The Trials of Empire, page 5
“There are those who would say that good cannot ever come from evil; that it is tarnished.”
“Such people lack intellectual nuance,” Vonvalt said, and I knew him well enough to know that that was one of his greatest insults.
“So.” Lady Frost sat back. Her disappointment was palpable. “You do fight for the Empire.”
“I fight for what is right! If the Empire is what it takes to preserve the rights and freedoms of the majority, then that is worth fighting for.”
“And how far will you go? To fight for that? To maintain the status quo? Many would welcome bloodshed if it meant self-governance.”
“I will go as far as I have to. Until the balance shifts. I serve the natural law, natural justice. If that means I have to operate outside the niceties of the common law, then so be it.”
“I believe that you believe that,” Lady Frost said. Vonvalt let out an exasperated noise. “You can be as angry as you like, Sir Konrad, but it seems to me you have missed a fundamental truth. There is peace, and there is justice, and these are not the same thing. And whilst the Empire has brought peace, where is the justice for those who died to bring it about?”
“Now you equate justice and vengeance.”
“Sometimes they are one and the same.”
“Nema’s fucking slit!” Sir Radomir exploded. “Are we in the fucking Philosopher’s Palace?” He gestured to Lady Frost. “Who the fuck are you? Where the fuck is the Sixteenth? Why is there a magickal tattoo on Helena’s breast? And why, the fuck, are we being tormented by fucking demons at every turn?! I am sick to my death of it. Let us have some answers, and not spar like pubescent law students. Blood of gods!”
There was a pause. Lady Frost looked impassive, though Vonvalt glowered, chewing on his pipe as he did when challenged. After a long time, Lady Frost said, “You and I do not see eye to eye. You have become less like the man I knew in Rill. That is a shame. But,” she added, again before Vonvalt could speak, “we both know Claver must be stopped. And to that end, I believe we can and should make common cause.”
“Aye,” Vonvalt said. He could appreciate realpolitik if nothing else.
“So. Some answers, then, before your brains boil. The question of what happened to the Sixteenth Legion can be answered very easily. They are killed. We ambushed them in the Velykšuma. We took their uniforms and equipment and marched into Seaguard unopposed. Then we slaughtered the garrison and burned the docked ships.”
We sat in stunned silence. What she was describing was impossible. A Legion could not simply be slaughtered; a gigantic, impregnable fortress like Seaguard could not simply be taken; the largest Imperial fleet of ships could not simply be burned to ashes and left to rot on the sea floor.
But we were sitting in the testament to the truth of what she said.
“How?” Vonvalt asked. “I’m not denying it – such is patent. But few succeed against an Imperial Legion, certainly not to such an extent. And the Prince Gordan – he is slain?”
“The wolf cub is dead, aye. And the Legion was not bested merely by skill at arms. I shall not pretend otherwise.”
“Magicks, then?”
Lady Frost inclined her head. “Your ‘demons’, Sir Radomir. It has been much easier to breach the fabric between our plane and theirs in recent weeks. It has thinned, and thins by the day. Our shamans have spoken on it at length.”
“You have more than one wielder of the pagan arcana?”
Lady Frost snorted. “Aye. It has always been the case.”
“If the fabric is thinning, that would explain the visions we have been having, and the… experiences,” Vonvalt said.
“I do not doubt it. Doubly so, thanks to your Entanglement.”
“What is ‘Entanglement’? What are you talking about?” von Osterlen asked.
“Think on how things come to pass,” Vonvalt said. “Prince Gordan, the Emperor’s third son, has been slain. Why?”
Von Osterlen gestured to Lady Frost. “Because he was ambushed in the Velykšuma.”
“And why?”
Von Osterlen sat back, her expression one of displeasure. She had little patience for Vonvalt’s method of tutelage, which was often condescending. “Because he was sent there by the Emperor to take up the margraveship of Seaguard.”
“And why?”
“Because Margrave Westenholtz is dead.”
“And why?”
