The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (51 page)

Persia allowed him to draw her in, used her momentum to
propel herself at him before he could raise the staff, and drove her head into
his midriff. The youth went backwards, winded, and in an instant she had spun
him around, twisted his arm up behind his back and forced him face-down onto
the benches, her knee into the middle of his back. Nish’s admiration for Persia
grew; he had never seen anything like it.

‘Bind him!’ she rasped.

Nish bound the youth’s hands behind his back with a length
of cord. Up above, Allioun and Beyl were tying two of the monks, but the other
had fled, and so had the old monk.

Sick at heart, Nish ran up to the floor of the temple and
looked out through the columns.

‘How long do we have left before Vomix gets here?’ he said
as he reached the square of columns. ‘I’ve lost track of time.’

‘No more than twenty minutes, I’d say,’ said M’lainte,
puffing along behind him.

Outside, the militia had formed a semi-circle around the
temple entrance and were defending themselves against at least forty enraged
monks, who were attacking with staves, clubs and reaping hooks without heed for
their own lives. They were led by the burly monk with the black beard, and very
effectively: two militiamen lay on the ground, while many others bore bloody
wounds. Nish counted eleven monks down.

‘What a fiasco,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll never subdue them;
they’re too handy with their weapons, even the old fellows.’

‘They’re trained to defend their temple,’ said Persia.

‘Call Chissmoul,’ said M’lainte. ‘I’ve a feeling Vomix is
closer than we think.’

‘She would have warned us,’ said Nish. Nonetheless, he ran
out into the open, looking up. The air-sled was still circling the top of the
temple. He waved; Chissmoul banked and curved down. ‘See anything yet?’

‘No,’ she yelled over the wind.

‘Go higher!’

She turned in climbing spirals, far above the temple, and
came zooming down again. ‘The leaders are crossing the river, about fifty of
them. They’ll be here in minutes.’

 
THIRTY-FOUR

‘Come on!’ yelled Nish to his militia. ‘We can’t fight
Vomix; we’ve got to go
now
.’

‘Surr, look out.’

Another dozen monks burst from a door on the other side of
the great wheel of the monastery, a hundred paces away, waving lengths of
timber, kitchen cleavers, and axes. Clearly there were far more monks here than
he’d been told. Panic flared; Nish fought it down as he tried to think.

‘Do you want me to land?’ yelled Chissmoul.

‘Yes. No,
wait
!’
Nish scanned the green battlefield, looking for Flangers. There he was, holding
a bloody shoulder. ‘Lieutenant!’ Nish ran to him.

‘They’re putting up stronger resistance than I’d expected,’
said Flangers.

The monks were advancing from either side. ‘Can we hold them
off long enough to get everyone onto the air-sled?’

‘There’s too many of them. Unless we use our swords …’

‘No! No killing.’

‘They’re happy to cut us down, surr,’ Flangers said quietly.

‘I know. Hoshi was killed inside,’ said Nish. ‘But I’m not
going to start my campaign by slaughtering innocent monks.’ He turned to
M’lainte, who had come to the front of the militia. ‘Can we get out through the
roof?’

‘You want Chissmoul to land on the top of the dome?’ She
considered. ‘It’ll be tricky getting the wounded up through the hole –
it’s a couple of spans above the platform – but I’ll find a way.’

‘Then do it. Flangers, organise the retreat,’ rapped Nish.
‘Chissmoul?’ He pointed to the top of the dome. She repeated the gesture,
questioningly, and he yelled, ‘Yes!’

The air-sled curved that way, but they’d lost a lot of time
and the monks were close now.

‘We’ll never hold them off long enough to get the injured
aboard,’ said Persia.

‘Unless I can scare them,’ said Nish. ‘Get going, Flangers!’

Edging through the semi-circle of the militia, Nish drew the
serpent staff from his back and brandished it at the monks. They stopped,
watching it warily. They recognised power when they saw it.

‘Stand back,’ he said, pointing the open serpent mouth at
them.

The monks swayed away. From the corner of his eye Nish
watched the militia backing towards the temple entrance, the ones at the rear
carrying the wounded, the men at the front making a barrier with their staves.
He backed after them, Persia moving in step with him.

