Captain Galen of the Sallet guards was an impressive-looking fellow, Tellius thought a little grudgingly. Tall and broad-chested, the man moved well in armour, though of course natural gifts were no substitute for proper training. The soldier had chosen to ignore the old man walking arm in arm with Lady Sallet. Captain Galen showed no sign of finding such familiarity irritating, but it may have played a part in the angle from which he approached. A different old man might have been shocked at his sudden appearance, perhaps. He might even have let out an unmanly squawk. Captain Galen had not actually opened his mouth before he found himself pressed back by Tellius’ arm, held off with such force that he had to take a pace or fall.
‘Ah, captain, you startled me,’ Tellius said.
He made a point of easing back to a ready position, in balance the whole way, one foot trailing in a half-moon, barely in contact with the ground. The captain smothered his surprise, allowing himself only a glare, though Tellius was certain Lady Sallet had seen every part of the exchange. Men were rather childish sometimes, Tellius thought, in the presence of a woman. He stepped aside and gestured for the captain to go on, as if giving permission. Lady Sallet’s mouth moved a little at that, but the situation was too serious and her patience was thin. All around them, the street was going to hell.
‘My lady, with the Greens down, we are too exposed. I cannot protect you in the open.’ Galen pointed to where threads of white fire spat and sparkled, not twenty yards away. ‘That … witch woman seems to be attacking the Immortal soldiers, but I do not know her, nor whether she will turn on us as well. With your permission, I would have you escorted out of the area, perhaps back to the estate itself, which is defensible.’
‘Not the estate,’ Lady Sallet said quickly. ‘I will not wait for news. I wish to remain, to give what orders need to be given. Goddess knows, there are enough fools out tonight.’
‘A house then, at the side of the road?’ Captain Galen asked. He gestured with an outstretched arm almost in mimicry of Tellius just before.
Tellius could not help glancing along the line and it was his turn to be surprised. A door stood open there, with men in Sallet green and gold standing as guards and within. The captain had known the offer to return to the estate would be refused. Perhaps a good part of his role was pre-empting the whims of Lady Sallet, but it was still impressive.
Tellius was surprised at the words that came from Lady Sallet then, so much so that he re-evaluated his view of her and found more to like than he had recognised before.
‘Where are the owners?’ she said. Did she glance at Tellius then for his reaction? He hoped he could believe it.
‘We are the owners, my lady,’ Galen said. ‘As of a moment past. I offered them three times the value of the house and sealed my ring to it.’
‘Excellent,’ Lady Sallet said.
That time, Tellius was sure she had looked at him as she lowered her gaze. Goddess, was the woman interested in him? He looked again at her upright carriage and fine, clear skin. For the first time that day, Tellius felt grubby and unkempt. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing strands of it back behind his ears.
‘This way, my lady,’ Galen said, turning so that he half-blocked Tellius from her sight.
‘Will you go in with me, Meneer Tellius?’ Lady Sallet said clearly.
Captain Galen was left with no choice but to step aside to let him answer, though he looked fairly constipated in his irritation.
‘My lady, I would like nothing more than to continue in your company,’ Tellius said with a dip of his head. ‘However, I would prefer to be useful, if I can be. If you don’t mind asking one of your men to give me a sword, I promise I will join you when it is over. I would not feel … able to leave the city without seeing you once more.’
‘And, of course, I still have your gold,’ she said coolly. ‘And a golem to find.’
‘Ah, yes. There is also that,’ he said, half-bowing.
Lady Sallet nodded to the closest of her men. He took his second sword from a sheath across his back, passing it over with enormous reluctance.
‘Can you … use such a weapon, meneer?’ Lady Sallet said.
Tellius smiled.
‘I believe I can, my lady. It has been a long time, but I believe so.’
Lady Sallet nodded to him, then turned away, crossing the part of the street held open for her by her men, though battle raged all around them. It was the oddest and most artificial moment Tellius could remember, all to keep the mistress of a great family safe. When the door to the house closed behind her, he turned to Captain Galen.
