Taeshin stood on a grey hillside strewn with loose rocks. Nothing grew in that place, while below on the plain, two vast armies clashed. He watched in awe and resignation. This then, was death.
Other men had been nearby when he opened his eyes. Without a word to him, they had walked down to join the ranks of the armies below, taking up fallen shields and swords. Taeshin did not know why he had not, nor why he still dreamed of the world he had known. He remained, unable to go on or back, in a place of grey dust, waiting. When he clenched his eyes and his fists, the sounds began to fade and he was no longer on that hill above the plain. If he strained until he trembled, he could sense another place in the darkness, where frightened eyes watched him walk back and forth.
Gabriel paced in the light of candles. Two hundred men and women had been rounded up in the night to stand before him. Some still sobbed, while the rest were silent and watchful, prepared to wait for whatever they would hear. Most people could not be shepherds, he thought. They were willing to endure hard work and cold winters to feed their families. That was who they were. It should not matter to most of them who sat on the throne, not beyond a few close friends and blood relations of the king.
‘My name is Gabriel Hernan Cortez,’ he said to them. ‘I was once ambassador to this city, oh, beyond the memories of …’
He paused and waved the words away. They watched him like cows waiting to be slaughtered, he realised. He had seen that once, when he was a boy and slaughterhouses had run all day and night. The animals had stared in the darkness when he’d raised his torch. They had the blackest of eyes, he remembered. The people in that hall had the same look in the candlelight, as if they saw death.
‘What matters tonight is that I defeated the Yuan in combat. However you choose your kings, that should suffice for most of you. I am willing to toe the line against any champion you wish to bring, but until then, I …’
He broke off again as he heard the same sound that had thumped through the air earlier that day. None of those assembled to hear him reacted to it.
‘What lies in that direction …?’ Gabriel asked them.
No one dared reply and he was on the verge of losing his temper when the young woman kneeling at his feet spoke.
‘The west, Your Majesty. The realm.’
He shook his head.
‘Beyond that, further. I sense something far off … What lies beyond the realm in this age? Does Spain still stand? Or Rome?’
The names meant nothing to them and he frowned. The woman he had named Song could only raise her empty hands in confusion.
‘My lord, what could lie beyond the realm?’
Gabriel blinked at her in disbelief.
‘Truly? You have lost a great deal, my dear, whether you know it or not. Any of you? What nations are to the west?’
A man raised his head in the crowd, seeing the monster who had killed his king. He spoke with thick hatred.
‘There is a city named Darien some thousands of miles west. A realm as great as this one, so it is said. Perhaps you should seek it out.’
Gabriel chuckled.
‘Well done. I had begun to think there was no spirit of defiance in any of you! How the rest of you cower! I should make you my servant, boy.’
‘I would not serve you,’ the man replied. He stood with his hand on his sword, ready to be attacked.
Gabriel took a deep breath and released it, feeling all tension leave him.
‘I have seen enough blood today. I summoned you merely to say this: go about your business. Make bread in the kitchens. Tend the royal horses. Make cloth, wash, mend – do whatever it is you all do in the royal household. But do it for me. There, I have said it all. Return to your duties.’
They began to stream out, their faces showing desperate relief. Gabriel watched them for a time and turned to Thomas and Sanjin. The latter’s foot had been wrapped in fresh bandages, but it was already showing a red spot the size of a coin. He could feel Sanjin’s anger as their eyes met. Gabriel knew very well that the man wanted him to heal it. It had become a test of will between them.
‘Did either of you feel that, before?’ Gabriel said.
Thomas shook his head and Sanjin shrugged.
‘Where is the fool?’
Thomas jerked his head and Gabriel saw the last of the returnees had been roped to a choir stall like a dog. The fool’s trousers were dark with urine and as he saw Gabriel looking at him, he beamed.
‘His mind has gone,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t know if he could even be healed now. It might be better to put him out of his misery.’
The fool shook with laughter, making a ‘shee shee’ sound that echoed unpleasantly from the stone ribs above. Slowly, he raised his hand and pointed west.
