Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Read online

  There was a deep, unsettling groan, and the stones shivered again. Kiva looked down nervously. ‘Are we in danger? Maybe we should abandon the Eyrie?’

  Quintillian shook his head. ‘That’s just a ripple. It’ll be felt all the way along this stretch of wall. The tower’s in no danger, but if the sigma goes, we’re going to have a real fight on our hands.’

  Kiva returned his attention to the endangered walls, his heart rising into his throat at the sudden realization of the scale of the danger. Black, greasy smoke was now belching up into the blue. It must have been an impressive feat of engineering in dreadful conditions, removing several of the large stone blocks just above the waterline in torrential rain and probably waist-deep in freezing water, propping up the stones with timbers as they chipped away. Then, this morning, when they felt the hole was wide enough, stuffing in brush smeared with pig fat. They must have brought it across the water with them during the night in a waterproof bag – probably also sealed with pig fat. No doubt the bag was stuffed in there as well.

  And whoever had planned it had known Velutio’s walls well. The sigma was probably the weakest section of the entire circuit, having been rebuilt from the stones of the gate and using pieces of old columns and the like to fill in the gaps. In most other places, the wall’s stones would be too large and well-set to even consider this in one night. But the rebuild had, Kiva remembered, been a rather haphazard affair. His father had always planned on a new rebuild, but it had ever been put off due to the lack of any kind of threat to the city. Well, they were paying for such short-sightedness now.

  Men were running along the walls, desperately making for the area where a column of roiling black split the sky. Before Quintillian even pointed it out, Kiva spotted the gateway of Aldegund’s camp opening. The walls gave another shudder and there was another ominous groan.

  The only bright spark was the independent thinking artillerist who took the opportunity without orders to loose a bag of rocks from an onager that utterly obliterated the small group of miners slowly making their way back up the slope, their frozen legs numb and giving them difficulty. It was small revenge, though. A last judder and groan, and there was a horrible cracking noise before suddenly, and most spectacularly, the entire sigma stretch of wall split away from the straight ramparts to either side and began to lean out precariously. Kiva watched in dismay as the walls reached that critical point of balance and finally gave way, smashing out into the moat where they more or less formed a causeway across the water.

  ‘But we still have the inner walls,’ Kiva muttered in a shocked tone as he stared along the circuit to where a huge gap in the outer defences had opened up, granting an access to the enemy that would hardly even wet their feet.

  ‘Yes, it’s not over yet,’ noted Quintillian, his expression grim, ‘but it’s a major blow. And if they managed to get through the outer wall in just two days, what else have they got planned for us?’

  Now, Aldegund’s forces were pouring out of his camp. Down along the wall, officers were shouting orders and temporary obstacles were being brought forward to form a makeshift rampart in the gap. Archers were lining the higher inner walls two deep, preparing to deal with the coming assault. Kiva stared in horror at the sheer number of men coming down that slope from the camp at the forest’s edge. He slapped his palm on the pommel of his sword and straightened.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Quintillian asked quietly.

  ‘I’m going to go and take part.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Quint, this is the life or death of the city… of the empire! I have to be part of it. Think of the boost in morale it will give the men.’

  ‘Think of the knock to their morale when you get skewered by some rebel archer’s arrow. Not a chance you’re going down there. I’ll knock you out myself if you try.’

  Kiva sighed and sagged against the stonework. His eyes strayed back to the nomads at the far side. At least the Khan’s distraction was now collapsing. The ladders had all gone and the bridges were burning under sizzling pitch and white-hot sand. The remaining clansmen were racing back towards their camp. Their work done, the Khan’s men were running back to lick their wounds, happy to leave the next assault to their barbarian allies.

  Kiva watched in dismay as thousands of rebel soldiers and barbarians poured towards the gap in the walls. He felt the dreadful possibility that he was watching the death throes of the empire playing out before him. And even if they moved at the fastest speed possible, it would be days yet before Titus and Jala returned with any kind of support.

