Jade Empire Read online

  At the general’s beckoning, Jai joined him and a group of cavalry who rode onto the ramp after the cannon. They rose slowly, and Jai was as nervous of the great iron menaces on the carts in front as he was of the missiles dropping from the walls. He remembered all too well the two men being crushed by the weapon that fell off its cradle in the first engagement, and had no wish to go to the afterlife in that manner.

  It took an hour, and it was probably the most nerve-shredding hour of Jai’s life. Every time the ramp wound back towards the fortress end, he winced and braced against the arrows and rocks. Unnecessarily so, of course. General Jiang had no intention of leaving the world in such an ignominious manner. Bodyguards rode on either side of the officers, holding up posts that supported a timber roof which covered them as they moved. But there was still the ever-present threat of falling cannon, and Jai watched them intently throughout, drawing a sharp breath every time one even faintly rocked in its housing at a corner.

  Eventually the cannon were drawn into the square before the top gate and the officers emerged onto the ridge of Salaya behind them. Jai watched as the ranks of infantry, still largely intact, spread out to face the wall of the fortress. In some places the flames of the blaze here had not yet died out, but the town of Salaya was largely burned now, and the open spaces just a charred mess. It was amazing how an entire town could disappear within an hour in the dry season.

  The cannon were moved into position and prepared as the cavalry who had followed the general up the ramp now settled into neat units at the rear.

  ‘Rajah of Salaya, hear me,’ the general said to Jai, gesturing to the walls. Jai repeated the words loudly in the Inda tongue.

  ‘Your town has fallen and your fortress will not last the hour. If you yield now, you alone will forfeit your life. If you force me to break down your walls, there will be no quarter given for soldier or citizen, or even your family. Do you understand?’

  There was a pause and finally a tall figure in rich red and gold appeared at the battlements above the gate.

  ‘This is sovereign land, not part of your empire. Leave Salaya at once, or the gods will not be able to identify your corpse.’

  Big words, nervously spoken. Jai could imagine how the rajah’s wife and children were now reacting to his response. Did he not realise this was a new type of war? Had he not seen what the Jade Empire had wrought? Cannon and black powder, fire and death inflicted from a great distance. He could not have been prepared for what Jiang and his army had brought west, but surely he was gaining an inkling now as the town burned? Could he not see the cannon? Even the glorious, ancient western empire had no such weapon in its arsenal.

  The general turned and nodded. A yellow flag was waved.

  The three cannon discharged in quick succession.

  The first struck the gates of the fortress, turning them into a thousand pieces of kindling that hurtled through the air, killing and maiming more of the men behind the gate than the great stone ball itself. The second shot punched through the stone frame of that gate, taking the remnants of a wooden door with it and adding shards of dark red stone to the debris that scythed through the air. The third blow had been aimed by an expert. Like all red sandstone structures, the fortress of Salaya had been carved by the winds over the centuries, and the projecting tower to the left of the gate had clearly been one of the most exposed. The stones had hollowed out, such that the mortar between them projected further than the stones themselves. It was this very spot that the great stone ball struck. The wind-weakened sandstone gave way like a child’s pile of wooden blocks at a petulant kick.

  There was a tremendous crash and a cloud of red dust. As it cleared, Jai watched, wide-eyed. A hole perhaps two feet across had been punched through the wall at the bottom of the tower. Cracks were already spidering up between the blocks, and the wall of the tower began to shift perceptibly. Horrible groaning noises and the sound of cracking stone echoed across the watching army. The defenders atop the gate were as yet oblivious, still reeling from the ease with which the gates themselves had been obliterated. They only became aware of their fresh peril as the tower collapsed beneath them. The cracks interconnected and reached up to the parapet, spreading out to the section of wall alongside and across the arch above the ruined gate. A man up there gave a cry of alarm and, before another could respond, the entire left-hand tower and the section above the gate collapsed into a pile of rubble, a massive cloud of red dust billowing out across both forces.

