Dangerous Offspring Page 5

  ‘Well, ten years ago the campaign of King Dunlin Rachiswater tried to breach the Wall and for our pains all we had was the worst swarm of Insects for centuries and a horrendous death toll. Altergate lost every man in its conscriptable generation, so that now the Castle has exempted it from the draft. Tambrine is also exempt from fyrdinge. Awndyn manor is in the enviable position of being able to use its Trisian trade profits to pay scutage rather than raise fyrd. Lowespass and Summerday are the only two manors where the Castle can appoint a governor, and both have been given to the Queen’s lance captains. Their garrisons have been increased because the threat still remains–’

  ‘Kestrel–’ I said.

  ‘–But you are proposing to advance into the Paperlands again. What did we gain last time? Nothing! The Wall is still in the same place. Many people think it should be left alone. Don’t mess with it. Is your campaign military necessity, or are you rushing ahead too fast?’

  Eleonora took a breath. ‘Comet, I will answer the man. The offensive of Dunlin Rachiswater was poorly thought out. His was a campaign of muscle not the mind. The Insects’ bodies are so much stronger than ours, we can only beat them with our skills and our brains. Dunlin responded to them rather than outwitting them and it was the downfall of his dynasty. Our current attack in no way compares. We’re using our knowledge of the Insects’ behaviour rather than our soldiers’ lives. We will take ten times more land than he did. Our fresh approach uses the Castle’s latest innovations–which are, dare I say, watertight?–and the might of my well-trained and experienced Select. The Emperor approves it.’

  She hooked her thumb in her sword belt. ‘Insects from here devastated the western reaches of my kingdom; I must protect Plow’s precious fields. I will not allow Insects to make paper from Awian feathers and bones.

  ‘I am simply first among the governors of Awia. In a time of emergency I took special care of my people and now that things are returning to normal I have made sure of my governors’ support’–Lightning nodded in agreement–‘Awia has always had a stoic attitude. The Tanagers never accept defeat. I have fielded all my Select Fyrd because I know this will improve their families’ lives.

  ‘Let me tell you that if we are successful we will no longer need to call up the General Fyrd. There will no longer be a need for a general levy of the whole of the people. I know they resent their sixty days’ unpaid service per year, and we are aware of desertions during the harvest and midwinter. Well, from now on they may remain at their proper work.

  ‘There is good news for the Select Fyrd too. Their monthly payments will be raised to five pounds a week and an equipment allowance of twenty pounds a year. Commissions will be renewed as usual on godsloss day. I expect that the advance will be over by then. At last we have the means to win the war! In future we will look back on this as a momentous date, not because of nineteen twenty-five but twenty twenty-five, when we at last halted the onslaught and took the first step that led to the death of every last Insect!’

  Eleonora gave her grand smile. Kestrel and the other journalists were hunched over, scribbling rapidly. None of them, therefore, was free to meet her eye. Their finished pages dropped, leafed down and slipped under the benches.

  I said, ‘Are there any more questions…No?…Very well. Then on behalf of the Castle I draw this meeting to a close, may it please Your Highness, ladies and gentlemen.’ And added informally to the reporters, ‘You can get lunch in the pub.’

  They still took ten minutes to finish and gather their belongings. The benches scraped on the flagstones and they left the hall. It suddenly seemed very spacious. I rested my backside on the table edge, leant back, arms straight and stretched my legs.

  The Architect had disappeared in a crowd of excited students in thick fustian jackets. They were asking her questions and surrounded the table to watch while she sketched an answer to one. She extricated herself by giving them as many figures and equations as they could take in and then we all watched them trickle out of the hall with their minds reeling.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘I think that was successful, if I do say so myself.’

  ‘Red or white?’

  ‘No thanks. I had too much yesterday and I’m still recovering.’

  Lightning was now on his second glass. ‘The vintage is not as good as the previous year, but still…’

  ‘Well, a splash of red then, thank you.’

