Jade Empire Read online

  But the killing would have been total and indiscriminate. The whole place would have gone.

  It had been the first moment in some days that Dev and General Cinna had spoken their mind at the same time and been in complete concord. Both had flatly refused to allow the artillery to crush the place. There were considerations to take into account, and not simply the humanitarian desire not to see innocent civilians killed in their thousands just to take the walls. There was still a message to be sent here to other rajahs. Admittedly they’d been sending that message over and over since they crossed the Oxus and it had seemed to have little effect on the Inda royalty thus far, but that was no good reason to change to a violent, destructive strategy.

  Both Dev and the general still hoped to bring some of the natives to their banner, despite everything negative they had encountered thus far, and to do that they needed to appear to be the Inda’s saviours and not their conquerors. Thus, while they could not leave a potential enemy in control of a fort behind their lines, they still sought to remove defiant commanders and their men while leaving the populace unharmed. Better still, following each of the few similar engagements they had dealt with on their journey from the Oxus, the general had distributed money among the people for reparations once the rajahs and their warriors had been cowed. Until there was no longer any hope of alliances, this was still a battle for Inda hearts, not their lands.

  There was a flurry of horn calls at the fortress gate, and Dev squinted to see what was happening now. The cohorts had finally reached the gates and were smashing at them. Their prime weapon – a great bole of ash with a cast bronze ram’s head affixed to the tip – had been brought forward under the shelter of the shields and was now being swung rhythmically back and forth. Here and there a man fell to enemy missiles, and Dev and his commander watched those wounded who survived their blows staggering from the rear of the lines seeking a medic. Not for the first time Dev was grateful that his organisational skills made him valuable to command and saved him from standing in the press with sword drawn. He could fight – had fought, in his early days in the western army – but that was not where his talent lay. He would never be a natural swordsman, and even the most martial of armies needed men who could plan.

  Bang.

  The gates shook at the impact, dust billowing up around the action, and the desperate men atop the wall cast down their tiles, rocks and arrows with whatever strength they still had after the hour-long barrage. The missiles largely bounced and careened off the roof of shields harmlessly. Those men were doomed.

  Bang.

  Dev twitched. Why could these people not see sense? He’d explained to the general about the individuality and unpredictability of the rajahs, of course, but despite all that it was clear that this rajah was going to lose. Why did he not capitulate and save his people?

  Bang.

  Dev tried not to superimpose memories of his home on the scene before him – the gates of the palace of Initpur resounding to the blows of the ram, his father Aram atop the battlements proud and defiant. He failed. The mental image made him shiver.

  Bang.

  ‘A new tactic is required when those walls fall,’ the general said to his second, quietly.

  ‘Sir?’ Dev turned to him, wincing involuntarily at the next blow from the ram.

  Bang.

  ‘I have attempted to bring peace, as we move, with the authority of the emperor, and I think we are both painfully aware that our tactic is failing.’ The general glanced around, noting that his staff were all busy, then leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. ‘I believe that the name of the Emperor Bassianus does not improve our case. A man who has killed more of his own citizens than any outside enemy in the past decade. It seems his poor reputation stands strong even this far from the border.’

  Bang.

  Dev’s mind whisked him momentarily from the siege of an Inda fortress and dropped him into the imperial court. The look he’d seen in the eyes of the emperor as the northern lord's face was pierced by an arrow. The nervousness of the courtiers. The level of palpable fear in the room. The line of danger General Cinna had walked in merely by speaking his mind. He remembered his father many years ago speaking of the mad western emperor. And the stories had only got worse. The general was quite right. What kind of figurehead were they fighting under?

  Bang.

  The general’s voice drew him back away from the sound of a bronze ram on weakening timber. ‘If we are to play the part of a relief force sent to free Inda lands from the clutches of the Jade Empire – which I might say is very much the part I wish to play – we may need to play down imperial authority a great deal and seem to be more sympathetic to the Inda and less reliant upon our emperor. When those gates fall, I want you to take the lead in negotiations. You know what we seek. I will act as your second in the matter.’

