The False Martyr (104 page)

“
Lord Chancellor,” Field
Marshal Landon called as Ipid walked toward him. “The men are ready
and await your command.”

“
You understand your
orders, marshal?” Ipid tried to sound commanding though he was sure
that his voice quavered.

“
We do, Lord Chancellor.
We have trained all week. Every man knows his part.”

“
You are prepared for the
portal?” Ipid knew the answers to these questions, had asked them
all the night before, but he wanted the men to hear the answers as
well, wanted them to know that he had asked.

“
The . . . te-am ‘eiruh,”
Marshal Landon still struggled with the proper name for the
wizards, “have transported us as part of our training. We are
ready, Lord Chancellor.”

“
Di Valati,” Ipid called
to the man standing to the side of the stairs, “please confirm for
us that this action is aligned with the most holy and benevolent
Order.”

Di Valati Wallock raised
his arms and spread them wide so that his brown robes stood out
like the wings of a bat. His voice carried over the creak and
rattle of the leather and steel around him. “Justice,” he called
then paused and scanned the soldiers. “Justice is how the Order
maintains Its balance. It is how It corrects for those that
transgress against It. Sometime, that justice is delivered by the
Order directly, but more often, It calls upon Its greatest creation
to see that justice is done, that Its will is enforced and
sanctified. Even as he stood upon the rock of Sal Danar to cast out
the Lawbreakers, our savior, the great and all-wise Theonious
Valatarian said, ‘We humans, Hileil’s most precious creation, were
given the ability to understand so that we could protect the Order
he made. Only humans were given the ability to judge, to be the
Order’s final arbiters. We must do everything possible, must make
any sacrifice to maintain the Order, to ensure that Its laws are
upheld.’ This is the way of the Order. May it guide and protect
you.”

The valati paused as the
men mumbled, “May the Order protect us,” into their
chests.

“
The Order is with you
this day,” the di valati continued when the response was complete.
“You are under Its care for you do Its will.” With that, he lowered
his hands and stepped back. The soldiers muttered to themselves,
but Ipid was sure that their resolution increased, that their
spines stiffened, shoulders rose.

It was his turn. Ipid took
a deep breath and gripped the pommel of the sword at his side,
though he was not sure if he had the strength to draw the thing
should such be required. “We do this to reunite our shattered
nation,” he yelled, voice rising to the men gathered around and the
servants that stood outside them, hoping to see the soldiers off.
“We do this to protect our lands from traitors who wish to tear it
apart. We do this to punish those who murdered our brothers, who
massacred families for no crime other than doing what must be done
to preserve our nation. We do this for the Order. And we do it for
justice.”

The gathered soldiers
yelled their agreement in a single bellow.

“
About, face,” Marshal
Landon called when the sound died. The men turned as one, armor
rattling like the cog of the world’s largest gear falling into
place. A pathway appeared between the men as they formed two sets
of rows one in front of each of the wizards. Marshal Landon walked
between them and took a place four men back in the center of the
stack to the right. The men held up their shields before them to
create a wall, protecting themselves from the empty courtyard
before them.

Ipid looked up past them,
found the eyes of Eia then Naidi. His stomach churned, his heart
hammered, his head swooned, but he nodded. His emotions
disappeared. For a moment, he knew calm. His breath came in a
steady stream. His body relaxed. His eyes watched the soldiers
before him without concern as their shields came down and their
lines wavered. Before them, two great black discs appeared, and all
the emotions came flooding back.

The soldiers raised their
shields, held out their swords, and charged through the portals.
Ipid followed. Before he even had time to think about what waited
on the other side, he was through the spinning blackness and being
torn apart by the chaos that defined it. His foot came down on
stones. His eyes adjusted from the brightness of the day to the
dimness of a room and focused on a battle that was already
over.