‘A formidable lady,’ he said.
Galen glowered down at him.
‘Worth a dozen of you,’ he said. He was halfway through presenting his back to Tellius when he relented and faced him once again. ‘But she seems to like you, so try not to get yourself killed. Better still, stay close to me and I will do my best to keep you alive.’
Tellius ran his thumb across the edge of the blade and smiled. He had taught the Mazer steps to every one of his lads over the years, taking hours each day to insist on perfection. Though he was perhaps the oldest man in that street, he chuckled.
‘Thank you, Captain Galen,’ he said.
Galen looked at the way the old man was standing. Despite the patched cloth of his coat and trousers, despite the white bristles of one who shaved rarely if at all, there was still an odd confidence in the man’s stance. Captain Galen jerked his head to the men around him.
‘That witch, or whatever she is. It looks like she’s on our side, but if she turns on us, I want her down and out. I’ll give her a chance to come into the ranks. If she doesn’t take it, she’s the target, understood? Hit the greatest force first – rule number one, gentlemen. So – gunmen to the front rank, loaded, drawn and ready. And I want a team looking at those Greens and dragging them back into that stable yard, understood? Well, find ropes! Fourth company! That is your task. At least discover if we can get our men out alive. Clear? Now, the rest of you: Lady Sallet is safe. This road is ours to defend. Steady now. Advance, Sallet!’
Captain Galen fell into step as the front rank came abreast of him, looking left and right as he went. Tellius took position on his shoulder and some part of him rejoiced, though it had been over thirty years since he’d stood in a line with warriors, bearing sharp iron and with an enemy ahead. He could not help the smile of satisfaction that crossed his face, just at feeling young again. A moment later, his aching knees reminded him of his age and he scowled. Still, Darien was his adopted city and Johannes had been his king. He didn’t believe for a moment that the murder and the invasion were unrelated. The traitors spreading out from the gate were responsible for bringing fear and chaos into his home. Tellius only hoped Arthur had not been destroyed trying to save the king.
The old man swished his new sword back and forth in patterns ahead of him, getting the feel of its weight. His throat grew dry at the thought of using such a blade in anger once again, though whether it was in fear or anticipation was hard to say. It had been a long time, it really had.
Nancy felt fear begin as a twist in her stomach, like the puckering of a mouth filled with vinegar. The power she had taken from the green warriors was draining away at a frightening rate. She had no true sense of how much was left in her, beyond a mental image of a sea vanishing to reveal a desert. Yet with every thread of white fire, she felt a sucking sensation in her chest and stomach, as if the great torrent was being reduced to a trickle, a dry teat after a waterfall. It made her want to weep for its loss, but the more pressing fear was that Immortal soldiers still blocked the road in front of her.
They had brought up shields, she saw, great boards of wood and hide to protect them from gunfire or crossbow bolts. Those things burned very well, but men still cowered behind them, preferring a heat they knew and could withstand to the one that tore air from their lungs and made their skin crisp. For a while, Nancy exulted in the destruction she could cause, but her threads were growing thin and she knew she could not be far from going dark and seeing them rush her. Already, there were soldiers in Immortal surcoats creeping around on either side. She picked them off, but they were fanatical. Even as they died, more and more pressed in, until she was snarling at them and forced to use all she had taken.
When the lines of fire were no thicker than hairs, she heard a voice close behind her.
‘My lady, please fall back,’ a man called. ‘You are growing weary. We are ready.’
Nancy risked a glance over her shoulder at the speaker, seeing a tall soldier in silver armour and a green surcoat. Bullets whined around her as she did so, thumping into the shields of the men at her back. Sallets, she realised. She hoped they would not blame her for taking the power from their famous green warriors.
She felt something snag her wounded arm then and hissed at an agony so great she thought she might faint. Nancy cupped one hand in the other and Captain Galen flicked his fingers at two of his men so that they put shields around her and gathered her in, falling back through the ranks.
