The City of Brass

 

Sinasekan lay quiet under the deepening summer, the days growing longer, the evening rains falling soft on the winding streets and the whitewashed houses.  By afternoon the humidity rose and steamed, and people escaped to their rooftops to lounge under silk canopies through the hottest part of the day.  They watched the air shimmer as the sun beat down, watched the towers of the palace of the viceroy seem to waver like the towers of a mirage, and they watched ships come and go from the great harbor.

So many ships, so many colors of hull and sail.  Traders from far Savindria and Sinagar, slavers from Achen, warships from Morda, and a dozen more purposes and nations all moving like swift fish through the blue waters.  The view reached far out over the sea, beyond the harbor where white towers stood watch, seeking the faded horizons and the stars that gleamed in the clear air even now, when the sun was high.  Sinasekan was a paradise on earth for its masters, who had seen the golden stone of the ancient palace gleaming in the sunset once and named it the City of Brass – the fabled home of a race older than man, and far more terrible.

The ship appeared in the swelling heat of midafternoon, and all marked it, for it was plainly one of the black ships that had set forth ten days ago, bound for the old kingdom with unimaginable riches swelling their holds.  The hull was black, and the sails had once been white but were now stained by smoke to a tattered gray.  The ship wallowed, her sails untrimmed, the driver alone forcing her onward at a walking pace, barely keeping steerage in the fallow sea.

Other ships turned to evade it, for it gave nothing to any other craft, only came on straight and slow and terrible.  Those who hove near from curiosity saw the bowsprit was draped with severed heads, flesh burned or torn away, eyes devoured by seabirds.  They veered away, terrorized, for when they came close they could smell the charnel reek of the ship, the miasma of death that followed it.  They saw the black hull was splashed with blood that crawled with a thousand flies, and in her wake were dragged bloodstained ropes with iron hooks at the ends of them, and from those hooks dragged pieces of shark-gnawed flesh that had once been men.

A hush fell across the harbor as the ghost ship wallowed steadily toward the quay.  Dockworkers, slaves, merchants and guards stopped their work and stared as the apparition crawled across the clear blue waters and finally shuddered to a halt against the pier, the prow grinding against the stone until the hull buckled and the ship settled into the waters.  Now it could be seen that there were holes along the sides from cannon-shot and that the rail was hung with severed heads.

Guards came running, and at their commands the slaves threw grapples over the gunwales and made the ship fast to the dock.  No one wanted to board her until a knight of the viceroy came and ordered men up the gangplank.  A dozen men climbed over the rail in a mass, swords ready, gasping and choking at the stench.  None of them had seen anything like this before, nor would they again.

The entire deck of the ship was covered in heads, cut and burned and chopped and skinned, many of them half-devoured by seabirds.  Flies rose up in a ripping swarm that darkened the afternoon sun, and the guardsmen rushed the vomit over the rail into the clean sea.  One man threw himself into the waters, screaming as he tried to drown himself, and one sank down on his knees in the carrion and wept, covering his face and refusing to look at what lay around him.

The knight came aboard, covering his face with a scented cloth and stoically refusing to choke on the smell that pierced it.  He looked at the deck and counted, and he realized there were far more men here than who had crewed this single ship.  The deck was maimed by fire and split open by powder explosions, and he knew it was almost miraculous that it had stayed afloat this long.  This was not a ship that had escaped from some disaster, this was a warning.

He heard weeping, and so he turned away from his horror-struck men and picked his way through the morass of dead flesh toward the stern, and there he found a single living man.  He was naked and scarred by knives and the lash, and he was bound tight to the wheel with leather thongs that had cut so cruelly deep that it was plain his hands were already dead and rotting.  His hamstrings had been cut, and he slumped there, sobbing from the one eye that remained to him, shuddering.

The knight stepped closer and drew his sword, prodded the man.  Here was a witness to what had happened, and he might yet be saved to tell his tale to the viceroy.  But when the sad survivor lifted his head and wailed, the knight saw that his tongue had been cut out, and he would never speak another word again.  Filled with disgust and some pity, he ran the survivor through with his sword, and then at last the wretch fell silent, and still.

There was no word given, no accounting of what had passed, and yet by the fall of night everyone in Sinasekan knew that the fleet of the black ships had been taken by the cannibal pirate queen named The Tigress, and the swiftness with which the lone ship was searched and then put to the torch did nothing to reassure those who spread rumors that a fleet of blood-mad corsairs was coming for them all.  When the moon rose up to shine silver upon the deeps, and the sky was marked by flaming stars as they fell, a pall of smoke the stench of burnt flesh hung over the city.  And even the viceroy in his white palace, guarded by legions of steel and fire, knew the taste of fear like a poison.

o0o

The moon rose high and fierce, blazing down like a shadow sun on the harbor of the city, and it was in that light Jaya first saw the place where her people had been kings.  The city was built in terraces up from the sea, streets and levels cut into the gold and white stone, blocks of buildings piled one atop the other, all the walls whitewashed until they glowed like alabaster.  At the tallest point, on a promontory with steep-cut sides, stood the palace of the rulers of Sinasekan, a great edifice crowned by five tall towers that gleamed like polished bone in the light of moon and stars.

