances. Griserio was seated at his side, busy crossing names off the list of Lances he was to collect. They were drinking a glass of wine, the last sour dregs left in the camp. Dunwich had drained his and got up for a refill from the pitcher. Far on the horizon loomed the line of the Rampart, a black wall standing against a crimson sky.

“
Hey... but wait...” he murmured, his eyes widening in amazement.

“
What is it, Dunwich?”

“
That way’s east, isn’t it?!”

“
Listen to the questions you ask!” Griserio replied, chuckling, without taking his eyes off his list. “Of course the Rampart is towards east!”

“
So why does it look like the sun’s
setting behind the wall
?!”

Griserio
lifted his eyes, and he too remained gaping. A fire, a huge frightful mass of flames rose up beyond the Rampart, from the rebels’ camp. A blaze so powerful the reverberation reached them.

“
It’s terrifying...” Griserio muttered meekly. “Looks like the breath of a God...”

“
It’s shining like a small sun,” whispered Dunwich.

“
What d’you think it is?! It doesn’t seem like their camp ravaged by fire.”

“
No, I’d say... erm... a pyre, a mammoth ceremonial pyre.”

“
Maybe they’re just celebrating the arrival of spring...” offered Griserio.

“
Or perhaps festivities for the last night before an assault...” Dunwich concluded. “
Their assault
.”

The
two Lances looked at each other, turned their attentions to the mountain ablaze on the horizon, and then stared at one another again.

“
Curse it all! We have to warn the men to find themselves ready!” they both burst out together. Dropping their glasses to the floor, they raced out the tent without another word.

***

Mordraud flung the door open and crossed the threshold to the tower lookout, panting. He’d raced through the whole town, terrified at every step by the rumours he’d picked up among the throngs at the market. They couldn’t be true. He didn’t want to believe it.

Only
when he saw Adraman weeping on his knees, with Eldain’s body in his arms, did he realise the awful totality of the tragedy. The Alliance had lost its head, its eyes, its mouth. Mordraud felt his arm tremble, which hadn’t happened in a very long time. His personal thoughts plunged into the blackest caverns.

T
he elderly nobleman lay supine on the ground, his eyes shut and a half-smile branded on his wrinkled face. He was wearing his old armour, with the crest of the Eld house: a tower circled by ears of wheat. Nobody had seen it in decades, following the death of his only son.

“
It’s almost as if he’d been expecting it...” whispered Berg, who was standing near the corpse, hands clasped on his chest. There were just the three of them in that chamber. The healers had not yet been called, nor had the women to cleanse the body. A routine guard had happened upon him, beneath the largest window in the lookout room. The voices has spread from there at an alarming speed. Before evening, the whole town would be aware of his demise. Adraman would have to take control of the situation while still mourning his life-long friend. Mordraud was pained for him.

T
he table in the centre of the chamber held the castle library’s oldest maps, and Eldain had left something with them. Mordraud approached in silence, for a closer look. It appeared to be a battle plan, set out with small wooden cubes and tiny flags of coloured cloth. His sword lay at the heart of a map, sheathed in a magnificently decorated dark leather case. Beneath the tip, Mordraud spotted a strip of parchment penned in all haste and stamped with the Eld seal. He read it, struggling to hold back a tear. Eldain had been like a father for him, as he was for all. The figure most succinctly embodying the values of the Alliance against Cambria.

“
Adraman... this is for you...” Mordraud knelt at his side, squeezed him with an arm and proffered the small message. Adraman raised his head, purple in the face and distraught with grief. “I can’t see anything... Would you read it for me, please?” he uttered between sobs.

Adraman, my friend,

I have spoken to you many a time of this
sword, and of who I always dreamt would hold it. It did not happen that way and, though many years later, I still suffer at the thought. Now it is yours, like all my other possessions. The castle, my family’s lands, everything. I do not want to depart leaving my people alone.

Do not allow the sword of my ancest
ors to fall into enemy hands. Ever.

You have been like a brother to me
.

Mordraud finished reading in a choked voice, folded the letter back up and took the scabbard from the table. Adraman got up to receive it, pulled the sword out by a palm’s width, and stood still staring at it with bowed head. It was the most beautiful weapon Mordraud had ever seen, with its black hilt wrapped in delicate bronze weave and detailed gold tracery along the slightly tarnished blade. But besides beautiful, it was also sorrowful. Adraman seemed to buckle beneath its weight, on securing it at his waist.