‘Take her to Lady Sallet and keep her safe,’ Galen said. He stared after her for a moment longer than he should have done, thinking how very beautiful she had been, with hair like flames in red and gold.
Tellius watched the young woman half-carried back to at least the semblance of safety. In all his years he had never seen anything like her for sheer violence. He was not sure yet of the source, nor why she had run dry. He was cynical enough to suspect that Lady Sallet would be very interested in such a powerful witch, or whatever she was. Still, he had other concerns at that moment.
‘Shields! Keep your damned shields up!’ Galen called to his men.
Bullets thumped into them and Tellius shook his head in disgust. Was this the face of warfare for the new generation? He hated the idea. In his youth, it had been about champions and skill and the Mazer steps that honed the body and the mind to make a living weapon out of them. This fusillade of shots was madness – and also terrifying. He had no desire to be cut down by some sweating soldier with a trembling gun-hand. He hoped to see Lady Sallet again, for a start.
Sallet gunmen poured their own fire into the Immortal ranks. The army pressing in from the western gate had begun to spread the news that the witch had fallen back and more ordinary soldiers awaited them. Their response was a great surge forward, closing the gap between the two forces so that the street filled with murder and snarling, two wolf packs released into one another.
Tellius raised his sword, and killed with it the next moment. He had faced an armoured warrior hardly able to believe his luck in coming across an old man. Yet Tellius had guided the soldier’s blade in a safer arc with a hand pressing against a shoulder, then jabbed his own sword under the man’s neck-plate, finding a spot where the point just slipped in. He jerked his hand and blood sheeted across the silver metal, making the Immortal’s eyes widen.
‘Sorry, son,’ Tellius said. ‘Go to the Goddess now.’
He hoped Galen had some sense of how the battle was going as Tellius found his world filled with the savagery he could suddenly recall only too well from his youth. It was ugly and exhilarating at the same time, with the stakes as high as they could possibly be. Yet he felt his own worm of doubt as his age began to tell almost immediately. Every man he cut down was a professional soldier in his twenties or thirties. They had stamina and strength he could not possibly match. He moved well enough against the first three men, leaving them to fall and twitch as they died, but the fourth almost had him – would have done if Galen hadn’t spotted the man gripping Tellius’ throat and bearing him backward, raising his sword like a cleaver. Galen had cut down the Immortal and Tellius had been left heaving for breath and holding his bruised neck, nodding his thanks.
Galen was a gifted fighter, Tellius could see. The captain of the Sallet forces kept a sense of space around him that few men managed. Anyone who crossed into range of his sword was engaged and sent reeling in two or three strokes at most, a nicely economical style that would mean Galen kept fighting long after the rest were exhausted. Lady Sallet had chosen her commander well, it seemed. Yet there were five thousand in the Immortal legion. If they were prepared to die to take the city in their madness, Tellius did not see how the forces of Darien could hold them off.
He had not yet seen any sign of the Twelve Families beyond Sallet. With the Greens down, the few hundred estate soldiers could not hold back an actual legion, not even with the advantage of the narrow streets by the gates. Tellius didn’t doubt the Immortals were already spreading around from the western gate, taking other routes into the city. The ordinary citizens of Darien might throw a few tiles or bricks, but they would not fight, he thought, perhaps because their lives would not really change. Places like his own workshop and his lads would go on, or something very like them, if General Justan Aldan Aeris took over. They would merely be exchanging one set of masters for another. The Twelve Families had a much greater stake in whoever ruled. They faced their own destruction, so it was up to them to defend Darien, if they had the sense and the will. Tellius only wished he could have seen some sign of it that evening. The Sallet force was already being pushed back and he could see no reinforcements coming.
Arthur Quick climbed higher and higher on the tiles, determined to watch the fighting. He’d been unhappy when the hunter Elias had sent him away, though he understood it was meant to protect him. The man had mentioned a home in a village and two daughters. It had been an age since Arthur had known anything like that and he was grateful for the image of it, even if it did not come about.