  Bang.

  Dev nodded, a shiver of nervous energy running through him. He was an administrator. He’d served in the army, of course, but he was no officer or ambassador. He was a strategist and administrator, quite simply. Yet as a man Inda-born, his words might carry enough weight to change matters, as the general seemed to believe. It was certainly worth a try.

  Bang.

  Crack!

  The gates of the fortress palace finally gave under the constant assault, the left-hand gate crashing back at a twisted angle, one great hinge torn from the stonework in which it was embedded. Another blow easily smashed the other gate aside, and the cohorts roared as they surged into the place like floodwater through a broken dam, easily overwhelming the small force behind the gates and thundering through.

  Dev watched with a touch of nervousness – not for their own men, but for the Inda. The imperial army had been lucky so far, in each attack they’d been forced to launch since the Oxus, that the officers of the victorious troops had managed to keep their men under control and there had been no indiscriminate slaughter, rape or looting. Oh, there had been a couple of minor incidents, of course, but they had been dealt with swiftly and brutally under military law, and the message seemed to have sunk into the army as they watched the flesh flayed from the culprits’ backs with barbed whips.

  Thus there was a good level of control as the men rushed into the fortress and seized yet another kingdom. Would the rajah and his men fight to the last? In the five fights they had so far waded through, twice every last man had fought and died for his land, including the rajahs; twice the rajahs had taken their own life before the imperial troops could grab them; and once the rajah and a few choice men had somehow escaped, slipping the net and vanishing when the fortress fell.

  They needed a clean win this time.

  The imperial soldiers flooded the square behind the gate and were momentarily lost to view from the officers’ platform a quarter of a mile from the walls. Dev watched intently, squinting into the sunlight and, after a few tense heartbeats, their men emerged onto the wall tops and the towers. There were a few small bouts of resistance and swordplay in attempts to retain control of the towers and gate top, but as the invaders’ numbers grew continually on the ramparts, the fight went out of the defenders. Men across the defences cast down their swords and bows and raised their hands to the victors. The imperial officers, back on their observation mound, remained silent and motionless, watching and listening carefully. The moment of uncertainty passed. The rajah, visible as a colourful figure in gleaming gold armour on the wall top, surrendered to the imperial officers, and the kingdom was theirs. Dev cupped a hand to his ear, but they could hear only the sounds of men securing the walls. There was none of the tell-tale screaming that signified men running amok in the city.

  A clean win. Hope for the future. Perhaps an opportunity.

  ‘Come,’ General Cinna said quietly, calling for his groom and swinging up expertly into the saddle. Dev did the same. Since leaving home, he had spent little time in the empire on horseback until crossing the Oxus with the general, but he had occupied much of his youth rid
ing at Initpur, and controlled a horse with the confidence of a natural cavalryman.

  In the wake of the general, he trotted towards the ruined gate, the imperial units moving aside to create a path for them. As always happened as soon as the general moved, his flag-bearer, three standards, two musicians, several senior officers and a whole unit of bodyguards seemed to appear from nowhere and fall in behind, turning it into more of a procession than an embassy.

  They approached the fallen walls, the shattered gates in the damaged archway standing open like a mouth of broken fangs, and Dev felt the tension build within as they entered the fortress. A spokesman for the empire? To the Inda. Against the Jade Empire.

  Their horses were taken by soldiers in the square beyond the shattered gate, and the two senior men, closely followed by their entourage, climbed the stairs to the wall walk, sweating in the burning sun. Dev was unused to such armour, and suspected he would never be comfortable wearing so much iron in the summer. The Inda defenders were now disarmed and kneeling along the parapet with their hands behind their heads, imperial soldiers covering them with spears against any sudden move.

