Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Read online

  Invasion

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Four

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Five

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  Invasion

  S.J.A. Turney

  Maps

  Prologue

  The world turns on the tip of a knife, and whatever the great men of empires and tribes might like to think, it is the wielders of those knives who hold great destinies, rather than those who command the wielders. I had been taken from my people on the misty, remote isle of Alba as a young girl by an imperial officer who saw the value in my uncanny visions. And though that great campaign failed and Gaius Volentius returned to his empire with me in tow, I had never forgotten that green, fresh land and its courageous, lively people; even when the Khan came with his armies and I first met the three soldiers I knew would be tied to the destiny of my island. Convocus – all honour and duty with a labyrinthine mind, Cantex – laughing, lucky and proud, and capable Bellacon – trailing destiny like a cloak of stars. And whatever I had seen and ever would see, those three – and particularly the last – became my world on the day the Khan’s dream failed.

  Ten years ago, at the siege of Velutio

  Titus Tythianus, commander of the imperial guard and close friend of the emperor, urged his horse forward, determined to be the first to touch land as the boarding ramp was run out. All along the shore, ships were beaching and preparing to disgorge a seemingly endless flood of men comprised of several imperial forces and their Pelasian allies, timber vessels with sails of half a dozen imperial fleets alongside the sleek black Pelasian darams. It was an impressive sight, as was made clear by the panic now evident among the enemy where they seethed across the ruined walls of Velutio and the green fields outside.

  Titus spotted wiry, red-faced Prefect Volentius on the next ship, readying his own horse for the ramp, desperate to achieve great deeds and increase his wavering reputation, that ever-present eerie witch woman in his entourage. She was watching this ship intently, though not Titus himself. Damn the pair of them.

  Volentius had been struggling through his wine-soaked life to rebuild a reputation shattered by failure a decade ago and was nothing less than a canker in the flesh of the military. And the witch woman he’d brought back from the north? Well, that woman just sent a shiver up Titus’ spine every time she looked at him. It was as if her eyes were planting poisonous seeds in his soul. At least she wasn’t looking at him now. His eyes strayed back across faces to try and see what she was peering at, but there were just men and horses, tense and waiting, a small trio of them laughing at some joke.

  The commander gripped his reins tighter, willing the descending ramp ever downwards. He was damned if he was going to let Volentius be the man to take the enemy leader’s head. Not that Titus had anything to prove, but in his opinion, any officer who put his own reputation ahead of the good of his army was a poor leader, and preventing further pomposity in Volentius was worth the push.

  The ramp smashed down onto the gravel shoreline and Titus was off, racing at the enemy, a flood of his best riders close at his heel, thunder on the boards as a tide of cavalry washed ashore, snarling and bellowing, baying for blood, their swords and lance tips flashing and glinting. While he knew he shouldn’t gloat, Titus cast a smug grin at Prefect Volentius, who was busy yelling at the sailors to hurry up and run out the damned ramp even as the witch woman in his entourage continued to stare creepily at the ship.

  And then the commander’s world became a tableau of violence and death.

  Cavalrymen fell in beside him as he swung his long, straight blade again and again, scything through the flesh of fleeing nomads. On the very cusp of triumph, with Velutio laid bare before them, the enemy had been thwarted by the arrival of the fleet and were now in danger of complete destruction. Though Titus had been absent throughout the siege, rallying the army and their allies to sail north and save Velutio, and therefore knew little of the forces surrounding the city, it was clear where the enemy leaders were to be found.

  He angled for the great tents on the hill, cleaving his way towards them. It was a cull. A harvest. Not a battle. Clearly the battle had been fought long and fought hard by the emperor and his meagre forces, but this? This was slaughter. Few of the enemy stood their ground, most dying with a spear in their back or their head rolling free as their legs pounded for the illusory safety of their camp.

  ‘The horse-humping bastard’s mine,’ called a voice off to his left, and Titus turned, fully intending to tell the rider that the important thing was to make sure the enemy leader was captured or killed, not who did it. Yet when he turned to the rider there was something almost joyous in the youthful face, and the rider laughed light and loud as though the whole thing were some great joke.

  Idiot.

  ‘Leave it out, Cantex,’ snorted another rider. ‘You couldn’t catch a cold.’

  And while Titus expected the first rider – Cantex – to lash out angrily, he simply laughed that carefree laugh once more. ‘And you ride a horse like my grandmother, Bellacon. And she’s only got one leg.’

  ‘Will you two shut up,’ said a third rider, closing with the others. ‘You’re giving me a headache, and I want to be able to think clearly while the commander over there is congratulating me for taking the Khan myself.’

  ‘Piss off, Convocus,’ chuckled the one called Bellacon. ‘Yes,’ put in the smiling one. ‘The day you beat us to anything faster than the last slice of pie, I’ll eat my own saddle.’

  Titus lost track of the friendly banter for a moment as the cavalry hit a small knot of nomads who had managed to form into something resembling an angry mob, spears and swords out. The world once more became a blur of spinning steel, grinding hooves, warm, pink spray and the smell of opened guts and bowels.

