Demon King (2 page)

It mattered little whether their imperially appointed governor was a tyrant or a weakling, whether he ruled by reason, law, the sword or caprice, or if he was an outsider or a native Kallian. The moment he suggested Kallio owed obedience to the emperor in Nicias … the killing began once more.

The cities had to be garrisoned by Numantian troops, the roads patrolled by cavalry, and a dispatch rider had to be escorted unless he wished to be found in a ditch with a second, red smile across his throat. Even civilian travelers or merchants who had no part in this feud of governments would be killed or held for ransom if they chanced the Kallian highways.

Four times ago, the emperor had named his brother, Reufern, as prince regent for Kallio, in the hopes that the province would have some respect for the name of Tenedos and settle down.

It hadn’t worked, and now I was going to Kallio as military governor, with orders from the emperor to ensure his brother did not fail like the others and make the name of Tenedos laughable.

Tenedos’s brother was older than Laish Tenedos and looked quite unlike him. He was tall where the emperor was stocky, slender where the seer was always struggling with a small potbelly, and handsome in a long-faced sort of way. The emperor’s face had been round, boyishly good-looking when I first met him, but the strain of his office was already aging him, and he now appeared to carry more than the five years he had on me.

But the biggest difference was the eyes. The emperor’s eyes caught and held you, blazing power and intensity. Reufern’s eyes were pale, washed out, and shifted uneasily when you met them directly.

Marán and I had met Reufern on three or four court occasions, and had no more than polite conversations with him. If he had not carried the Tenedos name, I’m sure I would have forgotten him and whatever we talked about by the next morning.

This was the “leader” whose reputation I was to save.

But I was used to being the emperor’s fireman, and never knowing much rest.

Eleven years ago, I had been a twenty-year-old legate in disgrace on the far frontier.

Three years later, I was first tribune, the highest-ranking officer in the army, and I stood in the greatest church in Nicias, Numantia’s capital, and named Laish Tenedos as emperor of all Numantia, putting a strong, wise man on the throne and ending the incompetent vagaries of the Rule of Ten.

So why hadn’t we found peace? Why, instead of being a cavalry commander in some dull garrison somewhere, or guarding my country’s frontiers against the hill tribesmen, had I spent eight years dashing about the kingdom, ending food riots here, chasing bandits there, quelling peasant uprisings in a third and fourth place, ending a regimental revolt … I would have a hard time listing all of the places I’d ridden into, proclaiming I was “on the service of the emperor,” and ordering instant obedience or face the cold steel of the soldiers behind me.

I’d seen the scorched land and ravaged civilians the marching songs don’t dwell on, and had my own scars. Without realizing it, I touched the spot in my ribs where the sorcerously driven arrow had gone in, still tender after two years. That was but the visible sign of an utter nightmare, when I’d been sent, with three regiments, to subdue what was called a minor uprising in our farthest western state of Khoh, led by some village hag with a few spells. But she’d turned out to be a full-fledged sorceress, able to hold men’s souls in their bodies after they’d been deathly wounded, and make them fight on.

Her ghastly minions had shattered my two regiments. I’d been carried from the field by one of my Red Lancers, treated by a village witch, and then tossed feverishly in a recovery tent for weeks, hearing the close creaking of the Wheel.

But I’d recovered, gone back with a dozen regiments, and she and her monsters had all died.

Still, there was a scar not just on my body, but on my soul, from that, and from other close-fought battles from one end of my country to the other.

Numantia should have been at peace, but was not. I wondered, then shrugged. Such thinking was beyond me.

Would that I had forced the thought, forced myself to ponder. Perhaps I could have changed things.

Perhaps I could have prevented the doom that was coming fast upon me, and all of Numantia.

It was a golden summer evening when we entered Polycittara. The city is quite old, and justly famed for being picturesque. Many centuries ago it was some fierce war lord’s solitary castle, built of heavy stone atop a great mountain to stand against now-forgotten enemies. The castle was built larger and larger and then, with peaceful times, became a town and then a city, and sprawled down to the river and plain.

We’d stopped for a few minutes behind the last hilltop to brush off the worst of the travel dust to make a proper entrance.

