The Fall to Power (6 page)

             
Save the harvest, little happened here to disturb the peace. Until today.

             
The cows looked up, curious, from their grass, chewing absent-mindedly as they watched with interest the road that wound its way twixt field and fen. The farmers at work lay down their pitchforks and hoes, their labourers’ lunches of bread and cheese stopping halfway to their mouths as the ground began to rumble and a cloud of dust kicked up, signalling the arrival of visitors to their land.

             
Black shapes hove into view, a score, clad in black form-fitting leather despite the noon-day heat, riding tall, black steeds and led by a duo that rode to the fore; one, handsome, in a white robe over which he wore shining silver armour that dazzled in the sun; the other, white haired, grim of visage, clad in the same stylised black armour as the men that trailed behind him.

             
The peasants looked down as the formation thundered past, for it was best not to attract the attention of the legendary Black Riders.

             
For the Khrdas were on the move, and where they rode, death was sure to follow.

***

That infernal humming. Droning, mindless, the sound made by a happy idiot. Memphias fumed, wishing it were so, but the cheerful rider beside him, long hair streaming in the breeze, was none other than Bavard, General of the King’s legions, leader of ten thousand clansmen. Ever-merry he may be, but idiot certainly not. And one would be a fool to accuse him of such in ear-shot.

             
Memphias had often wondered who would win should he ever challenge the General for real; one, tall, strong, clad in ensorcelled silver plate and wielding his runic hammer of stone; the other, a master assassin, lithe, fast, lethal with dagger and throwing star.

             
Of course, they’d duelled in the past, light-hearted combat for the amusement of the King, but such games were an unfair test of the Khrda’s skills; for to hold back, to stay his blade, to aim to knockdown rather than kill, this was not his style. He felt stifled in duels, handicapped.

             
No, he preferred to kill quickly, cleanly. Striking from the shadows and leaving before the deed was noticed. Not his way to draw things out, taking pleasure from every moment. Not like Bavard did. Not like the King.

             
Invictus. Now there would be a fight. There would be a target. Could a dagger, even his own envenomed tools that had claimed a hundred, a hundred-hundred lives, kill a God-King?

             
He’d never had the opportunity to duel the King, not during his sixty years of service.

             
Sixty years…

             
To look at, Memphias was no older than thirty, his close-cropped hair naturally white, not bleached with age, his piercing grey eyes having lost none of their youthful lustre.

Such was the boon of being in service to Invictus; the God-King’s immortal presence seemed to draw in those around him, like a heavy stone placed on a stretched out sheet, weighing it down and causing those things close enough to roll down and join it. To be in his presence was to live in a different flow of time to mortal men.

There were other boons, too. Darker boons.

Boons that suited the assassin and the warrior.

He shook his idle musings from his mind, focusing on the task in hand, for the road would soon be coming to an end, the shining, white towers already rising ahead over the green fields.

Pen-Tulador. Home of his target, the Lord Arbistrath.

Tracking the girl down had been too easy. He’d gotten word of his King’s bidding the morning before, that a servant girl was on the run, to be brought back to Ceceline for, ahem, ‘questioning.’ The girl didn’t even make it to the city walls before Memphias had come out of the shadows, rendering her unconscious with a nerve strike and carting her back to the Seers’ Tower.

Questioning. He shuddered at the complete injustice of the word, for it was no questioning. It was rape, of the most brutal and violating kind, the Seeress leaving the poor girl nothing but a dribbling wreck, her mind and soul scoured, shrivelled and useless like a gourd of wine left out in the sun.

It had done the job though; her orders had indeed come from the home of Arbistrath. This, plus the fact that the Seeresses had been unable to scry the fortress, some kind of shadowing, shielding effect hiding the place from their sight, had been enough to warrant the dispatch of the Khrdas.

And once the Khrdas had been dispatched, the deed was as good as done.

Enter the keep and capture the traitorous Lord and any Shamans found within.

Through will or might.

Memphias sniffed. He preferred the cold subtlety of a hidden blade.

***

Marlyn squinted into the glaring mid-day sun from his vantage point atop the gleaming white walls of the citadel, his keen eyes shaded by the roof of the ramparts, scanning for any hint of the force his betters had warned him about.

             
It still seemed surreal, that the gates should be shut, the walls manned, the guard mobilised, ready to repel a force sent by their own King. It didn’t make sense, any of it. Why would the Clansmen be coming here, to Pen-Tulador? Their Lord was a good ruler, in his way. Sure, he may have kept himself to himself, but he looked after the land, as his father had before him; his taxes were less than crippling and – rarely for a Lord of the Land – he did his best to keep his people safe when the Hunt came a-roaming.

             
But then what would Marlyn know? He’d been on the Guard for two weeks.

             
A heavy hand on his shoulder and he turned, smiling, as Daveth stood next to him, bow ever-slung over his shoulder.

             
“Still no sign, eh? I’m starting to doubt these rumours of our impending demise.”

             
Marlyn chuckled out of nerves, but also out of genuine humour, for Daveth had always had a way of settling his nerves; like brothers they were, from toiling the fields as lads to trying their luck with the maids in the village tavern, they were inseparable in their youth.

