A Shout for the Dead (80 page)

The days following the disaster had been entirely predictable. Gesteris, while removing his support from the Advocate, had nevertheless worked tirelessly with Elise Kastenas to make the palace complex a fortress. Onagers now occupied the courtyard and the gardens ringing the palace inside the walls. Ballistae and scorpions had been brought out of storage and moved to the walls and towers, places he had never thought to see them. Guards, legionaries and militia had been drilled in defensive tactics.

It would take an army to threaten the Advocate and all those within the walls.

And the Armour of God was massed outside. Whether this was brinkmanship or genuine threat wasn't clear. But it was certainly ugly, and it was certainly a siege.

Vasselis was in the state rooms. He seemed to spend a lot of his time there now. The view over the Victory Gates was peerless, though how hollow that title was now after what had happened in their shadow. The space within had been converted to an administration area for the rationing of food and water and he had placed himself in charge of this delicate area.

Estorr was lost. The Advocacy had no control. The Order was in charge. The citizenry had not reappeared at the gates to vent their rage at what had occurred. Fear saw to that. But they had taken their anger out all over the city. Rioting went unchecked for three days before the Order had stepped in this morning to direct the people into less damaging protest and action. But they hadn't begun the evacuation Vasselis had begged them to organise. They still didn't, or wouldn't, believe and the citizens were in their thrall.

He and Gesteris had watched from the high rooms of the palace as every business and enterprise close to the Advocacy went up in flames. The Advocate's few supporters in the city had been driven out, had run to the Hill or been killed. It was no more than a witch hunt and they had been powerless to stop it.

Only in the hours immediately following the disastrous Work had any loyals been into the city proper. With Herine incapable or unwilling to make any more decisions, the military minds had stepped in and brought to the Hill everything they could think of and easily find. Provisions, weapons, vulnerable people, city guard. Every single empty vessel the palace possessed had been filled with water. Because as Gesteris had correctly predicted, on this first afternoon of genasfall, the water supply to the palace was cut off.

In the Academy, all was quiet. The Ascendants had not emerged from there since the fateful evening. Petrevius and Mina were inconsolable. Yola was defiant and Vasselis did not like the echoes he saw in her. Hesther was furious with Herine for what she had ordered, and confused by how it had gone so spectacularly wrong. Vasselis knew how she felt.

In the whole damned mess, the only continuing blessing was that the quarantine flags were still hidden from the citizenry. Their anger had no edge of panic. The rioters' fires had been extinguished and the Order had imposed itself effectively if not even-handedly or indeed in the right direction. Vasselis was uncomfortably aware that could change at any moment. What the reaction would be he shuddered to think.

The doors opened behind him and eight heads turned to see the Advocate walk shakily into the room, supported by Tuline. Both of them looked exhausted. Herine looked very ill and despite his anger, Vasselis felt worried by that. The seven administrators bent their heads back to their plans and rotas. Vasselis waited for the two women to walk around the grand table and up the step to the balcony.

is there anyone here who still supports me?'

Herine's voice was rasping, her breath wheezing. Her eyes were bloodshot and there was a tremor to her body most evident in her fingers and lips. Tuline's eyes echoed her desperation and helplessness.

'God-surround-me, Herine, look at you,' said Vasselis.

He cast around and saw a chair. He dragged it to the balcony edge but Herine waved it away.

'I am not a total invalid, Arvan,' she said. 'Well?'

There was still strength in her eyes but it was fading. Vasselis sighed. She had aged a decade in three days and the ramifications of her orders lay upon her like a blanket of stone.

'What do you want me to say, Herine? Everyone within these walls still believes in the Advocacy and t
hey will fight to the last to pr
eserve it from destruction by the Order.'

'That isn't quite what I asked you, is it?'

'It's the best answer you're going to get right now.'

Herine looked away but nodded her acceptance. Vasselis could still find no sympathy inside himself for her. He was surprised by that but could not deny it. He was sure he should have been stronger in his defence but in the cold light of day, she had gone against every tenet of her own rule. The Advocate had attacked her own people. And though she would never have wished for the results of that decision, she had made it and had to face the consequences. She had ignored her advisers.

'I am lost,' she said quite suddenly. She felt for the chair and sat in it, Tuline helping her down. 'I cannot survive this, Arvan. It is over.'

'I think that is a gteat assumption, my Advocate,' he said. 'A hard blow, yes, but your achievements outweigh your mistakes.'

'Do they? Do they really? And what do you suppose my legacy will be when the history of my rule is written? That I held back the Tsardon tide, brought Dornos, Atreska and Bahkir into the Conquord? That I presided over the greatest growth of wealth the Conquotd had ever seen? Or that I, Herine Del Aglios, lost my grip and slaughtered hundreds outside the gates of my own house. That I embraced those that the majority of my people and the rulers of my faith knew to be evil and that I unleashed that evil on them in petty revenge.'

Herine looked so thin, sitting there. Her vitality was gone. Her face was hollow and the dark patches under her eyes reached down into her cheeks.

'I do not deserve to rule this great Conquord,' she said. The tears began to fall down her cheeks. 'I am not worthy of the love of my citizens. I am not worthy of any who yet stand beside me.'

Vasselis knelt before her, putting his arms on those of the chair in which she sat.

'Yes, you have done wrong,' he said. 'Is that what you want to hear? You have made a monumental mistake and the citizens of this city are angry and bitter and denounce your name. This is a setback of enormous proportions. But you are Herine Del Aglios. The Advocate of the Estorean Conquord. And you will not, no, may not, give up.