We needn’t have bothered. The gates swung open as we approached — Domina Bikaner had sent riders ahead. But, ominously, there was no cheering crowd. In fact, there was no crowd whatsoever. There
was
a small army band, tootling away as hard as they could. They were Numantian, as were the guards and a handful of civil servants, and they shouted greetings that echoed against the stone walls.

Nevertheless, we made our grand entrance — and then the splendor came to a rather embarrassing end as a regiment of cavalry, seven hundred horsemen, the two hundred men of the Red Lancers, plus some fifty carriages and wagons, my staff plus our household servants, tried to fit down one street.

I heard Karjan’s voice from atop the coach, where he rode: “Goin’ out of a city’s like birdshit comin’ out of a bird. Now we’re attemptin’ to put th’ shit back in.”

Marán and I laughed, and then everything ground to a complete halt. Officers bellowed orders, warrants screamed threats, and enlisted men muttered in their beards. I pulled on my plumed helm as I opened the coach door. The postilion whose keenness had saved us earlier dismounted, no doubt eager to further improve his reward, and hurried toward me.

I heard a scream of “Death to the emperor!” from above, and a huge chunk of rock, nearly the size of my chest, pinwheeled down from the roof of a house. I didn’t have time to duck, but the boulder missed by inches — and crushed the postilion. The boy’s head and chest were smashed, and he returned to the Wheel without ever knowing what happened.

“Get him!” I shouted, pointing up. Four Red Lancers jumped from their saddles and clattered up the house’s steps, but Karjan had already leapt down and was at the door. He put his back against the railing and smashed a boot heel against the door, and it fell open. Saber snaking out of its sheath, he ran inside, the others behind him.

Captain Lasta was beside me. “I saw him, sir, after you shouted. He ran across the roof and jumped to the next building. Almost fell but recovered, damn his eyes. Young, black hair cut short. He was wearing light blue pants, tight, kind of dirty, and a white shirt. I’ll know him when next we meet.”

I nodded, knelt over the postilion’s body, and whispered a silent prayer for Saionji to grant him the reward in his next life I had been unable to grant in this.

There was a scuffle and Karjan and the Red Lancers came out of the house, pushing an old man and two middle-aged women.

“This was all we found,” Karjan said. “We missed th’ shitheel. Stairs t’ th’ roof were blocked an’ th’ door was nailed shut. Took us forever t’ break through.”

“We’ll take them, soldier,” someone shouted. Ten men, oddly wearing the uniform of Nician wardens, ran up. Then I remembered the warders of Polycittara had refused their duties, and so the imperial government had to import patrols from the capital.

The wardens wore helmets and breastplates and carried pikes, daggers, and heavy truncheons, more like riot soldiers than upholders of the law. The man who’d shouted wore the emblem of a sergeant and waved a sword about.

“Glad to be rid of ‘em,” one of the Red Lancers said.

“We saw what happened, sir,” the sergeant said to me. “We’ll enforce th’ law without wastin’ any of your time. Over against that wall’s a good a place as any.”

Three wardens muscled the trio against the bricks. The others took bottles of a colorless fluid from belt pouches and went into the house.

The old man moaned and one of the women screamed for mercy.

“You’ll go first, bitch,” the sergeant said. “By th’ authority vested in me,” he muttered perfunctorily, and drew back his sword.

“Sergeant!” My barracks-square bellow froze him. “What in Isa’s bloody name are you doing?”

“Like I said, sir. Enforcin’ th’ law. Th’ prince regent’s orders’re quite clear. Anyone attackin’ a Numantian or a representative of the imperial government’s guilty of crimes against th’ state, and there’s only one penalty.”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” I said. “But those three had nothing to do with what happened. The man that tried to kill me came and went over the rooftops.”

“Doesn’t matter, sir. My orders are clear. Aidin’ or abettin’ an attack’s equally guilty, and their lives and property are forfeit. Soon as we execute these bastards we burn the house. I’ve already sent a man for the fire brigade, make sure the blaze don’t spread, although it’d matter none to me if the whole gods-damned city burnt. Those are orders direct from the prince regent.”