  The rajah and his vizier stood atop the gate, disarmed, but upright and proud still, despite everything. Dev felt his heart jump once more as the general slowed and let his second take the lead. The son of Aram stepped onto the gatehouse and faced the beaten Inda lord. The rajah wore a vest of bronze scales that shone like gold in the sunlight. Beneath, he was clad in tunic and trousers of blue and crimson. His head was covered with a turban of pale yellow bearing an impressive jewel at the front. His beard was neatly clipped. Dev looked him up and down, wondering at the same time how the rajah saw him. True, Dev was Inda, and he certainly had the colouring, but he had been in the empire so long he wondered whether he even looked Inda any longer. He decided in that moment that he needed to grow a beard, despite the prevailing imperial trend towards being neat-shorn and clean shaven. If he were going to attempt to appeal to the Inda, he needed to look less like an imperial lackey. He would also need to dress slightly less like a captain. Whatever he had to do to elicit a more sympathetic reaction, and shove thoughts of the mad emperor Bassianus from their mind.

  ‘Highness,’ Dev addressed the man with a bow of the head. There was a momentary glint of danger in the rajah’s eye. Highness was an honorific applied to a member of a rajah’s family – a noble who did not rule. Majesty would be the form of address the man was expecting, but the fact was simple: he might be noble, but he no longer ruled in this land. He was a Highness. No more than that.

  ‘You are… Inda?’ the man replied suspiciously.

  Dev nodded. ‘My father is the rajah of Initpur in the north. I have the honour to serve as a senior commander of this imperial force as well as carrying the blood of Inda kings.’

  ‘Curse you, then,’ spat the rajah.

  ‘This doom was levelled at your command, Highness, not ours,’ Dev said coldly, earning a warning look from the general. This was delicate. Dev counted to five and started again, calmly. ‘We sought only an alliance against a mutual enemy who is rampaging through Inda lands from the east. We offered you every chance to join us and avoid conflict. Instead you chose to pit your small but noble force against those very men who would aid you against a foreign aggressor.’

  The rajah’s lip curled. ‘In the name of your lunatic emperor, whose word is as constant as the surface of the Oxus, flowing and changing with every heartbeat. I would sooner trust a cobra than your master.’

  ‘Still, the Jade Empire—’ Dev began urgently.

  ‘Pah!’ snapped the rajah. ‘The Jade Empire’s reach grows ever stronger. It is said that the army moving through the north is the largest ever fielded in the history or our world, and that the emperor has countless reserves to throw after it. You seem strong enough, you believe you are strong enough, to ruin my home and my lands, but by comparison you are weak. We accept your offer and we simply die with you. But if we defy you, when the Jade Empire consumes our lands we will be vaunted and favoured as men who stood against you. If faced with two evils, young son of Initpur, it is always sensible to support the stronger.’

  Dev sighed. ‘Then you will not join us, even now?’

  ‘To march with you is to make the rod with which the Jade Empire will beat us later. No. I will not march with you, even if it means my head. And nor will any strong and sensible rajah of the west. You are destined to lose, children of a mad emperor.’

  Dev felt his heart sink. This was not what he’d hoped for at all. He knew the Jade Empire were strong, worried even that they were too strong, but was it such common belief that even western rajahs clung to it and shunned and pitied the west? How, then, could Cinna hope to hold them back? He turned to the lines of soldiers kneeling along the walls, trying not to note the look of disgruntlement on the general’s face as he did so.

  ‘The offer remains open to any man who wishes to join us in defending the Inda world against the Jade Emperor.’

  There was not a sound from the soldiers. No capitulation. No acceptance. Just silent defiance still. Dev bit his cheek. ‘This is insane.’

  ‘Dev,’ said the general, a warning tone in his voice once more, but Dev was incensed now and went on, sweeping his arms wide to take in the rajah, his vizier and many of his men in one gesture.

  ‘You would seriously rather fight those who would aid you for fear of those who, gods willing, will never set foot upon your land?’

