Chapter 11 - Skeir
‘No battle plan has yet been crafted that can fully account for human nature.’
- Entry from the journals of Altus Numerius, later crowned Emperor Vibenius II
Skeir watched the column of black smoke rising from behind the walls of the Isceria Zone and wondered why he’d survived this long.
It was a peculiar thing. You could never control the pain that was headed for you - swords and arrows, beatings, but also the sharper hurts. Friends or family cut away, loss of a more permanent nature. Neither could you choose how you emerged on the other side. Wounds healed, loss was forgotten. So much of it was chance, one’s place in the world. Men born ten leagues from each other would go to war because a king or a queen raised a banner, fighting and dying for the scant ground between their houses.
What determined his survival? Was it divine intervention; perhaps Barahisse, the imperial Virtue of Justice? Or the Medean pantokrator, the unknowable Oros in its Blessed Beyond? He had heard tales of protection spirits from the Reaches - could it be the hand of some all-powerful entity reaching down to shield their chosen.
If that was so, Skeir mused as he inspected his newly-healed scars, he had someone looking out for him, though that begged the question of why. He’d never been a particularly pious man - oh, he’d been born under the auspices of the Ten Virtues, but he’d always preferred his mother’s tales of the hero-gods of the mountaineers.
Woldam, who slew the Lyndwurm, had always been his favourite. Not his moment of triumph, when he’d delved into the frigid depths of Ulfgard below the frozen stands of the Giant’s Menagerie to finally defeat the beast. But because of the hero’s defeats. When he dueled Gryfform the Fearless and barely escaped with his life. When he faced down the fleet at Sarberius and lost the city to Asgerd’s hordes.
In those moments, he’d imagined himself. Because no matter the trials, no matter the disaster, Woldam always found a way to get back up.
Not for the first time, Skeir wondered if in those moments, the hero had felt the same uncertainty, those same touches of gnawing despair.
The shockwave had cut through the grey early air of Equinox, a deep-bass rumble that heralded disaster. It had woken all of them from their slumber, shaking stone and rattling glass. The noise spared neither the apartments in the Medeus Zone nor the ships or other slums of Portside as it rippled out across the city.
Out in the streets, bricks had quaked and statues quivered as the force passed by. At the docks, a small wave had flowed outward, growing in size before finally dissipating against the incoming morning tide. Those already out and about their business -the clerks and shop-owners, who were ready for the day's customers - stopped what they were doing and stared in utter bewilderment. The entire event was over within a few seconds, sound and fury gone as quickly as it came.
The distant screams, on the other hand, had not stopped since the start of the disaster.
From the finely sculpted roofs at the heart of the Isceria Zone came spilling out keening wails and a pall of dark cloud. They could not be ignored, and within a matter of fifteen minutes near every person on the street near Kaltia’s manor had opened their doors or windows to watch blankly as the horror unfolded.
Kaltia had sent a maid to figure out what was happening, and she’d returned inside of a quarter bell with tidings. An armored woman perfectly matching the description of Maugrim Nameless was seen in the early hours of the morning leading some kind of squadron to the Blade and Basket, a social club well known for its bravos and veterans.
The explosion, it was said, had come swiftly afterwards. The maid hadn’t seen the site, but by the accounts she was getting, the better part of a city block had been obliterated in a single magical calamity.
The warrant had come down from the Seat not long afterwards, couriered through an emergency printing of the Quarterly. ‘Maugrim Nameless’ was now at large within Equinox, wanted for nearly two score counts of murder. With the Thronekeepers occupied quelling the burgeoning riots by the docks and in and out of the Isceria Zone, the council had decided to open up the bounty on her: fifteen hundred thrones to the first person to apprehend her, dead or alive.
Nothing, it was said, traveled faster than bad news.
“Everyone in the city’s going to be looking for her now. Damn you, Moraine,” cursed Thero as he stepped into the room. The kyneid’s braids hung loose around his head as he looked down from the balcony at the people milling about in the street below.
“I’ve sent a message to a friend up at the castle. She’s got a way to get us inside the walls discreetly, but we still need to get Nameless up there.”
The woman herself - the real Maugrim - had risen only a few minutes ago, and Skeir had seen more life in corpses. Straggly, sweaty hair stuck to her scalp. Her breath reeked of vomit, as she’d spent most of the morning throwing up the last dregs of the elixirs she’d been force-fed. It wasn’t his area of expertise, but he’d seen trained soldiers lose their guts after a night of hard drink more than a few times.