“I could list reasons going back to the beginning of time if that is the only question you are going to ask me.”
Vonvalt leant forward. “Precisely. Chains of causation that stretch back to the beginning of everything that we know. Kane described how these temporal currents move like rivers through time and space, and, like rivers, they can be branched, diverted, or dammed. Large, world-shaping events are like wide and deep rivers. They pass through the country, dividing mountain ranges, eroding the soil, wearing down rocks, flowing to the sea unhindered. But like any river they can be affected; it is just that it takes more energy and effort to do so, and the outcome is more difficult to control.
“As matters stand, we are at the nexus of several cataclysmic events, any one of which would pose a threat to the existence of the Empire. The currents of time are in a state of great and violent flux. And we, through our actions, have become entangled in them, able to move and shape them in ways that are significant. I expect it is why we have drawn the attentions of some of the entities of the afterlife.”
“That you have,” Lady Frost said.
I felt the marking on my chest pulse painfully for a few moments. I wanted for all the world to examine it, but, for all my affected lack of concern earlier, a strange sense of modesty was preventing me from doing so.
“You said you have had visions, run-ins with the creatures of the afterlife,” Lady Frost continued. “Tell me the nature of these.”
We spent some time explaining the various encounters we had had. I told her of the time I had spent with Aegraxes in that bizarre floating castle in the afterlife, where he had taken the form of a Southern Plainsman. Even Vonvalt, whom I had expected to be tight-lipped, spoke at length of his own recent experiences – including that with the Muphraab. It was not because Vonvalt felt beholden to Lady Frost, nor particularly impressed by her. Rather, it was because he suspected that she already knew most of it. She had been playing her own part in the holy dimensions for months now, helping Justice August avoid Ghessis the Hunter, trying to steer the hand of Fate to her own ends.
“Thank you for being so open and honest with me, Sir Konrad,” Lady Frost said. “I know, of course, about your troubles at the Ziggurat of Ambyr.” She spoke of the home of the Muphraab. “And of Miss Sedanka saving your life. Justice August and I did what we could to assist.”
“That was you,” I breathed. “In the Myočvara.” I thought back to the Plain of Burden, after I had saved Vonvalt from the Ziggurat of Ambyr. Something had attacked us – and then something had saved us. I realised now that that latter something was Lady Frost.
Lady Frost inclined ahead. “It was. Not alone, of course.”
“Who? Who are you working with?” Vonvalt asked.
“Who else but Aegraxes himself?”
Vonvalt looked sceptical at this, but Lady Frost waved him off. “But, even working in concert, the truth of the matter is we are being overtaken by events. Something is happening in the afterlife. It is true that Aegraxes has long taken an interest in the affairs of men, but he is the exception that proves the rule. No longer. I am worried – and not a little frightened – that Bartholomew Claver is receiving assistance from some entity in the astral plane. A malevolent one.”
“He has boasted of receiving aid from something powerful,” Vonvalt said. “He has said as much to me directly.”
“Indeed,” Lady Frost said thoughtfully. “He managed to command the Prince of Ambyr – one of the foremost chieftains of Hell. Could it not be him?”
“That moth-headed soul-sucker?” Sir Radomir grunted.
The shadow of a smile played upon Lady Frost’s lips. “Well put.”
“There is tarring me with a hex, and there is securing patronage. Surely the Mu—” he caught himself before he could say it. He cleared his throat. “That parasite has better things to do than tutor Claver in death magicks.”
Lady Frost thought for a moment. “What does he want? Claver? What is driving him? He could enjoy a life of extraordinary wealth and privilege simply as he is, without ever stepping foot in the Hall of Solitude, let alone attaining the Imperial throne.”
