1163rd Year of Blaze’s Slumber

  105th Year of the Nazalam Empire

  9th Year of Empress Lasean’s Rule

  A young marine intercepted Taterztayl as she made her way across the compound in what was now Empire headquarters in Liet. The boy’s face had bewilderment written all over it, and he opened his mouth a few times before any words came out.

  ‘Sorceress?’

  She stopped. The thought of having Tynell wait a little longer appealed to her. ‘What is it, soldier?’

  The marine stole a glance over one shoulder, then said, ‘The guards, Sorceress. They’ve got something of a problem. They sent me to—’

  ‘Who? Which guards? Take me to them.’

  ‘Yes, Sorceress.’

  She followed the marine around the nearest corner of the main building, where the compound wall ran close, creating a narrow passage running the building’s length. At the far end knelt a figure, his bare head bowed. Beside him was a large, lumpy burlap sack, covered in brown stains. Clouds of flies swarmed around both the man and the sack.

  The marine halted and turned to the sorceress. ‘He still hasn’t moved. The guards keep getting sick when they patrol through here.’

  Taterztayl stared at the huddled man, a sudden welling of tears behind her eyes. Ignoring the marine, she strode into the aisle. The stench hit her like a wall. Damn, she thought, he’s been here since the battle. Five days. The sorceress came closer. Though Crusherskull knelt, his head came near to her own height. The Asgardmen Leading Sorcerer still wore what was left of his battle garb, the ragged strips of fur scorched and torn, the rough weave of fragments of tunic stained with blood. As she arrived to stop before him, she saw that his neck and face were covered in burn blisters, and most of his hair was gone.

  ‘You look terrible, Crusherskull,’ she said.

  The giant’s head slowly turned. Red-rimmed eyes focused on her face. ‘Ah,’ he rumbled. ‘Taterztayl.’ His exhausted smile cracked the charred flesh of one cheek. The wound gaped red and dry.

  That smile almost broke her down. ‘You need healing, old friend.’ Her gaze flicked to the burlap sack. Its surface crawled with flies. ‘Come on. Darknip would bite your head off if she could see you now.’ She felt a trembling steal into her, but grimly pressed on. ‘We’ll take care of her, Crusherskull. You and me. But we’ll need our strength to do that.’

  The Asgardmen shook his head slowly. ‘I choose this, Taterztayl. The scars without are the scars within.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I will survive these wounds. And I alone will raise my love’s barrow. But the time is not yet right.’ He laid a massive hand on the sack. ‘Tynell has given me leave to do this. Will you do the same?’

  Taterztayl was shocked to feel the surge of anger rising up in her.

  ‘Tynell gave you leave, did he?’ To her own ears her voice sounded brutal, a harsh grating of sarcasm. She saw Crusherskull flinch and seem to withdraw, and a part of her wanted to wail, to throw her arms around the giant and weep, but rage possessed her. ‘That bastard killed Darknip, Crusherskull! The Satellite’s lord had neither the time nor the inclination to raise demons. Think about it! Tynell had the time to prepare—’

  ‘No!’ The Asgardmen’s voice thundered down the aisle. He surged to his feet and Taterztayl stepped back. The giant looked ready to tear down the walls, a desperate fire in his eyes. His hands closed into fists. Then his glare fixed on her. He seemed to freeze. All at once his shoulders slumped, his hands opened, and his eyes dimmed. ‘No,’ he said again, this time in a tone filled with sorrow. ‘Tynell is our protector. As he has always been, Taterztayl. Remember the very beginning? The Emperor was mad, but Tynell stood at his side. He shaped the Empire’s dream and so opposed the Emperor’s nightmare. We underestimated the Master of Satellite’s Offspring, that is all.’

