Interregnum Read online

  Quintillian backed into the tree he’d been slouched against earlier. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. What did he want? Why had he never asked these questions of himself? Then he’d have been in a considerably better position to answer them.

  “I don’t have a plan,” the boy blurted out. “I want to go home. As for the future, I don’t know what it holds, but I know I’d rather have people like those who risked their lives for my uncle running the world than the Lords of the big cities now, who tax and torture and press the populace into their armies. They’re killing the Empire. You think I want to rule in place of my uncle? You’re wrong. I don’t want to run the damn world! I can’t even run my own life. I’m a scholar and I just want to be a scholar.”

  Now the whole company were looking at him, but he felt less foolish than he had before, the conviction and the anger rising and eclipsing his uncertainty. He planted his feet firmly on the turf and pointed angrily at Kiva.

  “What about you?” he demanded. “What do you want? Does what Captain Tregaron want differ from that of General Caerdin? Are the Wolves destined to limp from the pages of history?”

  He stopped, ruddy faced and drawing ragged breaths. Kiva looked around, only now noticing that his men were watching. He ground his teeth.

  “Boy,” he growled, “you live in a fantasy world built around what you think the Empire was like. It wasn’t like that. What do I want? I want to live until tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll want to live to the next day and so on. I don’t want any of my men to fall, but that’s about it. The Wolves ‘limped’ as you put it from the pages of history twenty years ago. Now there’s just the Grey Company and we’re renowned and feared in our own right. What would you have us do? March against the world and rebuild the Empire? Fiction! Stupidity!”

  Quintillian’s shoulders slumped.

  “I don’t want you to march on Velutio and claim the throne, General” he said, his voice taking on a pleading tone. “I’m not asking anything except that you have a little pride. Pride in what you were and what you are. There’s no one around who would take offence at General Caerdin and the Wolves except Velutio, and he doesn’t like you anyway. You’ve lost all your pride and your glory. That may not worry you, but how do you think these men feel?”

  He waved his arm, taking in the rest of the company.

  “They have constant reminders” he continued. “D’you think they’d use their Wolves flasks still if they had no pride?”

  “The world has changed, little boy” Kiva growled. “The glory’s gone. What we use to respect and protect has gone.”

  Quintillian stepped forward, bringing his nose just inches from Kiva’s.

  “It hasn’t gone” he growled; “it’s still there, but it’s fading. If people don’t care anymore then it really will go. Look around you General. Your bitterness is blinding you to what there is.”

  He gestured around the hollow. Kiva actually stopped for a moment and followed his gesture. The company stood in silence, their faces grave as they watched. They wouldn’t interrupt; not on this subject. Other than them, there was just the grassy dell.

  “What are you talking about?” the captain demanded.

  Quintillian rushed over to the rock the captain had been leaning against. “Look!” he replied, anger and hope vying in his voice. “Actually look at it.”

  Kiva turned and looked down at the rock. He hadn’t actually noticed the carving before. The rock was the fractured torso of a large statue, the robes and breastplate all but worn away. The captain stepped back.

  “What is this place?” he asked, his voice now low and unsure.

  Quintillian grasped the captain by the elbow and turned him, pointing into the deep grass nearby. The head of the statue stared back up, weathered, but better preserved. Despite the weather damage, the resemblance to the boy was uncanny.

  “How many temples have you been in during all that time you commanded the army, General Caerdin?” the boy asked. “How many sanctuaries to the Imperial Cult? Don’t you recognise my uncle when you see him?”

  The lad immediately regretted his words. Though it was barely perceptible, he could swear that the captain was shaking a little, with his shoulders hunched over. For a moment, Quintillian actually believed that the man was shedding a tear, but then he turned again. The look on his face was one of cold, calculated anger.

  “That’s it, boy” he barked. “You’ve lectured me enough. I’m entirely the wrong man to appeal to a sense of nostalgia. You’d have been better targeting Athas; he’s still a romantic at heart. You may be the last of the Imperial Line and by all the Gods there’s a lot of your uncle in you, but that’s just the problem, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Quintillian asked, with a rising tone of apprehension.

  Kiva had fallen quiet, his hands shaking slightly. “What do I mean?” he continued. “Have you never read your histories? I thought you prided yourself on your reading? Your family are prone to the most brutal insanity, Quintillian. Never read about the madness? The death and mayhem this dynasty caused? Your grandfather had to be put down by priests of his own cult so he could be buried and ascend to the Heavens. He tried to bite them as they held him down frothing at the mouth, while they cut his throat in the fountain of his own temple. But that wasn’t until after he’d had a thousand heads removed just for his amusement. Soldiers, senators, peasants, anybody. Hell, even one of the Marshals fell foul of Basianus the fair when the Emperor started to get paranoid thinking people were plotting against him. Problem is: by the time his madness was becoming obvious, they were! And your uncle? I couldn’t believe your uncle would succumb; I knew him so well. Yes, he was my best friend, and I tried to save him when the Senate condemned him for his insanity. I didn’t believe the rumours, but it was with my own ears that I heard him command me to crucify a city. A whole city, Quintillian. Men, women, children. Even the cats and dogs!”

