Dark Empress (12 page)

Finally, after a little discussion, one of them seemed to arrive at a conclusion and positioned himself.

The blare that issued was still quieter than the port hornsman would have managed, but would carry a warning to the complex, and that was all they needed. Satisfied, the three men blew a half dozen more blasts, gradually increasing in volume, and then returned to the open doorway. Ghassan slapped Samir on the back.

“That’s it. It’s all in Cronus’ hands now.”

Samir nodded and was about to reply when where was a cry of alarm from the square. Turning, he gazed down once again, just in time to see an arrow pass through the neck of one of the resistance.

“Oh no…”

Ghassan lunged to the edge and joined him, staring down in dismay. The Pelasians didn’t carry bows in the town. They were of little use in the narrow streets, so the guards relied on their spears and swords and slings if needed, so why did they have bows now. As he watched, he realised with cold dread that he already knew the answer. Groups of a dozen black-clad and heavily armed Pelasian soldiers had appeared in all the side streets, blocking the exits from the square. As the boys watched, more arrows whispered their deadly song as they emerged from windows all around the square and thudded into the crowd of protesters outside the barracks.

“It’s a trap!”

Already the numbers below were thinning out but Samir stared in horror as he saw more guards emerge from the doorway on top of the building. Most ran to the edge and began to drop stones onto the crowd, but two were carrying a huge copper pot slung between two poles and which, judging by the way it swayed, was very heavy.

Samir averted his eyes. This was one of the oldest of defensive manoeuvres, but Samir had no wish to watch its grisly effects. Ghassan grasped his smaller brother.

“We have to go!”

Samir was shaking gently.

“They’ll burn. They’ll all burn…”

Ghassan hauled the other boy to his feet and glared at him. Drawing his hand back, he gave Samir a stinging slap across the face.

“Wake up, brother. They have seen the flags. They know we’re up here. We have to go now, or we will burn with them!”

Samir stared at him, shocked, for a moment, and then nodded. As they rand across the roof, heading for one of their old routes that would take them unnoticed far from this place of danger and high above the ground, Samir shook his head sadly. How could they have dared to hope? Now the resistance was finished. M’Dahz was lost.

For the first time in many years, Samir found himself crying as he ran.

Across the town and far up the slope of M’Dahz, captain Cronus and the commanders of the resistance crouched behind doors and walls and listened to the stifling silence punctuated only by occasional mutterings of the guards at the palace complex nearby.

A distant boom from the horn in the main square rang across the town and Cronus clenched his teeth and made several hand signals to the nearby commanders. The signal at last. Now the civic barrack block in the square was under siege and the Pelasian soldiers, outnumbered almost two to one, would be trapped within the barracks.

Cronus found himself thinking sadly on those hundred volunteers in the square. They would have to keep pounding at the doors until the first sign that reinforcements were on the way. As soon as the Pelasian soldiers appeared in the square, they would have to run for their lives and few would escape.

He ground his teeth.

But their sacrifice would draw the soldiers from the palace, leaving the satrap and his upper echelons badly protected and at the mercy of the honest citizens of M’Dahz. Once they had the commanders, they could call an end to this and drive the invaders out and, when that was done, no other satrap would consider attempting a repeat of this horrible mess.

As he watched tensely, there was a blast on a horn within the complex and the gates opened. A swathe of heavily-armed black-clad soldiers marched out of the encircling wall in columns, turning and splitting into three groups that took separate roads toward the square to speed their arrival and deployment. Cronus watched them go from his position behind the low wall, making a rough count of the men. As the last men filed out of the gate and left the small plaza outside the complex, he made a quick mental calculation. Almost a thousand men. That would be most of the Pelasian complement in M’Dahz now. There would be a thousand or so more stationed in various places around the walls and at the port and sundry other locations, but there couldn’t be more than a couple of dozen left in the complex to stop the almost four hundred conspirators.

This was it. They finally had a chance.

Cronus watched and listened carefully. Taking a deep breath, he cautiously crept from his hiding place along the wall and to the low gate. A quick glimpse and he could see that the gate guards were standing at attention. The sounds of the soldiers marching away seemed to have faded. Now was the time.

The captain took a deep breath and then bellowed “now!”

The resistance poured from gates and doors in the surrounding buildings and ran out into the street, converging in the small, circular public space and running for the complex gate. It was a strange sight, Cronus thought as they ran; hundreds of heavily-armed men charging into battle, but doing so in relative quiet. The Pelasian soldiers may be out of the way and marching to the diversion in the square, but there was no reason to test their hearing and risk tempting them back.

The two guards at the gate disappeared within as soon as the mob entered the open spare. The gates began to close very slowly. Cronus had been counting on that. The portals were heavy, constructed of solid wood reinforced with bronze plates. There was no chance of them being closed in time.

Triumphantly, the mass of elated citizens ran through the gate, brandishing their weapons, ready to deal with whatever defence remained for the satrap. Cronus was, due to his positioning in the square, among the rearmost of the converging units and what happened next unfolded with the dreadful efficiency of a carefully-laid plan.

The charge came to a sudden stop in the courtyard of the complex as the ground burst into flame. A huge horseshoe of oil that arced out from the side wall was now a deadly blaze; a wall of fire blocking any hope of access to the interior buildings of the compound. Already the momentum of the charge had driven dozens of the attackers into the flames and their screams were echoing from the walls of M’Dahz.

Cronus came to a halt, his world shifting to slow motion and he turned with a cold weight in the pit of his belly, somehow knowing what he was going to see. Every street that led from the small piazza was filled with black figures, silently marching back toward them.