Riding three hundred miles had brought Hondo a sense of mental clarity, if not peace. He watched the crowd with no sign of the turbulence that troubled him. The city of Shiang was a distant place to those who lived in those hills, made real by annual visits of tithe and tally men from the capital. Only the schoolteacher had been born near to Shiang, Hondo had been told. They seemed to think that was a mark of high status. The rest had lived and bred in those same farms and fields for the passage of centuries.
Their faces were a little longer than the people of home, the eyes deep-set and darkened by long lashes, so that a few of the women were almost presentable. Yet they had unfurled a woven image of the Yuan king and laid a long feast table in a meadow for his champions. They too were of the nation. Hondo only wished he could feel as they felt, without his constant need to reflect and examine. To live a simple, rustic life! Hondo knew he would envy them when he was a thousand miles away. At that moment, however, he found them intensely annoying.
Hondo sensed another villager turn to look at him in delight, seeking out some shared joy. He had seen the same impulse at weddings and the births of healthy children. There was no harm in it, he reminded himself. Joy was a fragile thing, but it could overwhelm a man.
Whenever those seeking that connection actually met his eyes, they looked away immediately. It hurt him when it happened, like a sliver of ice pushed into his soul. Yet he could not pretend to fellow feeling he did not share! He could not laugh, not when he knew his eyes remained as cold as he did. Other men flinched from him if he aped their roars and bantering talk. They sensed a falseness, an awareness that watched them still.
He wondered if the twins felt the same, though as they hardly ever spoke, it was difficult to tell what those two thought about anything. Hondo had accepted them as travelling companions, but the pair were so self-contained that he thought he would never truly know them. It was a reserve he could respect. Some men were made for coldness, he thought. It was as much the nature of a man as desire in the presence of beauty. If anything separated man from …
Hondo’s train of thought came to a halt as Bosin came around the corner with one of the twins on his shoulders. The twin clamped Bosin’s head so hard with his legs that the big man had gone a bright red, but he still staggered on through the delighted crowd.
The village blacksmith was some way behind on the road, bearing his own twin and doing his best to catch up. Hondo sighed to himself. He had never met anyone quite like the giant swordsman before. He was not sure he was enjoying the experience. The crowd were chanting Bosin’s name, Hondo realised. They had asked for a test of strength with the local man and Hondo had been framing a polite refusal when Bosin agreed and heaved one of the twins to his shoulders. It had been fairly chaotic after that, with the people of the village in fits of laughter as they set off.
The two pairs had run to a distant oak tree and back. Some of the village had gone with the staggering blacksmith to urge on their man. Hondo had seen with some surprise that at least as many cheered for Bosin even against their own. The big warrior seemed to invite laughter, but it was without rancour. Hondo shook his head. He would never understand it. Some men found each meeting with another took a certain effort, a slight strain that could exhaust them over the passage of a day. Others, like Bosin, seemed to be invigorated by the same contact with others. There was no artifice involved. Bosin liked people. They sensed it and liked him in return. That was all there was to it.
The finish line was a horse trough in the centre of the square. Hondo wondered if he should be pleased one of the royal companions was at least winning the race, but it was hard not to begrudge the morning they had lost. He watched as Bosin laid a hand in triumph on the trough. The twin on his shoulders leaped down and bowed to all points of the compass, punching the air and launching flying kicks to roars of the crowd. A great luncheon had been assembled on tables in the open air, ready for their return. The entire village had the air of a harvest festival, or a wedding. They would certainly not forget the arrival of the four masters. Hondo wondered if they would be able to recall his name when they told the story of the race for generations to come. Sourly, he rather doubted it.
Bosin and the twin – though whether it was Hi or Je, Hondo could not tell – went back to clap the blacksmith home. Bosin was still bright red in the face and pouring with sweat, but he roared and chanted with the rest, gesturing to the trough. The second twin was just as animated, pulling his legs up into a crouch and balancing on the blacksmith’s shoulders like a monkey.
The poor villager was near dead on his feet from the run. A mile there and back with a man on his shoulders had been a fine test of endurance. Hondo admired the blacksmith’s spirit when he straightened up and walked the last few paces with something like dignity, laying his hand on the stone trough to a great shout from the crowd. Hondo watched Bosin embrace the fellow and yell something into his ear as the second twin leaped down and turned cartwheels and somersaults.