  Taterztayl stared up at Crusherskull’s ravaged face. The memory of Furbolt’s torn body returned to her. There was an echo there, but she couldn’t quite catch it. ‘I remember the beginning,’ she said softly, doing some searching of her own. The memories remained sharp, but whatever thread there was that connected then to now still eluded her. She desperately wanted to talk to Swift Nevis, but she had seen nothing of the Linktorches since the day of the battle. They’d left her with Furbolt, and that puppet scared her more and more with every passing day. Particularly now that he’d found a grudge to hold on to – the scene with the Pack of Serpents still smarted – and he worked it by keeping her in the dark. ‘The Emperor had a knack for gathering the right people around him,’ she continued. ‘But he wasn’t a fool. He knew the betrayal would come from that group. What made us the right people was our power. I remember, Crusherskull.’ She shook her head. ‘The Emperor’s gone, but the power’s still here.’

  Taterztayl’s breath caught. ‘And that’s it,’ she said, half to herself. ‘Tynell’s the thread.’

  ‘The Emperor was insane,’ Crusherskull said. ‘Else he would have protected himself better.’

  Taterztayl frowned at that. The Asgardmen had a point. Like she’d just said, that old man wasn’t a fool. So what had happened? ‘I’m sorry. We must talk later. The Leading Sorcerer has summoned me. Crusherskull, will we talk later?’

  The giant nodded. ‘As you wish. Soon I will depart to raise Darknip’s barrow. Far out on the Stout Grasslands, I think.’

  Taterztayl glanced back up the aisle. The marine still stood there, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Crusherskull, would you mind if I cast a sealing spell on her remains?’

  His eyes clouded and he looked down at the sack. ‘The guards are unhappy, it’s true.’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, Taterztayl. You may do that.’

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  ‘It smells bad from here to the throne,’ Aqida said, his scarred face twisted with worry. He sat crouched on his haunches, absently scratching the lines of a web on the ground with his dagger, then looked up at his sergeant.

  Uiscejacques eyed Liet’s stained walls, the muscles of his jaw bunching beneath his beard. ‘The last time I stood on this hill,’ he said, his gaze narrowing, ‘it was crowded with armour. And a mage and a half.’ He was silent for a time, then he sighed. ‘Go on, Corporal.’

  Aqida nodded. ‘I pulled some old threads,’ he said, squinting against the harsh morning light. ‘Somebody high up has us marked. Could be the court itself, or maybe the nobility – there’s rumours they’re back at it behind the scenes.’ He grimaced. ‘And now we’ve got some new captain from Magbalaan eager to get our throats cut. Four captains in the last three years, not one worth his weight in salt.’

  Swift Nevis stood ten feet away, at the hill’s crest, his arms crossed. He now spoke. ‘You heard the plan. Come on, Uiscejacques. That man slid straight out of the palace and into our laps on a stream of—’

  ‘Quiet,’ Uiscejacques muttered. ‘I’m thinking.’

  Aqida and Swift Nevis exchanged glances.

  A long minute passed. On the road below troop wagons rattled in the ruts leading into the city. Remnants of the 5th and 6th Infantries, already battered, almost broken, by Carvier Languish and the Blood-Red Guardians. Uiscejacques shook his head. The only force intact was the Anisoptera, and they seemed determined to field only the Darkness regiments, using the Emerald for lifts and drops – and where the hell was the Yellow he’d been hearing so much about? Damn those unhuman bastards anyway. Liet’s gutters still ran red from their hour of retribution. Once the burial shifts were through, there’d be a few more hills outside the city’s walls. Big ones.

  There would be nothing to mark thirteen hundred dead Linktorches, though. The worms didn’t need to travel far to feast on those bodies. What chilled the sergeant to his bones was the fact that, apart from the few survivors, nobody had made a serious effort to save them. Some low-ranking officer had delivered Tynell’s commiserations on those lost in the line of duty, then had unloaded a wagonload of tripe about heroism and sacrifice. His audience of thirty-nine stone-faced soldiers had looked on without a word. The officer was found dead in his room two hours later, expertly garotted. The mood was bad – nobody in the regiment would have even thought of something so ugly five years ago. But now they didn’t blink at the news.

  Garotte – sounds like Talon work. Aqida had suggested it was a set-up, an elaborate frame to discredit what was left of the Linktorches. Uiscejacques was sceptical.

  He tried to clear his thoughts. If there was a pattern it would be a simple one, simple enough to pass by unnoticed. But exhaustion seeped in like a thick haze behind his eyes. He took a deep lungful of the morning air. ‘The new recruit?’ he asked.

