Empress of the Fall Read online

  She allowed Takwyth to bend over her hand and fervently kiss her signet ring, then she hurried out, her train of clerks and advisors close behind.

  The knight-commander waited until the duchess had disappeared, then turned back to the crowd. ‘Her Grace might “know” that you slack-jawed drunkards are going to do her proud, but I bloody well don’t! What I do know is that anyone who lets me down is going to find my boot up his arsehole!’ He brandished a parchment. ‘I have six locations, from a castle bordering the Sacrecour lands to a monastery in Tergatland, but one stands out and I’m taking that one myself. I want half of you with me, and the rest split over the other five locations.’

  He rattled off names, assigning squads. As usual, his sycophants got the most important roles. ‘And Sir Roginald Clef,’ he concluded, turning to a grizzled veteran he disliked but couldn’t ignore, ‘you’ve got this monastery in Tergatland. Take Malthus Cayne, the Joyce brothers . . . and Ril Endarion. Every mage-knight in service must be in the air in twenty minutes!’

  Setallius stepped forward. ‘One of my people will accompany each mission, to coordinate our actions.’ He rattled off some names, making a point of sending Basia de Sirou with Clef’s group; her bond with Ril Endarion might be useful. Then he stepped back – he didn’t much like Takwyth, but this was his show now.

  Takwyth glowered about the room. ‘Corani knights: this is our hour – may fortune smile upon you!’ He strode out into the room, slapping shoulders, clasping hands, the consummate fighting man among his own.

  Setallius stepped back into the shadows, assessing probabilities and considering implications, but in truth, this was a step into the unknown. It could as easily end in disaster as glory.

  *

  ‘C’mon, pooty-girl,’ Ril Endarion murmured to his pegasus as he eased the bit into her mouth; Pearl, like every pegasus ever bred, was notoriously fussy – and right now all the mounts in the stable were skittish, alarmed by the bells and bustle; it was all stamping hooves, snorting and squealing and feathers flying. The Corani animagi bred pegasi as jousting beasts and taking Pearl into a real fight wasn’t something Ril was looking forward to. The beasts were glamorous additions to a tourney field, but they weren’t meant for war. All the venators belonged to the battle-magi though, and anyway, he’d never much cared for the ferocious flying reptiles.

  Stablehands scurried throughout the huge stables making last-minute checks of gear as armoured mage-knights barked orders and mostly just got in the way as they shouted insults and encouragement to their neighbours. A swirl of court ladies added to the chaos, sallying amongst the men to wish good fortune to their current paramours. Ril glimpsed Lady Jenet Brunlye, the only woman he’d ever come close to marrying; she had her arm around her latest conquest, a knight of House Moravin barely out of the Arcanum. He winced and looked away.

  ‘What’s happening, d’ye think, sir?’ young Malthus Cayne asked, tightening his helm before flipping up the visor.

  ‘We’re off to fleece some monks.’ Ril grinned, washing Jenet from his mind with a swig from a wine-sack, then tossing it to big Gryfflon Joyce. ‘Here, Gryff! You fly better drunk.’

  ‘Rich, comin’ from you,’ Gryff sniffed, before draining the entire skin and carelessly throwing it to the ground. ‘Rukkin’ Hel, Larik, get a move on! You’re only half-kitted!’

  Gryff’s skinny brother was standing with arms wide, aping the ‘Corineus the Saviour’ icons as his greaves were buckled on. ‘Nearly done, nearly done,’ he muttered. ‘Thanks for not saving me a drink, fart-breath!’

  Then Roginald Clef stomped up, annoyed at being given men he thoroughly disliked for a mission he knew nothing about. ‘Get a move on!’ he growled, his frown deepening as Basia de Sirou teetered through the confusion, her skeletal form encased in scab-red leathers. She was all angles, her delicate face set off by unfashionably short auburn hair. ‘You too, Fantoche!’

