The Trials of Empire, page 37
No one knew what to make of this bizarre exchange, but I could tell that with perhaps the exception of Baron Hangmar, the Legionaries and Hauners around the table were having not a little difficulty in swallowing this talk of magick and sorcery and demons.
Well, they would be grappling with the sharp end of it soon enough.
“We are dealing with dark forces here. You know me by reputation. Many of you know me personally. I’m not a credulous man. And I am aware that many people will never witness the exercise of the arcana in person. You will have to take it from me that this fight will test your very sanity. These are monsters – very real monsters. How else could it be possible for ten thousand men to threaten Sova? Do you think I would have taken the actions I have, the extreme measures, the recalling of the Legions from the Confederation – for all the good that seems to have done,” he added darkly, “the defrocking of the Emperor himself, and all of these curious alliances of convenience if I were not absolutely convinced of the magnitude of the danger we face?”
“And we around this table are all that is available to fight them,” Sir Radomir said.
There was another silence.
“Well,” Hofmann said, gesturing to Lady Frost. “We have been travelling south with the pagans. They have shamans. Can we not summon some monsters of our own?”
Lady Frost smiled thinly. Now she looked pointedly at Vonvalt. I wondered if she knew about the killing of Vladimir von Geier.
“No,” she said. “It is possible, but we should exercise extreme caution. There are other matters at work here. There is a war in the holy dimensions. What we are witnessing in Sova is the end result of a great many dark schemes.”
Lady Frost was no fool. She knew that to delve into the specifics of these matters risked making her sound profoundly unhinged. Vonvalt clearly felt similarly, for he had not – and would not – divulge the details of everything we had seen and experienced in the afterlife.
“The truth of the matter is, there are certain things that we can do, and that will be a matter for Lady Frost and I,” he said.
“The ‘pagan queen’,” Lord Hofmann sneered.
“Your being amongst your fellow Sovan lords has emboldened you, Duke,” Lady Frost said icily. “Your tone was much friendlier on the Hauner Road.”
Baron Hangmar broke the uncomfortable silence that followed with a hearty laugh, clapping the duke on the shoulder. “’Tis true. We are not natural friends, and if the pagans are indeed responsible for the wholesale destruction of the Sixteenth Legion – which Lady Frost assures us that she is – then I expect one day there shall be reckoning.”
“There shall be no reckoning,” Vonvalt snapped. “If Lady Frost and Captain Llyr are responsible for helping us defeat Claver and spare Sova its untimely end, then they shall have earned their reward.”
“The precise nature of which continues to escape me,” Lord Hofmann said pointedly.
I realised then, of course, that Vonvalt had not explained to the Hauner lords what was to become of the Sovan Empire if and when Claver was defeated. It seemed extremely unlikely that Hofmann would willingly accept the partitioning of the northern half of Haunersheim.
Vonvalt exchanged a glance with Lady Frost. “There are terms, of course. A truce, the release of some prisoners, some payments.” He conveniently left off the addendum, “of land”. I had to stop myself from visibly wincing. I was not looking forward to the time when Vonvalt had to grasp that nettle. “But enough of this. We must discuss dispositions of forces. The city is as emptied of useless mouths as I can make it, and for the useful – or at least the immovable, Sova has stores for a siege of at least six months. And, were it just a siege, I would not be worried at all. I would let Claver’s lack of numbers, extended supply lines and inevitable disease take care of his army while we sit quietly in the capital.
“But, even leaving aside the Draedist arcana – and we cannot be sure precisely how that will play out – the biggest threat is blackpowder. The Confederation has been stockpiling it for many months. Lady Iliyana has struck a bargain with Claver that she will assist his venture in claiming the Imperial throne, provided he withdraws any and all of the Autun’s claims east of the Kova. She is a fool for trusting him, but, trusted him she has. And Kòvosk has the largest supply of blackpowder in the known world. Which means the walls of Sova can be undone in fairly short order.”