  The bulk of the defensive force of Velutio – currently the entire imperial army in the northern and central regions – were converging on the ruined sigma, members of the imperial guard alongside the regular army, auxiliary units drawn from every region and citizen levy raised from the city itself. Every man who could wield a spear or sword or loose an arrow with any level of accuracy was arriving, archers finding positions up high, the rest preparing to face the enemy horde or helping construct the temporary redoubt to fill the gap.

  He watched, counting off the time first in minutes, then in quarters, then halves, then hours, as the enemy reached the sigma and began the fight to gain the outer walls. As the sun rose higher and the few scattered clouds faded from the azure sky, the fight for the sigma raged on and the dead piled up. And at every count he made, Kiva wished he could be there with his people, fighting for the survival of his empire. But Quintillian was right. For every spirit that would rise with his presence, there would be two that would break should he die in the fight, and Kiva knew his ability with the senate and the councillors of the court and the administration of empire, but he also knew the limit of his martial talents, and knew that if one man were to be a viable leader down there it would be his brother, not he. Yet Quintillian remained atop the Eyrie with him, endlessly giving out streams of orders to the various officers to reinforce certain sections, reposition archers, draw men from other areas and so on.

  Away by the sigma, only 60 or 70 paces from their viewing platform, barbarians raised axes and brought them down in killing blows, smashing bones, severing limbs and crushing bodies. Soldiers lanced out with their short imperial blades, neatly and efficiently dispatching the enemy. Archers loosed missiles into any enemy they could pick out. Aldegund’s army had a vast superiority in numbers, but their advantage was largely negated by their limited approach. The fallen sigma was just 50 paces wide, and the rubble causeway approaching it the same, such that the bulk of the enemy were still snarled up on the far side, where four artillery pieces on the nearest towers continually pounded them, leaving smears of flesh and blood on the grass. Better yet, given the positions, the enemy could not get archers in any place where they could effectively attack the men at the walls, and so the beleaguered defenders fought on with lions’ strength against an army that would, in an open field, simply swamp them.

  Finally, as the world began to take on an indigo hue and the sun became a dome of gold over the city roofs to the west, the struggle came to an end. Someone among the besieging rebels decided that the fight would be too uncertain in the dark, and the enemy pulled back from the breach, staggering and running across the turf to Aldegund’s camp. The artillery continued to loose into the retreating army until they reached a safe distance, and Kiva stared at the world in the wake of the siege.

  The green sward before the rebel lord’s camp was littered with dead, mangled and torn. Spears, arrows and desperate, imploring arms reached up from the ground like a sickly forest, and carrion animals both flying and walking were beginning to feed among the dead, pecking even at the wounded who feebly flapped at them, trying to stop the dreadful torture of their dying bodies. There was little green to be seen on the grass at all.

  Closer to Velutio, the moat was a horrible brown colour, formed of churned mud and seas of blood, bodies bobbing on the water so thick they could almost form a causeway themselves. And the sigma?

  It had
been held.

  By all the gods, the sigma had been held! There was no jubilation among the exhausted defenders, though, as they moved about the rubble and the makeshift barriers, rolling hundreds of dead barbarians and rebels away into the moat, reinforcing the temporary wall and seeing to their wounds.

  ‘We can plug that gap a little better during the night,’ Quintillian sighed with relief. ‘Certainly we can make it strong enough to give us a better chance tomorrow, depending on what the enemy have planned next. For now, you and I need to get down there and pat some backs. Those men achieved the unachievable today and they deserve to be honoured.’

  Kiva nodded his agreement, all words dying in his throat, and turned to follow his brother. Before they descended, he cast a last look at the site of the battle in the increasingly orange glow of the sunset.

  They had made it through another day. How many more could they manage?