Throughout the Dorington
Directorate Hall, men still fought, but there was no point to their
struggle. As Ipid had planned and expected, the self-proclaimed
Chancellor of the South had prepared no defense against the
possibility of forty knights charging from thin air into the middle
of his conference chamber. There had been perhaps an equal number
of soldiers in the room when the portals had opened, the majority
of them officers in uniforms rather than armor. All but a handful
were already dead. Caught entirely unprepared, their blood now
painted the room with the colors of Dorington. The red of their
banner was splattered onto the walls, formed pools across the
floor, marked the statues and paintings, covered the dead and
dying.

Eia’s portal had placed
Ipid and his Darthur protectors at the far end of the hall near its
entrance in a great open space where the benches would have been
set for those seeking an audience with the directors. What fighting
remained was taking place twenty paces away around the great table
where Lord Bairn and his advisors had been planning how to meet the
force that was descending upon them from Aldon and Denton. Those
forces had been sent from the west as a distraction to bring Bairn
and his officers together and concentrate their attention on their
walls. Vontel had told them when those men would be gathered to
discuss that threat so that this one blow would be the only one
required. The knights had trained for days. The planning had been
meticulous. It had worked to cataclysmic perfection.

Scanning the carnage,
forcing himself to understand it, Ipid watched an elderly man in a
dark suit and red scarf fall as a blade sliced across his chest so
that his shirt soon matched his scarf and vest. Past him, two
armored guards with broad-bladed spears tried to surrender and were
cut down before their spears found the stones. At the same time,
one of the thin rapiers that were still popular among the more
militant nobility of the south snuck between the rings of a
knight’s armor and found his heart. The officer who held the sword
fell with the man he’d killed as a knight avenged his comrad by
driving his blade through his killer’s back. Another officer
dropped his weapon and was rewarded with a blow that nearly took
his head. It was the same throughout the room. The knights were not
unscathed – beyond the man who’d been killed, a few were nursing
gashes to arms or legs – but the result was far worse for the
southerners. Ipid had ordered that any man who raised or held a
weapon was to die. They had borne arms against their countrymen and
the rightful Chancellor, the sentence was death. The knights
carried it out.

It created a miasma of
violence that Ipid’s senses could not hope to process. Through all
the blood and carnage, the world became a blur. The screams and
crashes faded into a buzz. Everything was clouded and dispersed by
a shock so complete that he did not hear the doors crash open
behind him, barely noticed the Darthur turning, did not recognize
the battle cry coming from men who were not his own.

A storm of soldiers ran
through the double doors that marked the entrance to the hall,
catching the, still disoriented Darthur, out of position, leaving
Ipid exposed to the tall, handsome young man who led the charge.
The officer closed so that Ipid could see the color of his eyes. A
long, thin blade that might have split chains came round, rang
against the heavy plate covering his chest, and slid to the side.
Only then did Ipid try to dodge, but he was never meant to wear
armor. His feet caught. He fell backward. The blade slashed against
the inside of his arm as its owner brought it round.

Pain lanced through Ipid,
seeming to slice all the way up his shoulder to his neck and head.
Blood splattered across his armor. Then he hit the ground all at
once, carried down by the weight of his armor. The wind rushed from
him. His head bounced. The world spun as he struggled to breathe,
to move, to focus. The only thing he could see was the handsome
soldier, who looked so much like Dasen through the blur of his
eyes, as he brought the slim blade around to finish him.

The man was engulfed in
flame. Seemingly from the very floor, a tower of fire rose to
engulf the officer just as his blade swept down. The heat was such
that it pounded Ipid even as he laid below it. The officer did not
scream. The flame came too fast, consumed him too quickly for a
sound to escape his mouth. He flailed for no more than heartbeats
before he collapsed into ash and cinders and bone.

Turning his head, Ipid saw
the source of his salvation. It was Eia. She was
smiling.