  Slowly, the haze subsided. Inda warriors were staggering and limping from the rubble, clutching broken arms, weapons discarded. They were beaten and they knew it instantly. The impregnable Salaya had fallen in two hours.

  ‘Your orders, sir?’ asked a captain as his men kept their weapons out and pointed at the surrendering men.

  ‘No quarter, you said,’ Jai reminded the general.

  ‘Agreed, but there will be civilians in there too, and this should be an example, not a slaughter.’ The general turned to the captain. ‘Put the warriors to the sword. Swift and sharp – a soldier’s death. Search the rubble and find the body of the rajah. If he is still alive, remedy that. His family are not to be harmed and nor are any other civilians you find. They may join the refugees on the plain below.’

  Jai heaved a sigh of relief. Though he felt for the warriors who would die, they had chosen their lot, but he had not been relishing the sight of a population slain. His initial opinion of General Xeng Shu Jiang seemed to have been well founded. If there had to be a conqueror of the Inda, Jai was grateful it would be him.

  And now, when they had finished here and installed a garrison, the way was open to the heart of the Inda Diamond. Few places that stood in their way would be as troublesome as Salaya. And then the armies would combine at Jalnapur, and they would stare across the western hills towards Velutio and the western empire.

  Gods, but let them stay behind their river, Jai wished fervently.

  Chapter 5

  Duty is a curious thing. It often leads us to act in a manner that is directly contradictory to our desire. And only a man without conscience is also without duty. The soldier has a duty to his commander. The citizen has a duty to his lord. The priest has a duty to his god. But duty is reciprocal. It is the duty of gods to watch over their believers. It is the duty of a commander to support his soldiers. And it is the duty of a lord to protect and serve his people. Thus it is that a man can do the unthinkable when there is no other way for him to discharge his duty.

  I pray that I choose correctly. There is no small future riding on my decision.

  The sound of horns in the middle distance drew worried looks from the gathered, suddenly shocked people. Aram glanced sharply at the leader of his guards, and the man – one constant of Initpur since the days of Aram’s father – nodded and gestured for the soldiers to follow him. Fifteen hardened, ageing soldiers in laminated lacquered wood-and-chain armour scurried off through the dust.

  The village of Nalla was the westernmost settlement in Aram’s kingdom and the last to be mobilised as part of the scheme. Many weeks after its creation, Aram’s plan was still a fragile and mutable thing, for it relied upon numerous factors outside his control. When word had come that a giant force of the Jade Empire’s military had moved into the neighbouring kingdom, Aram had put his plan into action and assumed all would follow his design. He had been wrong.

  All goods and population had already been catalogued, the people informed and routes laid out in discussion with each village’s headman. As soon as the word of impending invasion went out, the people began to move and gather, travelling west all the time, across Initpur, away from the Jade Empire. What Aram had not counted on, though, was the tremendous slowness and disorganisation of his people. He found it baffling. They knew what was coming, knew what had happened to the kingdoms east of here. If it had been Aram in one of these villages, he could have gathered what mattered to him, slung them on a donkey and left the village in the time it took to dr
aw a dozen breaths. Yet some of these villages had taken half a day to empty, such was the tardiness and fussiness of their occupants.

  Aram had left the palace, sending on four of his precious few remaining men with his own baggage to the meeting place, while he took the other fifteen to round up any stragglers. The first few villages had been clear, though his men had found a few of the precious resources the villagers had been instructed to bring still in situ, and had been forced to act as porters as well as soldiers, drawing the important supplies with them. Slowly, throughout the day, Aram and his men had moved through the villages of Initpur methodically, gathering what was supposed to have left with the population, urging the occasional reluctant ageing villager out of their house and seating them on the pack horses to carry them to safety.

  It had not worked as smoothly as Aram had anticipated, but finally, as the sun began to descend towards the Kalagund Hills that marked the heart of the next kingdom in the west, Aram and his men had cleared all but Nalla, which marked the last stage of the plan. When the Jade Empire rolled over Initpur there would be no rajah to kill, no people to enslave or control, and no goods to take. The kingdom would be empty.