  Aqida rose from his haunches with a grunt. A faraway and long-ago look entered his eyes. ‘Maybe,’ he said finally. ‘Pretty young for a Talon, though.’

  ‘I never believed in pure evil before Sorrowful showed up,’ Swift Nevis said. ‘But you’re right, she’s awfully young. How long are they trained before they’re sent out?’

  Aqida shrugged uneasily. ‘Fifteen years minimum. Mind you, they get them young. Five or six.’

  ‘Could be magery involved, making her look younger than she is,’ Swift Nevis said. ‘High-level stuff, but within Tynell’s abilities.’

  ‘Seems too obvious,’ Uiscejacques muttered. ‘Call it bad upbringing.’

  Swift Nevis snorted. ‘Don’t tell me you believe that, Uiscejacques.’

  The sergeant’s face tightened. ‘The subject’s closed on Sorrowful. And don’t tell me what I think, Wizard.’ He faced Aqida. ‘All right. You think the Empire’s into killing its own these days. You think Lasean’s cleaning her house, maybe? Or someone close to her? Getting rid of certain people. Fine. Tell me why.’

  ‘The old guard,’ Aqida replied immediately. ‘Everyone still loyal to the Emperor’s memory.’

  ‘Doesn’t wash,’ Uiscejacques said. ‘We’re all dying off anyway. We don’t need Lasean’s help. Apart from Drin there’s not a man in this army here who even knows the Emperor’s name, and nobody would give a damn in any case. He’s dead. Long live the Empress.’

  ‘She ain’t got the patience to wait it out,’ Swift Nevis said.

  Aqida nodded agreement. ‘She’s losing momentum as it is. Things used to be better – it’s that memory she wants dead.’

  ‘Furbolt’s our snake in the hole,’ Swift Nevis said with a sharp nod. ‘It’ll work, Uiscejacques. I know what I’m doing on this one.’

  ‘We do it the way the Emperor would have,’ Aqida added. ‘We turn the game around. We do our own house-cleaning.’

  Uiscejacques raised a hand. ‘All right. Now be quiet. You’re both sounding too damn rehearsed.’ He paused. ‘It’s a theory. A complicated one. Who’s in the know and who isn’t?’ He scowled at Swift Nevis’s expression. ‘Right, that’s Furbolt’s task. But what happens when you come face to face with someone big, powerful and mean?’

  ‘Like Tynell?’ The wizard grinned.

  ‘Right. I’m sure you’ve got an answer. Let’s see if I can work it out myself. You look for someone even nastier. You make a deal and you set things up, and if we’re quick enough we’ll come out smelling of roses. Am I close, Wizard?’

  Aqida snorted his amusement.

  Swift Nevis looked away. ‘Back in the Seven Metropolises, before the Empire showed up—’

  ‘Back in the Seven Metropolises is back in the Seven Metropolises,’ Uiscejacques said. ‘Hell, I led the company chasing you across the desert, remember? I know how you work, Swift. And I know you’re damn good at this. But I also recall that you were the only one of your cabal to come out alive back then. And this time?’

  The wizard seemed hurt by Uiscejacques’s words. His lips thinned to a straight line.

  The sergeant sighed. ‘All right. We go with it. Start things rolling. And pull that sorceress all the way in. We’ll need her if Furbolt breaks his chains.’

  ‘And Sorrowful?’ Aqida asked.

  Uiscejacques hesitated. He knew the question behind that question. Swift Nevis was the squad’s brains, but Aqida was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents. ‘Leave her alone,’ he said at last. ‘For now.’

  Aqida and Swift Nevis sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant’s back.

  ‘Just don’t get cocky,’ Uiscejacques said drily.

  The grins faded.

  The sergeant’s gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.’ The riders were from his squad, Piper and Sorrowful.

  ‘You think the new captain’s arrived?’ Aqida asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two long-time companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.

  Uiscejacques looked on, amused. ‘Probably. Let’s head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.’ Then his humour fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Swift Nevis or Aqida. There was no point in complicating things even further, though. They’ll find out soon enough.