Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Page 9

  The general was staggering, trying to keep his footing as his face darkened and his arm trembled with the sword wobbling in his grip. There was the possibility that Bellacon could disarm the man, given his inebriated state, but then it would only take one lucky stab with that thing to give the tribune a really bad day. The general advanced on him, sword now up, wavering but threatening.

  ‘Traitor. You’ll not stop me. It’s all in place now anyway. You can’t prevent it.’

  Bellacon felt a cold chill at those words, but then, suddenly, the main tent flap was ripped open and the general’s guards appeared in the doorway, swords out.

  ‘Stay there,’ the general snapped. ‘I’ll kill him myself.’

  Volentius lunged, the blade shaking wildly and missing the killing blow the general clearly intended by some distance. Still, Bellacon was forced to step sharply back and to the side. He grasped the general’s wooden correspondence case from the table and brandished it like a shield.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, General.’

  ‘Oh no. You’d love me to put this down so you can kill me, wouldn’t you? Well you’ll not get the chance, whoever you really are.’

  The sword lashed out again, this time with better aim, and Bellacon only turned the blade with the wooden case in his hands, and then only just.

  ‘General –’

  ‘To the fires of the underworld with you, Bellacon, you traitor.’

  The next blow came as an overhead slice and cleaved the wooden box in two, pens, ink and vellum scattering to the tent floor.

  As the general almost lost his balance, Bellacon saw an opportunity to move into the clear and ducked past his attacker, dancing back out across the tent. As he did so, he saw the second rear dividing tent flap swept open as Lissa emerged from the darkness beyond, her expression betraying no surprise whatsoever.

  He had no time to speak or call for aid, though, for Volentius spun and went for him again, the sword swinging wild and madly. Bellacon had to lurch backwards and the general came on, angrily, raising his sword for another overhead chop.

  In the end it was a simple rug that did for Volentius. Even as Bellacon saw the danger and tried to cry a warning to his drunken, deluded attacker, the general’s foot caught a rucked-up fold in a carpet and he toppled, unable to retain his inebriated balance.

  Bellacon watched in horror as Volentius plunged into the pit of burning coals, his clothes catching immediately, orange tongues of flame rippling along the dry linen and shrivelling his hair with a dreadful smell.

  Volentius screamed, the sword falling away from his grasp. Bellacon felt a momentary panic, uncertain as to what to do, even as the two guards cast their own weapons away and ran towards the floundering conflagration of man and fire.

  ‘Leave him,’ snapped a voice of irresistible command. Bellacon, snapped out of his confusion, turned to see Lissa holding her arm up to the two guards. The men staggered to a halt, as baffled by this turn of events as was Bellacon.

  ‘General…’ one of them began.

  But Volentius could not hear. He was emitting a series of high-pitched keening noises as the fat of his flesh popped and spat amid the coals. Even burning to death, he apparently lacked the balance and strength of limb to help himself. His drunken body burned, unable to prevent it happening.

  ‘The general is dead,’ Lissa said coldly, gesturing to the two guards. ‘It was not your fault, and you could have done nothing to stop it. It was an unhappy accident. You saw it. We all saw how his drunkenness caused him to fall in the fire. And now even if you manage to save him from the flames he will die from his injuries. Better to let him expire there than to linger in agony for days.’

  Bellacon’s disbelieving gaze snapped back and forth between the shrieking, burning general, and the cold, implacable witch in the doorway. He had never seen her look so powerful. Suddenly he had an image of what she might have been like among her own people had Volentius not taken her as a prize. She was wreathed in a power he could not comprehend. He was at one and the same time horrified and excited by this odd change.

  There was more to the witch than Volentius’ tame seer, clearly.

  ‘Go,’ she gestured to the guards.

  ‘Ma’am,’ they answered in confusion, their gaze still locked on the body in the fire, which was now just whining as it hissed and spat, the twitching legs its only remaining movement.

  ‘Go and summon the senior officers to the command tent. And send for the medical orderlies and the doctor. They cannot save him, but they will need to deal with the body.’

  Bellacon stared at the witch, boggling at the natural way she seemed to give orders.

  ‘Go,’ she urged them, and the two guards exchanged a quick, helpless look, nodded, and turned to run from the tent. Bellacon, his mind racing, waited until they were gone, one question now prevalent in his mind above all the others. Once they were alone and the body had stopped making noises and moving, Bellacon shook his head.

  ‘Your visions are untrue. Or uncertain, anyway.’

  ‘What leads you to believe this?’ Lissa asked quietly. ‘The general knew them to be true.’

  ‘The general,’ Bellacon replied acidly, ‘knew that you had seen him standing beneath the Vulture flag at this fortress of the Albantes. Explain that!’

  The witch gave him a strange, inscrutable look.

  ‘People never pay close enough attention to prophecy. Half the misunderstandings in respect of seers are born of people hearing only what they want to hear, and not what is actually said.’

  Bellacon’s frown, which seemed to have been riveted to his face for this whole exchange, deepened further still.