She hadn’t said anything coherent either. Issa had said she might still be disoriented after multiple doses of absential. The way her eyes kept flitting about and her mouth moved soundlessly, Skeir wasn’t inclined to disagree. She sat at the edge of one of the couches, staring out at the distant sky. Every so often, she said something approaching sense, but the thought flitted away as soon as it arrived.
Some monster she was. He’d been nervous, down in the catacombs when he first saw her flanked by Undertow’s muscle. The greatest traitor to Helkoran, the catalyst for the Changing of the Guard herself. There was still a statue of her in the Reikscourt, in front of the Iron Gallery.
But to look at her now, a woman more than halfway dead, he couldn’t muster up anything beyond disgust. If he survived long enough, if the spirit of Woldam or whatever god saw fit to extend his life continued in the same vein, would this be his fate?
Fuck that. I’ll take a blade in the belly first.
“What are you doing?” he asked Thero as the Latent stood above the seated woman, something arcane under his breath. There was a lizard clinging to his shoulder, Skeir noticed. When had that gotten there?
“Putting up a ward around her. The Primality of Motion affects physical movement first, but it’s also quite handy at deflecting Workings of a particular type if you know the right Secret. In this case, any attempt to scry her through a Wandering Eye Working will be redirected elsewhere.”
Skeir didn’t inquire further. The mage was going to help the best way he knew how, and honestly he didn’t need to understand all of the details here either.
The job should have been easy: get Nameless to the Seat, and then get her to talk. However she was mixed up with the Company and the smugglers, she would talk once they gave her time to recover, one way or the other. If the precious Justices and all their knights didn’t have the stomach, Skeir would get it done himself.
Now though, they were good and fucked. There’d be gangs of mercenaries going door to door soon. Fifteen hundred thrones would incite half the city to look for Nameless, and the other half would join them by day’s end. Not to mention, Kaltia had made it very clear after her maid had returned that they’d used up what little grace they’d had - if they weren’t gone by midday, she was going to fetch the guards herself.
Getting the old woman to the castle at this hour would be an impossibility. That hadn’t stopped any of them from deciding they were doing it anyway.
“Got it!” Zarja pushed through the doors to unfurl a map of the city on one of the drawing room tables. There was the outline of Haedralia, the maze of streets from the harbour mouth in Portside, cut off abruptly by the frown-like shape of Aryth Way as it severed the lowest quarter of the city from the rest. From there, Skeir watched Thero grab a quill from the inkpot he’d had Kaltia fetch and start marking the parchment.
Two minutes later, Issa slipped into the room. She gave them all a single nod.
“Right, let’s get started.” Nobody protested. This was Thero’s show, so he had assumed command for the time being. With one finger, the kyneid traced the central zig-zag like street up from Palatine Park to the gates of the Seat itself. “This is the Avenue of Arms. It’s the only direct route from the harbour all the way to the Prince’s door. It will also have the most checkpoints after this morning’s incident. There’s no way we can get through there unseen, especially since I’ll be accompanying you.”
“Ideally,” interrupted Issa, “we could set up an additional distraction elsewhere in the city to pull attention away but we don't have the time or manpower to plan something and the city's probably been blown up enough for one morning, so we'll have to go without. Unless…”
She raised her eyebrows at Thero, who shook his head vigorously.
“We are not starting additional riots at the checkpoints. I won’t see Equinox torn apart more than it already is, and we would be getting innocent people killed.”
The spy turned her neck, and Skeir swore he could hear her whisper: ‘figures’.
“The good news,” Thero continued with just a bit more force than was necessary, “is that we only have to pass through one gate: the Triptych. The exit from the Medeus Zone gets us nearly halfway up the Avenue already, allowing us to bypass a good deal of the security.”
The bad news is that as soon as we do that, the game is up. I’m known in the city, and my appearance will send up flags within the ranks of the Thronekeepers. Moraine is almost certainly out of custody by now, which means she’ll be waiting to hear any word about me.”
“Let them come,” Skeir shrugged. The lieutenant had handled herself poorly underground, disarmed and outmaneuvered without so much as a fight. She and her dogs wouldn’t be the only ones they had to contend with, but they weren’t the highest on his list of worries.
“If she fails to grab us, she’ll make sure everyone in the city knows who we are and what we’re doing,” Thero replied evenly. “I know her. She’d rather see us all dead than let us escape with Nameless. Especially since we can all bear witness to what she tried to do last night. Issa, you’re sure you can’t provide another glamour over Maugrim and I?”
