changed. ‘Lord of Living and Dying, you really are going to do it, aren’t you? You really are trying to change the world …’
‘Not the world. Sorlost.’
‘Sorlost is the world. And what in Great Tanis’s name does Tam Rhyl think this is about? He’s not looking to change the world, surely?’
Tam? Change the world? ‘He just wants power. And March Verneth humiliated. But I couldn’t do it alone.’
‘You could have come to me,’ Darath said.
‘Could I?’
‘Ha. No. Probably not. ‘
They turned into Felling Street, still strolling slowly, gazing idly in the shop windows at expensive sheets of silk paper, old books, pretty silverware with a patina of refined age.
‘But now that I know … If we’re doing it, we’re doing it properly. If I’m in, I’m in. So … how many men? And where did you find them? Even I’ve not bought that kind of service before. Wouldn’t know where you even begin, or what a likely price would be. I’d imagine it’s rather more complicated than buying a new coat, somehow.’
Orhan snorted. ‘Even you …! So daring and wicked and corrupt your very name is a byword for idleness. It is strangely like buying a new coat, to be quite honest, if that doesn’t disappoint you. Get a recommended name, describe what you want and by when, negotiate over details and price, sit back and wait and hope the man cuts your cloth straight and knows where to stick his pins. Forty men. The Free Company of the Sword, they’re called. Absurd name. They were recommended by one of my acquaintances in Immish, ironically enough. The High Council has used them a couple of times. They were key to the Immish recovery of Telea during the Winter War. Specialize in … interesting work like this.’
‘And you trust them?’
‘Of course I don’t trust them. I don’t expect to trust them. That’s what they do. Betray people for money. They’re inherently untrustworthy, in fact. Except that I’m paying them, and they don’t get paid if they betray me. That’s how they operate.’
‘Like buying a whore, then. They’ll get a bad reputation if they don’t go through with it, or pick your pocket or whatnot.’
‘If you really must put it that way, probably, yes, I imagine it is.’
Darath grinned at him again. ‘Now I’ve put you out, haven’t I? So sweetly fastidious as always. Even plotting murder you have to be purer than I am … They’re arriving soon, then, I take it?’
‘I had word yesterday. They’re coming in in small groups. Two or three days, it will take.’
‘Hmmm … This doubling of the guard. Dangerous. Very bad timing. Why in the God’s name did Tam suggest it? And why in the God’s name did you agree?’
‘Because I don’t particularly want to die of deeping fever, probably.’ Orhan took a last bite of meat and spoke as he chewed. ‘And it’s actually extremely fortuitous, as far as I can see. Excellent timing. The guards will be so preoccupied looking out for Chathean accents, they won’t look too closely at anything else.’
‘I suppose so … You’ve got a lump of gristle on your chin, by the way.’
Orhan rubbed at his face in irritation. The spices were beginning to sting his lips. ‘We could have just had this conversation in my study. Without the need for all this flim-flamming about.’
‘Your study … Now that’s somewhere I haven’t been for a while. What would people say? Quite an eventful day you’d be having. And I don’t trust even your men not to be peeping at the keyhole. Especially your men, if they really do only charge six dhol.’
They paused in the street, standing with the charred skewers in their hands, sticky with grease. Before them the small green square flanking the House of the East. A magnolia tree bloomed in its centre, its petals were beginning to fall and lay like skin on the marble ground. The air was very still, as though the city had stopped breathing. A bell tolled over in the west. Dusk. A ferfew called loudly; he heard a woman laugh. A dog barked and the bird flew up with a frantic beating of wings. Orhan thought: a little way over to the west, a child is dying. Always a perilous time, the border between day and night. He looked at his ex-lover, who was more worn now, more haggard, more alive.
‘Why don’t you come in, Darath?’ he said.
Darath looked back at him. The tension that was between them flickered like the tongue of a snake. ‘Damned erotic thing, plotting the overthrow of one’s Emperor. Or did the pretty serving boy earlier stir you up? I saw you eyeing him. Lovely lips, he had.’
They turned together in through the gates of the House of the East, which opened smoothly at Orhan’s approach. Amlis and Sterne and Darath’s escort followed behind them, knives drawn.
They line up in long rows, stretching away into the horizon. Rank upon rank of them. Gleaming silver armour, silver-gilt bronze over fine white cloth. The blood shows through the white and marks them as His soldiers, who will fight until they’ve lost every drop of blood in their bodies and beyond.
They carry the long spear, the sarriss, its jagged point a thing to rip flesh going in and coming out. A short wide-bladed sword that will stab and hack and cleave and tear. A broad cruel knife. No shields. His armies do not need shields. Shields are to stop a man dying. It does not matter how many of them die. Only that they kill as they do so. A shield is a coward thing.
Their helmets cover the eyes but leave the mouth bare, to bite and spit and scream. Ten times a thousand pairs of eyes stare through white-tempered bronze. They wear red horse-hair plumes that nod in the wind. He likes His soldiers plumed like birds in His colours. Seen from above, standing on the walls of a city looking down at them, they must look like a great field of flowers. Like the rose forests of Chathe must have looked, before they burned them.
They stand in perfect silence, still as standing stones, still as teeth in a dead mouth. Perfect order. Perfect discipline. He likes that. Demands that. His officers know the need for it, have passed the lesson on to their men. And they do not often need speech, anyway, when they march. They sing the paean and they sing the death song and they shout their allegiance to the skies. Anything else is unnecessary. What is there in the world to think of but Him?
Within their ranks are men and women and children and old men and cripples and the maimed and the half-dead. He does not care who they are. Whether they are strong or weak. Only that they will fight. If they have no other use, they will deflect an arrow or a sword. If they have no other use, they will die.
They are the army of Amrath, the World Conqueror, the King of Dust, the King of Shadows, the Dragon Kin, the Dragonlord, the Demon Born. For all eternity, they will fight for Him.
A command sounds, a great horn of silver. Music of paradise! The officers call out commands in clear voices. The ranks move forward, cavalry and infantry marching together, baggage wagons drawn by white oxen, camp followers with their meagre lives packed on their backs. Dark red pennants flutter above them, bright in the wind. The war drums pound out a beat like that of the human heart. The terrible, awful sound of living, that one first learns
