peasant: whoever you’re sworn to, whoever they’re sworn to, totter high enough up the stack and they’re all sworn to the crown. And who wears that?’
‘Uh, your father?’
‘Well, yes, but he’s ill, isn’t he? So while he recovers, the master of the Star Court is …?’
‘Your brother, highness?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But he’s not the one commandeering me.’
‘Well, no, you gormless pleb, but that’s why you’re going to take me to him.’
‘But your brother is in Omundi and that’s days away – I’d be an oathbreaker! I have to be released, it doesn’t work if I just walk away.’
‘In my father’s name, are all you provincials so thick-skulled? Your pestilent oath won’t matter a gnat’s fart once we reach my brother. The crown can supplant or dissolve inferior pledges, you homespun halfwit. You’ll be released the moment my brother decrees it.’
Chel’s hands went very still on the thin reins. The mule plodded on, making progress into the rough countryside. In Chel’s mind, a second road was unfurling, one that led into a suddenly unconstrained future. For a moment he forgot his fear. ‘Released from my oath?’
‘In a heartbeat.’
‘And what about a pardon for any unwitting offences against the Church?’
‘Of course! My brother is on excellent terms with Primarch Vassad. Just get me to safety. And fast! This whole coast is unsafe. One of my brothers was murdered on the road by brigands, you know.’
Chel’s mind was galloping ahead. The prince slapped at his arm.
‘Do you dare defy a prince of the kingdom in a time of war? I’ll have you e—’
‘I’ll take you, highness. I’ll get you to safety, I swear it.’
‘Well, about bloody time. There you go, you have a new oath already.’
Chel saw no sign of any of Sokol’s band on the road. Images floated in his mind: silken birds pouring fire onto the water beneath, the screaming fireballs ripping across the bay and into the fort, the giant black ship, sitting implacable between frothing plumes. Already the memories were becoming unreal, too much to absorb, greasy moments slipping away into his subconscious.
He still felt a burn of shame at the thought of abandoning his sworn duty, despite the young prince’s commands. He told himself that Sokol would no doubt be on the road east already, and that they’d likely catch him up, whereupon Prince Tarfel could explain the situation. Perhaps they’d all make the journey together, Sokol prideful of his new charge right up to the moment where Crown Prince Mendel dissolved Chel’s oath before his eyes.
Chel and the prince went east, toward Omundi and the army.
***
The port was burning, great gouts of flame pouring from the sky like incandescent pillars. Whole buildings were reduced to rubble, the palace on the bluffs a blackened cadaver, the Academy opposite a scorching glare too bright to regard.
The city walls crumbled to ash as the entire sea lit with alchemical fire, washing like a wave over the port. He watched it rise before him, screaming silently, anchored to the spot in the ruin of the sea-fort. Heali’s voice called to him, exhorting him to flee, but he remained rooted as the curtain of flame rose higher until it consumed the sky. There, at its centre, just before it fell upon him, he saw a tiny figure, dark against the blaze. It wore a snarling mask.
His head knocked against the crate behind him and with a gulp of air Chel woke. The reins were still in his hands, soaked through. Mortified, he tried to wipe away the worst of his slick sheen, while the mule plodded faithfully on. He felt in no hurry to sleep again.
It was a three-day trip to Omundi, rattling along the pitted dirt roads in the mule cart. The makeshift convoy moved as fast as it could, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the invading Norts as conditions allowed, the bulk of their contingent likewise seeking the safety of the League’s armies.
They camped only briefly and stopped at few roadside shrines. Prince Tarfel made for a dreadful travelling companion: he insisted on hiding among the kitchen supplies in the back of the cart, where he alternated between gibbering panic, which was tiresome, and ostentatious boredom, which was worse. He was prone to bursting into song when under-occupied; his reedy tenor could at least carry a tune, but his limited repertoire ground down Chel’s resolve as the journey wore on, to the extent that he considered teaching the prince some of the more rustic ditties favoured by Sokol’s regulars. When not singing, the prince demanded explanations for everything they passed on the road, from the meaning of the plague quarantine markers to the frequency of the smoking char pits. The only sight to hush him was a rack of gibbets strung at a crossroads, the bodies dangling beneath shorn of noses and ears, the signs around their shredded necks clearly reading ‘Rau Rel’. Otherwise, Chel kept his answers short. When a kingdom has been fighting the same war on itself for twenty years, there’s little new to say, he thought to himself.
Chel tried to focus on the immediate future. He would ditch the prince with his brother, hop back on the cart and roll on south, cut east at the Lakes and be home ahead of the news of Denirnas Port’s destruction. Away from the madness, away from murderous confessors and their lingering venom. By the time he arrived, he could shape the story of the Nort invasion to his choosing, his interactions with the prince, how he came to be reprieved from Sokol’s pointless service, assuming Sokol had even survived. Enough remained of the cart’s contents to barter his way all the way back to Barva. He was going far away from all this. He was going home. All he had to worry about was what to say when he arrived. What to say to his sisters, what to say to his step-father. What to say to his mother. Chel bit his lip in contemplation. At least he’d have plenty of time to think.
‘Look, the pennants, the pennants!’
Tarfel had roused himself and was pointing down into the river valley. Ahead of them, down the curve of the dusty road as it wound its way into the river valley, the bright walls of Omundi shone in the evening sun.
Spread like a dark blanket pocked with campfires before the walls, the armies of the Glorious League lay camped, the Church-blessed alliance of great Names and small, the crown-led instrument of divine unification. Siege engines stood idle in their earthworks, just out of bowshot, and Chel noted with distaste the rocky dam that had diverted the river’s flow away from the city and down deep-cut channels in the earth. Little seemed to be happening.
Highest of all the pennants that fluttered at the centre of the camp was the white lion of Merimonsun, and Tarfel squealed with glee at its sight. ‘Go there, go there!’ Chel geed the mule down the slope toward the camp.
***
Whether or not the pickets at the camp’s edge believed that the mule cart was an official royal conveyance, Tarfel’s shrieking, princely entitlement and signet-waving had them escorted to the camp’s centre in short order by nervous men-at-arms. An equally sceptical vizier bade them wait, still guarded, at the edge of a wide earth circle, ringed by the exotic tents of the great and good of the royal forces. Lions, pictorially speaking, were everywhere.
Overhead, a host of messenger-birds, doves and pigeons, seemed in constant