Arthur had always been good at climbing. He went hand over hand to the peak of the roof, lying prone on the ridge beam and staring down in fascination as the fighting began in fire and explosions. The golem had frowned when he’d recognised the woman from the king’s apartments. He did not want to face her again, not the one who could somehow drag life right out of him. For the first time in all his years, he thought he understood what it meant to come to an end. It was a revelation, and as he stared down in the darkness at the armies heaving back and forth below, he could only wonder at the short lives of men and the way they were willing to risk them.
Arthur lay as still as any gargoyle until the witch woman’s threads of light began to fade and die out. He saw her twitch as if she’d been hurt and leaned right over the ridge beam to watch as she was taken into the ranks of the Sallets, wounded but alive.
Arthur’s gaze sharpened further as he saw Tellius standing in the ranks of those soldiers. The old man went forward in smooth movements, almost gliding where others plodded. Arthur smiled in recognition, but from the height of the pitched roof, he could see how few the Sallets were, how shallow their line – and how many they faced. The witch woman had smashed the front ranks of the Immortals, but they were still pushing into the city. Beyond the wall, Arthur caught glimpses of a column of torches flickering like stars, all marching into Darien.
He sat up, looking over to the gate. To decide was to act and he did not hesitate or ponder, as another might have. He skittered down the roof and along to the dipped section over a doorway where he had come up. From there, he jumped down to a balcony, swung over the edge of it and hung-dropped to the street below, coming up at a sprint.
The massive western gateway lay ahead of him, just a hundred yards from where he was. He had lived a long, long time and he had a good idea how such things worked, how they were opened and how they could be closed once again. The Immortal legion would react quickly, he thought, as he dodged and weaved past shouting drunks and marching soldiers. They would know as soon as the gate moved, and wherever he stood would become the hottest part of Darien in a few moments. He would be killed, certainly, but he would close the gate, or at least draw vital soldiers from the attack. Either way, both Tellius and Elias were in that bloodied, savage press. Whether they ever knew or not, Arthur could not watch those men cut down and just do nothing.
When the crush of soldiers was too great even for one of his size to slip through, he yanked open a door into a tavern packed with terrified citizens, all watching him in astonished silence as Arthur ran across the benches and tables and out the other side.
Ahead of him, huge stone steps rose to the winching mechanism: ancient cogs of oiled iron and black lignum vitae wood set against the inner wall. It was all on a grand scale, as befitted one of the main gates of a city like Darien. It was also the first spot the Immortals had secured, using men already in the city. Every one of the great steps was guarded by soldiers wearing white surcoats and silver mail.
They were watching the heave and ebb of the battle inside the walls, enjoying a duty that gave them a perfect view and yet forced them to remain clear of the fighting. They did not see him at first. As he walked up, Arthur drew the sword King Johannes had given him and felt the weight of it, flicking his thumb across the edge. Johannes had been kind to him and Arthur had failed to repay that kindness.
He had lived for centuries and he could feel the weight of those years. Arthur had never truly been able to imagine death before. Yet the witch woman had given him a glimpse and it no longer frightened him, not really. Like sleep, there was no sense of loss, no wrongness. It was just darkness, with no regrets. He felt a twinge of sorrow that he had not seen the Goddess the people of Darien mentioned. Perhaps she was not for things like him.
The first group of Immortals looked away from the bloody street battle at last as he approached. The sight of a child with a sword did not unnerve them, though one of them made a comment to another and both men laughed. Arthur did not smile. Such men had trained to fight others of their own size; Tellius had told him that. It was a most extraordinary advantage. Everyone Arthur faced was taller, so that he had to bring them down with one cut, then finish them off. He had learned the style as easily as anything else. The men on the first step were facing one of his size for the first time – and they did not get long enough to adjust for it. On that Reapers’ Eve, he went through them like wheat.