Bosin headed for the feasting table. He had spotted a roast pig and felt as if he could eat the entire thing himself. He came to a skidding halt when he saw Hondo.
‘There you are!’ Bosin said.
Hondo had to steel himself not to step back as Bosin advanced on him. The man’s sheer size never failed to make him nervous. To his horror, Bosin tried to reach around him and pick him up. Hondo had to strike with a knuckle into the elbow joint, hard enough to numb the entire arm.
To his astonishment, Bosin did not seem to notice and heaved him into the air like a child.
‘Put me down, ox,’ Hondo said, flushing. ‘I will not be handled.’
‘Let them see you!’ Bosin said, laughing. ‘This man is the greatest sword of Shiang!’ he cried to the crowd. ‘The sword saint!’
Hondo gripped one of the hands that held him, turning it hard against the joint so that Bosin grunted with sudden pain and surprise.
‘Put me down,’ Hondo said.
The big man did so, rubbing his wrist with the other hand. Hondo saw the smiles fade around him and he was suddenly angry with them all.
‘I wish to meditate in my room. Well done, Master Bosin. It was a fine race.’
To say a word more would be to unleash a bitter tirade, Hondo could feel it. So he clamped his jaw shut and bowed to his three companions. The twins looked crestfallen, he saw. That gave him some satisfaction at least.
Little by little, the crowd fell silent as Hondo walked through them. He felt a cold anger simmering in him at Bosin. The man seemed to have no sense of dignity, for himself or anyone else. In quieter moments, Hondo might have envied it. At that point, he felt nothing more than humiliation – and as every man knew, humiliation was brother to rage. He turned his back on them and tried not to hear when they began to roar Bosin’s name once more.
Hondo had covered fifty miles that day and he was no longer a young man. He tried to meditate, but when the twins came back to their cots in the little room above the tavern, they found him snoring softly. Hi and Je looked to one another in private communication then, their eyes bright with the evening and with wine.
Gabriel woke to find the lady he had taken as his mistress trying on a new dress. It seemed Song understood how to make the palace servants leap to do her bidding. They ran at her command and pinned and stitched as she directed. From the king’s bed, Gabriel lay and watched her, wondering what he had wrought. Taking her from her guards had been an expression of power rather than desire, at least at first. He’d been wary of sudden lusts after so long in the grey land. Yet she had come to his bed willingly enough the night before. He’d expected tears, but she’d surprised him, pressing him down and sitting astride. He’d let her pin his arms for a time and when he’d tired of that, he had been gentler than he’d planned to be. When he’d slept at last, it was with flashes of terror that he might awake in the other place, with all pleasures stolen and only eternity as a comfort. He’d clawed the air, he remembered, but been drawn down even so. As always, his dreams had been terrible. Yet the sun had risen and he had opened his eyes to industry and bustling servants. Song had brought something like order back to the royal rooms.
He raised himself up on his elbows and scratched his side, seeing flakes of dried blood come loose. Gabriel grimaced at that. He was not a savage. In his first life, he had always been a fastidious man, preferring to wash two or three times a day. Yesterday had been for death and killing. Today he would bathe and make love to his mistress. He would find a clean set of armour and take up the wonderful sword King Yuan-Choji had wielded. Perhaps he would ride in the royal gardens. It had been a long time since he’d known simple pleasures, or anything but war. Gabriel could smell grass and flowers, though such things … He jerked as he felt the pulse beat through the air once again. He knew the location of west in that moment.
His mood darkening, Gabriel leaped naked from the bed, ignoring the squeaks and scurrying of servants as they dashed out of the rooms.
‘Lady Song, where is Thomas?’
‘At your door, Gabriel,’ she replied. ‘I will fetch him.’
There was no fear in her then, but only a sort of slyness, like a cat with blood on its whiskers. Gabriel realised she reminded him of his first wife, who had run off with one of his captains. He wondered if this one would be more trustworthy, or whether he had chosen poorly once more. A man had patterns, he thought. Good or bad, his patterns made him what he was.