‘Flangers, send everyone up the ramp. You, Persia and I will
form a rear-guard.’

Over the groans of the wounded and the clash of weapons,
Nish made out the drumming of hooves. Vomix was close.

The monks must have thought Nish had called for reinforcements,
for they attacked in a mass. Three of them ran at him and Persia, swinging
clubs and reaping hooks, while more surged past on either side, going for the
militia. Nish and Persia defended as best they could as they backed between the
columns into the temple.

‘This way,’ called M’lainte breathlessly from inside. ‘Get
the wounded up first.’

Two monks came at Nish, the black-bearded, thickset leader
bearing a spiky cudgel made from the root of a tree, the other a reaping sickle
on a long handle. Nish parried the sickle blow; the curved blade rang as it
struck the serpent staff and was torn out of the monk’s hands. Nish kicked his
feet out from under him then went for the neck of the black-bearded monk who
had the raised cudgel. The monk took the blow on his shoulder, twisted around
and swung the cudgel with enough force to dash Nish’s brains out.

He could not get out of the way in time, and Nish was sure
he was going to die when Persia, who was to his left, dived and knocked him
aside. The cudgel swept down and again he heard the sickening sound of bones
snapping.

She gasped and tried to rise, but could not. Nish scrambled
to his feet as the monk raised the cudgel to strike her dead. His face was a
bloody, engorged purple, there was blood on the white patch in his black beard
and he had a murderous look in his eye.

Nish sprang over Persia, putting himself between her and the
monk as he began his ferocious downswing. There was no time for niceties now;
if Nish had misjudged the moment, both he and Persia would die. Aiming the
staff like a javelin, he thrust it at the monk with all his strength, and the
tip of the serpent’s iron tail went through his chest to the heart.

As he fell dead, the other monk backed away, eyes like twin
eggs. ‘He killed the abbot! Murderer! Blasphemer! Despoiler of all that is
sacred!’

Nish threw the cudgel at him, but it missed and the monk ran
out into the middle of the lawn, roaring, ‘Murderer!’

The other monks gathered around him, staring at the abbot’s
body, now pinned to the ground by the staff, which had taken on a blood-red
glow.

‘There was no help for it,’ said Flangers. He helped Persia
up.

Nish wrenched the staff out and brandished it at them, and
they backed away. It was hot and heavy again, churning inside, as if the blood
sacrifice had woken it. He didn’t like the way it felt, not at all, but he
couldn’t leave it now. He looked around; the militia were out of sight, inside
the temple.

As he retreated, holding the staff up threateningly, the
drumming of hooves grew ever louder. The seneschal’s troops were just outside
the monastery now, and the monks were staring at the entrance in dismay.

Nish turned to Persia, whose left forearm hung at an odd
angle and was swelling visibly. ‘Thank you. You saved my life.’

She was staring at him as if she’d just had a revelation. ‘I
simply did my duty, but you risked your life to save mine.’ She shook her head.
‘My arm is badly broken. I’ve let Yulla down.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘You don’t understand. My indenture –’

He cut her off, for the huddle of monks was breaking up.
‘They’re going to attack again. Go up the ramp.’

‘I can’t!’ cried Persia; her chocolate skin had gone a muddy
grey. ‘Yulla ordered me to guard you.’

‘I’m in charge of this disaster. Carry her up, Lieutenant.’

Heaving Persia over his shoulder, Flangers went into the
temple. Her troubled eyes were on Nish all the way, but she did not struggle.
She appeared to be in too much pain.

There was no time to wonder about the nature of her
indenture to Yulla. He dismissed them both from his mind and concentrated on
keeping the monks at bay. The saturnine woodsman, Beyl, fell in beside him, and
two others, one left, the other right.

‘We can do this, Nish,’ said Beyl encouragingly. ‘We’ll beat
’em the way we beat the enemy up at Blisterbone.’

Nish hadn’t realised he’d looked so downcast. ‘We must.’

The monks were almost onto them when the leading riders
burst through the entrance of the monastery and stopped on the green lawn. The
monks froze, then turned to face the new threat.

Nish slipped behind a column, gestured to his rear-guard to
go up, and peered out. The horsemen leaned forwards over their saddle horns and
raised their swords. The warhorses pawed at the lawn.