“I used to think he just wanted the repatriation of the Draedist arcana to the Neman Church,” Vonvalt mused. “Then I expect when he achieved the backing of the Church and of the Templars, he began to buy into his own myth. Now he has designs on the Imperial throne. The question is, who benefits? Certainly Claver and his cronies. Perhaps the Templars will push even further south and claim the riches of the Southern Plains for themselves? But that was inevitable even under Haugenate rule.” He shook his head. “And then there is this question of entities of the afterlife. To what end do they manipulate the Empire of the Wolf so? If Claver is being backed by some malign entity, then it is clearly of benefit to that entity, for my experience of the inhabitants of the holy dimensions is that they are too vast and alien to be truly concerned with the affairs of mortal men. What does it gain from patronising Claver?”
“They can see things which we cannot,” Lady Frost said. “The temporal pathways flow differently for them. We can only perceive of events after they have passed; entities in the afterlife can perceive of events that have not yet happened, and direct the present time accordingly.”
“The Trickster has some plan for me yet, then?” I asked.
“I expect so.”
“What is your plan?” Vonvalt asked. “And what means do you have to enact it? You say you have magickal practitioners.”
Lady Frost was quiet for another long moment, still weighing up whether to bring Vonvalt into the fold.
After a long while she said, “Come with me. There are some things that I must show you.”
IV
Pagan Magicks
“Overconfidence is a contemptuous quality, but underconfidence is worse. The sufferer of the former is quick to be dismissed as a charlatan; but what intellectual fruits does the latter withhold from mankind?”
JUSTICE VILEN VAŠEK MASTER OF THE MAGISTRATUM AND LEGAL PREFECT
I did not know what to expect, but a half-day’s journey south across cold, desolate countryside, huddled under our waxed cloaks, shielding ourselves from the persistent drizzle, was not it. By the time we approached what appeared to be the outer perimeter of Lady Frost’s pagan army encampment, night was falling, and I was fixated on my growling stomach and soaking wet clothes.
The forest looked vast, ancient and uninviting, a dark tangle of wet wood and moss that stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction. This was the Velykšuma, an ancient Hauner word the Saxans had not bested, and which meant something absurdly prosaic like “big dark forest”. But what it lacked in poetry it made up for in aptness.
If I had felt a nebulous sense of unease before, then here in the Velykšuma the essence of that fear was distilled and my blood suffused with it. And it was not just the crude, animal masks and tribal warpaint of the encampment’s guards, though that would have been intimidating enough; rather, it was the eldritch whispering, the shadows at the edges of my mind, the sense that, but a few ill-chosen words, the gates to the afterlife would be flung open. If, as Lady Frost had put it, the fabric of the aether between the mortal plane and that of the holy dimensions was thinning, then here in the woods it was held intact by a single frayed thread.
Now there was no chance of turning back. The journey between Seaguard and the outer parts of the Velykšuma had been characterised by open, if bleak countryside, and had presented plenty of chances to – well. Not escape Lady Frost, for she had no hold over us; but certainly to part ways. Aligning ourselves to her cause, though expedient, still did not necessarily feel like the right thing to do. There was no question that Claver had to be stopped; but there was a question of how we did it. Like I had once considered Vonvalt to be, perhaps I, too, was being high-minded and naïve.
However, if I was being those things, then I was not alone in it. Sir Radomir, an old drunk veteran and Hauner nationalist, disliked Tolls and hated pagans – not because he was an adherent of the Neman Creed, but rather because the only pagans he knew existed in Hauner folk tales, and they were a bloodthirsty group of baby snatchers. To ask him to cast aside his prejudices and throw in his lot with a group of people who he detested was asking a lot of a man who saw the world through a very narrow lens. Sir Radomir was the type of man who wanted to stop Claver, but he wanted to stop him at the head of an Imperial army, not this heretic rabble.
Von Osterlen’s concerns were similar, but born of a different mother. I was sure that von Osterlen was at least moderately Neman, against the use of the Draedist arcana, and certainly opposed to the activities of the pagans here in Haunersheim. Lady Frost’s people, her army, were for all intents and purposes identical to the pagans on the Frontier. The Frontier pagans were not Draedists – they were Saekas – but they were offshoots of the same branch, and only distance prevented them from making common cause. Von Osterlen had spent years fighting the Saekas; now Vonvalt was asking her to assist in bringing a group of Draedists all the way south to Sova.
