The City (16 page)

‘Fortance. He seemed grief-stricken.’

‘Fortance is a veteran of the Thousand. He served with the Gulons, the elite century. He knows the emperor if any man does. Did he accompany the emperor back?’

‘Not all the way. Before we reached the City we were met by an escort, and Fortance and the Thousand were sent back to the attack site. I thought it was a punishment. The emperor was taken the rest of the way by the First Adamantine.’

‘The Nighthawks. Who was their commander?’

‘I don’t know. But the leader of the escort was Saroyan, the lord …’

‘Yes, I know who Saroyan is,’ he told her.

‘Um. Fortance told her who I was. I mean, my family name.’

‘Why?’

She hung her head in the moonlight. For once in her life she seemed reluctant to speak. ‘I tried to stop the assassin. I didn’t succeed, but perhaps I hampered his aim.’

Conflicting emotions vied in his heart. ‘You saved the emperor’s life?’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

‘And Fortance pointed you out to Saroyan for praise?’

‘Mmm.’

Suddenly Fell realized they were speaking openly. He lowered his voice. ‘This is no business of yours, soldier. Go back to your unit. Say nothing.’

‘But, sir …’

He leaned towards her, feeling her warmth. ‘Just for once, Indaro, shut your mouth. Re-join your colleagues and forget about the last few days.’

He waited to see if she would argue again, but she bowed her head, exhaustion taking over. Without another word she disappeared into the night.

THE STORM OF
the century began over waters very far from the City. Sailors on foreign galleys looked to the sky with dread, and their captains made haste for shore and harbour. The winds picked up quickly and soon the skies were filled with roiling, boiling clouds like octopus ink. The air was sharp with the tang of metal. Thunder grumbled just below the horizon. The winds rose and started to howl. By the time the first lightning flashed most ships were safely harboured, hatches battened, lines tied, the sly gusts plucking at loose stays and poorly furled sails. Those boats still racing for safety were picked up by the ferocious winds and flung about, mere flotsam in the grip of the gale.

The storm headed east, taking its time, moving relentlessly across the waters towards the City. The seagulls forecast it first, and they fled in advance of the storm long before human senses could detect it. As the great white birds crossed the City’s coastline old salts looked up and heard their eerie cry, and they knew a blow was coming, though the horizon was clear and the sun still shone blandly down. The birds continued eastward, and men and women far inland watched them pass with unease. Seabirds were seldom seen in those easterly parts, and hasty invocations were made to many gods, especially the gods of sun and rain, and the east wind, and the cruel god of the north wind known as Cernunnos.

The white birds streamed over the tall turrets of the Red Palace of
the emperor. They passed across the slate and tile roofs of the rich and powerful and the tarpaper shanties of the poor, caring nothing for any of them. They looked down on the great eastern walls of the City and the only thoughts in their small sleek heads were of sanctuary.

The battlefield of Salaba was more than a hundred leagues from the coast and the gulls paused there and started wheeling and circling, thoughts of safety giving way to those of food. Beneath them was the wide, sluggish brown ribbon of the river Kercheval crossing a flat plain that had once been rich with grain and horse meadows. On its western side the armies lay entrenched, six leagues distant from each other, indistinguishable to a seagull.

Had the birds passed over a year before they would have seen much the same sight, although the armies were lying six leagues further north. Were they to pass over a year in the future they would spy an empty plain, empty at least of people, the first flush of green tinting the blood-soaked soil, the wild beasts returning once the savage warriors had gone.

Indaro was lying on her back in the sunshine staring at the sky, her head resting on her folded red jerkin. She rejoiced at the sight of the gulls. Living on the coast for most of her life, she knew they fled before a storm. And bad weather, despite drenched clothes and sodden bedding, was better than the four days of inactivity they had endured under the relentless sun. She was hot and deeply bored, and even a torrent of rain would be welcome.

‘There’s a storm coming,’ someone behind her said.

Doon snorted derisively, and pointedly stared at the blue sky. Blond Garret, who always seemed to be within Indaro’s eyeline, argued, ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky.’ Now Broglanh was no longer with them, Indaro seemed to have inherited Garret, an unwanted bequest.