She shook her head. “If we were traveling by foot, yes. But with that much movement, I’m not sure how well my images would hold up. The Pall works best on a living person if they’re still.”
Skeir hadn’t been all that surprised to learn she was not a Latent. She didn’t act like she had a stick up her ass, for one. In hindsight, the lack of a Focus also should have tipped him off.
“And if we proceed on foot, we’ll be too vulnerable to ambushers.” He looked at Nameless, who seemed to be watching them but her eyes still looked vacant.
The Nascyian was right; there were too many hunters looking for her, she’d be sniffed out long before they could reach the plateau summit.
“That’s it for the good plans.” Thero sighed, putting a hand over his face. “I was really hoping we wouldn’t need to resort to the bad one.”
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His tattooed guard was grinning ear to ear, which Skeir didn’t take as a great sign.
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Skeir did not look down as the flagstones of the Concord Forum flew beneath the shoes of his horse. Instead, he focused on keeping a tighter grip on the reins.
The three horses that Issa had stolen from a nearby lordling’s stable were fine breeds, he had to admit. Two chestnuts and a palomino, coats shining, well-fed and fit to run. He’d done most of his fighting in the war on foot - despite nominally being a captain, he was an infantryman and had preferred not to make himself too much of a target for archers - but he knew his way around a saddle well enough.
Not like this, though. A canter through the woods was one thing. A pell-mell gallop through crowded city streets was another. He tugged firmly to the left, pulling his mount around a looming cart in the middle of the laneway. With his other hand, he waved to the two other horses behind him to follow.
“Clear the fucking way!” he shouted down at the throng ahead. A pair of washer women and a potter all dove to avoid getting trampled, and he heard a thunderous clattering behind him.
He stole a glance behind him. Nameless was masked and hooded, her wrists and shins tied up to the saddle and stirrups. He could hear her expelling a procession of vague profanities, muffled by both the mask and the noise surrounding them.
Turned out that a suicidal charge on horseback was the best way to sober someone up. Who knew?
The other two horses kept in close formation with his own, proceeding in a single line. Thero sat behind Zarja, who had reversed her Thronekeeper cloak and hadn’t stopped smiling since they took off from Kaltia’s. Issa’s mount took up the rear, the spy astride the palomino looking like she was out for a stroll.
Nameless’ voice reached a crescendo, prompting Skeir to whip his eyes back in front. Seeing a group of armed men and women blocking the lane, he forced the chestnut to the right and onto the central green at the center of the plaza. The horse leapt over a series of stone benches, nearly bowling over a young couple out for a promenade.
Then he was grabbing Nameless’ shoulder and dragging her down and to the side, both of them barely avoiding the stone wings of some engraven cherubic figure atop a fountain.
Shit. That had been too close.
He would have objected to this so-called ‘plan’ if he’d thought they had a reasonable alternative. Sadly, none of them had come up with anything better. There were already dozens of faces in the crowd turned their way, most expressing disbelief and rage.
While it wasn’t uncommon for lords and such to ride in the city, to do so at top speed in the middle of the day in such cramped quarters was considered… ill-advised. It was only a matter of time before anyone looking for that bounty put two and two together.
They just had to get as close to the Seat as possible before that happened.
Up ahead loomed their first major obstacle. According to Thero, the Triptych was one of the oldest structures on Haedralia besides the Seat itself, as it had once been part of an outer bastion connecting the roads from castle to harbour.
A fortified, hexagonal tower rose at the conflux of the walls surrounding the Concord Forum - and indeed, the Medeus Zone as a whole. Atop the battlements, he saw patrol groups in grey armor and dark green tabards, the sigils of Thronekeepers clear even from a ways off. Skeir counted at least forty on the various sections of masonry, not including those amidst the populace on the ground in its shadow.
And it cast a long shadow indeed. He spotted two different open passages from the other side joined at the base, where gates of wrought iron nearly as tall as the walls came together in a triangular arc. At their widest, each passage could easily fit two wagons next to one another and have room for pedestrians on either side, and although they split right at the mouth of the gate, each offered a similar view of the sprawling avenue beyond.
However, at the moment the gates were barred by the riotous colors and burnished armor of Alteria’s finest. The Medean guards - the national regiment, loyal to Ebonsun rather than Equinox - were on high alert. Skeir spotted full squadrons and palisade-like roadblocks, scribes painstakingly checking the papers of every single person looking to cross into neutral territory.
