Interregnum (33 page)

Kiva walked with his head down, a wax tablet and stylus in hand, periodically scribbling notes in the dim pre-dawn light as something leapt to mind and occasionally tutting in frustration and scribbling them out again. Clovis and Scauvus spent most of the time as they travelled ahead and out of sight, scouting the wilderness for any sight of Velutio’s mercenary groups, but had found nothing but occasional signs of units having passed. Now that they’d reached the built up area, the two of them had pulled back in and walked only a few yards ahead of the rest of the column. It would be at least another hour until sunrise and the streets were empty and silent. Kiva put away his writing materials as they passed the first building, far out.

Quintillian watched the captain looking this way and that as they walked in the eerie half-light. They passed a few recently constructed buildings on the very edge and then came to a long open stretch of road. Quintillian wondered for a moment why these houses had been built so far out with a long stretch of countryside between them and the main mass of the town, but then he spotted the shapes looming out of the dark; shells of collapsed buildings standing like land-locked shipwrecks, jutting wall fragments reaching toward the canopy of the night. Young trees grew within the ruins and many were covered with ivy. With a nervous swallow the lad realised why the captain had been so quiet recently and why his head turned constantly as they moved. He found himself wondering which one of the sad ruins had held Livilla and the boy named for his uncle while the flames had charred their bones. A shudder ran down his spine. Fire. It always came back to fire where the captain was concerned. Perhaps his family’s death was the Gods inflicting their punishment on Caerdin for harming one of their own. He shook his head, angry with himself. He was of the Imperial line too and he was damn sure he was no God, so Quintus the Golden had been naught but a man, which meant that none of this was the working of fate or Gods, and there could be no curse on the captain. In actual fact the man, and probably his uncle and Velutio for that matter, were only doing what they each believed in their own way to be right. A serious of unfortunate and sad accidents and necessities.

He almost walked into the back of the captain as he was deep in thought and hadn’t noticed the man stop in his tracks. This must be the one then. About a hundred yards from the road a crumbled wall rose up out of a dip. Fragments of a roof were visible in the corner, where some kind of creeper had grown and held the fractured masonry and tile together. He swallowed again, worried that he might shed a tear if he pondered too much on the sight before him. Yet, unbidden the visions came: pictures flashing in his mind of screaming women and children, unable to escape the inferno as the soldiers surrounding the villa threw more and more lit torches in. A haystack flaming next to the wall perhaps. The roof collapsing when a fireball exploded into the sky as the flames found the fuel for the under floor heating. Quintillian cursed his imagination. He could see it clearly. Perhaps that was for the best though, since there were no tears in the eyes of Kiva Caerdin as he looked on his old home. His eyes were grown hard and a sense of furious purpose shone in his face. Quintillian understood. The urge to shed a tear was gone in him now, replaced by a cold anger. He would exact revenge on Velutio for everything the man had done in his life.

He was still seething silently and personally when he became aware that Caerdin had started walking again, past the ruins of the broken villas and into the town itself. The walls of Serfium were white and clean, even in this curious early morning light as they passed between high-walled houses and narrow side streets in the town that was once the centre of the summer villa locale for the Empire’s elite. The sun was not far off now, and the light increased noticeably every few minutes. He shrugged off the feeling of loss and sadness from the burned villas they’d passed and concentrated on the town itself. Presumably the captain knew where he was going and what they were going to do, so he would just follow along.

They passed a corner with an ironmonger’s that was closed as the shopkeeper would be still abed, and reached a wide crossroads surrounded by old buildings whitewashed and with red tile roofs. Kiva stopped at the crossroads and frowned. He beckoned to Clovis and Scauvus and then pointed up the side streets. “No point in being foolhardy. We’re being looked for as a unit. Clovis? Take Julian that way. Scout through the edge of town to the other end and then work your way back to the temple in the square. Scauvus? You take Pirus the south route and do the same. Move fairly fast. You’ve only got around half an hour before the streets will start to fill up, so I want you in the temple in twenty minutes at the latest. Stay out of sight and out of trouble.” His face serious, he added “and don’t go anywhere near the harbour. The town’s still asleep, but there’ll be people working down there.”

The men saluted quietly and then started to jog off down the side streets until they disappeared around the curve of the road and out of sight. Quintillian glanced around himself. The Grey Company were diminishing rapidly as people were sent on errands missions and now only five men walked down the road into the centre of the town. Kiva and Bors walked on either side of him, with Alessus and Thalo behind, paying careful attention to every window, door or alley they passed. They really were running out of time. The light was coming up fast now and Quintillian could pick out colour in the windows of houses.

The street was long and straight and as the light continually improved, so did the range of vision. Quintillian suddenly spotted an edifice far ahead in the centre of the street: a fountain ten or fifteen feet high carved in the forms of the Sea King and his mermaids. He smiled. “Funny thing Captain, but I’ve come full circle now. I passed that statue months ago just after we landed on the mainland. We went out to the north so I haven’t seen any of this part of town.”

Kiva nodded. “I know Serfium quite well. The town hasn’t changed, but the feeling of the place is different.”

“How long is it since you were last here?”

The captain shrugged. “At least ten years. I try not to come back too often; it’s not very pleasant for me and I’m a reminder of worse times to the people I know here.”