  The boy realised that Kiva was shaking now, whether with anger or some other emotion, he couldn’t tell. The captain drew his sword and Quintillian’s eyes fixed in fear on the deadly point. Kiva gave the sword a couple of idle, angry slashes.

  “And do you know why?” he challenged. “Why they were all to die?”

  In a panic, Quintillian stuttered. “N.. no.”

  “Because they couldn’t afford to pay his new fucking taxes!” Kiva shouted.

  The captain thrust the sword, narrowly missing the lad’s shoulder and digging the point deep into bark before turning and speaking as he walked away.

  “That’s the problem with Emperors” he said without looking back. “Power curses you, or drives you mad or something like that. Look around you. The other Lords are all going the same way. They all want to rule and look at what it does to them. Better we stay as we are: mercenaries, and wait for the day the Lords have all killed each other. Then we can have some peace.”

  Quintillian stood stock still, his eyes on the hilt of the sword by his side, still shuddering with the force with which it had struck the tree.

  “But you were his friend” he cried. “You still helped him. You saved him.”

  Kiva stopped abruptly. He turned and walked very slowly back toward the boy. Once he reached him, he put his hand on the lad’s shoulder, almost comforting. To Quintillian’s astonishment, there really were tears in the captain’s eyes. Kiva pushed hard and, as the lad dropped to his backside on the grass, he drew the sword from the tree.

  “I was more than his friend, Quintillian. He was like my brother.”

  Sheathing his sword, he stood, looking down at the boy.

  “But it was me who locked him in his palace” he said, his voice cracking slightly with raw emotion. “Me who dismissed his guard.” His voice sounded choked; clotted, his face bleak and more open than Quintillian had seen since they’d met. The captain cleared his throat.

  “Me who set the fire and killed him.”

  Kiva turned his back on the boy, who had blanched and was gasping
for breath. As the captain reached the edge of the hollow, he turned back one last time.

  “It had to be done Quintillian. For the good of the Empire.”

  And with that the captain vanished from sight over the lip of the hollow.

  The boy sat stunned in the grass, shaking uncontrollably until suddenly a large hand appeared beneath his chin, holding a Wolves flask that contained something that smelled revolting. Athas crouched next to him.

  “Drink lad” he said comfortingly. “You’ve never needed it more than now.”

  Quintillian took a grateful pull on the spirit and coughed repeatedly. His throat spasmed and he leaned to one side, towards the bushes and vomited until he was dry retching. The face of his uncle stared up at him from the grass. Still shivering, he looked up at Athas, his face streaked with the tracks of his sorrow.

  “It can’t be true” he begged of the big sergeant.

  The hulking, coloured man placed a blanket around the boy’s shoulders and sat beside him. He took a swig from the flask and then passed it back to the lad.

  “Quintillian,” he said, “there are some things you have to understand.”

  “About him?” the lad said, his voice beginning to harden again. “A regicide? The man who murdered my uncle? I feel like such an idiot. Why should I need to understand?”

  Athas shook the boy by the shoulders.

  “It’s not that simple” the sergeant said quietly. “Your uncle had lost his wits. We were the last to see it and the last to believe it. There were other officers, even Generals who had wanted to execute your uncle in public. The nobles were calling for it in the city, but no one could decide what to do. You can’t kill a God without repercussions and who the hell would do the deed? It was Kiva who stopped them all. He tried to reason with Quintus, but there was no reason left in the Emperor; none at all. It had to be done, otherwise Quintus would have ruined the Empire or a mob would have got to him and torn him to pieces.”

  Athas sighed.

  “In the end, history remembers that he died in a fire in his palace. He went to the Gods deified and pure and died a hero, albeit a lunatic. People don’t talk about it. Most people are frightened to speak ill of a divine figure, so his name goes unsullied and that’s the way it should be. He’d been a great man for a lot of years before he started to slip. And when the time came and there was no other choice left to us, Kiva did it all, from dismissing the guard to locking the door, starting the fire and watching until it was over. He had to, don’t you see? He wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Couldn’t let them. To kill the Emperor was to kill a God. He would be cursed for the rest of his miserable life.”

  “Cursed?” the boy queried.

  “Can’t you see that in him?” Athas sighed. “A curse? Whether he actually is cursed or just believes it to be so, it’s affected his life ever since. Personally I don’t believe in curses; those of us from the desert lands never really held with the Emperor being a God anyway.”

  The burly sergeant grasped the boy’s shoulder.

  “Kiva did what he had to” he said. “He brought down the Empire with his own hands, but he had to do it; there really was no other way. Hate him now if you must, but try to remember this: you never even knew your uncle. Kiva treated him like a brother. He’s had to live for twenty years with the knowledge that he personally brought down the Empire, destroying the dynasty and executing a friend. You might begin to understand why he sleeps so badly.”

  Quintillian had stopped shaking and, to his great surprise, had also stopped crying. Athas grasped him once more by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet.

  “Perhaps now at least the two of you can talk as men, without all this carry-on” the sergeant said. “And now you need to stand up and straighten out. You’re one of the Grey Company and you need to act like one, or I’ll have to have Marco lash you.”