  Frost, Eleonora, Lightning and me were celebrating with lunch in the hall. We were together at the head of the table so we could hear the hubbub of the other immortals further down and occasional voices from the tavern across the square as the journalists entertained themselves. Frost rested her notebook on the table beside her. Woe betide anybody who gets between her and its pages when she has an idea.

  She neatened her bone-handled cutlery with precision and began to rub a little butter into her chapped hands. ‘Thank you, Jant,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t have done it on my own.’

  ‘No more should you. It is Jant’s office and I am glad he is pulling his weight for once.’

  ‘Hey, Archer, what are you drinking? That’s not like you.’ I grinned at him.

  Lightning scowled back. ‘At least your Messenger service has become more reliable recently.’

  Eleonora, at the head of the table, leant to the side as a boy served trout cooked in verjuice. She said, ‘Cloud has surpassed himself, don’t you think?’

  ‘It is all right for the front,’ said Lightning, who tended to bring good food and a cellar’s worth of wine with him. It was his only show of wealth because his clothes were understated, if expensive. You wouldn’t know from looking at him that he has millions a year.

  Each of Lightning’s features taken separately would also seem normal rather than striking, but even if I didn’t know he was noble he would impress me as such; he has that confidence that casts a glow and makes a man the centre of attention, because he knows he ought to be. Give his plain grey eyes an imperious look but make them often prone to be cloaked. Dimple his chin, make his mouth firm, used to command but with a twist of sarcasm. Mark that he not only alternates between being ardent and brooding but sometimes manages to be both at once.

  Constant training is the only thing that will make men stick fast in a shield wall, and Lightning drills the fyrd until they are less terrified of the Insects than they are of his anger. Since he is the Lord Governor of Micawater manor, as well as an Eszai, he boldly shapes the world but he still welcomes the yearly cycle of harvests, hunting seasons and accounts. He takes the world seriously, because he has no imagination. Because he has no imagination, he is a popular novelist.

  The Lowespass wind blustered across the square and howled through the alleys. It never seemed to stop. The Riverworks banner fissled and slapped on the roof.

  Frost glanced at me. ‘The wind’s getting up again.’

  I shuddered. I had a sudden vivid image of the soil crumbling over my clothes. I could taste it. I said, ‘We’re supposed to be celebrating your accomplishment. Don’t remind me of the state I was in a hundred years ago.’

  Lightning said, ‘You survived. Simply take more care next time.’

  ‘Next time?’

  ‘Most of us have been bitten. Tornado has been bitten more times than he can count.’

  ‘Do you remember being picked up?’ Eleonora asked me.

  ‘Ha! Of course not.’

  ‘He was in a coma,’ Lightning said.

  ‘I was moribund.’

  ‘He lay unconscious for fourteen weeks in the field hospital at Whittorn. Rayne moved him to Rachiswater Infirmary, then to her hospital in the Castle. He stayed there for a year.’

  I wrapped a strip of fish around my two-pronged fork. ‘It was terrible. I’m far too impatient to convalesce in hospital for day after day, with nothing to do but the occasional haemorrhage.’

  I had a collapsed lung and pneumonia–which injured Awians are prone to–and a bloody great hole in my side. Sepsis led to organ
failure but Rayne knew to let me lie dormant until my body recovered itself. When I came round I screamed solidly, high and eerie like a sick infant until she pumped me full of painkillers. I was in shock; it cocooned and isolated me from reality. I knew I was very badly hurt but could only lie still and trust her. The thought I might never fly again constantly distressed me; if that broken wing had grounded me permanently I would have been vulnerable to Challengers so I made sure Rayne paid it careful attention. I also suffered from a great sense of failure because the mortals who looked to me to lead them had all been killed. I desperately needed to talk but I kept my silence. It was like being in a dark tunnel that very gradually widened and I began to realise what had actually happened to me. I relived it again and again and I grew to understand it. Then I began to talk about it and I healed more quickly.

  ‘He harried us for all the news,’ Lightning told Eleonora.

  ‘Four months were missing from my life!’ I said.