The captain picked up a little pace as they neared the central square. It was saddening to see the town he knew so well, that he’d called home for years, so different now. Gone was the happy festive atmosphere that was the heart and soul of the community in the old days. Thirty years ago generals, senators, governors and other rich or important men had private villas around Serfium and with them came family and attendants, servants and slaves. The whole town had thrived and embraced its Imperial status. Now Kiva walked past a hollow, cylindrical marble stump used as a flower planter. In his mind’s eye it still bore a magnificent bronze statue of the Emperor Corus the Great, conqueror of the steppes, dressed in the garb of a soldier. Without looking, he could remember across the square the statue of Basianus the Fair in priestly garb. There was no point in looking for the statue of Quintus the Golden, once ten feet high in marble and bronze and towering on its pedestal in front of the Tribunal building. That had been one of the first casualties of the new regime. Velutio had torn down all the Imperial statuary across his demesne, shattering the marble and melting down the bronze to arm more troops.

He looked up to see Quintillian watching him with a look of concern. He smiled weakly. “Sorry. Getting soft in my old age.”

Quintillian laughed gently. “Somehow I can’t see that.”

The captain stopped and the other four clustered around him. “What now?” asked the young man.

“Now?” Kiva repeated. He pointed ahead. “Now we go in there and hope there hasn’t been a change of priesthood in the past ten years.”

The temple of the Divine Triad dominated the square more even than the public Tribunal. Law and order had never been a great issue in Serfium, quiet coastal town of wealthy homes. The Tribunal had only really been used for regular public meetings and occasional minor disputes. The temple on the other hand, had to be grand enough to support some of the most important families in the Empire. There were only three cities in the Empire with larger temple complexes than Serfium, and one of those didn’t count, being dedicated to strange eastern Gods in Germalla.

The temple itself was circular, but with a curved porch of high marble columns facing the square; a portico of impressive dimensions itself. A triangular pediment above showed the birth of the Gods in a marble frieze that had seen better days, much of the paintwork having faded or flaked off. Behind the colonnade stood two high embossed bronze doors. They would not be locked; the doors of the Triad temples were never locked.

Quintillian whistled through his teeth. “That’s a big temple. The Temples of the triad on Isera are small comparatively.”

Kiva nodded. “A lot of that’s down to your grandfather. Basianus wanted no temple on the island to be bigger than his own. You see he may have been called ‘the fair’, but nicknames are rarely accurate.”

Quintillian frowned. “I didn’t know there was a temple to my grandfather on the island?”

“There isn’t now” the captain replied. “You see, your uncle became very egocentric long before any serious slide into … well anyway, you know what I mean. He had the temple Basianus built torn down and his Golden House built over the site. In fact some of the stonework was reused; I remember him building the place. He had all the statues of your grandfather put to one side and the bases were re-chiselled. Your grandfather’s name was removed from them all and replaced with his own. In fact, there aren’t many Imperial statues left now, but any time you find one of Quintus, there’s at least half a chance it’s actually Basianus with the name changed.”

Quintillian frowned. “You mean that even before he went insane he destroyed statues and temples of his own uncle?”

Kiva nodded. “Of course. It was standard practice when a previous Emperor had been condemned for anything in the public eye. He had to distance himself from Basianus you see?”

Quintillian nodded and stepped to keep up as the captain had begun to stroll toward the doors of the great temple.

They stepped into the shade of the colonnade and it was only then that Quintillian realised that the sun must actually officially be up now. A quarter of an hour ago there had been little difference in the grey half-light between being sheltered or in the open air. Now the eyes had to adjust as one stepped from the open air into the shade of a canopy.

The captain reached the doors and grasped a huge bronze handle, wrenching it to one side and heaving the doors slowly open. Normal practice was for the doors to be opened just after sunrise by the priests, but Kiva was in a hurry. The handle squeaked and screeched as it turned and strained and the veins stood out of the captain’s forehead as he hauled on the heavy bronze door, pulling it gradually open.

The main room of the temple within was a domed circular span, with small chapels and rooms leading off in various places. The main area of habitation was to the rear, through doors denied to all but the priesthood. This alone was the public space, but what a space! The dome was perhaps forty feet high in the centre, with a huge diameter. The room itself could easily contain the entire population of the town of Serfium. A dark look crossed the captain’s face. That very ability had been proved over twenty years ago while Velutio’s army had rampaged around Serfium hunting down the remaining soldiers of his opposition while the frightened populace flocked to the one place they felt safe. Hundreds of terrified people crowded into this room, listening to screams and sounds of battle outside; to occasional sounds of collapsing buildings and the roaring of flames. The captain shook his head to clear it of such memories. Not his memories, for he had been miles away with his horse on a hilltop, but he knew well what had happened in the town. Some of them had been his friends, and some of his friends had not made it to the temple and had been trampled, speared, burned or even raped in the streets before they could make it to sanctuary. A victorious army always had to be tightly controlled by its commanders, or it could easily become a mob, but it seemed that Velutio had
wanted
a mob once the battle was over. A mob would give him fear, and fear was a very useful weapon to a new power.

As they stepped into the wide open central dome, a figure in a white robe stepped forward from the rear doors. He was an old man, perhaps even what one would consider venerable, with a short and well-tended beard and white hair cut in the old fashion. With a slight limp he stepped up the stairs onto the circular central platform and held his hand up in greeting.

“Kiva, my boy, it really is good to see you. I had feared the worst. Messengers ride into town every day now asking whether people have seen you. It must have been hell out there.”

The captain smiled and mounted the central platform himself, reaching out to shake hands with the elderly priest. “Pelian. You’re looking good. I’m afraid I’m going to have to impose on you and ask for sanctuary for myself and the rest of the company.”