He felt the pulse thump through him again, as if the air moved without sound. It was not a pleasant sensation. It was a summons, an awareness. Or an awakening. He felt a string being tugged in his chest, not as pain, but as if the very matter of him was being drawn away. He wanted in that moment just to set out. To take a horse and the Yuan sword and answer the note that called him.
Thomas entered and dropped to one knee. The man seemed content in his new role, though Gabriel could see he was a thinker. Not all men desired to lead. Some were happy to be second or third. He hoped Thomas was one of those. Gabriel did not want to kill him. And, of course, he was not completely sure he could.
‘Thomas,’ Gabriel said. ‘Have you felt these … beats in the air?’
‘I have,’ Thomas said. Gabriel closed his eyes in relief. He’d wondered if he was going mad, like the fool. ‘Last night and just now. What do you think they are?’
‘We were brought back with a stone, Thomas. Power calls to power.’
Gabriel knew he was correct as he said the words. Whatever the stone had been that Lord Ran had used, the threads of others lay to the west. Stones called to stones – and he and Thomas carried one within them. Gabriel sensed he could ignore it; the question was whether he wanted to.
‘If I had another stone,’ he said slowly, ‘and Lord Ran to help me, I could bring back men I trusted in life.’
He spoke warily, testing the thoughts. He had returned to the world just the day before and he had been king for less than twelve hours. Too many things had happened quickly and he knew he needed time to settle and consider.
‘Has Sanjin said anything?’ he asked. ‘He was behind you, when we came through. The fool came behind him. Perhaps it is as simple as that, Thomas. I came first, so I am the strongest.’
Gabriel shrugged. There was so much he did not know. For all his new speed and power, he was as a new-born child.
He and Thomas looked up as the royal tailor entered the room and knelt, ushering a dozen servants into Gabriel’s presence. The new king of Shiang stood naked before them all, untroubled by it as he remembered a line of poetry he had once known. It was good to be alive that day … but to be young, oh to be young, was very heaven.
High on the walls of the city, the wind was constant and exhilarating. Tellius clapped a captain of the guards on the shoulder. The man had done well, though of course it was at the orders of his master, Lord Bracken. One thing Tellius had discovered about the Twelve Families – they could argue whether the sun set in the east or the west, but when they agreed, when they moved, they moved fast.
The defences of Darien had first to be broken before they could be rebuilt. All along the outer wall, stones were being gently prised apart, while new stocks came by river, on barges from the Woodville quarries. New fortunes were being made, with careful accounting of all of it, Tellius was certain. There would be new debts and favours owed by the time the king’s review of the armed forces of Darien was at an end.
Tellius pressed his thumbs into his eyes, seeing green lights flash. He was weary and he was not a young man. Yet he had somehow become the foreman of the project, with a hundred different requests for attention and decisions that needed to be made reaching him each day. He looked along the crown of the great wall as it began to curve away in the distance. The truth was, the review was long overdue. It should have been something they’d begun after the attack two years before, but there was no point regretting that lapse then.
All across the city, defences were being catalogued and marked as obsolete, or missing, or in dire need of new funds and labour. The results had meant a fortune in gold coming out of the royal treasury, as well as every noble house. The king could draw on the Twelve Families to the limit of their wealth. That was the ancient compact that served them all, and if they grumbled, they could not deny the results of it, nor whisper that the money was vanishing in corruption. The new walls going up were those of a fortress in pale stone, with massive ridges and buttresses.
Not every citizen was delighted by the work, nor every head of the great houses. Those families who depended on trade made constant complaint as it was choked off in favour of supplies. Others had lost the labour of their key people while they were trained to fight outside the walls, on the great plain by the river. Tellius had begun referring to it as the Campus, after Lord Canis told him an ancient city had employed a field of war to train its citizens, a Campus Martius.