The monks must have seen their doom approaching, for their
rustic weapons would be useless against armed and armoured troops, but not one
of them turned and ran. They were brave men.

The officer at the head swept his blade down and the horses
leapt forwards. Uprooted grass flew up from their hooves as they raced across
the turf, and at their head, directing his mount with touches of his knees, was
the man Nish despised most in all the empire – Seneschal Vomix.

He had never been a handsome man, but since Maelys had
tricked him into taking hold of her taphloid, months ago, Vomix was grotesque.
His nose was a flattened blob, while his face looked as if it had been torn
off, ripped into three pieces and nailed back on. Half his teeth were gone and
his right arm, severed at the wrist, now ended in a triangular, three-bladed
spike. In his left hand he held up an enormous scimitar, the light winking off
its polished, curved blade.

‘Go up!’ Nish hissed to his lurking men, and they went,
reluctantly.

Nish waited, knowing there would be a crowd at the top of
the ramp. He had to see what Vomix was up to, and what he knew. If there was
treachery afoot, he might reveal something that would give away the traitor’s
name.

Half the monks had lined up in the middle of the lawn; the
rest moved to block the entrance to the temple. More riders raced through,
until they must have numbered fifty. Vomix wheeled to come alongside a monk who
was holding up his skirts as he ran, and plunged his spike into the man’s back
so hard that it came out his chest. The monk’s hands opened, he tripped on his
skirt and fell flat on his face. The spike slid free and Vomix held it up,
dripping red.

The old monk who had been at the flame earlier tottered out,
brandishing a walking cane. ‘This monastery and temple are forbidden to all but
the monks of the Celestial Flame,’ he said in a reedy voice. ‘You pollute our
retreat with your vile swords and wicked ways. Begone!’

The seneschal trotted across to the monk, lifted him by the
bunched robes and said, ‘Where is the white chthonic fire?’

‘There is no such fire here, and never has been. We are
worshippers of the Celestial Flame, which has … had never gone out since we
built our temple three thousand years ago.’

‘Liar!’ said Vomix, swatting him across the face with the
side of his bloody spike.

‘Our flame is not white,’ said the monk feebly, ‘and it has
never been called chthonic. Indeed, it is the very opposite, for within it we
read the movements of the heavenly bodies, and from them tell the future.’

‘I’ll bet you didn’t predict this future,’ leered Vomix.

‘As it happens,’ the old monk said with dignity, ‘your
coming was foretold two thousand years ago. Had we known
when
you were to appear, we would have been prepared.’

‘We’re going to take this place apart, and then you, until
we find it.’

The monk did not shrink away. ‘You are not the first to
threaten us, but our founder’s foretelling states that the Monastery of the
Celestial Flame will survive until the end of the Third Empire and that
–’

‘The empire is finished, you old fool,’ sneered Vomix. ‘Did
you not see Stilkeen’s proclamation on the wisp-watcher yesterday?’

‘There are no wisp-watchers here,’ said the old monk,
looking uncertain now.

‘And that is a capital offence!’

‘We have an exemption signed by the God-Emperor –’

‘Who has been deposed by Stilkeen, a shapeshifting
being
from the void. The empire is at an
end.’ Vomix tossed the old monk to the ground. ‘Take him inside and roast him
over his precious Celestial Flame until he reveals the location of the white
fire. Then roast him some more.’

‘You know what to do,’ he said to the twenty riders on his
left, and they began the killing. Vomix glanced up at the top of the dome,
smiled a savage smile and said to the thirty riders to his right, ‘The air-sled
is almost empty; we have Nish and his militia trapped inside the temple. Once
he is dead, the first man to reach Morrelune will take the throne – as
long as he has the pure fire.

‘Kill them, monks and militia all!’ he roared. ‘Let not a
single witness live. If Nish has the white fire, bring it to me. If he does
not, we’re going to take the temple and monastery apart, stone by stone, until
we find it.’

Nish slipped inside. Could he make Vomix believe that he did
have the true fire? The dead abbot lay to his left; through the columns he saw
the cast-out youth running for the far side of the monastery, his hands still
bound. He wouldn’t last long.

He ran in, through the triangle of columns and down the
benches to the square hole. The youth’s white robes lay on the stone beside it.