  Chapter XXVII

  Of Words and War

  ‘I’d not expected that,’ admitted Quintillian as he peered over the parapet, trying not to lean on the damp stonework. Though the sky was once again clear and blue, the night had brought with it a two-hour downpour that had left the world smelling damp and earthy again. While Kiva had grumbled about it, Quintillian had pointed out that a damp world meant that if the enemy decided to use fire their task would be made all the more difficult, and rain made archery troublesome too, so he, for one, was hoping for even more of a deluge. And, of course, the rain had washed away some of the filth from the battlefield, reducing the stench of death.

  The defending garrison had mostly slept fitfully in place, sheltered from the rain only by cloaks and in short shifts as they worked to plug the gap at the sigma, and with dawn they were ready once more for the next assault. Though tired, the men were alert, watching both camps as best they could to be prepared for whatever the enemy had in mind this morning.

  But it appeared that what they had in mind was a conversation.

  A rider from the nomad camp had raced towards the walls not long after dawn, a long spear in his hand bearing a white streamer, and had planted the spear in the earth just out of bowshot of the wall. Though none of the defenders knew the customs of the nomads, it seemed clear that this was a call to parlay, and now, as the brothers watched from their lofty viewpoint, a small party of riders began to approach from the nomad camp.

  Kiva turned to the runner standing by the stairs. ‘Have our horses brought round and have Prefect Secutus gather a small honour guard.’

  The man saluted and jogged off down the stairs, leaving the brothers alone on the tower once more. ‘I cannot see how he can have anything constructive to say,’ Quintillian muttered, ‘but I would like to look into his eyes. Perhaps I can glean a clue as to what he has planned.’

  Moments later the pair were racing down the stairs and in short order the gates were opened and the emperor and his marshal, along with a prefect and 20 imperial guardsmen in their gleaming scale shirts and black tunics were pounding across the bridge and out onto the wet grass. Fortunately, this area had not yet been involved in the fight, lying as it did in the mid-point between the nomad front and the barbarian one, and so the turf was clear of the bodies and debris that littered other stretches of the defences.

  After two days of being trapped within the city there was something liberating about riding across open grass, regardless of the circumstances. Kiva smiled. He was not a lover of riding for leisure like his brother, and he had spent weeks on end never leaving the confines of Velutio, but the moment it became impossible to do so, he’d never realized how much he wanted to be out in the open.

  The nomad deputation were already sitting by the spear with its limp, unmoving white streamer. The Khan was there, as well as his son and a mix of warriors and old men. The Khan’s advisors, Kiva guessed from his brother’s descriptions, and a few of the most senior chieftains. Kiva kept his smile small and bland, though inside he felt like grinning at the sight. The old Khan, an impressive looking man for all his age, and his son, a huge brute of a warrior, were sitting with their horses turned slightly away from each other, their gazes not meeting. Clearly something had happened and father and son were not currently on the best of terms. Knowledge like that was always of use.

  ‘Great Khan,’ Kiva said in a cool, clear voice with a nod of the head as one noble to another. The Khan nodded back.

  ‘Emperor of the West. You are younger than I expected. I had it in the eye of my mind that you were older than your brother here.’

  ‘That I am, but not by a great deal.’

  The emperor turned to the huge warrior who was gazing out across the grass at the walls. ‘Ganbaatar.’

  The Khan’s son turned a look of utter hatred and disgust on him, and Kiva almost laughed. These two would never command an army together without quarrelling. Add Aldegund into the mix and there were likely already factions forming in the enemy ranks. And if Kiva could just insert a pry-bar into the cracks and widen them, perhaps he could buy time for the city while they fought among themselves.

  ‘You will not turn my son against me, young emperor.’

  Kiva, surprised, turned back to the Khan. The old man had an amused smile and his eyes twinkled. The emperor quickly reassessed. This man was every bit as sharp as Quintillian had said. He realized in an instant that whatever argument there was between father and son, the Khan would always win it. In fact, it seemed certain now that Aldegund was little more than a captain in the Khan’s great force.

