Descent of Angels (19 page)

‘Absolutely. You have my word that I will never repeat this conversation to anyone.’

‘Excellent,’ said Lord Cypher. ‘I am glad to see you understand the value of discretion.’

He gazed around for long seconds, his failing eyes taking in the scene of knights enjoying wine and conversation with each other. Then, without warning, the Lord Cypher turned away to leave the gathering.

Unaccountably, Zahariel was put in mind of an old bear shuffling into the forest to die.

‘The Order is in good hands,’ said Lord Cypher, offering the words as a parting shot over his shoulder as he moved away. ‘Between men like Jonson, Luther, Master Ramiel, and even youngsters like you, I am confident it will continue to thrive in the decades ahead. I doubt I will live to see it, but I am content all the same. It is time for one generation to give way to the next, as is the way of things. I have no fear for the future.’

I
T WAS THE
last time Zahariel would ever speak to the man who had been Lord Cypher at the time he joined the Order. For that matter, it was the last time he would ever see him.

In a few days’ time, a quest would be declared against another beast in the Northwilds in the vicinity of a settlement named Bradin. Having retired from his duties, the ex-Lord Cypher would petition the Order’s hierarchy to be allowed to take on the quest. They would accede to his request and the old man would ride quietly from Aldurukh early one morning while most of the fortress was still sleeping.

He would never be seen again.

Some would claim the beast he was hunting had killed him: others would say he had more likely been brought down by a pack of raptors before reaching the Northwilds.

The truth would never be known, but in the wake of his disappearance a place of honour would be set aside for him in the catacombs beneath Aldurukh. It was a small space, a rocky shelf no more than a third of a metre wide and half a metre tall, large enough to hold an urn full of ashes or some of the old man’s bones if his body were ever found.

His name would also be carved into the rock by the Order’s stonemasons.

This was the shape of days to come. Zahariel could not know what would happen in the future, any more than he could know he would never see the Lord Cypher, or rather, this particular Lord Cypher again.

Another individual would wear that title in the Order, and his true character would always be a mystery.

It was all a matter of the future.

For the moment, as the knights of the Order drank and celebrated together, the only thing left to complete Zahariel’s ascension to knighthood was to have his status confirmed by the Lion.

‘I
T HAS BEEN
a momentous night for both of us,’ said Lion El’Jonson. ‘You have become a knight, and I have learned I am about to become its new Grand Master.’

‘Our Grand Master?’ asked Zahariel. Mindful of the promise he had made to Lord Cypher earlier, and shocked that Jonson would even consider mentioning such a thing to him when the news was not yet common currency, Zahariel was lost for words. ‘I… ah… congratulations.’

‘Don’t act so surprised, Zahariel,’ said Jonson.

His tone was neither chiding nor unkind as he steered Zahariel away from the gathered knights towards a secluded corner of the great hall. Firelight and shadows played across the great warrior’s face, and Zahariel realised with a start that he doubted whether he had ever seen the Lion in daylight or without the refuge of shadows close by.

The revelries were dying down as the wine did its work, and as the Lion had approached him, Zahariel knew his part in the festivities was almost concluded.

‘Let’s not pretend you don’t know it already,’ said the Lion. ‘I couldn’t help but catch some of your conversation with Lord Cypher earlier. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but my senses are sharp, especially my hearing, almost preternaturally so. I heard Lord Cypher’s slip of the tongue. I know that you know I am to be made Grand Master.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Zahariel, bowing his head. ‘My finding out about it was entirely accidental. I assure you, I won’t repeat it to any—’

‘It’s all right, Zahariel,’ said Jonson, holding a hand up to silence him. ‘I trust your discretion and I realise you were in no way at fault. Besides which, it is already the worst-kept secret on Caliban. People tend to forget how good my hearing is. I have heard my impending promotion discussed by at least three dozen different people in the last few days, all when they think I am out of earshot.’

‘Then may I offer you my congratulations, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

‘You may,’ smiled the Lion, ‘and they are gratefully accepted, though in practical terms my new role will make little difference to my life.’