From that height, he could see them, the people of Darien, looking small against the vastness of the world. Yet they marched and halted and presented arms. Tellius shook his head in frustration as he recalled the influence Lord Canis had played in the choice of weapons. The men learning field tactics and battle commands on the Campus were armed with only swords and daggers, or long spears. They held shields in their hands and drilled with them as their forefathers had done. Tellius had pleaded for entire gun regiments, but that was the one skirmish he had lost, though it might prove the most important. The Regis family owned the workshops – and it seemed Lord Regis was a close ally of Lord Canis.
As Tellius watched, a tiny number of men revealed their weapons with a puff of white smoke and, some time after, a rippling crack of sound. He shook his head in irritation. It was not enough to arm small teams in such a way. He had seen the new guns actually used in a street battle, the air alive with bullets and stinging grains. In that moment, he had seen the end of swordsmen on the field, he was certain. The very idea that an army could approach another on foot now that guns existed was a sort of madness. He clenched his jaw. When challenged, Lord Canis had pointed to bows and crossbows, saying those would suffice for common men. Tellius had been forced to concede the point in open debate, as he was not allowed to strangle a lord in front of all the others. Yet he knew every single subject who could afford the rising prices had an order in for a pistol as a private purchase. Other workshops were opening to repair and service the pistols. More than a few were on the cusp of making their own – and it wouldn’t be long before the Hart family entered the market. Whether Canis and Regis knew it or not, many in the new militia would be armed with more than blade or bow when the time came.
Looking away from those training, Tellius turned to the darker streets that ran below. He could see faces in the crowd as bustling men and women went about putting bread on the table each evening. He knew them, Tellius reminded himself. He was one of them. He did not always like them, but by the Goddess, he understood how they thought. Perhaps Lord Canis was right to fear the common use of guns, but that was a problem for the future. Tellius could still remember the slow horror of the wave that crashed against his city. He believed in the Forza Stone and what it had shown him. Nothing else mattered as much – not the sensibilities of Lord Canis, not even the unrest that might one day lie ahead. They had to survive till the following spring first. He recalled Lord Hart had said something about difficulties in securing finance for gun shops under his own name. The Harts were friendly with the Sallets and proud of the part they had played in the defence of Darien. Tellius nodded to himself. Perhaps he could persuade Win to cover a loan the banks would not. Odds were, it would be a good investment.
Shouts sounded on his left, so that Tellius turned and blinked at a sight that never failed to amaze him. Lord Bracken had fashioned harnesses for his dogs, so that they could carry the tools and equipment for the men working on the walls. As a new shift began, the animals appeared in a flood, racing along with jingling packs on their shoulders. That they were hunting dogs was not in doubt. It still took an effort of will for Tellius to pat one as it sat with tongue lolling, looking as if it laughed at him. They were muscular beasts with wide heads and powerful jaws, but Lord Bracken controlled them in some way with the stone he wore on his arm. It looked as natural as breathing to him, and Tellius could not deny the animals were useful. They were so fast! He had spent too many years on the wrong side of the law to ever be comfortable in the presence of such animals. It was just too easy to imagine them chasing one of the old gang through the streets.
As Tellius watched, the animals were relieved of their burdens and ran off once again, as if they raced one another. Tellius wondered if Lord Bracken’s dogs enjoyed their lives. He suspected they did. Their owner was large and brash. Being accompanied by a yelping pack of hounds made him harder to dislike, in Tellius’ opinion.
He made his way to the steps and looked across the city to where the Hart estate had its gates. He would see Lord Hart that very evening to guarantee the loan, he decided, whatever was needed. Lady Forza would surely come in on the deal. Either way, it did not sit well with Tellius to have only the poorest denied the new weapons. He had been poor. Even if the new regiments still officially carried swords, it would not hurt to have a pistol on each belt as well.
‘Master Tellius! One of the river barges has run aground. Lady Woodville says you must come.’
Tellius swore under his breath as the house messenger found him. There was another one in different livery racing along the wall. Damn them. He could not find a moment to himself.
‘I will be there in an hour,’ he called over his shoulder.
The messenger set his jaw and followed him down the steps.
‘My mistress said I was not to let you out of my sight, Master Tellius. Lady Woodville says you did not come as you promised you would yesterday.’
‘Lady Woodville can …’ Tellius began. He forced a smile. ‘She can wait a little longer, I am certain.’