  ‘I will not waste my time or yours, young emperor.’ The Khan smiled. ‘We are all busy men, are we not? I am here to offer terms, as that is the thing a civilized leader does, and I would like to consider myself a civilized man.’

  ‘I will hear your terms and decide what level of unacceptability they reach,’ Kiva said with a sharp smile.

  The Khan chuckled. ‘My terms are very simple. I will accept the surrender of Velutio and, with it, the empire and your throne. Your officers and nobles will be given their choice of slavery or a clean, quick death as their own fears or pride demand. In return for this, I shall ensure that the people of your city, and your empire as a whole, remain unharmed and continue to live their lives free and uninterrupted under a new ruling dynasty.’

  ‘You are too kind,’ Quintillian snorted.

  ‘You are almost certainly correct,’ the Khan said, his face becoming serious. ‘My son, as well as a sizeable group of my advisors and chieftains, all despise capitulation. They see it as a weakness beneath the honour of even a slave. The clans do not have a word for surrender. The concept is utterly alien to them. The nomad way of war is to fight until you are victorious or dead, and then, if the former, to rape and pillage as is the conqueror’s right. Be aware, princelings, that it is only my tenuous control over these men that allows us to prosecute this war in any kind of civilized manner. I advise you to accept my terms, naturally. If you do not do so, then I will be forced to acknowledge the failure of diplomacy and the end of civilized behaviour, and to accept the course of action my advisors advocate.’

  He straightened. ‘In short, take my terms and save your people, or I will let my son and his cronies set the tone for the war and every living thing in Velutio will be killed, after the nomads have had their fun with the survivors first. Do we have an understanding?’

  Kiva nodded. ‘I understand that you want me to hand over the empire to you without a fight. I think you are uncertain about your ability to take Velutio in the end, and so you attempt to do so by words alone. I think that your son and his friends are correct. You are weak, Khan, and the empire cannot be ruled by weak men. I refuse your terms utterly. Velutio will defy you to the last man. If all that are left are old women and babes in arms, even they will take up a spear and refuse you. You will never rule here. At best you will conquer and control the greatest charnel house in the world.’

  The Khan’s lip twitched and Kiva, looking around, was gratified to note a look of hunger on Ganbaatar�
��s face. Good. Stir up the hornets’ nest and see if they start to sting one another.

  ‘Foolish,’ said the Khan. ‘You are making a mistake for your people, young emperor. For I have no fear of your city and it will be mine within mere days. I can assure you of it.’

  ‘My decision stands,’ Kiva said, rolling his shoulders. ‘The empire refuses you. I deny you.’ He reached out and plucked the spear from the ground. For just a moment the gathered nomads reached for their weapons, suspecting trouble, but Kiva held the spear level and snapped the shaft across his saddle horns, casting the broken shards down to the wet grass. He had no idea what the custom was among these people, or even if they had one, but the message that sent should be clear.

  The Khan gave him one last sour look and then turned, walking his horse back towards the nomad camp. Advisors and chieftains followed suit. The Khan’s son, however, remained where he was, his gaze on Kiva for just a moment before it slid across to Quintillian.

  ‘Your friend the slave died badly, Ba’atu. He lost his eyes, his tongue and his ears. I left him his nose so he could smell his own shit when he fouled himself at the end.’

  Kiva saw Quintillian tense and remembered his account of Asander, the former soldier who had helped him escape the nomad city. ‘Quint…’ he murmured in warning. The marshal was nearing the edge of his temper, Kiva knew, and he couldn’t accept any chance his brother might break the terms of a parlay.

  ‘He was screaming for his mother at the end, just before I cut off his manhood and stuffed them in his face.’

  ‘You do not frighten me, Ganbaatar,’ Quintillian said quietly, through gritted teeth. ‘You disgust me, but you do not frighten me. You are a simple wild animal on your father’s leash.

  ‘I will kill you before this is over, Ba’atu.’

  ‘You are welcome to seek me out, Ganbaatar. I would love nothing more than to put a sword through that flapping mouth of yours.’