“It would take a vast store of blackpowder to undo the walls of Sova,” Hofmann remarked. “They must be twenty feet thick at least.”
“The walls of Südenburg were not much thinner and a single barrel of it put a hole in those,” Vonvalt said dismissively.
The conversation moved to more tactical and strategic considerations. Everyone clamoured to talk, to have their say. Victuals were provided. Tension between the pagans and the Sovans ebbed away as everybody got stuck into the detail of the defence of the city. Maps were pored over and studied, and detailed lists of available forces and their strength were drawn up.
Hours passed. The afternoon wore into evening, until all of the plans that were going to be laid that day were laid. The lords were tired after a long journey, and needed rest.
So it was that we dispersed, tired, but with a renewed sense of purpose. A little time before dusk fell, I found myself standing atop the walls about a hundred yards west of the Victory Gate. This aspect of Sova was an impressive one, where the Sauber’s two sun-silvered southern branches recombined near the Poor King’s Bridge. For at least a mile and probably more, the city spilled out into the Ebenen Plains, an unofficial surplus closure that was filled with the houses of lesser merchants and pedlars, their last chance to secure passage to the Frontier this side of Saxanfelde.
The sky was a sick, dirty yellow, whilst bruise-purple clouds scudded overhead on the breeze. Pennants and flags flapped and snapped around me, tugging against their poles. City watchmen in the red, yellow and blue livery of the Empire traded idle conversation. Nearby, several men checked the ropes on a ballista, whilst a huge iron cannon, one of only about ten on the walls, was inspected by the duty serjeant.
“How are you, Helena?” sounded a voice to my left. Next to me, Heinrich wagged his tail and groaned happily as Lady Karol Frost scratched his ears. To Lady Frost’s left stood Ulrich. I could smell his pungent, herby scent even with the strong prevailing winds.
I turned away from her and looked back out over the view. “I am losing my mind,” I said. I was quiet for a moment, considering what I had just uttered. I nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think that’s right.”
It was right. There were no two ways about it. I was simply not equipped to deal with the constant horror I found myself confronted by.
Lady Frost did something I did not expect; she put her hand on my shoulder, and squeezed it gently.
I was overwhelmed by this simple gesture. I had spent so long in the company of gruff, taciturn men twice my age that I had not realised just how much I missed the company of another woman. The matronly squeeze; the motherly embrace; the sisterly giggle. My life and circumstances had hardened my soul, forced me to become inured to the despicable and the horrific – to say nothing of the arcane. And whilst it would have been easy for me to portray my twenty-year-old self in this account as some stoic heroine, the reality is far less impressive. These dark years broke me.
“I understand, Helena. I do,” Lady Frost said, seeing that it was taking all of my fortitude to simply stand still and watch the city to the south. “If you take any comfort from this, know that we approach a reckoning. It will all be over soon, one way or the other.”
“Here, perhaps,” I said eventually. “And that’s just it, isn’t it? Here, on this… world, plane, realm.” I gestured broadly out to the Ebenen Plains. “We might defeat Claver here. Kill him, destroy his Templars, cut his poisonous ideology out of the world like a rotten heart from a corpse. But then what? The powers are there. The sorceries, the magicks. These means to commune with and puppeteer the dead still exist. And that is to say nothing of the afterlife itself. That is what vexes me the most.” I felt my blood surge as the first stirrings of panic began to reassert themselves. It was always just below the surface now, a feeling of acute desperation. I knew that if I indulged it, even for a moment, it would overwhelm me. “Death is not even a release. I cannot even die and be rid of this nightmare.”
I spoke the last words quietly. It felt good to say them to someone who had no personal investment in my survival. Telling Vonvalt had simply made him angry and upset; Sir Radomir, too, would be upset, and that would mean managing their emotions as well as my own. I just wanted to tell someone how I felt and not have them get angry because they loved me, or break down because the thought of my dying made them distraught. I wanted someone to deal with it like a physician might, as a problem to be solved.
