Gav Thorpe - The Crown of the Conqueror

He was numb, in mind and body. He saw the remains of a mother and two children buried under a pile of bricks, their bodies crushed by the collapsed building, and it meant nothing to the lord of Magilnada. Blood stained the flagstones underfoot and he stumbled through ruddy-tinged puddles. Dust filled the air, coating his clothes, choking eyes, ears and mouth.

The handcart jarred against something, bringing Anglhan to a stop. He looked back dumbly and saw that a severed arm had become trapped in the spokes of a wheel. Disgust, despair, anger had all run their course, and now Anglhan bent down, tossed aside the offending object and carried on without a second thought.

A boulder smashed through the roof of a house ahead, sending up shards of tiles and a cloud of plaster dust. Anglhan did not flinch. He barely heard the shriek of a man who came stumbling out of the damaged building, a splinter the size of a sword jutting from his shoulder. He made a grab for Anglhan, eyes pleading, but the ruler of the devastated city swiped away the man's hand and pushed him back.

He had to get out.

The city was surrounded. As far as Anglhan knew, nobody had escaped the ring of Askhans. Until that morning, he had harboured the hope that he would be able to slip away in the confusion and carnage of the final assault. That hope had been dashed the moment he realised the Askhans planned to kill everyone in the city. It would not matter if he could disguise himself in a flood of refugees, he would be cut down all the same.

So it was that he followed the last-ditch plan he had concocted more than a year ago, when he had first considered crowning himself ruler of the Free Country. He did not do so with hope of expectation, or even desperation. He walked through the city simply because the alternative was to wait in the palace to die. He was not a fighter, and he was sure that Ullsaard would give orders to ensure he was captured alive. Anglhan bore no illusions about the fate being taken prisoner would bring. Torture and an agonising death would be his only future.

He came upon Spring Road, where the wells that served the city were found, fed by underground rivers from the Altes Hills. There was a large crowd of people, scrabbling with one another to get fresh water. People wanted to drink; none gave thought to the dozens of fires that still burned in the city.

Anglhan was not interested in the fresh springs. It was pointless to stave off death by thirst just to wait for a legionnaire's spear. He moved around the crowd, avoiding the gazes of the desperate citizens, and made his way over a shallow pile of debris into a half-ruined wooden hall.

Inside stank of shit and piss, for this was the wastehouse of the upper city. Separate from the river and pools that brought the city drinking water, another foaming rivulet cascaded down into the plains, accessed by three deep brick-lined holes. In normal times, the nightmen and pissboys would collect the waste of the nobles and flush it away down the open sewer; the common folk brought their own filth to dispose. Nobody knew where the stream went — Shit River as it was known — and until now nobody had cared.

Anglhan pulled a scarf from his belt and wrapped it over his mouth and nose; it did little to ward away the stench, but at least he would not get sprays of effluent in his mouth. He lifted the small chest from the cart and set it onto the lip of the closest sewer well. From the cart he brought forth a length of rope and tied it about his chest in the manner of a topman on his old landship. A memory flickered through his dulled mind, of teaching the same knot to a rebel chieftain.

Searching for something secure to tie the other end of the rope to, he spied a fallen beam from the broken roof. Tying the rope with nimble hands, he tested the knot and shuffled back to his chest. He passed the rope through a metal ring on one end and secured the chest to his belt. It weighed heavily at the moment, but it was only half-full, the rest of the space taken up by an inflated bladder that would keep the chest afloat once he was in the waterway.

Without any hesitation, no thoughts of what he had lost or the misery he had brought upon the thousands of people he had ruled, Anglhan flicked the rope over the wall of the well and heaved himself up to the lip. Inside, the bricks were coated with an uneven layer of dried waste, looking much like brown and black ice. The smell hit him with renewed strength as he swung his legs into the opening and dangled at the edge.

Working the rope through the special knot at his waist, Anglhan lowered himself towards the foaming water far below. In small drops, feet braced against the wall, the former lord of Magilnada left his city, face red with effort, the scarf across his face wet with his panting breath and sweat.

His foot slipped and for a moment he swung from side to side, toes scraping at the accreted shit for purchase. He eventually came to a stop and started down again. His feet were almost in the torrent when he noticed something different. He listened and could not place what he heard; then realised that it was quiet.

The Askhan drums had stopped. The assault was about to begin.

With a last effort, he slipped the knot free and dropped into the water. Foam bubbled around him as the current grabbed his legs and swept him away. His sodden clothes dragged at him and he clawed at the surface of the river. He snatched away the scarf and arched his neck to gasp for air, the small chest of money bobbing along beside him.

Only now did he feel something. Freedom. He laughed and spluttered, imagining Ullsaard's rage when he discovered Anglhan had escaped.

"Fuck Ullsaard!" Anglhan shouted, barely hearing his own voice over the rush of the river.

A moment later he was dashed against an outcrop of rock, his head cracking against stone, knocking him out.

Ullsaard had razed farms, villages, even towns, but he had never destroyed a whole city. A bank of oily smoke obscured the peaks behind Magilnada, blotting out everything around the city. Most of the flames were pyres, upon which the thousands of dead were burned. It had taken four days to take Magilnada; already five days had been spent collecting and disposing of the bodies. It was a grim task made all the more laborious because of Ull saard's instructions to check every corpse to identify Anglhan's body. So far he had not been found, and Ullsaard was depressed at the realisation that in all likelihood the former governor had somehow eluded him.

Those companies not detailed on the corpse-burning were at work with the engineers, levelling every building, pulling down the great curtain wall, shattering bricks and breaking up stone blocks. The sound of their labour rang far across the Magilnadan gap, and it would continue for many more days to come.

Ullsaard sat in his pavilion and worked out what to do next. There was so much debris to search through, it could take dozens of days before Anglhan's remains might be found, if they existed at all. Practicality had to triumph over vengeance for the moment; supplies were already moving dawnwards to the Askhan legions and the offensive needed to start again. There was nothing Ullsaard could do to hasten the discovery of Anglhan or help with the utter destruction of Magilnada. His duty was to rejoin his army after long absence and lead the attack on Carantathi.

"Happy with your handiwork?"

Looking up, Ullsaard saw Noran stepping into the cloth-walled chamber. Some of the colour had returned to his face, but he still looked weak.

"You should be resting," said the king, standing up to direct his friend to a chair.

Noran sagged into the canvas seat with a long exhalation. He took a moment to regain his breath.

"You have not answered my question," said Noran. "Are you happy now that Magilnada is destroyed?"