  The rajah straightened a little. ‘Once, many years ago, when my father ruled here, we had a thousand men. Now we have less than half that. Our world crumbles, son of Initpur, but as rajahs we must always put our people first. I look to the future to divine the path my people are destined to walk, and it seems clear that it is the path to the Jade Emperor. And so I place my head beneath your blade now to buy us the favour of the Jade Empire when that time comes. It is a small price to pay for a future, and no lord of the Inda would do less. You will find no ally among the rajahs, servant of a madman.’

  Dev shook his head. ‘There will be men of clearer vision who can see the threat posed by the Jade Empire. They will join us.’

  ‘Only idiots and the desperate and lost will join you, and of what value are they in war? Or those as mad as your emperor, of course. Seek the Sizhad if you want an ally, but remember that when you handle fire, burned fingers are inevitable.’

  ‘What is the Sizhad?’ General Cinna put in, stepping forward now.

  ‘Not what. Who,’ the rajah replied with an odd hint of menace.

  ‘Who, then?’ Dev asked, a sudden surge of hope thrilling him.

  ‘You have been away from Initpur many years if you do not know the answer to that, young warrior. The Sizhad is the only one who might join with you, for it is said he is as mad as your emperor. He is a bandit chief in the northern mountains.’

  The general huffed his dismissal. ‘Bandits. Hardly what we seek.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Dev said, his brow creasing as he studied the rajah’s face. ‘Even when I was a boy the bandit chiefs in the north were already becoming stronger than many rajahs. Every kingdom became weaker over the decades as the Jade Empire stripped them of their assets. It did not take long for the rajahs to reach a level of insolvency in which they could not afford to maintain the glorious armies they once commanded. And where does a soldier turn when he is no longer paid? Many moved into the mountains and became bandits.’

  The defeated rajah nodded. ‘At one time it was said that every valley in the north had its own bandit king. We were never plagued with them here in the west, of course, but one hears all manner of tales. Slowly the more powerful bandit chiefs crushed their opposition and incorporated their warriors. The stories coming from the north now speak of this Sizhad as a madman and a zealot. A lunatic, but with an army of impressive size, and gathering more to his banner with every day the Jade Empire wages war. You want a man to help you throw back the eastern invader? The Sizhad is the only man who might a
nswer your call. But you invite a wolf into your midst at your peril.’

  General Cinna beckoned and led Dev along the wall walk, away from the rajah and his men. Once they were in relative seclusion on a tower top and the soldiers had been dismissed from it, the general stopped. ‘You know these people better than I. Our strategy seems to be failing badly. Are the words of this rajah true? Will we meet the same resistance everywhere we go?’

  Dev sighed. He wished he had answers to give.

  ‘As I said before, General, it is hard to tell the mind of a rajah. But it does seem that the Jade Empire casts a longer shadow than us, and we will meet that all the more as we travel east. And the rajahs will look to the future of their people. My great-grandfather would have done precisely what this man did today. The old man looked to the future even half a century ago and saw what was coming.’

  Cinna peered back at the defiant rajah and then along the line of kneeling Inda warriors.

  ‘Captain? Execute the Rajah and his commanders.’ He caught sight of Dev’s crestfallen expression and sighed. ‘Give his men the choice between service with the legions and following their master into the next world.’

  Dev nodded. The rajah had to die. There was no denying that. At least this way the rest stood a chance…

  ‘And is there any truth in what this man says about the bandit chief in the mountains?’ Cinna said.

  Dev chewed his lip. ‘The bandit chiefs have always been untrustworthy and dangerous. And a zealot, the man said too. How far can a zealot ever be trusted? But he is certainly right about one thing: this Sizhad will be strong. The bandit chiefs have defied the strongest rajahs over the centuries and have also kept the horse clans out of their mountains. And if one of their number has become powerful enough to crush his rivals, then it is possible that he represents the edge we seek. The question is whether we can afford to rely upon him.’