  But Nalla had been no better than any of the others. In fact, Nalla had been altogether lazy and slow in its preparations. As the golden orb touched the treetops and the seething, crackling summer air still steamed the parched ground, Aram and his men had entered the village to find a wedding feast in progress. A wedding feast, for the love of the seven sacred gods of the mountains!

  The forces of the Jade Empire were rolling across the northern lands of the Inda, crushing, controlling and enslaving, yet the people of Nalla were dancing and throwing flowers. It had almost been enough to make Aram weep. He and the soldiers had interrupted the wedding feast mid-dance, striding into the dusty square. The soldiers had silenced the three musicians, and the dancers had spun to a halt in baffled dismay. The bride in her bright and colourful traditional dress had risen from the table in confusion, shock and anger on her new husband’s face.

  The father – apparently Nalla’s headman, which only served to make the whole farce more stupid still – had demanded of his rajah why such a joyous and sacred occasion should be halted like this. Aram had rounded angrily on the man and reminded him of the plans set in place so many days ago. The forces of the Jade Empire were close, and Nalla had been instructed to move out like every other village.

  The husband had scoffed then, noting that they were far in the west of Initpur and that it would take long enough for the enemy to move across the kingdom that the feast would easily be finished and the village evacuated before the Jade Empire came.

  Aram had opened his mouth to give an angry retort, but that had been when they first heard the horn. He had thrown a pointed look at the father, who paled in an instant.

  ‘Isha. Bilau. Gather everything that matters and do it now,’ the old man had said, sharply.

  Aram had shaken his head as the horn blew again and received an answer from another somewhere in the hills. ‘There is no time now. That is why the call came to you when it did. You are out of time. You have to move. Now. All of you. Go to the meeting place. Run or ride, but move.’

  There had been baffled looks of consternation, and now the horns blew again. The people were more than worried now. Panic was beginning to set in.

  ‘Go.’

  Another blast. Aram glanced sharply at the leader of his guards, and the man nodded and gestured for the soldiers to follow him. The square exploded into activity as the fifteen soldiers drew their swords and hefted their spears, hurrying to the eastern edge of the small community. Men and women were running now, shouting for their children. Musical instruments lay discarded on the ground and the bride’s dress tore as someone trod on the colourful, delicate hem in the commotion. She did not notice.

  Aram looked around at the chaos and cleared his throat.

  ‘Calm down!’ he bellowed, and the whole exodus stopped suddenly, like a child caught doing something he shouldn’t. ‘Panic kills people as readily as combat. Gather your loved ones. Leave everything else. Run or get your beast, but do it sensibly, aware of the others around you. Get to the meeting point and wait there.’

  Idiocy. This should have happened hours ago.

  Leaving the villagers, who were now at least moving with purpose, Aram drew his own blade and followed his soldiers. The horn honked again, this time worryingly close. The old man peered at the sword in his hand. It had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him. Unlike the precious blade that had been taken by the foragers all those years ago, this was worth little and had thus been ignored by the interlopers. It was not precious, delicate or artistic. It was a warrior’s blade, steel and brass, with a curve that displayed a few small notches that had been too deep to fully polish out. A blade that had seen war. His great-grandfather had used it in anger, defending Initpur against the territorial ambitions of a neighbour, but it had not been drawn from its scabbard in anger for three generations. Aram had never used it. He had never used any sword, or even struck a man in anger.

  But there was a first time for everything. And his duty was to his people.

  He found his own men at the same time he found the enemy.

  The soldiers of Initpur – once a small army his great-grandfather had led in combat and now fifteen hungry old men just like Aram – were bracing themselves with their spears held out as men did when facing a tiger or suchlike on a jungle hunt. But this was no tiger.