  ‘I’m ready, sir.’ Basia barely even registered the nickname; ‘puppet’ was one of the milder insults these men had come up with over the years.

  ‘You en’t even dressed!’ Larik snickered. ‘Come on, Leggy, get some steel on!’

  ‘Ladies don’t wear tin, Larik. You know that.’

  ‘Rich coming from someone who’s no more a lady than the rest of us,’ he muttered. ‘And mostly made of tin anyway.’

  Basia ignored him and joined Ril to finish buckling his armour herself. They’d both been orphaned in 909, and she’d only survived the attack on the Pallas Arcanum because of him. Two days trapped in a collapsed drain together, keeping each other alive, had forged bonds beyond love; they were closer than brother and sister.

  ‘You up for this, Bas?’ he murmured.

  ‘Dirklan thinks so.’ Setallius had made her artificial, gnostically powered limbs to replace her amputated legs – both crushed from the knee joint down – then persuaded her to join him in rebuilding the Corani Volsai. ‘I’m just along to liaise; you boys can handle any fighting. Anyone who gets through you lot deserves my virtue.’

  Ril snorted, then murmured, ‘What’s Dirk really up to?’

  ‘Word came during the night and he’s been with Radine’s advisors ever since. I’ve no bloody idea what it’s about. Hey, Bitch Lucia is dead! Our parents will be dancing in Paradise!’

  Ril’s mother, a Corani mage, had scandalously fallen pregnant to a rake in the Estellan Ambassador’s entourage, which had left Ril in the strange position of growing up as the only bronze-skinned, black-haired mage-child in the pale blond north. That hadn’t been easy, and after his parents had been murdered in Lucia’s purge, he’d been raised as a Jandreux – no boon but a curse, as House Jandreux had run his estates into the ground to reimburse themselves for their ‘generosity’ in raising him.

  Ril was now thirty-three years old, with little to his name but mounting debts. He’d been accounted one of the best swordsmen in the north for a decade, but time spared no one, not even magi, and his generation were now either ranking knights in the entourage of men like Solon Takwyth or Lord Sulpeter . . . or fading into obscurity.

  ‘This could be the chance you need,’ Basia whispered. ‘What we’re doing today matters, Ril.’

  ‘You know, 909 was a long time ago, and I don’t doubt some of our lot would have done the same thing given the chance,’ Ril murmured. ‘Twenty years is too long to hold a grudge, even for something like that. Sure, there are a dozen men I’d like to see dangling . . . Really, I’d settle for a little plunder to get me free of Radine’s golden manacles.’

  And if today yields no loot, I’m going to fly away . . .

  ‘For my part, I’ll never forgive them,’ Basia said stiffly. ‘Not if every Sacrecour was flayed before my eyes. I’ve never thought of you as a better person than me, Ril Endarion, but perhaps you are?’

  Before he could answer, Takwyth and his bullyboys barged past.

  ‘I hope that prick catches a blade in his belly,’ Ril growled.

  Takwyth had been the hero of the hour for getting a body of young Corani knights safely out of Pallas during the purge, but when he’d been given the task of rebuilding their military, he’d made it abundantly clear that his senior men would come from the Great Houses; there was no room for misfits like Ril. It didn’t matter that he was a fearsome swordsman – advancement under Takwyth and Radine came through wealth, blood and sycophancy.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Basia murmured, teetering away to her mount. Watching her go, Ril reflected that she was the only person he’d really miss when he finally left this place.

  *

  Five minutes later, Ril was urging his pegasus higher as the six groups of winged riders fanned out across the skies. Roginald and Malthus were ahead of him, straining for purchase against the wind; Gryff and Larik were somewhere behind, vomiting every few minutes as the wine in their guts revolted against the awkward flying gait of their mounts. Basia’s small wyvern alongside him didn’t need much urging; the lightweight winged reptile had be
en bred for speed.

