Fall of Light (93 page)

‘Take that boy’s body – drag it in here. Scuff up that snow, and see the lantern brought inside – no, no need to light it again. Across the courtyard is the main house. You, Pryll, stay here with Corporal Paralandas. When the first squads arrive, send them to the east building – that’s the barracks – in case they manage to break out. Sergeant Telra, take your three to the barracks. Bar the doors and be liberal with the oil, especially round the windows. Set it all alight as soon as you’re ready. Rathadas, you and Billat are with me – to the main house. All right, then, let’s go about our work – I’m freezing my tits off out here.’

No alarm was raised as Esk and her soldiers set out across the compound. Somewhere on the track west of the monastery, her commander would be leading the remaining troops. Should the warrior monks sequestered in the barracks awaken in time to force their way past the barricaded doors, Esk’s few squads would have a fight on their hands, but so long as they could hold the main gate until Bahann’s advance squads arrived, all would be well.

The best outcome, of course, would be Hallyd Bahann arriving to the chorus of screams from the burning barracks.

In the meantime, she had Higher Grace Sheccanto to hunt down. The woman was rumoured to be ill, bedridden. With Rathadas and Billat behind her, Esk opened the main building’s door and edged inside. Heat gusted round her, scented with the evening meal. Wicks had been turned down in the few lanterns left lit, and the three soldiers padded quietly into the main hall.

Near the hearth was a pair of high-backed, padded chairs, and a figure was seated in one of them, his head tilted to one side, his eyes closed. Muffled beneath furs that someone had settled over him, only his head and his right hand were visible, the wrinkled skin grey-hued and slack in sleep.

Esk approached him, drawing her sword.

She drove the blade deep into the man’s neck, stepping up in the same instant to close her hand over his mouth. She watched his eyes open as the blade slid its way through his neck, and as the point erupted from the other side it made a sluice for a welter of blood. As he died, the man met the lieutenant’s gaze, but without comprehension. His last breath eased out from his nostrils, painting Esk’s left hand in red. Now, the eyes looked at nothing.

Pulling her sword free, she stepped back, looked round, and then whispered, ‘A high room, somewhere the heat rises. Central, away from any outer walls. Billat, take the lead on the stairs.’ But as she moved away, Rathadas reached out to stay her. He had drawn close to examine the dead man in the chair, and now with his other hand he held up the arm that had been hidden beneath the furs.

‘Lieutenant!’ he hissed.

Even as he spoke, she saw the signet ring, and then the faded swirl of tattoos spiralling up the thin, pallid wrist.

‘You just murdered Skelenal!’

Esk scowled. ‘What’s he doing here? Well, saves us a march down to Yedan monastery, doesn’t it?’

‘Royal blood—’

‘Be quiet, damn you. Do you actually think Hallyd Bahann was going to let them live?’

Rathadas stepped back.

Esk eyed both men, gauging the shock on their faces. ‘What the fuck did you expect to happen, you fools? This is a civil war. How crowded do you want the steps to the throne? We’re here, clearing the path. Skelenal’s dead. Now it’s time to see his wife join him.’

By her measure, the barracks should have been fired by now, but thus far the storm’s wild gale was sweeping away all other sounds from outside. Despite this, someone in the main building would see the lurid glow of the flames before too long.

‘We have to move. Billat, you’re point on the stairs. Rathadas, cover my back. Let’s get going.’

They were reluctant, as if dragging free of treacle, but Esk bit back on her frustration, her growing fury. Soldiers followed orders. This was unquestioned, beyond challenging. The Legion obeyed, making for a simpler, sweeter world. There was no need to fret about the royal blood staining her left hand, or its grislier counterpart still dripping from her sword. Skelenal was no king. He had elected to become a priest, to join an order worshipping a now dead god. In her mind, he’d simply made a bad cast of the bones, making his eventual murder if not inevitable, then likely.

Billat reached the top of the stairs, then suddenly withdrew, back down a step. A hand gesture froze both Esk and Rathadas. He edged down another step and leaned close to whisper in Esk’s ear.

‘Two guards, at hall’s end. Either side of a large door.’