  There were only a dozen of them, for which Aram felt he should be grateful. The bulk of the Jade Empire’s army were still some distance away, moving through the deserted villages, but scouts had ridden on ahead. These men were lightly armed and armoured – ten with spears and belted swords, two with bows and daggers, all wearing light vests of leather that flexed well in the saddle. Aram felt a sudden panic flow through him. What should he do? Realistically he would not add a great deal to the force arrayed here and might perhaps be more use herding the people, but he had a duty, and how hard could it be? Leather grip goes in the hand, pointy end goes in the enemy.

  He moved into one of the gaps between the men, where they filled a roadway between two old brittle fences at the edge of the village. His roving eyes caught the other men with swords and he took in their stance and the way they held their blade. Imitating them, he braced, his left foot forward and his right at an angle behind. He gripped the sword in both hands and drew it back, held out at an angle in the same way as his men.

  ‘None can escape,’ Aram said to his men. Several of them nodded. It was the right decision. If no scout reported back to the army, then there would be enough time for the people of Initpur to disappear into the woods and move into deeper jungle. It would not be worth the effort of the enemy general to follow a ragged band of natives into such terrain. But they had to buy time, and that meant killing the scouts.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the vanishing figures of the last few villagers and then wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve before settling the sword back into position. It was hot for this early in the year. How did soldiers fight well in this heat?

  The plan was good. The village of Nalla lay at the edge of the mountains. To the north and east of here lay the true valleys and heights. To the south lay a low range of hills, and then open farmland. But to the west… well, there were more hills and mountains, but in between there was a wide vale of woodland that became steadily more tropical as one travelled south. And within that vale lay the great River Nadu. Here, in the north, there were crossing points if you knew where to look, but it would save them from imperial pursuit, for it would be far too difficult for a full army to cross. Once on the far side of the river, they could travel south and seek refuge in the lands near the border of the western empire, where they might hope to be safe from the Jade Emperor’s men.

  All that relied on them getting out of Initpur alive, of course.

  The scouts charged. A
ram concentrated not on his stance or the weaknesses of his enemy or his own strength, or any of those things he understood warriors considered at this point. He concentrated quite simply on staying where he was and not turning and fleeing, which was what his heart, his brain and his legs were all telling him to do.

  The scouts advanced, urging their horses across the open ground at the edge of the village, and Aram realised at that moment that the enemy had fully expected the paltry collection of poorly armed old warriors here to break and run. To the credit of each man of Initpur, not one man turned away. Not even Aram.

  In a moment that gave him heart, the first kill went to the commander of his guards. A scout tried to ride him down, but the man held tight to his spear and at the last moment brought the tip up slightly, slamming the butt back into the sandy soil. The horse hit the spear and the point punched through its chest. The startled scout made an attempt to stab down with his own lance, but the horse reared and fell. Aram just had time to watch the rider disappear beneath the massive bulk of the dying horse before his attention was drawn back by the man riding directly at him. He had no spear. How did you attack a horseman with a sword? Possibly he could sever a leg from the horse and bring the man down, but he didn’t like the thought of that, since the horse had never done him any harm, and he would almost certainly be crushed by the beast as it either ran or fell.

  It was in that split second of confusion that Aram learned his first lesson of war. Reaction is sometimes more important than planning. The scout’s spear lanced out at Aram even as he dithered and panicked, unsure what to do. Without conscious decision, his sword came up and slashed this way and that in a very inexpert manner, attempting to keep the spear from his face. He had also automatically sidestepped in his confusion, so as not to be in direct line of trampling. Somehow, the flailing blade managed to cut through the ash shaft of the enemy spear.

  The rider’s momentum carried him past Aram. The rajah looked around for the next enemy, but it seemed they were all engaged with his men. With a terrified leap of the heart, Aram realised that his erstwhile assailant was now behind him. The scout was already wheeling his horse for another charge. He had cast aside his broken spear – still a good six feet of shaft there – and was drawing his sword now. Aram took two steps towards the man and dropped, scooping up the discarded shaft.