How could they have known? Someone had betrayed them. Someone had sold out any hope of the freedom of M’Dahz. With a sickening finality, he turned to face the nearest Pelasian unit and straightened his back.

“If we’re going to die, lads, let’s make them remember us, eh?”

Amongst cries of rage and hatred and screams of the dying, the last defenders of free M’Dahz charged to their doom.

In which endings become beginnings

Samir and Ghassan trudged through the street with heavy hearts, their heads bowed and watching only the feet of those in front of them. There had been no escaping this time and no hope of being saved by the resistance. Every last man involved in either of the attacks had been butchered mercilessly and their bodies carted several miles into the desert where they had been left to rot.

There had been a pregnant pause for a few hours after the incident during which the brothers had dared to hope that repercussions would be limited to the resistance themselves.

Such was not the case. The gates and harbour had been sealed off and patrols increased around the edge of M’Dahz during that quiet time; that deep indrawn breath before the real evil began. Then, during the height of the afternoon heat, the Pelasian military had begun to sweep through the town. This was no victory looting or search for culprits, but a simple rounding up of every living being in M’Dahz.

So thorough had the satrap’s men been that even the infirm had been rounded up, their relatives or neighbours forced to carry them. Newborn babes cried in their mothers’ arms. Even the homeless beggars were collected. Every last soul in M’Dahz was gathering by the southern Desert Gate, as Samir and Ghassan knew. They had the best hiding places of anyone in the town and the best knowledge of the hidden ways and yet even they and their mother had been found behind the garden wall on the roof of the neglected Imperial cult temple.

And now, here at the gate, finally were gathered all of M’Dahz. Samir shook his head slightly. Not true, he corrected himself. Those who lived now in virtual seclusion in the governor’s palace complex were not here. What had happened to them would remain a mystery.

He looked up at Ghassan, who was examining the ranks of the Pelasian guards who surrounded the sadly depleted population of M’Dahz. He had once heard someone estimate the population of the town at something like twenty thousand people. At a rough estimate, he would guess there were less than three thousand people here, and that was everyone.

Orders were being given by the gate, but that was on the other side of the crowd and the boys could not hear the details from where they stood. Something was happening, though.

As they watched, the first few of the population were led up the staircase on the inner side of the south gate. Slowly and dejectedly, they trudged up the steps to the top of the wall, where they were then directed out along the parapet. Ghassan ground his teeth.

“Whatever they’re going to do, it will not be pretty.”

Samir nodded grimly.

“I know what they’re going to do. So do you.”

Ghassan closed his eyes and shook his head.

“How did it get this bad, brother? Every time I think M’Dahz has reached the bottom of the well of the damned, we get kicked down a little further.”

Samir nodded.

“It continues to grow more and more hopeless, Ghassan, but when things are truly hopeless… that is when you need hope more than ever before. We will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes; endure whatever the Gods and the satrap can throw at us and we will survive. Because all things change and one day things will be better.”

Ghassan stared down at his smaller brother in surprise. There was a strange certainty about him, something that actually gave the taller boy just a flicker of hope; a tiny light in his heart, wrapped in pride.

“Things will be better, Samir.”

Though, as they nodded and returned their attention to the activity ahead, the very idea of things improving seemed impossibly far away. Samir continued to watch as the scene unfolded, while Ghassan averted his eyes sadly.

As the folk of M’Dahz were led along the wall there was a scream. Samir nodded sadly to himself as he watched the first person in the line plummet from the wall to land on the rocky ground below, his head smashing like a watermelon. The fall was perhaps forty feet. Few would survive the drop and many of those that did would be smashed beyond repair. Surely the satrap did not intend to execute them all? Who would he have to be merciless to?

As he watched, the line of prisoners was marched along the wall and the next few were directed to the steps to descend to ground level once again. Samir clenched his teeth and counted as he watched.

“One… two… three… four…”

As the smaller brother peered between the figures before him, he saw the fifth prisoner jabbed with a staff and pushed across the parapet by one of the guards. The man made no sound as he fell, though Samir would never forget the sound as he landed. Was he brave to have held his silence, or perhaps stricken by such shock that he was unable to speak?

“One… two… three… four…”

Another scream; this time a woman’s voice. He was unable to see as a large, bald man obscured his view at the last moment.

“Every fifth person, Ghassan. One in five.”

The taller brother shook his head in disbelief.

“Then we have to leave; to escape…”

Samir pursed his lips.

“Not possible. I’ve looked at every angle I can think of, but the satrap’s got us covered. The only way out of here is along the wall or through a thousand heavily armed guards.”

“Someone has to do something.”

Samir shook his head.

“He’s broken us. Have you not seen? Months ago the guards would have had to physically push the people up the stairs. Not now, though. They’re acting like cattle. The satrap points and the people walk. M’Dahz is done for. When we get through this, we need to make some rather important decisions, my friend.”

“When we get through this?”

“One in five. The odds aren’t too bad.”

Ghassan stared at his brother.

Suddenly the crowd nearby was beginning to move. The pace along the wall was picking up. One, two, three, four… scream. One, two, three, four… scream. There was something sickeningly comforting about the one, two, three and four.

Ghassan continued to stare at his brother as Samir turned to face the now moving crowd and walked forward. The taller brother stared for a moment and then turned to look up at their mother, who had been silent throughout the whole exchange. She hardly appeared to notice him. Her expression, dead and glassy, was unchanged by the horror around her and the only hint Ghassan could detect that she was even aware of her surroundings was a slight twitch at the corner of her eye with each fresh scream from the wall.