‘You are Grand Master of the Order,’ said Zahariel. ‘That must feel… important.’

‘Oh I’ll grant you I’m proud to lead you all, but such was my role beforehand, though I did not have the title for it. How about you? Do you feel any different now that you are a knight?’

‘Of course.’

‘How so?’

For a moment, Zahariel was flustered, not quite knowing how he felt. ‘Honoured, proud of my achievements, accepted.’

‘And all of these are good things,’ nodded the Lion, ‘but you are just the same, Zahariel. You are still the same person you were before you killed the lion. You have crossed a line, but it does not change who you are. Don’t forget that. A man may be dressed up in all manner of fancy titles, but he must not let it change him or else ego, pride and ambition will be his undoing. No matter what grand title is bestowed upon you, to thine own self be true, Zahariel. Do you understand?’

‘I think so, my lord,’ said Zahariel.

‘I hope that you do,’ said the Lion. ‘It is an easy thing to forget, for all of us.’

The Lion then leaned conspiratorially close and said, ‘Did you know we two now share a brotherhood shared by no others on Caliban?’

‘We do?’ said Zahariel, surprised and flattered. ‘What brotherhood?’

‘We are the only warriors ever to kill a Calibanite lion. All others who tried are dead. One day you must tell me how you killed it.’

Zahariel felt a justifiable swell of pride and fraternity as the import of his killing the beast sank in. The tale of how Lord Jonson had slain a Calibanite lion was well known and was commemorated upon one of the windows of the Circle Chamber, but until now, it had not occurred to him that he had survived an encounter with so unique a beast.

‘I am honoured to share that brotherhood, my lord,’ said Zahariel, bowing his head.

‘It is one that will only ever comprise of you and I, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There are no others of their kind on Caliban. The great beasts are almost extinct and there will be no others like them on our world ever again. Part of me thinks I should be sad about that, after all, extinction is such a final solution don’t you think?’

‘They are beasts that exist only to kill, why should we not exterminate them? They would do the same to us were it not for the knightly orders.’

‘True, but do they do it because they are evil, or because it is the way they were made?’

Zahariel thought back to the beasts he had fought and said, ‘I do not know if they were evil as such, but each time I have faced one, I have seen something in its eyes, some, I don’t know… desire to kill that is more than simply animal hunger. Something in the beasts is… wrong.’

‘Then you are perceptive, Zahariel,’ said the Lion. ‘There
is
something wrong with the beasts. I don’t know what it is, but they are not just some other race of beasts like horses, foxes or humans, they are aberrations, twisted mistakes wrought from some early form that has not yet had the good grace to die out on its own. Can you imagine what it must be like to be so singular a creature? To go through life knowing, even on some animal, instinctual level that you are alone and that there will never be more of you. Think how maddening that must be. The beasts were not just driven by hunger, they were insane, driven to madness by their very uniqueness. Trust me, Zahariel, we are doing them a favour by destroying them all.’

Zahariel nodded and sipped his wine, too caught up with the Lion’s words to dare to interrupt him. A strange melancholy had crept into his leader’s words, as though he was recalling a distant memory that flitted just beyond the reach of recall.

Then, suddenly, it was gone, as though the Lion realised he had spoken unguardedly.

‘Of course, there will be some who are upset that you killed the last of the lions,’ said Jonson. ‘Luther, for one.’

‘Sar Luther? How so?’

Lord Jonson laughed. ‘He always wanted to kill a lion. Now he’ll never get the chance.’

A
S PARTIES WENT
, it had been a fine one.

Zahariel had enjoyed the company of the other knights. He had enjoyed the feeling that he could look at these men as his peers, and with it came a feeling of inclusion, of acceptance. Following his talk with Lion El’Jonson, Zahariel had returned to his fellow knights, where the talk had turned to the war against the Knights of Lupus.

All agreed that the war was in its final stages and that the final destruction of the rebellious order would be complete in the very near future.

He had enjoyed good food and wine, and he had enjoyed the expression in Master Ramiel’s eyes, the one that said he had made his teacher proud. Most of all, he had enjoyed the moment, for he knew that such triumphs were rare in a man’s life.