  Lissa breathed deeply. ‘I have said time and again that the Vulture Legion’s flag will fly above the heart of Alba and that its general would stand victorious beneath it. I never once named that general.’

  Bellacon’s frown shattered and fell away as he blinked in surprised comprehension.

  ‘You misled him!’

  ‘He misled himself. The general of the Vulture Legion will stand victorious among the Albantes. What remains to be seen is who that general is.’

  Chapter 6

  Bellacon looked around the tent. The captains and tribunes were clearly uncertain. The death of General Volentius had been a shock to all concerned, and despite the testimonies of both Lissa and the two guards, they were clearly still struggling with suspicion over the fact that the ousted Bellacon had been present.

  ‘I know this has come as an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events to you all. You have served under Volentius for years. Though I’ve not known him for long, I can see that for all his faults, disloyalty to his men was clearly not one of them. He was proud and fatherly towards the Vulture Legion. It was the drink that did for him, gentlemen. It set him against me and it lost him his balance at a crucial moment. The flames claimed him, not by the design of any of us, but by sad accident and over-inebriation. Yet we are mid-campaign and we must move on. The general vouchsafed to me before his demise that his plan was to move north against a tribe called the Albantes and secure a fortress that he believed was central to the control of this whole island. Our mission and goals have not changed, just the commander.’

  This was it. The moment that would make or break, depending upon how it was taken by the others. They all liked him – he knew that – but still he was an outsider.

  ‘I am the legion’s second-in-command, appointed under imperial authority by the Marshal Titus Tythianus. As such it is my clear duty to step into the boots of the general in his passing. I hereby assume command of the Vulture Legion. As such, I will be entirely reliant upon the professionalism and support of the legion’s officers. Namely, you. If you have any misgivings about my taking this role, now is your time to voice them.’

  It was not lost on him how many of the officers’ eyes turned to Lissa, standing in the corner, at that juncture. It also did not escape his notice how she gave the tiniest nod to them. His awe
of this strange native witch was growing with each passing hour.

  There was a telling silence. Despite any misgivings they might have had, each man here knew of Volentius’ personal habits and was aware of how they had begun to affect his command skills.

  ‘Good. Then it is done. I will lead Vulture Legion north against the Albantes, where hopefully we will meet up with the other forces and provide a united front against this apparently powerful tribe. One thing remains to be clarified, though, and I recognise that this could cause a great deal of trouble in the ranks. Before he died, General Volentius hinted that he had some sort of plan in place and that our time here in the west was little more than a delay for the army while that plan was enacted. For the safety of us all, I need to know what those plans were or are. There is something that fills me with suspicion and uncertainty over the whole thing. Be assured, all of you, that the command has changed and that I will not have hidden agendas in the legion. If any of you know anything, if you have anything to say, say it now. There will be no comeback or trouble for having kept the confidence of your former commander or following his orders. Speak now.’

  The various officers exchanged looks and Bellacon examined their faces in the gloom of the tent. The cavalry tribune failed to meet his eye, his gaze lowered. He and one of the captains…

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t tell you what the general had in mind, sir,’ the cavalry officer said quietly, ‘but he requisitioned four of my best horses only two days after we set off west. Wouldn’t explain what they were needed for, and there was no official chitty or request. Highly unusual and I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Were the riders anything special?’

  ‘You don’t understand, sir,’ the cavalry commander replied. ‘It was just the horses. Fast and reliable. No riders.’

  Bellacon felt that familiar frown crease his forehead. He never used to frown until he joined this lot.

  ‘You,’ he said, gesturing at the captain whose expression was shifty to say the least.

  ‘Sir, I don’t know whether it’s connected, but it seems odd enough to be. I had two deserters that same day. I know every legion has its share of deserters, but not deep in enemy territory. Only an idiot would desert here. And these two weren’t idiots. Far from it.’

  Bellacon folded his arms and stepped towards him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They were veterans and very good soldiers. They were both decorated men, but trouble, transferred into the legion not long before we crossed. They were very, very good at what they did, but they both had something of a tendency to act regardless of military propriety. One of them was destined for promotion but put a captain in the medical tent over a woman. Dangerous bastards, both of them.’

  ‘Four horses and two dangerous men,’ Bellacon huffed. ‘Fast horses, so they were travelling, and apparently at Volentius’ command. Spare horses to allow for even speedier travel. This is making me nervous. If we had access to the records I would not be at all surprised to find that the general was personally responsible for their transfer to this legion. Lissa?’

  But the witch was already moving, whipping the pouches up from her belt and mixing her powders. In heartbeats she was leaning to a brazier, blowing her powder into the hissing charcoal. Once again there was a strange flash and Lissa peered into the conflagration as the sickly-sweet smoke filled the tent, drawing tears from the officers’ eyes with its cloying pungent aroma.

  ‘Two men will die,’ she said, ominously. ‘Two men with general’s belts. One will gasp out his life as his throat closes. One will feel the sharp agony of a steel point in his neck.’

  There was a long, ominous silence, and Lissa, seemingly having trouble tearing herself away from the flames, rose and turned, her expression dark.

