Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

“Youʼve done enough for today, mistress,” he told her. And we have losses to make good, he added silently. “Youʼll find Sister Illian and Weaver on the rise, please fetch them here.”

He moved around the near-perfect circle of Varitai, peering through the fading smoke to confirm the defeat of the Volarian left flank. Free Swords were running in all directions and the Garisai advancing in good order towards the Varitai, Ivelda and Lekran at their head. Frentis held up a hand to halt them in place, turning to quickly count the remaining Varitai. Three hundred. Double the number already in the army.

“Brother.” Illian came to a halt at his side, crossbow in hand. He took in the sight of a bandage on her forehead, the wound just below the hairline and still leaking blood. “Kuritai,” she said with a shrug.

He nodded, turning back to the Varitai. “Wait for my order.” He strode closer to the circle of slave soldiers, gaze fixed on the two figures in their centre. The burly sergeant stood stock still and back straight, staring at Frentis, grizzled face showing a stern defiance he couldnʼt help but admire. The officer at his side was at most half the sergeantʼs age and considerably less defiant, eyes constantly roaming the surrounding freed folk, face pale with terror.

“Youʼre alone,” Frentis called to the burly man across the ranks of immobile Varitai. “Your officers are dead or running back to New Kethia. If you want to join them, give the order for these men to lay down their arms.”

The sergeantʼs face twisted into a disgusted grimace and he spat on the ground, speaking but one word, laden with contempt, “Slave!”

Illianʼs crossbow bolt smacked into the sergeantʼs breastplate just left of the sternum. At such close range it had little difficulty penetrating armour and bone to find the heart.

“And you, Honoured Citizen?” Frentis called to the young officer, now gaping at the fallen sergeant, the tears streaming from his eyes making him appear no more than a child lost amidst a field of dangerous strangers. After a moment he mastered himself sufficiently to retrieve the bugle from the sergeantʼs body. The call he sounded was faltering and thin, but evidently sufficiently clear. As one the Varitai laid down their weapons and stood in ranks, every face expressing no more emotion than a stone.

“Can you heal so many?” Frentis asked Weaver as the healer appeared with his freed Varitai.

Weaver gave a soft laugh, surveying the neat ranks of slave soldiers with his now-habitual sad smile. “You talk as if I have a choice, brother.”

New Kethia burned. Tall columns of smoke rose from its close-packed streets, most of the fires seemingly concentrated around the docks where a number of ships could be seen drawing away from the harbour. They were all low in the water, one so heavily laden it capsized on reaching the harbour mouth, tiny antlike figures scuttling over its hull as it rolled in the waves. To the south a long line of people were streaming from the city gates, Frentisʼs spyglass confirming the vast majority as grey-clads, stooped and burdened with various household items, dragging wailing children in their wake, confusion and fear on every face.

“They mightʼve waited till we got here,” Draker grumbled.

“One less battle to fight,” Frentis said. They had encamped amidst a large collection of ruins on a low plateau just under a mile east of the city, Thirty-Four naming the place as the site of Old Kethia, destroyed centuries before in the Forging Age. The former slave returned from his reconnaissance in late afternoon, he and Master Rensial having been sent ahead in the morning.

“It seems news of our victory had a dramatic effect,” Thirty-Four reported. “The governor hatched a plan to execute every slave rather than allow them to fall into our hands. Given that the cityʼs slaves outnumber the free population by a factor of two to one, this proved an unwise course of action. The riots have been raging for three days, thousands have died, more have fled.”

“The slaves hold the city?” Frentis asked.

“Only a quarter.” Thirty-Four pointed to a district that appeared even more shrouded in smoke than the others. “Lacking arms, their losses were heavy. We picked our way through to contact their leaders.” He turned to Frentis with a smile. “It seems they have heard much about the Red Brother, and are eager for his arrival.”

“One less battle,” Draker muttered, getting to his feet.

“Why was this done?”

The body hung from a pole in New Kethiaʼs main square, the feet reduced to blackened stumps, stomach torn out, and the face frozen in an agonised scream. Despite all the mutilation visited upon the corpse Frentis could still recognise the features. Iʼll suffer every torment for a thousand years, Varek had said. From the state of him Frentis doubted he had lasted more than an hour.

New Kethiaʼs Deputy Treasurer, a pinch-faced black-clad who seemed equal parts baffled and terrorised by his continued survival, had to cough several times before finding the voice to speak. “The Empressʼs orders,” he said, the tone wavering despite his efforts to master it. “They arrived before he did.”

Didnʼt like what he said to me, Frentis decided, feeling an odd sense of disappointment. Varek had seemed so determined, it would have been interesting to see how far his quest for vengeance would have taken him. But he was one of just several thousand corpses littering this city, bloating in the sun and birthing clouds of flies that swarmed amidst the burgeoning stench. Thousands of stories snuffed out before the ending.

It had taken a day and a night of hard fighting to win the city, Frentis leading the infantry in a slow but inexorable advance towards the docks whilst Lekran and Ivelda took charge of the surviving rebels. They had been obliged to fight from street to street, their opponents a mix of Free Swords and townsmen, capable of furious resistance now their homes faced destruction. But they were too few and too badly organised to prevail, their barricades ramshackle constructions crafted by hands unused to work. Frentis soon evolved a tactic of seizing the surrounding rooftops and assailing the defenders from above, forcing them back whilst the barricades were torn down. They had made a final stand of sorts at the docks, a few hundred sheltered behind stacked barrels and crates, refusing all calls for surrender. It was Weaverʼs freed Varitai who finished it, simply pushing the barrels over and storming in to club down the defenders.

What was left of the governor had been roped to the base of the pole; unlike Varek his face was truly unrecognisable. The man had been a general before entering politics, choosing to meet his end on the steps of the governorʼs mansion with a few loyal guards. Unfortunately his heroics hadnʼt secured him a speedy end, the great mob of slaves sweeping aside all resistance as they stormed the mansion in the final attack, but possessing enough presence of mind to ensure the governor was taken alive. Having witnessed the horrors wrought by the governorʼs attempts to cull the slave population Frentis felt no inclination to interfere in his protracted, and inventive, punishment.

“The Empress is a monster,” the Deputy Treasurer added, a faint, hopeful ingratiation in his tone.

“She is Volarian,” Frentis replied. “As the only Imperial official left in this city, I require you to act as liaison to the surviving free populace. You will find them quartered under guard at the docks. Inform them that, as free subjects of the Unified Realm, they are afforded the protection of the Crown and I personally guarantee the safety of all those innocent of any part in the atrocities committed here. However, all property formerly owned is forfeit to the Crown as spoils of war. By the Queenʼs Word slavery is now outlawed in this province and any found to be engaged in it subject to summary execution.”