Lady Karol nodded. “It is not all bleak,” she said. “This is a problem – one of the great many problems – with the Autun. With the Neman Church. They have never understood the afterlife and the arcana. To them it is like a fortress to be besieged. They broke into the holy dimensions a few centuries ago, ransacked a few chambers, and left, and now have proclaimed themselves experts and masters of the magicks.” She snorted bitterly. “Even the most learned members of the Church and the Magistratum, the likes of your ‘Master Kane’, know so little. Yet to speak to them, to speak of them, you would think they were the wisest and most learned spiritualists in the land. They attack the afterlife, attack it like a problem to be solved. They treat everything there as either unknown, unknowable or hostile, because to them it is. And everyone listens to them because what they say sounds like wisdom and it is all you have ever known.
“But there is a balance. Like all things there is a balance, an equilibrium that exists. There is no plane of existence that can subsist in a constant state of flux and chaos. It is the way of all things; there may be cycles of violence and destruction, but no being can endure when there is nothing but misery and death. Even the most evil amongst us cannot survive in such circumstances. If we lose, if Claver survives and claims the Imperial throne and brings all of the Sovan provinces under his yoke, even that will not last. It may last for the balance of our lifetimes – for the balance of his lifetime – but not in the great natural schemes of the earth.”
I looked over to the pair of them, these old Draedists. How was it that they could have accrued so much wisdom? I found years of anti-Draedist prejudice a difficult thing to overcome. Who were they to swan in and declare everything the Magistratum had achieved to be null and void?
Feeling reckless, I said, “If you are so well versed in the arcana, why do the Draedists of the Northmark not command the Sovan Empire? Why allow yourselves to be crushed under the sabaton of the Autun for decades? Centuries? Why not do what Claver is doing now?”
Lady Frost regarded me. “All you have known is conquest. Manaeisland – what you know to be “Tolsburg” – was taken when you were a child. Draedaland when I was a child. We have simply accepted that the conquest of peoples, that expansion, is a normal, natural thing, so much so that its absence baffles us. What is so difficult to understand? That we simply wish to exist in peace? To till the fields, to feed our families, to explore the afterlife in a respectful way, to practise our own religion? Without the need to force everybody else around us to accept those same beliefs? That same way of living? Sir Konrad is so important to us, because he is the only one who trusts us to simply… exist. The Northmark is not valuable to the Empire. It is not even valuable to Haunersheim! A bit of grass for sheep grazing, enough tillable land to feed us, and enough timber to keep us warm in the winter. And yet the Autun built Seaguard, one of the largest fortresses in the Empire, to watch over it. The Sovans will never let us go because they distrust us. They think that as soon as we are left to our own devices, we will gather and husband our forces and then attack. Sir Konrad understands the value of self-interest. He knows what it is the people want; to live. Happily and without the threat of death hanging over them. Everything else, all this talk of conquest and empires… it is all so meaningless.”
I let out a long sigh. I regretted bringing it up – not because I disagreed with anything she said, but because it was important, and yet my mind was elsewhere.
“Justice August spoke with me,” I said. “She explained to me what was happening.”
“Then you understand your importance in these affairs?”
I shook my head slowly. “I do not think I will ever understand.”
Lady Frost took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. We watched the clouds over the Ebenen Plains. There was a great deal of activity in the farmlands to the south. What I thought had been braziers turned out to be the beginnings of bonfires. They were burning the crops ahead of the arrival of the Templars. In the distance, men were cleaning the moss off the painted stones that acted like range markers for the trebuchets.
“I see angels,” I said quietly. “Around my bed every night.”
“I know. The Shrine Guardians.” Lady Frost put her hand on my shoulder again. “One day, if you would like to learn about it, about the significance of all of these entities and how they sit within the structure of the afterlife, I will teach you.”
I nodded. But in truth, I was not interested. I just wanted it all to be over.
“I saw Ramayah. He was in my bedchamber.” The words were so quiet they could be barely heard over the wind.