He would have more time to be outraged at the needless bureaucracy if he wasn’t concerned with his current problem, namely their imminent collision with said roadblocks.
The cry had already been taken up - the sentries atop the tower had spotted them.The old soldier could see the first of their ranks already scurrying to get into formation. Thankfully, they were drilled enough not to shoot wildly into the crowd around them.
They’d wait until Skeir and the others were close enough that a massed volley couldn’t miss.
“Halt!” A figure in plate-mail emblazoned with a number of suns - some kind of Medean paladin - raised a hand in supplication towards them. “Slow and dismount immediately!”
Skeir flicked the reins to get the chestnut to move faster.
Whenever you’re ready, Varglass. He didn’t really feel like getting impaled twice in as many days. He could hear the hoofbeats of his companions’ horses close behind.
The second they broke from the crowd, the world slowed around them. They galloped through a garden of living statues, expressions of frozen shock carved into their features. The chaos of the streets blended into something unintelligible, liquid sound that had no beginning or end.
There were two score men at arms ahead, quarrels descending from above - all were as dust to them. Skeir nudged the chestnut through the hail of bolts, using his other hand to knock them out of the air to avoid any impacts with either it or Nameless.
Each of the three horses had a running start. In the bubble of the kyneid’s Working, that was plenty. They cleared the roadblock in a massive leap, the thoroughbreds trained well enough to know how to jump a line. He ducked to avoid the iron prongs of the portcullis, but it still scraped the top of his head as he passed directly beneath it.
They hung in the air like that for an interminable time, suspended as if on glass. It was the closest Skeir had ever come to flying - he found, as the blood dripped past his ear, that he did not care for it all that much.
And then their formation landed, and the world caught up to them. The bubbling noise crystallized back into clear shouts of dismay, the Medeans seeking them out. But by then they were away, Skeir turning his horse northward.
The Avenue of Arms, unlike the rest of Equinox, was just like he remembered. There were no merchants allowed here, not under the gazes of its enshrined denizens, an edict that had dated back well into imperial reckoning.
This was the widest road in the city, at least six wagon-widths across at its narrowest point. Its stones glared at him under the midmorning sun, forcing him to avert his eyes. There were skeins of silver buried beneath, he knew - both a testament to the honour of Old Immeria and a sign of respect for those whose faces looked down on passers by.
Hundreds of dead heroes lined the Avenue. Each of them were a paragon of a society that had eaten itself alive less than a decade before; princeps and philosophers, saints and sorcerers, patrons of art and music, the wealthy and powerful in celebration of a bygone age. Many of them were wreathed in garlands or the centerpieces of ornate gardens, whatever meaning they had once had turned into something purely aesthetic.
And yet, every year, the supplicants made the journey. They traveled hundreds of leagues, across lake and forest, and spent months just to come to Equinox. Rich and poor, they came. They made the trip because their mothers and fathers, their grandparents, had done the same. Many brought their families along with them, to stand at the base of a cold stone plinth and give a precious offering under the light of some icon.
Thousands of souls, looking into the past for guidance.
It was those very same souls in his way right now. In the face of their advance, what looked to have been an orderly mass of pilgrims was transformed into anarchy, a pressing mass of flesh and clothes and screams that would engulf them all if they simply charged in.
Skeir pulled back on his horse’s reins, and the beast rose to its full height, letting out a fearful bray as it kicked its front hooves in the air. The gaggle of petitioners in front began to melt away, but it was too large a congregation. There were too many.
There was a sharp and sudden snapping sound. From her pockets, Issa had drawn what looked like small glass globes, tossing them on the stones. Each one produced a thunderclap and a burst of bright flame, and just like that the way forward was clear.
They charged up the Avenue at full speed once more, Skeir wiping the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand as he kept watch for any ambushes. On two more occasions they saw armed groups try to outmaneuver them, but each time a burst of Motion power from Thero saw even those on horseback thoroughly outpaced.
Any pretense at subtlety was long gone now; this was going to be a mad dash for the finish.
He would have missed the next ambush, but for the unmistakable glint of glass from a nearby rooftop. Skeir spotted a pair of figures clambering across the stonework. No mere bounty hunters, these: by the looks of their cloaks they must have been practitioners of some kind.
