David Wragg - Articles of Faith

***

He dropped from the wall above the stables. The palace was emptying, he couldn’t see Sokol and his retinue, and their mounts were gone too. They must have cleared out at the first warning bells. How very Sokol. Chel took a long, ragged breath to try to calm his nerves. He had to get out before the Norts razed the entire port. There were still horses left, although not for much longer: already palace staff were tussling with liveried riders over the ownership and use of those that remained. Then, of course, there was Brother Hurkel and his companion confessors to consider. If witchfire hadn’t put them off his trail, they may yet be lying in wait.

A narrow, two-wheeled cart stood just beside the stable arch, abandoned midway through unloading supplies for the kitchens from the look of it. It stood, facing the wrong way, a burly, bored-looking mule hitched before it. A dusty cloak lay across the driver’s bench.

‘Perfect.’

He jumped up to the cart and threw the cloak over himself. Sweating from the morning’s heat, the strain of Hurkel’s chase, the Nort attack and now cart-theft to boot, Chel geed the reins and drove the cart and mule forward, wheeling around the stables and toward the main courtyard and the outside world.

***

Chel couldn’t keep his hands tight on the reins. They shook and slipped with his still-thumping heartbeats as well as with each rut on the road. He’d joined the main road out to the provinces, but all around him people surged, creating a long line back to the city. He could only hope that Vashenda and Hurkel had more to worry about than his escape.

A cloaked figure poked his head out from the crates in the back of the cart. ‘Why are we slowing?’

‘Argh! Who in hells are you?’ Chel shrieked.

‘We’ve been invaded! Invaded! They’re going to kill us all! Why aren’t we going faster? ’

‘Because this road is full of people, you plank. I’d rather not tip this thing and kill us and them before we get anywhere.’

Something about the way his companion stiffened when he’d called him a plank bothered Chel. ‘Who are you? Why were you hiding in this cart?’

The figure pulled back his hood and looked up at him. Chel’s insides congealed. He looked back at the pallid face of the hang-dog prince, the runt of the litter: Tarfel Merimonsun, Junior Prince of Vistirlar.

‘Five bloody, blasted hells …’

‘Why aren’t we going faster?’ shrieked the prince.

‘Your highness! I’m so— I didn’t realize. I was just trying to get out of the city and find my liege—’

‘Immaterial! I’m commandeering you.’

‘But—’

‘Listen, 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.