  Once they’d reached altitude and Pearl was able to level out and glide on the wind currents, he pulled out his sapphire periapt; the gemstone began to pulse in time with his heartbeat, enhancing his gnostic energy as he reached out with his mind to Basia.

  Basia replied.

 

 

  He chuckled.

 

  He sighed.

  2

  Saint Balphus Monastery

  Rondelmar

  Rondelmar is peopled by many diverse tribes united by the same tongue and racial stock: the Frandians. Conquered early by the Rimoni, they became loyal imperial subjects. Rondelmar’s benevolent climate and resources fostered wealth and prosperity, but it is wrong to think of Rondelmar as one happy family. The Corani despise the Pallacians, the Dupeni loathe the Canossi, and they all hold the Aquilleans in mutual contempt. Only the dream of Empire holds them together.

  ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS, 724

  Saint Balphus Monastery, Northwestern Rondelmar

  Junesse 930

  Final month of the Moontide

  Four hours and almost two hundred miles out of Coraine, Ril Endarion, Malthus Cayne, Gryff and Larik Joyce and Basia de Sirou were trailing Roginald Clef through yet another cloudbank, swooping lower as the afternoon faded towards evening. Patchwork farms dotted the landscape, surrounded by rugged hills and forests. The joys of flight had given way to boredom, and Ril closed up with Basia and called to her, mind to mind.

 

  Basia’s face was a pale blur a hundred feet to his right, but her voice crackled in his head.

  Garod Sacrecour. Brylion Fasterius. The names brought back bad memories.

 

  Roginald Clef’s anxious voice interrupted, calling,

  They followed his gesturing arm, and saw seven winged shapes silhouetted against the fields thousands of feet below: venators. Their riders wore black-and-red quartered cloaks: Kirkegarde colours. The magi-knights of the Church were dangerous foes.

  Larik asked.

  Roginald replied, certainty draining from his voice. He looked ready to haul on his reins and back off.

  He wasn’t there in 909 . . . Ril projected his mental voice into all of their minds:

  He could almost hear Roginald sweating as he said,

 

  Crossbows might not be a very knightly weapon, but they all knew how to use them. Ril glanced at Basia.

 

  Setallius mightn’t know everything, but no one finessed the odds better. Ril suspected the real action was wherever Takwyth had gone; this was a sideshow. But they’d be expected to give their all – and after all, the Kirkegarde had been happy to help the Sacrecours in 909.

 

  Gryff and Larik were grinning; they’d purged themselves and now they were ready for mayhem. Malthus Cayne, unimaginative oaf that he was, looked keen; Roginald Clef was jittery. The Kirkegarde fliers hadn’t looked up yet, so Ril, somehow in charge now, took the squad lower, using the cloud cover to keep them hidden as they closed in. Then he spotted their destination in the middle distance: a bulky brownstone building towering out of the lush fields, with a cluster of huts on one side.

 

  They circled in the clouds while the Kirkegarde landed their venators near the monastery and a swarm of creamy-robed nuns emerged. Which is weird, because this was supposed to be a monastery, Ril thought. But there was no time to ponder that; he waited until the venators were all picketed, then signalled the attack.

  They sent their mounts into a spiralling dive; twenty-one years of training and drilling but never seeing war boiling up inside. They’d been excluded from the Crusades; now they were desperate to show their prowess. Ril’s heart pounded with exhilaration as he kindled gnostic fire on the end of his crossbow bolt and took aim, narrowing his eyes against the wind as and Pearl glided in with hooves poised to lash out.

 

  Ril’s crossbow cracked and his bolt flew true, striking a Kirkegarde man in the back an instant before Pearl skimmed the crowd of nuns, then lashed out. Her hooves slammed into a venator, caving in its skull. Gnostic shields flared around the Kirkegarde knights; Gryff and Larik loosed their own bolts – and missed. Clef fared little better, catching a venator in the back and enraging it, but Basia’s bolt slammed into another man’s shields, ripped them apart and spun him round. She gave a faint through the mental link and quite obviously almost fainted.