He leaped up onto the step to land amongst the soldiers. One of them instinctively tried to kick him off and cried out as the sword gashed his thigh, falling to one knee as the leg folded. He was dispatched and the crowded soldiers panicked at the glimpsed child in their midst, stabbing and gashing, leaving blood splashed across their white surcoats. They struck each other as they lunged for him. He never stopped moving as he cleared each step and hacked at the ankles of those above. They stabbed down at him, trying to pin the vicious creature to the ground and then yelping and cursing as his sword found their flesh. They had trained for years to fight men. A golem the size of a ten-year-old boy was a whirlwind coming through them.
Arthur was on the fourth step of twelve, with bodies littered behind him, when a shot stabbed a burning finger through his chest. He looked up in astonishment at the line of gunmen facing him. He raised his hand to the hole and saw a smear of clear fluid dribbling from it. It hurt. He never showed it, but it really did.
He gave a cat-growl and rushed them, gashing the gunman’s pistol hand with his sword so that he pulled it back, spoiling the aim of the next one along – and by then, Arthur was in amongst them, stabbing and cutting. Those above could not see him to aid the ones below, so he could continue to fight his way up until he was too wounded to go on, or too tired. He had been cut and shot and he felt weariness in his arms that would only grow.
The secret of the Mazer steps was to remain utterly calm, a calm that it took most men a lifetime to learn. Arthur had sensed the rightness of it from the moment he saw Micahel demonstrate the movements back at the workshop. Physical control and strength for balance – yes, of course, but the peace came from a prepared mind. So he did not panic as another gunshot clutched at him. He had not expected to live, though he had to remind himself of that when he grew afraid.
He continued to climb and leap and kill, but there were too many of them. He saw the last few steps filled with Immortals in white coats, emptying their pistols in smoke and thunder. He felt impossibly tired and he could hear a roaring in his ears, like the sea. He hoped it was not his life’s blood spattering on the stone steps, but he thought it probably was.
‘Arthur!’ he heard behind him. ‘It is you! We have this.’
He turned, still ducking and moving so that they would not cut him down. Arthur blinked as Micahel, Donny and the older boys from the workshop raced past him. They had collected pistols and shields as they came and they were holding them up. No, Micahel held only his sword and he raised it in salute as he went past. None of them hesitated and the Immortals threw empty guns at them and drew the swords they actually knew how to use.
Arthur sat on the steps and wondered at the pool of sticky fluid all around him. He had to crane his neck to see, which hurt him, though he would not have missed it. He watched Micahel sweep through the remaining soldiers with an economy of movement Arthur knew very well, that would have made Tellius weep with joy to see once more. The others were not quite as perfect, but Micahel wove a storm with his blade, an archangel on the stair.
Arthur found he was panting. The air would not come properly, though he had never really thought about breathing before. It had always just been part of him, for centuries of nights and days. He had learned so many things.
He looked up once more as his sword fell with a clatter from his hand. The boys were spinning the massive gear wheel into a blur and they were answered by a confusion of sounds Arthur could not understand as his senses began to fade. Above all was a roar of metal and stone as the gate began to close, incredibly slowly, but with inexorable force. New cries of anger and panic sounded both before and behind it, as the Immortals understood what was happening. Frantic orders were shouted for those already inside the gate to get up the steps and hold it open.
Arthur watched as the boys from the workshop came over to stand on the walkway at the top, Micahel with them. Donny spun and spun the gate wheel, laughing at the speed of it. Another held a long shield over them both as bullets from below began to rattle against it. The rest made a line, with shields and swords and even pistols held ready as they looked down on the struggle going on around the gate. Not all of them had reached the top. Yet those who had conquered the mountain were triumphant and howling. They had faced grown men and somehow lived.
Arthur smiled at his friends and slumped against the step. For an instant, he saw light gleam around him and he heard a voice he knew, the mother who had created him, or the Goddess herself, he could not be sure.
‘Come to me, my son,’ she said, and he was gone.