“I know that, too,” Lady Frost said sympathetically. “I am sorry to say it will not be the last time. I will give you a charm, which should stop the nightmares. But he will be there.”
I felt my chest pulse painfully for a moment, and looked down, placing my hand over the tattoo of Aegraxes on my sternum.
“We are doing what we can,” Lady Frost said, observing the gesture. “I know that the lack of information is frustrating, but we must be so careful, so very careful with what we say and do. To misdirect the temporal pathway now could undo everything we have worked hard to achieve.”
“Here,” Ulrich said. He produced a small box from inside his robes, half the size of my palm. Something rattled inside it. Heinrich whined. Somewhere far away, I heard a shout of rage.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Keep it about you. It will help with the visions.”
The three of us stood in silence for a while, looking out over the sprawl of buildings, vineyards, fields, wharves that spread beyond the walls. The air was thick with smoke where gangs of soldiers moved south, burning crops to deny Claver and his Templars subsistence. Nearby, the farmers and labourers watched.
“Not long now,” Lady Frost said. She nodded to herself, then exchanged a glance with Ulrich.
“Not long now.”
Vonvalt was back in the Imperial Palace. I had to ask a succession of people where he had gone, and was surprised to learn that he was with the Emperor himself.
The Emperor’s stateroom was on the first floor of the Imperial Palace, accessible by a single narrow staircase which itself was followed by a single narrow corridor. The old Haugenate emperors had clearly been a paranoid mob, filling the fortress-like Palace with checkpoints and holdouts and murder holes that would be more suited to the Templar castles of the Frontier.
At the end of the corridor, Kimathi stood guard, as statuesque as the day I had first seen him. He did not prevent my entry, as I expected he might, though he did hold out an enormous, clawed hand for my sword. I handed it over without ceremony, and then my dagger, too. I felt as though I should talk to him, but for all I had seen of his homeland and his kin, I found the huge Kasar to be as enigmatic as the day I had first laid eyes on him.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled to him. “For… Nema, I don’t know. Everything that has happened.”
Kimathi regarded me with his huge, lupine eyes. Then slowly, he laid a hand on my shoulder. He left it there for a moment; then he pulled open the door.
Beyond the threshold was a chamber of breathtaking size and ostentation. The Emperor was lying in his bed, clad in white bedclothes and a cloak of maroon satin. He looked like an unkempt old man, an invalid. Next to him, Vonvalt looked like a giant, his black breastplate and white cloak giving him an imperious air. He wanted only for a laurel crown; then he could have been one of the Kliner oil paintings in the Hall of Solitude.
If either man was bothered by the interruption, they showed no sign of it.
“Scouts have reported a large host moving up the Aleksandra the Valiant High-Way,” I said. “They will be here in a matter of hours.”
Vonvalt nodded. “So. We begin.”
I glanced at the Emperor, and was startled to see he was staring at me.
“Your master has stolen the throne from me,” he rumbled.
I looked to Vonvalt, but he did not visibly react.
“A regency, Majesty. Not a supplantation.” I said it not because I thought it was true, but because I wanted it to be true. The fact of the matter was, I had no idea what Vonvalt’s intentions were, though I suspected he thought he was about to be killed in the battle for Sova. Indeed, I suspected he would contrive to be killed in the battle for Sova, even if a victory seemed in the offing, if only to avoid the burdensome politicking that was sure to follow.
The Emperor snorted. The snort turned into a cough, a deep rattling basso in his core. I frowned at that.
“Yes,” he grumbled. “I look forward to the day when Sir Konrad defeats Claver and the Templars and the Confederation and then steps down and hands the reins of power back to me.”
“I have explained to—” Vonvalt started, but the Emperor cut him off.
“Bah!” he snapped. “You have explained what you believe yourself to be capable of. It is nonsense! It is a power none willingly part with. It fills you, wraps itself around your core, and permeates your every fibre. You could no more surrender the Emperorship than your own heart and lungs.”