  As the newly-arrived relief force made gradual headway into the panicked army of nomads, the going gradually became tougher, partially from the increasing number of enemy bodies, but also from the deepening conviction and strength of those men as they closed on the Khan himself and his most powerful veterans.

  Titus felt a line of fire score across his thigh and managed to roll his eyes downwards momentarily in the press to see blood leaking out through his breeches and spreading rosy across the material. Flexing his muscles confirmed it was a surface cut and no more, so he pressed on, his sword rising and falling into the neck cords of a howling nomad. Spear points lashed out at him and a blade swept through the air close enough for him to feel the draft, and then his sword was stabbing and slashing out, dealing death to the beleaguered nomads, taking an eye, a hand, a head.

  A few moments later the nomad group was scattering once more as th
e first wave of imperial infantry hit them like a wall of steel in the cavalry’s wake, and the two dozen riders who’d left the ship together were once more racing through scattered fleeing forms, intent on capturing the nomads’ leader. Up the slope, Titus could see a group of nomads saddling up, their… squires?, handing them bows and swords. That was more what he’d expected from the infamous horse-lords.

  The landing had taken the enemy by surprise and few had been mounted. Now that was beginning to change. They had to take the Khan before the clans could rally.

  ‘Anyway,’ shouted one of the three horsemen again, drawing Titus’ focus irritatingly away from the goal, ‘perhaps the commander wants their leader for himself. You should ask him nicely, Cantex.’

  ‘Commander,’ grinned the laughing one in his sing-song voice, ‘can I have the enemy leader? Please? It is my birthday, soon…’

  Titus shook his head in exasperation at the ability of the young to treat such momentous and potentially deadly actions as these as though they were some sort of party game.

  ‘See,’ laughed the one with the dark curly hair – Bellacon, Titus thought – ‘the commander’s shaking his head. Maybe me, commander?’ implored the rider with a grin.

  ‘Concentrate on your job,’ shouted Titus, though without real rancour. Something about the playful manner of the three men was infectious and he was fighting to contain a mad grin of his own. ‘And leave the enemy commander to me.’

  The three riders laughed.

  ‘Only if you get there first, sir,’ called Cantex insolently.

  Another wave of desperate infantry surged across from somewhere, blocking their route. For a moment, Titus considered utilising the extra speed his mount granted him and simply skirting this bunch, leaving them to the others. But he could see Volentius gaining on him now, the prefect’s men clearing a way for him in his desperate rush to be the man who took the Khan’s head. Skirting wide now might very well hand the glory to Volentius, and the pompous sot didn’t deserve that. Titus would rather see the decoration for valour go to one of the three laughing riders in his wake, any day.

  Once again, Titus’ world became the charnel machine, edges and points seeking out his lifeblood, some coming dangerously close. His sword lashed out to the side, jabbing into a man’s throat, then wheeling up and back before slashing wide and taking a head with surprisingly little resistance. The smith on the ship had done an excellent job of putting a new keen edge on his blade.

  Blood sprayed, limbs whirled and the stink grew with the din until Titus felt as though he were being churned and spun in a great machine of carnage and shit.

  Moments later he burst from the rear of the knot of defenders and was suddenly in the relative open, those three laughing riders close by still, as though protecting him, or more likely vying with him for prime position. Here and there nomads among the fleeing bodies would turn and fight, and those who were not ridden down and pulverised beneath the pounding hooves were taken by sword or lance. Still Titus raced on.

  The hill was rising now, far from the ruined walls of the city, the great circular leather tents of the horse clan leaders visible at the crest where banners and standards wavered in the breeze. While the vast majority of the nomads seemed to have abandoned their leaders, preferring flight and the possibility of escape, a small knot of hard-looking men were forming up on horseback, some readying bows and nocking arrows while others levelled spears, clearly in a last effort to protect the Khan from this threat.

  ‘Watch out for those toothpicks,’ shouted Cantex.

  ‘It’s the missiles you want to watch,’ snorted his curly-haired friend, Bellacon.

  ‘Look! The enemy Khan!’ said Convocus, gesturing with his sword.

  Titus peered ahead. Sure enough, the Khan had emerged from the largest tent, arrayed in his finery, though his only concession to war gear was the curved blade in his hand. The commander was surprised to discover faint but definite feelings of envy and disappointment as he realised that the three friendly riders to his left would, for all their japes, reach the enemy leader before him. One of those three would indeed be the man to take the Khan and win glory and the highest of military decorations available in the field.

  The world changed in a heartbeat with a flurry of black-fletched arrows.

  The three men to his left had been engaged in a new, light-hearted argument and in the blink of an eye three voices became two. Titus turned his head as he urged his horse on and saw the most serious of the three, Convocus, ripped from his saddle as an arrow punched into his shoulder. His sword spun useless from his hand and his horse reared with two more arrows in its neck.