'Out there beyond the walls they choose not to believe it but we know the threat approaching the Conquord. We know his name and we must not buckle. We must not let our guard slip again. Your sons are out there defending all of this. You, the Order, the citizens of this city and the whole Conquord. And though I might be furious with you, Herine. Though I might not even know how I feel about you today, you are still my Advocate. And I, Arvan Vasselis, stand with the Advocacy and I will not turn away. I will not.'

Herine put a hand on his cheek. His beard was thick on his jaw, it needed trimming.

'Dear Arvan. Never flinching. Always facing. Why are you not sitting on the throne?'

'Because I have no line of succession. And because I am sworn to the Del Aglios dynasty. I have no desire to rule the Conquord.'

'But you have ability. Your people in Caraduk love you. The Conquord would love you too.'

'It will never happen. Roberto will follow you and if I am still alive, I will swear my oath to him too.'

Herine smiled. 'I wish my son were here.'

Vasselis stood up, biting his tongue from agreeing with her. He walked away a few paces. Tuline followed him.

'God-embrace-me, but I am glad she has you,' said Vasselis. 'You have the Del Aglios strength within you and I didn't always feel that way.'

Tuline was beautiful in her mother's image. Pearl-white toga, hair gathered and pinned on her head, decorated with threads of gold and revealing her delicate swan neck. Her eyes sparkled with passion. Even now at the edge of the precipice, she chose to maintain the aura of authority and that was no easy act. Inside, she must be crushed.

'You must help her,' said Tuline 'I don't like the way she speaks sometimes. Just now even. It's like someone else is inhabiting her body.'

Vasselis glanced at Herine. She was gazing out over the edge of the balcony, her chin just above the ledge. She wouldn't be able to see much. Probably just as well.

'What would you have me do?' he asked and gestured out beyond the walls. 'Look at this. This is where power lies if they choose to use it.'

Tuline looked. Two legions of the Armour of God were surrounding the palace. They could see infantry and cavalry on the apron. Artillery stood further down the processional road. Archers were gathered behind the front lines. It was in every way, allowing for the constrictions of space, a classic deployment. Horst Vennegoor knew his battles well. He had fought in many and lost none with the Conquord legions.

'They should be out there defending the Conquord from its enemies,' said Tuline.

Vasselis sighed. Something else he'd been doing a great deal of lately. 'Tuline, that is precisely what they believe they are doing.'

The
Ocetarus
made good headway with a strong wind at their stern. On the deck, Kashilli was taking the Ocenii squad through their paces with a curious array of weapons. Gone were gladius and short sword or long knife. Gone were bucklers and round shields. In their place, sledgehammers, blacksmith's hammers, wood axes and two executioner's blades from the Ocetarus palace museum.

When the dead had eventually fallen, Iliev had ordered them all burned in the gardens. The huge pyre had thrown a choking black cloud of ash into the air, smudging the sky and visible for hundreds of miles in every direction. It gave credence to the quarantine flags flying from every post and he hoped it sent a signal to enemies that they were far from finished. One day, he would be back to declare the Isle clear. One day, when all the dead were gracing the bottom of the ocean.

Iliev had joined with three other triremes patrolling the northern tip of the Isle, and the Lances of Ocetarus. Flags and birds brought news of Tsardon sails along hundreds of miles of Gesternan coastline. Refugees were sailing in large numbers from Byscar still and each boat had to be checked and cleared for passage to the east coast of Estorea or further south to Caraduk.

The net was tight but it was stretched. Iliev was aware that a single large fleet might pierce the defence but he was also confident that his signalling would give him enough warning. Standing orders and positions around key harbours on the western edge of the Tirronean Sea were well known. He was in the hands of his Trierarchs and captains now.

The
Ocetanas
led the quartet of boats, all of which had the spiked corsairs of the Ocenii squadron slung at their sterns, in pursuit of three trireme sails. They were closing fast. The skippers of the target vessels were making poor use of the wind and he could see the dip and raise of oars fighting the sail. They looked like ships under the control of the incompetent. And as far as Iliev was concerned, that made them enemies. Dead enemies.

They were a mile ahead. Decision time. The flagship had the pipe and bellows fitted to her stern to disgorge naphtha onto enemy vessels. But their supply was limited. Iliev didn't want to waste it on scattered enemies with the spectre of a fleet of the dead still looming large in his mind. On the other hand, an experiment to investigate the reaction of the dead to fire on board might prove invaluable.

Iliev looked down the deck. Kashilli roared with laughter. He had a sledgehammer in his hands and battered it into the barricade they'd built from old timbers and two empty barrels. The hammer went straight through. Kashilli grunted his satisfaction.

'Bring me some dead, skipper,' he called, seeing Iliev watching.

Decision made. Iliev turned to the flagship's captain.

'Signal the patrol. Ocenii to the water. Triremes to stand off. And let's keep our bellows ready, eh? Just in case.'

'Yes, Admiral.'

'Kashilli! Squad seven to the stern. Gentle swell, marines to the tiller. Spike up.'

'Seven!' bellowed Kashilli, his voice carrying to the birds flying high overhead. 'You heard the skipper. Move.'

Ocenii squad seven hefted weapons and ran to the stern. Sailors on the corsair's fastenings released ropes and braced against tackle gearing.

'Straight on,' said Iliev. 'Starting positions, don't dip the spike.'

Iliev watched them swarm down the ladder and onto the corsair that rocked gently between its ropes. Iliev turned to the sailors taking the strain on deck.

'Easy descent on my order.'

'Yes, Admiral.'

Iliev nodded at the captain and went last down the ladder, taking