  The lad managed a weak smile.

  “I wonder if he knows how much damage he just did?” he said quietly.

  Athas sighed.

  “I wonder if you realise how much pain it causes him just to look at you?”

  Chapter VI.

  The sun beat down heavily on the baker’s dozen as they trudged along the road toward the coast. Now that late morning had arrived the heat was becoming unbearable and the dust from the mud and shale road was churned into throat-clogging clouds. The men sweated under their leather and steel armour, grateful only that the cart followed at the rear with the rest of the pack and gear aboard.

  Quintillian plodded, his feet and his heart heavy as lead. He’d have refused to climb aboard the cart if they’d asked him, but no one had spoken to him as they’d set off once again on their route. Once in a while he’d raise his face and see the unit stretched out in front of him on the gravel road, chattering inanities as they marched. He’d tried hard to fall behind and bring up the rear of the column, but Marco had taken the position of rearguard with the cart and maintained a steady pace at the back of the unit. Quintillian occasionally turned to make sure that Marco was still there and the man winked at him every time. Far from being in a social frame of mind, Quintillian returned each wink with a scowl and faced front again. He shrugged and the leather tunic settled into place, distributing the weight better. He was starting to yearn for the days of simplicity on the island. Nothing had perturbed him there. People were learned; deferential to each other; calm.

  On the island it’d been him and Darius. There had been no one else the same rough age, mostly ageing ex senators or bureaucrats or their young children or grandchildren, teaching and learning and farming to eke out a living. The island had once been a complex of palaces where the central power of the world was wielded. Now some of the palatial buildings had been converted into living, teaching and working areas and the once-proud gardens of the Imperial Palace were vegetable plots and pig pens. He and Darius had spent much of their time since reaching an age of truly conscious thought exploring the island and their own skills, interrupted by sessions of teaching and training and of hard, gruelling physical labour when the masters could actually find them. A horrible thought crossed his mind that the shattered and charred ruin where the two of them hid so often from the elders would have been the last place his uncle and the General had seen each other. Quintillian reflected that he’d never really grown up until he’d left the place, though Darius had seemed older and worldlier than he even when they were together and playing. When had the world…?

  His train of thought shattered as he felt a hand on his shoulder. With a slight involuntary jump, he turned to see Marco grinning at him, a piece of roadside wild grass jutting from the corner of his mouth. He repeated his general scowl, but the infuriating man just scratched his chin absently and then grinned some more. Quintillian turned to face ahead once more.

  Ah yes, the island. Darius…

  “You really got to learn to relax, kid” said an easy voice from behind.

  Quintillian spun around angrily, causing Marco to bump into him as the two oxen continued along the path, heedless of the lad’s obstruction. The olive-skinned mercenary hauled on the leather strap until the cart slowed and stopped. The smile had slipped from his face.

  “I mean it” he said. “Relax. For fuck’s sake, you nearly got run over by a damn heavy cart.”

  Quintillian shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably as he spoke.

  “Don’t tell me to relax” he replied petulantly. “I’ll relax when I get back to the island and not until then.”

  As the lad turned again and started to walk off after the group of men, Marco hauled on the strap and made the oxen begin their lumbering advance once more. He smiled again; this time a smile of sympathy, aimed at the back of the boy’s head. Marco would be the first to admit that he was probably the most innocent still of the Company and he could still remember what it felt like to have such a simple view of the world; such a simple view of oneself. He spoke softly, expecting no reply.

  “Quintillian, you’ve had a shock. You�
�re disappointed. We all know that, and we do sympathise, but there’s two ways to get over it. Either you confront it, beat the shit out of your problems and come out the other side happy, or you surrender to it; let your emotions run their course and it’ll come out anyway it feels. Otherwise all you’re doing is moping and sulking and that does no good for you nor for nobody else. People’ll just treat you like a kid.”

  The lad walked on ahead of him in silence. Well, Marco’d done all he could to convince him. Someone would have to. The Captain damn well wouldn’t make the first move and they all knew it.

  He glanced up ahead. Being considerably shorter than some of his compatriots, all he could see was a mass of bodies in a haze of dust. Hauling on the side of the cart, he pulled himself up to where he was standing on the lower boards. The group was getting a little too strung out along the road, partially due to having to halt and restart the slow, lumbering oxen. Spying the Captain way ahead at the front, he dropped back to the gravel with a crunch and slapped the leather strap on the rump of the oxen to gee them up.

  Kiva was already aware that he was further out ahead of the company than he should be, but the territory was fairly open and they’d be able to see anyone long before they became a threat. Besides, Clovis would be on point about half a mile ahead and would give plenty of warning. And he was still angry. Angry with the lad for refusing to drop a subject that he shouldn’t have known about. Those scenes from that last hellish year may visit the Captain with soul-shattering regularity in his sleep, but he’d managed for a long time now to keep the past locked away in his nocturnal journeys and the rest of the time had been devoted to keeping his men alive through another day. Now, thanks to the prying youth, the line had been blurred and he was being forced to confront his own personal demons around the clock.