  Cantex, no longer laughing, was fighting to control his own horse from which black fletching protruded. For just a moment, Bellacon was in the clear. He could ride the Khan down and kill him or knock him out, or even snatch him up if he was agile and strong enough.

  But as Titus watched, Bellacon turned his horse, putting glory and reward behind him as he threw himself from his steed, running over to help his fallen friend.

  Titus felt a tiny twinge of guilt as he rode on, the Khan filling his gaze, the fallen riders left behind. The knot of nomad heroes were riding forward now to cut him off, but more and more cavalrymen were arriving to help him.

  The two groups of riders swept against one another like a high wave on a sea wall. There was little in the way of tactics or strategy. The imperial cavalry was forcing their way through the routed army to take the Khan as fast as possible, and the enemy was throwing desperate obstacles in the way as quickly as they could. Horses and men reared and fell, blood lingering in an almost constant pink mizzle in the air as men stabbed and hacked, lashed out with spears and even pushed, shoved and battered at one another in the press. Titus fought to maintain his control of the beast beneath him and to remain upright and alive in the desperate melee. Arrows whirred through the air, though loosed from such close range they carried little power and few did more than rattle off shields, helmets and armour.

  The nomads had done what they could to protect the Khan, but it was hopeless. Their strength lay in speed and intensity, sweeping in and loosing arrows, taking the periphery of a force first without putting themselves in too much danger. Once they met in a headlong charge, it was the heavily armoured imperial forces who were fighting on their own terms.

  A gap opened up, and Titus swept his sword down, the blade pink and watery with blood as it cleaved the top span from a bow and then took the archer’s forearm. Then he was out in the relative open once more, his companion cavalry still close and hammering at the defenders in the press.

  Leaving the nomads to his men, Titus ploughed on towards the enemy leader, who was readying his sword to meet the charging commander. For a single moment, Titus glanced back and had a brief image of the two cavalrymen, Cantex and Bellacon, standing back to back above the fallen figure of their friend, fighting off the running nomads who were taking every opportunity to try and kill a few stray dismounted imperial soldiers in their flight.

  The Khan’s great curved blade was brought back to the side, and Titus saw the coming moments in his mind’s eye. Even as that gleaming steel, impossibly thin and sharp, scythed through the air and the front legs of the commander’s horse as though they were naught but butter, Titus was already out of the saddle, jumping to safety.

  He landed hard, rolling, his sword out safely to the side, and came to his feet swiftly, dancing back towards the Khan who was already readying his weapon again. Titus prepared to meet the Khan warrior to warrior, duelling as leaders of men had done since the dawn of time.

  His rage was almost incandescent as Prefect Volentius appeared from somewhere and struck the Khan on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword, knocking the man out. As the nomad leader fell, his eyes rolling up into their sockets, Titus let out an angry roar and stomped across the turf, grasping Volentius by his wrist and pulling the man bodily from his horse. The smug smile vanished from the prefect’s f
ace as he hit the grass, winded.

  ‘If you think I’ll recommend you for honours for that, Prefect, then you’re sadly mistaken.’

  Leaving Volentius spluttering in outrage and floundering on the grass, Titus gripped his sword and stalked out away from the command tent, hacking at any nomad who was foolish enough to get close to him. He registered for a moment the eyes of that barbarian witch who was never far from the prefect’s side. Her gaze was on him, then flicked across the field of battle.

  Titus found himself following the path of her eyes.

  The battle, such as it was, was over. There would still be hard fighting in the streets and ruins of Velutio for a while, but the nomad camp had fallen and the bulk of their survivors were running for their lives, heading east as fast as their legs or steeds could carry them. The northern rebel lords were already decamped and running north, trying to escape the fight before it reached them properly.

  But that was not the subject of the witch woman’s gaze.

  Among the various small fights still raging across the field, he could see the young cavalrymen. The one with the arrow wound, Convocus, was resting against his dead horse, lashing out with his sword whenever an enemy came within reach. The one called Bellacon had now also been wounded, but had positioned himself so that he covered his friend’s blind side, similarly flailing at the enemy and keeping stray blows away. Cantex remained unwounded, standing behind the pair, keeping them safe as he fought off three men at once.

  Titus was impressed. Even as he watched, one of those three assailants died in a welter of blood. The two on the floor worked together to bring down another nomad, and even had the presence of mind to shout a warning to another random dismounted cavalryman nearby. That soldier turned just in time to block a blow that would have cleaved his head, and shouted his thanks, though he could not reach them to help, engaged as he was with other nomads.

  The commander, his recent anger all but forgotten, stormed across the grass, pausing only to push a struggling pair out of the way, and hacked the arm from one of the nomads attacking the three friends. With the aid of the commander, the three pushed back at the opportunistic nomads attacking them and, realising their easy targets had just become much more troublesome, the easterners fled. Titus cut one last enemy warrior down as he ran, then turned and joined Cantex in helping the other two to their feet. Both groaned at the pain coursing through them.