             
So it stood to reason that when Daveth had signed up for the guard, Marlyn had followed.

             
But where the bigger lad, with his cocky confidence, had excelled in every aspect of training, Marlyn had struggled; he was strong – all farmer’s lads were – but the bow, the sword, all the weapons had felt cumbersome, unwieldy in his hands, his strikes and shots amateurish and clumsy.

             
He couldn’t understand why the Guard still used such ancient weapons when the mechanical crossbows and ballistae of the Clans had been in use for a century or more. But then Marlyn had always been mechanically minded; even on his father’s farm he’d kept his mind busy, contriving new and ingenious ways of threshing and ploughing with ever greater efficiency, using pulleys, winches, cables to give one horse the strength of ten.

             
Not that they’d always gone according to plan, mind.

             
His father still hadn’t forgiven him for the gelding that had been catapulted a hundred yards to land in the next field.

             
“Thinking of home?”

             
He nodded, never any point trying to conceal the truth from his friend.

             
“Aye. Wondering how dad’s getting on with the farm. Wondering how he’ll cope if the Clansmen are actually marching on us.”

             
He turned to Daveth, concern on his young face of only nineteen summers.

             
“Will we actually stand a chance? What if they bring siege weapons? Towers?”

             
His friend didn’t reply at once, instead looking out into the far distance, as though he could see their village ten miles off.

             
“Mum’ll be baking right now,” he mused, as though to himself. “Fresh bread, ready for dinner tonight. Fresh butter from farmer Lowe, down the road. Bacon from our own pigs.”

             
A gruff voice from behind them caused them to start, break out of the reverie.

             
“You’re guardsmen now, lads. You’ll eat your gruel and be thankful for it!”

             
Sergeant Poland was a grizzled veteran, lined face stern, but there was a grim humour beneath his stony veneer that kept his men in line without them resenting him.

             
He walked over, his mail coat clinking in time to the limp of his gammy leg, ceremonial sword tied at his belt.

             
Ceremonial. Hah! On the drill ground, Marlyn had stood in awe as the ageing warrior had disarmed five recruits in as many moves with that ceremonial sabre. The man’s skill was legend, him being the personal tutor to Arbistrath himself, or so they said.

             
Rumour even had it that, in his youth, the man had approached the Khrdas, aiming to join their elite ranks, such was his skill and ruthlessness in the day. But for his gammy leg, perhaps he could have made the cut.

             
Now though, he was content, at least on the surface, to be the man in charge of training the new recruits to the Guard. And a fine job of it he did. Not a man had a bad word to say about him.

             
“So, young ‘uns, we comparing mama’s recipes? Fine conversation to while away the watch.”

             
The pair laughed.

             
“That’s about it, sarge!”

             
The officer shot Daveth a look of warning, only half serious.

             
“What have I told you, son, a million times?”

             
Marlyn grinned as his embarrassed friend recited the mantra.

             
“There’s only two types of sarge; the massage. And the sausage.”

             
“Right! And do I look like either?”

             
“No, sergeant.”

             
“Very good. Bear that in mind.”

             
He joined them on the edge of the wall, high above the moat. Other guardsmen, too, were posted at points along the wall on this side of the gatehouse. Another wall was opposite, fifty feet away, with the causeway between them. The design was cunning, for no enemy could reach the gatehouse without running a gauntlet of bowfire from above.

             
Against any conventional enemy, the fortress would have been a difficult prospect.

             
Even Clansmen would have struggled, for they favoured horse and scimitar over battering ram and siege tower, though sheer weight of numbers would have finally won them through.

             
Against any conventional enemy, they might have stood a chance.

             
They didn’t face a conventional enemy.

             
A piercing scream echoed across the ramparts, before fading into the depths below, culminating in a splash.

             
Frantic motion, adrenaline surging, as guardsmen leaned out, peering this way and that to find the source of the scream.

             
Another cry of terror, receding then ending with a splat of finality, as a guardsman down the wall was dragged over the edge.

             
The sergeant frowned in confusion.

             
“No…”

             
Eyes widened in horror as Daveth and Marlyn looked out to the wall opposite, their stomachs clutched in icy fingers of dread.

             
There, on the blindingly white wall opposite, figures could be seen somehow crawling their way up, gripping to the sheer stone, almost invisible in the sunlight thanks to pure white sheets that covered them head to toe.

             
Marlyn stood gawping, but Daveth burst into action, ever the one to act first. He unslung his bow, nocked an arrow and fired, the missile streaking across the depths and thudding into one of the white sheets, pinning it to the wall and unveiling the climbing figure.

             
The black-armoured warrior turned, glaring up at them with evil masked eyes, suspended  by one spiked vambrace dug into the stone, before continuing his climb with renewed pace.

             
“Khrdas…”

             
They looked to their sergeant, hesitant, seeing shock and fear warring across his face, but in the end, neither won, his resolve steeling with the experience of decades, before grasping his sabre and brandishing it in the air.