  ‘I am informed,’ Bellacon said quietly, ‘that Lissa does not lie. Not just a claim of hers, but a fact, supposedly.’

  There was a chorus of quiet agreement across the tent.

  ‘Then it seems clear that Volentius sent two assassins after his fellow generals. We are all, I think, aware that there were deep divisions in the command of this invasion force, though I had no idea they went so deep as to involve murder. I do know that General Volentius saw his sole victory over Alba as the only conceivable path to bring his family back out of their pit of shame. Sadly, I suspect he has just consigned them to it for good. The general brought us west to dither while his assassins removed the other two commanders. That would make him senior general in the field and, even if the three legions together moved against the Albantes, the glory in the victory would be his. A cunning, and rather despicable, plan.’

  There was a silence filled with a combination of disbelief, shock and disappointment.

  ‘We need to move fast. Let us hope that the assassins are finding it difficult to gain access to their targets, for they are clearly far ahead of us. Have we any news of the other legions?’

  ‘No, sir,’ the cavalry commander murmured. ‘But we know where they were going. Crito into the fenlands of the east and Quietus straight north.’

  Bellacon nodded. ‘We’ve not the time to cross the entire country to the east and try to save Crito, though perhaps a lesser, fast-moving, unit can.’

  He gestured to the cavalry tribune. ‘Have a small force of ten or twelve riders put together with spare horses and send them east in search of Crito. If fortune is with us they can find the Raven Legion before anything happens. We will take the army and move north as fast as we can, hoping to catch up with General Quietus and his Hawk Legion before either assassins or Albante warriors can thwart him. At dawn we move north at speed.’

  ‘Fruitless.’

  All eyes, including Bellacon’s narrowing ones, turned to Lissa at her single, damning word.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Concentrate on your conquest and forget about assassins and generals. The others will die.’

  ‘We might be able to reach them in time,’ Bellacon said adamantly.

  ‘No,’ Lissa replied. ‘It will come to pass. Both of them will die. You can do nothing to prevent that, so concentrate on the living and forget the doomed.’

  Bellacon pursed his lips and breathed deeply. ‘I do not like to believe in a fate that is immutable and final. Each of the other generals has one of my friends with him. Tribunes Convocus and Cantex are the best of men. I do not believe they will let their generals die.’

  ‘Then prepare yourself for disappointment,’ Lissa said quietly.

  ‘Go,’ the tribune said to the officers. ‘See to your men, scotch any rumours that are already arising. The truth about the fire and the accident will be out soon enough if not already, but I do not want a hint of what’s just been revealed to reach the men. Morale will suffer, as will confidence in the chain of command. The general tripped and died by accident and now we continue with his plan and march north. That is all.’

  As the officers nodded and filed out and Lissa, with a last arch look, retreated to the rear rooms, Bellacon ground his teeth and looked at the brazier, still issuing cloying smoke. His friends would stop the assassins. Or they would die trying.

  Part Two

  Raven Legion

  Whatever Bellacon might think, I had seen the future for the generals of the imperial force, and I knew that Caldagh, the judge of souls who my people revere, was waiting for them. Their days in our world were numbered as the murderous riders of the fallen general, Volentius, bore down on them. There was nothing we could do to save either of them, though Bellacon refused to accept it and took the army north at pace. But to the east, General Crito led the Raven Legion with the tribune Convocus at his back. I wondered how the tribune would fare and whether he would live to be reunited with his friend. I had peered into the fire, but these tribunes’ fates were ephemeral things twisting and wisping in the flames so that I could never be certain of them. Convocus was on his own, and even I could not say where he was bound.

  Chapter 7

  Decius Convocus peer
ed at the wide expanse of river with its thick muddy banks and fast-flowing brown torrents, churning and turning on their way out to the great sea. It was as unsettled as he himself. Convocus had long since learned that when things were at their easiest, that was the time to be on your guard.

  And things had been unexpectedly and suspiciously easy.

  Not only had they met no resistance since their disembarkation and departure from the other two legions, in fact they had found the southern tribes to be cooperative and even accommodating.

  Of course, those tribes in the southern coastal areas had been trading with the empire for generations, and might well see a permanent imperial presence as the next logical step, perhaps even welcoming them. It had certainly felt like that. And the logic of the situation was not difficult to unpick. Those tribes knew that their cousins across the water had managed to retain their own culture while becoming part of the greater empire as a whole. They had suffered the attacks of pirates the same as those cousins, but could see how the empire had leapt to the defence of their own.

  Perhaps it was natural, then, that they welcomed the empire. Yet it still seemed strange. So few generations had passed since the north lands had been the periphery of the world, untamed and hostile. Saravis Fork had once stood as a critical pass separating the empire from its enemies. Now it was a mid-way post on the road through the northern provinces.

  The bright side that even Convocus had to concede was that the congeniality and familiarity of the situation, combined with the confidence of the general and his officers, had counteracted the superstition and worry of the men, who were no longer watching over their shoulders for magic monsters or refusing to walk into a mist in case it suffocated them.