Chapter 58

The
45
^th
Day of Summer

“
I need to stitch this,”
the surgeon mumbled more to himself than to Ipid. “It’s not that
deep, but it won’t heal properly unless it’s closed.” He was in his
middle years, likely to oldest person beyond Ipid to have made this
trip. Short and wiry, he seemed almost as lost in his armor as the
man he tended, though Ipid supposed that, as a military surgeon, he
had actually worn the stuff before. His hair was trimmed short,
high widow’s peaks showing through the stubble. His pointed face
was lost under Ipid’s arm where he inspected the cut, poking and
painfully dabbing away blood.

“
Later,” Ipid growled
through gnashing teeth. He felt like his entire arm was on fire.
The cut itself throbbed like he couldn’t believe, making it hard to
concentrate on anything. His arm and side were covered with red
slowly drying into ruddy brown. His hand was sticky with the stuff,
and he could feel it clinging to his cheek and neck, tightening as
it dried. Rotten and metallic, it filled his nostrils, so that his
stomach roiled. Still, he knew that he needed to act quickly.
Everything had been carefully timed. Already they had lost too much
of that time. He could not lose more to this idiotic
injury.

“
It needs to be stitched,
Lord Chancellor,” the man said as he moved his head around to look
at his patient. He was crouched down, the posture obviously
uncomfortable in the heavy armor, but his patient sat on the
ground, his patient was the Chancellor, so that is where he served
him.

“
Bandage it,” Ipid
growled. “There are other men worse off than me.” Though his desire
to avoid the stitches had nothing to do with the injuries suffered
by the knights, Ipid knew that was what great leaders were supposed
to say.

Beside him, Eia watched
from the downturned shadows of her hood. Her eyes showed concern,
but there was the hint of a smile, maybe admiration. Ipid tried to
give her a brave grin, but it withered as he remembered her
expression as she watched that young officer burn. Certainly, she
had saved his life, but how could anyone smile at seeing that? It
was an image in many ways more horrible than the sight of the man
engulfed in flame.

His attempt at a smile was
fully abandoned as pain overtook his every sense. The surgeon
pulled a cloth tight around the cut. It sent spasms through him
that made spots race before his eyes. He clenched his teeth until
they might crack. His every muscle tensed. Sweat poured from him,
though he had not exerted himself beyond falling on his
ass.

“
Done,” the surgeon
declared as he tied off the bandage. Ipid released the breath he
had been holding and gasped for more. “That will hold for a while,
but we should fix it properly before the day is out.” He looked
across the room to a line of wounded knights that had formed on the
other side, thoughts already turning to the men who were supposed
to be his primary concern. “That bandage will probably be soaked
through in an hour, maybe you’ll let me stitch it then.”

“
Maybe,” Ipid said without
separating his gnashing teeth.

“
I can take the pain,” Eia
whispered in his ear as she helped him to his feet. “Or at least
block you from feeling it.”

Ipid knew what she
offered. It was what she did almost every night so that he could
sleep. She blocked his mind from the worries that plagued it. He
was typically asleep a few seconds later, but he could not afford
that now.
The pain will
help
, he told himself.
It will help you focus on what you have to do. It will keep
you angry, make you willing to do what must be done.

“
Not now,” he said softly
and turned from her. For the purposes of this mission, she was
supposed to be another of the te-am ‘eiruh, the one that had
accompanied him three weeks before. Already, she had likely exposed
the ruse by falling to his side and doting over him like he might
die from the slash in his arm. Still, if there were those that had
not yet made the connection, he did not want to fuel the
fires.

Taking a step away from
Eia, the pile of ashes and bone, the splatters of his own blood, he
looked out at the room around him. The fight was over. The surge of
men from the adjoining room had been dealt with quickly once the
Darthur and Eia recovered from their shock. Between them, the
onslaught had been deterred with no injury more serious than the
gash in Ipid’s arm. He was sure the same could not be said for the
officers and guards who had rushed to the aid of their governor.
Yet Ipid could see nothing of that carnage through the wall that
the Darthur formed with their bodies to block the door, and he
could only hope that the man he needed from that room had not been
foolish enough to join the ill-fated charge.