  Eleonora asked Lightning, ‘Where were you in that battle? Why weren’t you hurt like Jant?’

  He shrugged modestly.

  ‘Go on,’ she teased. ‘Tell me.’

  Lightning never needs much encouragement to recount a story. ‘In the preceding weeks,’ he began, ‘everyone seemed tired, overworked and irritable. Little things kept going wrong. We couldn’t know then that it was because something so momentous, so awful, was going to happen that it sent ripples back down the flow of time, to disturb us and disrupt our attention.

  ‘I was in the Sun Pavilion, writing. You know the story where an Eszai is Challenged, but he sends an assassin to murder the Challenger before they meet, so San throws him out of the Circle?’

  ‘No,’ said Eleonora.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Lightning. ‘But this is proof that romantic novels can save your life. The ground began to shake and, one by one, the candles guttered out. I could see nothing, not the back of my hand, not the page in front of me. I couldn’t grasp what was happening.

  ‘I called the captain and together we walked along the line of tents summoning the archers, getting them kitted up and reassuring them. By the time we had one hundred men the rest had gone. They had fled. The ground was falling away under our feet so fast it brought down the palisade.’

  Lightning was staring intently, watching the memory. He subconsciously dropped a hand to his sword hilt. With eyes bright and the other hand spread, he leant over the table, talking directly to Eleonora. ‘You should never meet Insects on open ground. Use fortifications whenever possible. I knew that, but what did we have? Two companies of archers and a handful of arrows.

  ‘We retreated along the stockade until we came to the only corner where it was still upright. I ordered them to form up inside with the fence at their backs. They were breaking down with fear but I made them pull a fallen section in front of us and shoot for all they were worth. We shot straight out over the top, in relays, all night long.’

  ‘For the whole night?’ asked Eleonora.

  ‘If we slowed we would die, I knew that full well.’ He swept his hand out over the table. ‘Fss! Fss! Went the arrows. Every time we paused, stragglers were coming in, some no more than naked, and we lifted them over the defence. Insects scaled it and I had teams to chop them down as they reached the top. After the first hour men started giving up, falling from exhaustion and hypothermia. I dragged them to the back and I kept the rest going. We could see nothing. We knew we were hitting people out there, but they were already lost to the Insects. I could not help them. I did what every Eszai should do in a disaster: cut your losses and save your fyrd.

  ‘When we ran out of ammunition I sent fifty men to bring more. Only ten returned. It was a suicide mission. We had no way of knowing what was happening beyond our palisade. We just kept shooting, holding out against the instant we would be annihilated. I felt the Circle break and I knew Hayl Eske was dead, but I didn’t tell the men.’ He glanced at me. ‘I was waiting for the Circle to break for Comet and Tornado. It was not the first time I have had to leave the battlefield on my own.

  ‘After that first hour I knew everything out there still moving was an Insect. I kept up volleys in pulses for six consecutive hours, until dawn began to resolve.

  ‘The light came up slowly, pale grey, and through the murk we could at last see the utter devastation. The ground in front of us sloped straight into the pit. The middle of the camp had vanished. Only the tents at the far end were left standing, leaning inwards. Around us, the corrugated stockade sagged and twisted like a ribbon. Insects were everywhere, feeding on the bodies. We were helpless, stranded in our corner and tired to death. My vision was dark at the edges with exhaustion but I wrapped my wings around me and I persevered.

  ‘Then came the sound of thunder along the road. Heavy cavalry were riding in. They were armoured head to foot and they poured into the camp with their lances levelled, riding the Insects down. Do you know who was leading them? Rayne. The Doctor. Bundled up in her old cloak on the back of a destrier.

  ‘She had felt the Circle break. She had been here in Slake with the rearguard and at first light she gathered all the cavalry left and set out to find us. We climbed the palisade and hailed her.

  ‘She brought her horse around the lip of the crater. “Bracing morning you have for it, Saker,” said she. “Where are the other two?”

  ‘“I don’t know,’ I said. They were both pulling on the Circle, we could tell that much.