They must be handled with care, and then put away as memories for the future.

TEN

‘W
AR IS A
terrible beauty,’ the knightly poet philosopher Aureas wrote in the pages of his
Meditations.
‘It is breathtaking and horrifying in equal measure. Once a man has seen its face, the memory of it never leaves him. War gouges a mark into the soul.’

Zahariel had heard those words often in the course of his training.

They were among the favourites of his former mentor, Master Ramiel. The old man had liked to quote them regularly, reciting the same few pithy sentences on a daily basis as he attempted to turn ranks of supplicants from fresh-faced boys into knights.

They had been as much part of his teachings as firing practice and extra sword drills.

Among those who had come to knighthood under Ramiel’s tutelage, it was said they went armed with an appreciation of fine words alongside the Order’s more usual weapons of sword and pistol.

Still, as often as he had heard the words, Zahariel never truly understood them, not until the final days of the war against the Knights of Lupus.

His first impression as he emerged from the forest, riding his destrier, on the night of the final assault was that the sky was alive with fire. Earlier in the day, he had supervised the gangs of woodsmen cutting timbers for siege engines in the forests on the lower slopes of the mountain.

His duties complete, he returned to camp at nightfall expecting things to be quiet.

Instead, he found his fellow knights of the Order about to attack the enemy fortress.

Ahead, in the distance, the fortress monastery of the Knights of Lupus sat on a brooding crag at the summit of the mountain, a towering line of grey walls and warriors. Surrounded on all sides by the concentric circles of the Order’s siege lines, the fortress was a masterpiece of military architecture, but Zahariel’s eyes were drawn to the extraordinary spectacle unfolding in the air above the two armies as they fired their artillery at each other across no-man’s-land.

The air was thick with flames of a dozen shapes, colours and patterns. Zahariel saw the short-lived green and orange flare trails left by tracer rounds, the streaming red haloes of burning incendiaries in flight and the smoky yellow fireballs of cannon bursts.

A bright tapestry of fire illuminated the sky, and Zahariel had never before seen its like.

He found it equally appalling and spectacular at the same time.

‘A terrible beauty,’ he whispered, the words of Aureas returning to him as he stared in wonderment at the startling sky. The colours were so exquisite it was easy to forget the fact that they portended danger. The same projectiles that burned through the heavens with such beauty would bring agony and death to some unfortunate soul when they reached their target.

War, it seemed, was full of contradictions.

Later, he would learn that there was nothing unusual in the sights he saw in the sky that night, but this was his first siege and he knew no better. Pitched battles were so rare on Caliban that his training had largely concentrated on close combat rather than questions of siege craft.

Since the coming of the Lion, the knights of Caliban rarely made war against each other, at least not in any major or systematic way. Normally, any conflict undertaken to resolve some issue of affront or insult would take one of the traditional forms of ritual combat.

A conflict of the kind he could see before him, where two knightly orders made ready to bring the best part of their entire strength to bear in a single battle, happened hardly once in a generation.

‘You there!’ called a voice from behind.

Zahariel turned to see one of the Order’s siege masters marching furiously towards him, his expression thunderous beneath his hood. ‘The assault is about to begin. Why aren’t you in position? Give me your name, sar!’

‘My apologies, master,’ said Zahariel, bowing from the saddle. ‘I am Sar Zahariel. I have just returned from the lower slopes. I was detailed to—’

‘Zahariel?’ the master cut him off. ‘The killer of the Lion of Endriago?’

‘Yes, master.’

‘So, it is not cowardice that kept you back. I see that now. Whose sword-line are you attached to?’

‘I am with Sar Hadariel’s men, master, stationed on the western approaches.’

‘They have been moved,’ said the master. He pointed impatiently to the siege lines to Zahariel’s right. ‘They are positioned for the assault on the south wall. You’ll find them over there somewhere. Leave your destrier with the ostlers on the way, and hurry up, boy. The war won’t wait on you.’

‘I understand,’ Zahariel said, dismounting. ‘Thank you, master.’