Some careless indulgence, she concluded, had left Skelenal alone in the main chamber, an old man asleep in a chair by the hearth. But here, before what had to be Sheccanto’s private chamber, diligence remained. Frowning, Esk brought her sword down, tugging her wolfskin cloak over to hide the weapon, and then, indicating with a nod that her soldiers remain where they were, she climbed past them both and stepped out into the corridor.

At the far door, both warrior monks rose from the wooden chairs upon which they had been sitting.

Smiling, Esk approached. ‘I was told that the Higher Grace would receive me, no matter how late my arrival. Friends, I have important word from Lord Urusander.’

The monk to the right of the door took two steps forward. There was a short-handled throwing axe tucked into his belt, but in his left hand he held a heavy knife with an angled blade. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Come ahead. She will be pleased to see you.’

With her gaze fixed on the monk who was speaking, Esk barely registered the blur of motion from the other man. With ten paces between her and the nearer monk, Esk felt a heavy blow to her left shoulder, of such force as to half spin her round. Looking down, she saw an axe, its blade buried deep in her shoulder.

Shocked, suddenly confused, she felt her back thud against a wall.

The nearer monk was rushing towards her now.

Ah, shit. Fooled no one.

Motion from the stairs revealed both Rathadas and Billat charging forward, their swords drawn.

The monk reached her first. She had raised her sword, thrusting its point towards the man, waiting for his heavy knife to move as he sought to sweep aside her blade – but he would miss, as she disengaged his attempted beat. Or so it should have been.

Instead, the monk threw the knife underhand with barely three paces between them.

Another heavy blow punched under her right arm, and she saw her sword leap from her grip, clattering against the wall before falling to the floor. The thrown knife had slipped between ribs, the massive, crooked blade sliding into her right lung. Sagging, slumping down the wall, Esk gagged as her mouth filled with blood.

Bodyguards. Of course they’re good. It started out too easily, down at the gatehouse.

As the monk swept past her to engage with Rathadas and Billat, he ran the thin blade of a parrying knife across her throat.

A sting, sudden warmth, and then nothing.

Seeing the monk casually slice open the lieutenant’s throat, Rathadas cursed and charged to close with the bastard.

His sword had the advantage of reach, as the monk facing him was readying a short-handled, single-bladed axe in his right hand, and a thin parrying knife in his left. His expression, as he watched Rathadas approach, was calm.

‘She came to parley!’ Billat shouted from behind Rathadas.

‘She came to die,’ the monk replied.

Rathadas bellowed as he attacked, slashing crossways to either cut or force away the monk’s two out-thrust hands. Instead, he cut through nothing but air. Recovering, he brought the blade back up, point angled to take the monk from low should the man seek to close – but something obstructed it, swept it out to the side. The parrying knife tapped his temple, making a sound like a nail driven through the side of a clay pot.

As the sound echoed, Rathadas stepped back, shaking his head. He was having trouble seeing. He then realized that he did not know where he was, or what the strange man now stepping past him had done to him. He stood, uncomprehending, as a second stranger reached him. Frowning, Rathadas watched the man swing a heavy knife casually towards him. Vaguely alarmed, he tried raising an arm to block the knife – which looked sharp and might hurt him – but his arm would not answer, or perhaps it was simply too slow. The knife edge sawed through his neck, cutting muscle, gristle and bone.

The world tilted crazily as Rathadas watched the floor rising to meet him.

Billat screamed when he saw Rathadas’s head roll forward, toppling from the man’s still upright body. A moment later, the lead monk reached the soldier. Cursing that they’d not been permitted to carry their shields, Billat backed away, his sword thrust out, its point dancing to keep his distance from the advancing monk. A shield would have made all the difference. He’d not have needed to worry about that second weapon, and behind a shield he could have charged the man, blocking the axe even if it was thrown at him, and then his sword would have done its work quickly.

He nodded to himself, only then realizing that he was sitting down, almost opposite the staircase. Sweat stung his eyes, making it difficult to understand what his hands were doing, there in his lap, repeatedly moving in a way something like shovelling, as they sought to push his intestines back into his body. It wasn’t working.

A shield. And a sword. Things would have turned out differently if he’d had those. He wouldn’t be sitting here on the floor.