We were taken down a path into the forest. Occasionally I caught sight of a pagan warrior, a man or woman clad in mail, their armour decorated with trinkets, their faces tattooed or painted. In the gloaming they were an imposing, frightening presence, still as statues, only their eyes following the passing of our little group.
Lady Frost led us into a glade. Here was a collection of tents made of overlapping swathes of sturdy, treated fabric, and camouflaged with branches. There were no fires outside, nothing to illuminate the army of pagans which surrounded this place. Squinting and looking carefully revealed dozens of only slightly unnatural-looking mounds in the forest, which must have been other camouflaged tents, but the full extent of the force amassed here could not be divined. I marvelled at their discipline; without fires, there was no warmth, no light, no hot food or drink. Just a miserable, damp and dark evening to be spent.
Lady Frost took us inside the largest tent. Inside was clearly some sort of headquarters, comfortable and well appointed with soft furnishings. For all Lady Frost was a hard woman, she was still an old one. She required a little more than the soldiers under her command.
Two people were waiting for us, sitting on chairs. Neither stood as we entered. The first was clearly some kind of pagan shaman, his skin so extensively tattooed that he looked as though he had been dipped in a vat of dark blue dye. A black band of ink circled his head at eye level, and more black markings had been wrought on his face and scalp over the blue. He smelt strongly of herbs, so strongly it filled the chamber with a sweet, cloying musk.
The second person was a woman of early middle age, armoured in an ornate, lacquered black breastplate chased with bronze over a coat of mail. Her once vibrant red hair was fading like autumnal leaves, and an unsightly scar wound from the middle of her chin to the back of her jawbone – what looked to be a failed attempt at opening her throat. She put me immediately in mind of von Osterlen.
“This is Kunagas Ulrich,” Lady Frost said, indicating the shaman. I knew “Kunagas” to be a title, rather than a name, the equivalent of “patria” in the Neman Church.
“Hm,” the shaman grunted. He took stock of us all, but his gaze settled on me. It lingered long enough to make me uncomfortable.
“Io restas proksime de ŝi,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off me.
“Jes. Ankaŭ mi sentas ĝin,” Lady Frost replied.
“Kiu portas la kronon de sango?”
“Ni esperu ke ne.”
“You hear it?” Ulrich asked in Saxan. It took me a moment to realise he had asked me.
“Hear what?” I asked back.
Ulrich waggled his fingers as though mimicking a tiny waterfall. “Drip, drip, drip?”
I looked at Vonvalt uncertainly, but his expression was one of distaste. “No.”
Ulrich shrugged. “Hm,” he said again.
“Who is this?” Vonvalt asked impatiently, gesturing to the warrior woman. She sat at her ease, reclining, one leg loosely crossed over the other.
“Captain Llyr ken Slaineduro,” Lady Frost said.
Captain Llyr eyed us. “Seen dier wolfen?” she asked Lady Frost.
“Aye,” Lady Frost replied.
“You are from the northern kingdoms,” Vonvalt remarked.
“You are from the southern kingdoms,” Captain Llyr said in thickly accented Low Saxan. I realised that for the first time in my life that I was meeting someone from across the North Sea. She may as well have come from the surface of the moon. The Sovan Empire was a place so geographically vast that it was easy to lose oneself in it and its matters entirely, without ever thinking of those other empires and kingdoms that existed beyond its borders. After all, the Sovan Empire was but a tiny slice of the world – though it was my entire world – and that made it easy to forget that the Sovans were but one people amongst many.
Or rather, many people amongst many.
“How large a force have you assembled here?” Vonvalt asked, turning to Lady Frost. “I shall not assist an invasion.”
Lady Frost tutted as Captain Llyr snorted. “Here? Half a thousand. A sixth of our full force. Most every man and woman under my command is a Hauner or a Toll, born and bred. Though I daresay we have more in common with the Brigalanders than the Sovans.”