The first speaker, whom Indaro identified from his voice as a stone-grey northlander called Malachi, explained, ‘Seabirds are flying inland. If they’ve come this far, it’ll be an earth-shaker.’

Garret asked, ‘What’s an earth-shaker?’

It was a question Indaro wanted the answer to, although she would have never asked it herself. She was torn between admiration for people like Garret, who had no concerns about displaying his ignorance, and contempt.

‘In our northland forests it’s a giant tree, which if it’s felled makes a crash you can hear around the world.’

Apparently convinced, Doon scrambled up and started packing Indaro’s belongings in canvas sacks and covering their armour and weapons. Indaro knew the woman was glad to have something to do, and it made no difference to her if Malachi’s prediction was true or not. For four interminable days they had stayed rooted to the same spot. The enemy army had not moved either. She could not see them, but she knew it. When twenty thousand warriors started donning armour and preparing weapons, they could not do it quietly. Even from six leagues you could hear the sound like waves on gravel.

‘Perhaps they’ll attack during the storm,’ offered Garret. His conversation was mostly speculation about when the enemy would attack, or when they would attack the enemy. He had the startling ability to be almost always wrong.

‘Do you think so, Garret?’ Doon asked slyly, rubbing a layer of grease on Indaro’s helm.

‘
I
would,’ he said stoutly. ‘Catch us by surprise.’

‘We five won’t be surprised then, thanks to you,’ came a new voice, deep and hollow, and full of amusement.

Indaro lifted her head and craned round. Malachi, who was lean with cropped grey hair, crouched over a tiny fire which apparently produced no heat and only a wisp of smoke. Beside him was another northlander, barrel-chested, with bright ginger hair and beard in many braids. He returned her look, and winked.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked the pair, sitting up and swinging round, glad of someone new to talk to.

Malachi coughed and spat into the frail fire. ‘Our company was slaughtered by horsemen in the last attack,’ he explained. ‘Including our leaders. There’s only twenty of us left. We’ve been divvied up into other companies.’

‘Welcome to the Wildcats,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I’m Indaro. This is Doon.’

‘Your body servant,’ the ginger man commented, watching Doon go about her chores.

Indaro nodded. She had no intention of explaining that Doon was more friend than servant, that they had known each other since they were children and had grown up together, that she would give her life for Doon as readily as her friend would give hers for Indaro. And
she was used to the sneers, and the tedious ribald jokes about the two women. They slid off her as though buttered.

‘I’m Garret,’ volunteered the blond soldier, unaware as usual of any nuance in the conversation. ‘You northlanders are said to be very fine warriors,’ he added generously.

Both men glared at him, but Garret smiled in his friendly way. In that moment there was a faint, almost imperceptible, rumble of thunder, far in the western distances. Malachi cocked his head and nodded at his colleague, vindicated.

‘It’ll be an earth-shaker,’ he repeated.

It began with huge, widely spaced drops of water, ‘as big as Marcellus’ breastplate’ said Doon, sounding on armour like distant gongs. She and Indaro scrambled into their poor tent, which was hardly big enough for two, and peered out and watched the fat drops hit the dust, making it ripple. The thunder rolled towards them and when they saw the first lightning flash they glanced at each other, as excited as schoolgirls by the relief from the tedium.

The sky darkened and took on a weird greenish tinge, then the rain started falling in earnest, drumming on the canvas above their heads, quickly weighing it down. Thunder cracked overhead and a fork of lightning speared the earth right in front of them. They heard men shouting and the terrified whinnies of horses, then the sound of running hooves. They grinned at each other.

‘Who’d be a horse boy?’ Doon said without sympathy.

A sudden rivulet of water ran into their tent and Indaro felt it soaking greedily into her bone-dry clothes. In their year in this embattled place they had seen all the weather there was to see, she thought, and rain wasn’t the worst of it. She peered out to check on how the others were faring, but she could make out little through the grey wall of torrential rain. The air became colder and darker, the thunder was almost continuous and the lightning made the air smell salty and metallic.