I hesitated. Orders
were
orders, and it was certainly not the brightest way to begin a new posting by breaking one of your leader’s commands. But something begun wrong seldom rights itself. And what kind of peace was Reufern trying to keep? That of the grave? Marán was waiting to see what I’d do.

“Sergeant, I understand your orders. But I’m Tribune Damastes á Cimabue, Kallio’s new military governor, and your superior-to-be. I’m countermanding that order to you right now, and I’ll rescind it for the entire province before the morrow. You may release those three and return to your duties. Their home will go unburnt.”

He hesitated, then his jaw firmed. “Sorry, Tribune. But, like you said, orders’re orders. Stand aside, sir.”

Again he readied his sword, and the woman, whose face had begun to show hope, whimpered.

“Curti!”

“Sir!”

“If that warden moves one muscle, shoot him dead!” “Sir!”

“Captain Lasta, send a squad in after those policemen and bring them out. By force, if necessary.”

“Yes, sir!”

The warden looked at Curti. The archer’s bow was drawn to his ear, the four-cross warhead aimed steady at the policeman’s throat. There was a small grin on Curti’s face. They both wear uniforms and enforce the state’s wishes, but there’s no love wasted between policemen and the army. Perhaps being on different sides in too many drunken brawls is the reason, or perhaps most soldiers feel the police are little but poseurs at danger, and actually pass their days in cozy taprooms, inveigling the proprietors into letting them drink on the cuff.

The sergeant’s fingers opened, his sword clattered to the street, and he flushed scarlet. I walked forward, picked the blade up, and slipped it into the man’s sheath.

“Now, as I said, go about your duties.”

He began to salute, caught himself, spun on his heel, and pushed his way through the watching soldiery. His men trailed behind him, pointedly not looking at anyone.

I heard a bit of laughter, broken off as men realized there was still a body sprawled in the street, a boy not many weeks off a farm who’d been pointlessly murdered by a cowardly dog.

“We’ll bury him with the honors due a Red Lancer,” Captain Lasta said. He unstrapped his cloak from behind his saddle and spread it over the corpse.

I got back in the coach and closed the door.

“This is not good,” Marán said.

“No,” I agreed. “Now, let’s continue on to the castle and find out how much worse things can get.”

• • •

“Did the sergeant of police inform you that those were my direct,
personal
orders?” The prince regent’s voice quivered a bit, but he was trying to remain calm. There was no one but the two of us in the small private audience chamber off the main throne room.

“He did, my lord.”

“But you still countermanded them.”

“I did, sir. May I explain?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir, I’m to be your military governor. As such, I’ll be responsible for enforcing the law. I know the emperor wants Kallio to return to normal as quickly as possible.”

“As do we all,” Reufern Tenedos said.

“If the law in Kallio is entirely different than that of the rest of Numantia, except on certain very special occasions, how can normal times ever come? We might as well be an occupying army.”

“There are those who say we are that now,” the regent said. He heaved a sigh, then forced a chuckle. It rang falsely. “I suppose I should find it amusing.”

“What, my lord?”

“Well, here you are, Damastes the cavalryman. Damastes the Fair, I’ve heard you called. Hero of a thousand battles, the emperor’s finest soldier.”

“I doubt that, sir. I can name a thousand better, and point out a thousand more whose names I’ve never learned but whose feats I’m familiar with. But what makes you find that funny?”

“Today there were two attempts on your life, both nearly succeeding, and you manage to maintain a peaceful air. Perhaps it should be Damastes the Kind, and you should serve a gentler god than the war god Isa, as a priest.” There was no humor in his voice, but rather bitterness.

I said nothing, but remained at attention. He looked out a window into the huge courtyard where the Seventeenth Lancers and my Red Lancers were drawn up, awaiting his review. Then he looked back at me.

“Damastes, for so I wish to call you since I hope our service will be combined with the warmest of friendships, perhaps you’re right. I’m assuming, though, that what happened was unique and you don’t plan on questioning all my commands.”

“I don’t plan on questioning
any
of your commands, sir, not ever,” I said firmly. “You rule at the wishes of the Emperor Tenedos, and I have sworn a blood oath to him. My family’s pride and honor is that we have never broken our word or vow.”