  ‘She said, “You have exposure. Go back to town.”

  ‘I did not return to town. I picked my way over the subsiding ground with her, looking for Comet and Tornado. She spotted the sunburst on his shield–’ He gestured at me ‘–through the scattered soil and set her soldiers to dig him out. Finding Tornado was more difficult. She had to bring in some of her trained dogs. But of Hayl Eske we never found a single piece…Long, drawn-out ordeals are the ones that change us. For me it was just one night. But what a night!’

  I said, ‘It was my biggest battle.’

  ‘Falling down the hole was not the best thing to do under the circumstances,’ Lightning assured me.

  ‘At least I wasn’t as useless as Hayl.’

  Frost said, ‘Everybody remembers where they were when they heard the news.’

  Lightning nodded. His face was flushed. He unlaced the strings at the neck of his shirt, downed the dregs of his wine and called, ‘Bring some more claret. No, no…that old bottle…You’ll like this one, Eleonora. I had to sell a house for it.’ A servant gave him the bottle and he clinked his intaglio ring against its glass. ‘We shall toast Frost’s dam with this. There are only six bottles left in the world…Well, five. But you only live once.’

  I made my excuses, left the table and walked out to the washroom block to have a piss. I was just buttoning my fly when a figure loomed behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Eleonora at the doorway. She looked left and right with a pervert’s smile. ‘Hmm. Interesting in here. Why is it such a mess?’

  ‘Why are you following me?’ I asked.

  ‘You have a pert backside.’

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t give me ideas!’

  ‘Eleonora…no.’

  She laughed. I was begging and that was good enough for her. She said, ‘No, anyway. I want to talk to you about the Archer.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Not here.’ She beckoned. ‘Come into the church, out of this terrible wind.’

  We walked past the stores, stepping over the rail tracks that carry fodder to the stables, through the alleyway and into the church beside the hall.

  It was a quiet, white room with beanbags on the floor. Churches are only single rooms but they are often built and funded by governors and sometimes as a display of the sponsor’s wealth can be quite ornate. They employ no officials, except a caretaker to look after the building, and they are places in which to think and relax, and reflect on the absence of god. People sit, or walk around admiri
ng the decoration. Travellers are welcome to shelter there for the night. They are for people, not god, since god has left the world on an extended break and has had no impact on anybody’s life since the calendar began.

  The church was empty so Eleonora spoke openly. ‘Do you know what’s bothering Lightning?’

  ‘Is something bothering him?’

  She blinked in disbelief. ‘Yes! Men–you never notice anything, do you? Have you ever seen him so tipsy before?’

  I considered it. ‘No, not for a long time. Is it his fiancée?’

  ‘Swallow!’ Eleonora said contemptuously. ‘No. He wouldn’t mention it to you, because it isn’t connected with the dam. I know how Eszai hide their weaknesses. He told me and, since the weight of responsibility for the advance is on you immortals, I thought I should let you know what has shaken him.’

  ‘He told you? What? What did he tell you?’

  ‘Do you remember Cyan, his daughter?’

  ‘Of course I remember Cyan.’

  ‘She has gone missing.’ Eleonora paused, dramatically.

  I said, ‘What, again?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘She was kidnapped once,’ I explained. ‘While you were busy wresting the throne from Staniel Rachiswater and exiling the poor fool.’

  Eleonora tipped her foot and thoughtfully rolled her rowel spur up and down on the floorboards, leaving a line of dents. ‘Oh, I see. Well, that explains Lightning’s extreme reaction. He jumped to the conclusion that Cyan has been snatched. She is, after all, the future governor of Peregrine and the daughter of Governor Micawater, so she’s a target for kidnappers. They know he would give his manor for her safety.’

  ‘Where did she go missing? Awndyn?’

  ‘Hacilith. In the city.’

  ‘Why? What was she doing there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was hoping you’d sort it out. Eszai should bloody well tell each other if something goes wrong instead of moping around and drinking.’