Blinking back on a world that now stung, he saw his hands give up, and the guts roll out. He recalled trying to dig a latrine once, in sandy clay, and how the side walls kept caving in, until that damned pit was fifteen fucking paces across, and his comrades – all laughing – had had to throw him a rope so he could climb up the sloping sides. They’d known about the sand, of course. It was a rite of passage, being made into a fool, but how it had burned, how it had stung.

Humiliation. What a last thing to remember.

  *   *   *

The heat from the fire engulfing the barracks forced Sergeant Telra and her soldiers back towards the entrance to the main building, where she decided they would await the reappearance of the lieutenant, once the ugly work inside was done with.

The shrieks from inside the barracks were gone now. No one had made it outside, meaning that she and her comrades had yet to bless their swords this night. Often, war forgot about being all about fighting, and instead became a sordid exercise in destruction, in flames and burned bodies stepped over, as if the aftermath had a way of creeping unseen over the present. In some ways, of course, that was a relief, but one could be left with the sense of having missed out on everything.

The heat and the flames, the billowing black smoke rising only to tumble over beneath the ceiling of white clouds, all reminded her of the last time she’d set fire to a building. That one had been an estate, empty but for a horrid old woman. Something of a debacle, to be honest. She’d exceeded her orders. Well, truth was, she’d been drunk.

Motion from the gatehouse drew her attention and she turned to see the first of Bahann’s advance squads arriving. Lieutenant Uskan was in the lead, sword in one hand and shield drawn round and set. Telra bit back a sneer. The man’s excessive caution hinted at cowardice, as far as she was concerned. Stepping forward, she said, ‘Sir. Lieutenant Esk is still in the main building. We got the company unawares – not a single man made it out of the barracks.’

‘How long?’ he demanded.

She frowned at his flushed face beneath the helm’s rim. ‘Sir?’

‘How long has she been in there, sergeant?’

‘Well, now that you mention it, some time’s passed.’

‘Stay here,’ he ordered, gesturing his squads to follow him. He brushed past Telra and entered the main building, his soldiers trooping after him.

Stepping back to join her three comrades, Telra watched for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Well, leave ’em to it, I say. We did our bit.’

None of her soldiers replied.

She looked across at them. ‘Got a problem with any of this?’

The three men shook their heads.

It was then that the first screams erupted from the main house.

  *   *   *

Dawn was paling the sky when Captain Hallyd Bahann at last stepped into the compound of Yannis monastery. He halted upon seeing Sergeant Telra directing her soldiers on the laying out of bodies. Legion bodies.

Scowling, he marched up to Telra. ‘Sergeant, where’s Lieutenant Esk?’

‘Dead, sir. Uskan’s inside. He’s badly wounded. He went in there with eighteen soldiers, sir, came out with three still standing. It was Sheccanto’s bodyguards, sir.’

‘Abyss take me, how many did she have?’

‘Two, sir.’

Hallyd Bahann found himself unable to muster a reply to that. He swung round to scan the corpses that had been lined up in three rows on the ground. The men and women looked chopped to pieces. Most bore multiple wounds. Smoke drifted over them like ethereal veils. The heat from the burned-down barracks had melted all the snow in the compound, leaving the bodies in puddles of sooty water now stained red.

He turned to Telra. ‘And you didn’t go in to help them?’

‘Sir? Lieutenant Esk ordered us to guard the gatehouse. That was the last order she gave us.’

‘Very well,’ Bahann said after a moment.

‘Oh, and sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘We got them both, sir. Sheccanto and Skelenal.’

‘Skelenal? Well, then some good’s come of this mess after all.’ He turned and strode into the main building.

Lieutenant Uskan was seated in a plush chair near the hearth in the main hall. The chair opposite him held a corpse, which Uskan seemed to be studying intently, as if they’d been sharing a conversation just now interrupted. From the waist down the lieutenant was soaked in blood.

Hallyd Bahann cursed under his breath. ‘Uskan,’ he said.

The veteran glanced over with glassy eyes. ‘Sir. Building secured.’

‘How much of that blood on you is yours?’

‘All of it, sir. I won’t see the sun’s rise.’

‘Tell me those bodyguards are dead.’