  But inside two seconds, the odds had dropped to six on five.

  Pearl slammed her fore-hooves into the long serpent neck of another venator and broke its spine as Ril launched himself into the air, using kinetic gnosis to cartwheel groundwards, landing with blade drawn and immediately battering aside a lance-thrust from a Kirkegarde knight. He stepped inside the man’s guard and stabbed, but – impressively, Ril admitted to himself – the man managed to get his own blade out and parried, then riposted, forcing Ril to spin away.

  Then Gryfflon Joyce came flying through the air and cut the man in half with a massive two-handed kinesis-powered swing of his sword before ploughing into the field, gouging a massive wound in the earth and slamming head-first into a low wall. His gnostic shields flared madly, but he just lay there. For a moment Ril didn’t think the shielding had been enough to save him, but at last he sensed a heartbeat and sighed in relief.

  Five on four, though – much better!

  ‘Rukkin’ idiot!’ Larik yelled at his brother, landing and shielding Gryff from mage-fire coming from the right, even as a torrent of flame all but engulfed Basia. Her shields kept the blaze at bay as the air turned to heat and smoke, though the effort was making her wobble on her unsteady legs. Heat and smoke washed over Ril and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Basia fired off her own blue bolts of energy into the murk, then Roginald Clef loomed out of the haze, shouting, ‘Onwards, Corani!’

  All very noble and heroic, no doubt. Ril called for Larik, then grabbed Basia’s arm and they followed Clef. They burst out of the smoke into clean air to see nuns scattering, but the four remaining Kirkegarde had grouped together: one was a grandmaster, directing his three remaining men into a defensive shield about him.

  All right, so now we’re getting serious.

  Clef reached the first of the churchmen and began hammering away at him. One of the other Kirkegarde, already wounded, with a crossbow bolt through his right bicep, went t
o his aid, an act of either commendable courage or reprehensible fanaticism, in Ril’s eyes – but a bolt of light shot from Basia’s hand and the wounded man spun and dropped.

  Five on three. Ril flowed into the fight, forcing another of the Church knights to turn and face him. Their blades clashed; they thrust, parried and shoved, gnostic shields crackling in the air between them. As they probed at each other’s defences, memories of his Arcanum tutors rose in Ril’s mind: ‘Every mage has an aura, a field of energy that can be used to sense the world around him. With it you can read an enemy’s intentions, sense movement and instinctively counter an attack: that’s called shielding. You can move objects – kinesis. Or you can kindle energy and kill with it – mage-bolts. Your gnostic aura is both armour and weapon.’

  Their blades slammed together again, then the Kirkegarde knight shoved with kinesis, forcing Ril away. Their shields, semi-visible pale blue spheres of gnostic energy flashing red as they caught blows and stabs of mage-fire, crackled between them. The Church knight was already panting and swaying, but Ril could sense Clef was faltering too, Basia was being driven back by the third defender and Larik was still some distance away.

  Once the grandmaster joins the fray, we’re in trouble . . .

  Ril reached for more complex aspects of the gnosis: ‘Every mage has options. If you’re a thaumaturge, draw on the Elements: Fire, Earth, Water or Air. If you’re a hermetic mage, change your body, or the world around you. If you’re a theurgist, attack your enemy’s mind. A sorcerer? Use the spirits. There are always options.’

  Ril’s affinities were in Theurgy – messing with minds – and Air. He drew on the place where those two affinities intersected, weaving an illusory sword-arm over his real one, preparing for the moment when he could strike . . .

  . . . then he lunged, pulling the illusion away from his arm so that his foe saw two blades. If the man had similar affinities, he’d see through the spell easily – but he didn’t, and chose the wrong arm to parry. Ril’s real longsword punched straight through his defences and the Kirkegarde went, ‘Ooof!’ and stared, horrified, at the three feet of steel piercing his chest. Then he folded over with a groan.