“Here they come; do it now!” came a shout, followed by a short incantation and the sudden creation of a pulsating silver beacon that hovered about thirty paces above their heads... and kept pace unerringly with their mounts.
That would be a dead giveaway. Thankfully, they had a Latent on his side. With a snort and a bark of arcane power, Thero grit his teeth and unleashed his own Working. A translucent hammer tore through the air, scattering and dissipating the beacon.
Thero was still holding on, Skeir saw, but he’d started to grip Zarja a little bit tighter. Locking eyes with Skeir, he dipped into a mocking half-bow in the saddle. He was playing off his exhaustion, the soldier knew. Each time he dipped into that well of magic, a little less of him came back.
Skeir had barely been conscious for the fight in Undertow’s lair, but from what he’d gathered, the kyneid had overextended himself, burned through his strength and nearly gotten himself killed.
After a certain point, the Latent would stop becoming an asset and start being a liability.
Yet providence seemed on their side once more. As their formation tore through the last of the checkpoints, they surged past the final bend in the Avenue of Arms and their destination came into sight.
The island’s uppermost plateau had long since been synonymous with the Seat that the Conqueror built, yet to reach the Prince’s Door that was the entrance to the castle, one needed to traverse the causeway up to the gates. A raised ramp of stone at least forty feet across from side to side rose from a semicircle of graceful manors of sober granite with thick-paneled windows.
Here, flanking the opposing borders of what the Immerians had called the Victor's Row, the heroes of a lost kingdom sat in vigil. No soft-handed artists were these, but a procession of emperors and warlords whose like had passed and would not come again. There were no flowers here, no gentle shrines. Their likenesses were carved instead directly into pillars glowering over the causeway: Vibenius II, who had laid low the mountain people to pacify what would later become Helkoran. Mathea the Red-Handed, doomed victor of Rhona’s War. Opiter of the Lykaeian Brand, who had defeated the were-tribes at Collea.
So many others still, all festooned in the glory of the kind of murder to be celebrated rather than reviled.
But largest and most beloved was Haedren the Conqueror himself, who appeared on no less than three separate occasions, frozen during different scenes of his life. Under his gaze flew banners of snow, ash, and blood, the stark makings of a nation of soldiers.
Down this famed path they came, five figures alone. And ahead lay their final test.
The fortifications of Haedren’s Seat, once the heart of a realm that spanned all of Alteria, dominated the end of the causeway. How could they not, when even their lowest walls were a full story taller than the nearest rooftops? Like the spine of a great beast - adamant, unassailable - the wall blotted out the horizon in front of them.
Between those crenelations, Skeir could make out dozens of archers, bows at the ready yet not taken aim. In their midst were affixed onyx cauldrons and the wooden silhouettes of trebuchets to deter all but the most tenacious of invasion forces. A pair of guard towers, their stature and circumference dwarfing all predecessors, protected a pair of doors of dark wood and iron more than ten times the height of his horse.
And in front, an entire rank of pikes aimed directly at them. The soldier signaled the others to slow their horses to fall in line with his own.
“What?” Thero exhaled as they closed in together. “My contact should have been…” his voice trailed off as he registered the emplacements of soldiers, the legion of eyes and weapons pointed in their direction.
Yet the Thronekeepers did not advance. No orders were shouted, nobody moved. There was no question they’d been anticipated - someone had gotten to Thero’s friend, the guards had been waiting for them, they were all about to die horribly - but his heart was still counting time.
Skeir’s frown deepened. There was survival, and then there was bad intelligence. This was the latter.
“Something’s wrong,” Issa said, once again an uncanny mirror to his thoughts. “They’re waiting for -” And then she was gone, already vanished from her saddle as a bolt of living lightning struck her horse from the side.
The detonation was instant, an eruption of energy that tore through flesh, cloth, and steel. Skeir let go of his reins at the last second and was halfway out of his stirrups, and was blown free of his horse. Yet he landed on stone all the same, several bones cracking as he tumbled and finally came to rest several feet away.
His ears rang, his vision was blurred, but Skeir was not dead yet. After what could have been a minute or an hour, he was climbing back to his hands and knees and reaching for his highblade.
Four familiar silhouettes stepped out from between the buildings on either side of the causeway. The masks of the Mourners winked at him in the sunlight.
One of them - the one closest to him - still carried the face of a madman. Its hands flickered with electricity, its Stormlance recharging for another throw.
“Motherfucker,” Skeir growled and he tasted blood. “I’m going to make you pay for that.”