It darkened further and the rain came down even harder. Both women were soaked now, from rain dripping through the canvas above and rising round their ankles. The sound was deafening. They clung together, all excitement, all amusement, washed away. They just waited for it to end.

But it did not end. The rainclouds seemed anchored above them, the thunder and lightning yoked in place. After a while the rising
water forced them to stand. They threw aside the useless tent and merely stood there in the wall of rain. It was hard to breathe without sucking in water. They felt they were swimming without sight of shore, disorientated. Indaro took up her helm and put it on to protect her from the rain, to help her breathe, then snatched it off again, for the sound inside was horrendous.

They seemed to be standing thigh-high in a river. The debris of the army camp – sticks and wood of campfires, straw and grain from the horse tethers, bits of food, clothing and tents – were swirling around their legs. The latrines had flooded and added their contents to the mix. The water was still rising, and Indaro started to feel fearful. She had never seen rain like this. Would it ever stop, or would they soon be swimming for their lives? She could no longer see Doon, only feel a firm hand on her wrist. She remembered Doon could not swim.

There had never been a storm like it, in all the City’s ten-thousand-year history. It swept in from the west one bright sunny morning and by the evening, when the deluge mercifully stopped, thousands had been drowned by the waters and tens of thousands were homeless. Homes were destroyed, those of the poor already barely clinging to life being swept away by the force of the floods, those of the wealthy toppling as their foundations collapsed. The rainwaters poured into the sewers, drowning everything that lived. Most of the City’s crops, vital to see the beleaguered citizens through the winter, were wiped out, and entire herds of farm animals died.

At Salaba the river Kercheval broke its banks and flooded both armies. For decades the wide river had been fought over, sometimes one side taking it, sometimes the other. Often the armies were camped on opposing banks, staring at each other across the lazy brown waters. But at the time of the Great Flood both armies were camped on the south-east of the river.

The enemy had the slightly higher land, furthest from the river, at a place they called Barren Heights. The ‘heights’ were barely six feet above the flood plain on which the City warriors were camped. But those few feet made a world of difference, an ocean. The City army was inundated, several feet deep, by the flood waters. The soldiers had to swim for their lives, and those who could not swim, or had been so imprudent as to wear their armour, drowned in their
thousands. The Blueskin army was flooded too, and drenched from above, and many of their soldiers drowned.

But maybe it was the superior position of the Blueskins, or their greater distance from the river, or perhaps their generals were just quicker to recover. But when the rain slowed and the City forces were still floundering half dead in the water …

… the Blues attacked.

Doon had never felt such fear. One moment she was ankle-deep in rain, the next, rushing water was up to her chest. The river, which she had last seen lying placidly half a league to the north of the army, surged through the centre of their camp, flushing them all off their feet like rats down a gulley.

Her head plunged under the muddy brown water, which flowed into her mouth and nose. She flailed her arms, spluttered as she found air, then panicked as she sank once more, weighed down by her heavy cotton trousers, leather jerkin and boots. She felt a strong grip on the collar of the jerkin and was dragged up through the water. Her face came out into air and she sucked in a shallow lungful. She grabbed the arm holding her and breathed again, her feet kicking around, trying to find something to stand on. But then she and her rescuer were both hit by an armoured body, alive or dead, at hip level. She was knocked sideways, down into the water again, and she felt the reassuring hand on her collar ripped away.

Thick muddy water was all around her and she had no idea which way was up. Greyness entered her head and she felt consciousness leaving. In a way it was a relief. Better than drowning, she thought …

Then the last conscious spark deep inside her felt hands grip her shoulders and she was dragged out of the water again. A voice close to her ear screamed, ‘Breathe, Doon, keep breathing!’ Her chest hurt and she was too tired to breathe. The calm cool darkness was captivating. Weakly she tried to pull away from the hot nagging voice.

Time passed sluggishly, and she found herself on her back, hard arms gripping her from behind. Her head was out of the water, her lungs open and free. She breathed luxuriously. A wave of water washed across her face and down her throat and she struggled feebly. But the arms held her tight and one hand shifted to support her chin, holding it out of the water as she was carried securely above the flood.