Gathered with her was a striking force of forty of her best, all men and women chosen because they could move with silence and kill without hesitation.  Among them were Ekwa and Tau’ta and Utani all together.  Like Jaya, their bodies were painted black to hide them in the darkness, their swords and knives covered in soot from low fires.  None of them carried a rifle or a bow, for this was a mission of ambush and murder, not a battle.  There would come a day when she would come against this place in all her strength, but not tonight.  Tonight she came seeking one life only.

The weakness of the Mordani occupation was that it rested on a foundation of fear.  There were far more Utani in the islands than there were giants, and yet it was the terror of reprisal that kept the conquered with heads bowed and hands empty.  She knew also what many of her fellows did not understand – that the Mordani were fractious and only held back from fighting one another by a similar force of fear.  They obeyed men such as the viceroy only so long as they feared the swords of those who obeyed him.

Now she had captured the treasure fleet and bolstered her own force with some of the best of the ships she had taken.  The faith in the viceroy would be faltering, and his own would mutter that he had failed.  Now she would strike a fatal blow to this usurped throne.

They were on a hill that looked over the city from just beyond the walls.  It was a heap of loose stone piled up from when the walls had been quarried.  The defenses here were low and poorly-tended, because in these islands who would attack by land?

There was a single gate astride the road that led down from the highlands, and Jaya walked toward it fearlessly.  It opened before she reached it, and she was met by two of her tiger-striped disciples.  The half-dozen guards at this gate had been slain, and the watchfire would be tended so nothing seemed amiss.  Jaya stepped through the gate and into the encompass of the city walls.  She smelled the odors of a Mordani city, from the simple reeks of dead fish and human waste to the sickly perfumes of their women and the incense they burned in their temples.  There was the tang of woodsmoke from so many cookfires, and the smells of food.

The palace loomed downhill from them, a massive form of shadows and the glimmer of lighted windows.  Lanterns moved on the walls, even so late, and Jaya smiled.  She knew her message had been received, and that now the lords of the city were alive with fear of her.  Now she would harvest that fear, and cut the head from the whole kingdom with one stroke.  Once the viceroy’s head was taken, the rest of the lords here would fall to quarreling over who would be next in line, and into that chaos she would strike for the heart.

She gestured, and her force came streaming through the gate and shut it behind them.  They scattered into the alleyways and cross-streets, vanishing into the darkness, moving unseen.  Jaya and Dhatun moved into the shadow of the palace, disciples in their wake.  They went barefoot across the stone-paved streets, slipping silent through the houses and guard barracks, hearing voices inside.  People laughed and cried and made love and ate behind their walls, close enough to touch, yet they saw nothing.

When they reached the bounds of the palace Jaya found a small gate in the back wall of a garden already opened for them, and she smiled at the thought of the spies she had gathered in this place, those Utani who would be glad to see their overlords cast down.  They had given her the information she needed about the inside of the palace, and they opened the way so she could enter unseen.  Beyond the small gate was a garden that draped them in deeper shadow, the scents of flowers heady in the night air along with the sounds of rilling water from the silver fountains and the tiny cascades.

Had the history of her people been different, she might have been born into this place, to live her life amidst soft things, walking tended paths through sculpted gardens, lounging through the heat of the days on silken couches and eating iced fruits over lazy dinners.  It seemed like a hallucination, as though she saw through a veil to a different life that made no sense to her.

And yet it seemed she almost knew the way without asking.  Knew to cross the small courtyard and push through a delicate, gold-gilded gate, and then climb a narrow stair.  She entered a wide room with a low roof, the walls and windows hung with billowing curtains, low fires banked in firepits and braziers that smoldered.  She sent her acolytes on ahead, and they marked the way with slain guards who left red trails on the white stone floor, their bodies dragged back into shadows so no one could see them, only the marks where they had once been.  Red stains and bloody handprints.

o0o

Jaya moved through the halls of the palace like a shade, her way prepared with blood and death.  The guards who stood sentinel were taken unawares, their throats cut without any sound save a slight, strangled cry.  No alarm rose, no warning was given.  She walked barefooted through the polished halls where her ancestors had once ruled, and she was followed by fanatic killers who clung to the dark and waited for her command.

She ascended to the highest tower, and here she knew the viceroy would be guarded well, watched over by guardsmen and knights alike, all with their weapons ready to defend him to the death.  She would have it no other way, no sparing of life for her blood price.  Let them know she had come in the night and slain with her own hand.  Let them fear her.

Dhatun held the base of the wide stair with a dozen men, and Jaya and her acolytes climbed the stairway on silent feet.  Her sword was ready in her right hand, her left hand on the hilt of her long Mordani knife.

She heard a cry above, a voice calling out in the slurred tongue of the giants.  Jaya looked up and saw a white face twist in fear and then vanish from the rail and then came the screams of alarm.  Now they were seen, and they must strike like the jungle serpent when it is discovered.  She raced upward, drawing her pistol.  She bore the only one, and the shot would be her signal.

They rounded the corner, the ten of them, and found a high hallway bounded wall to wall by guardsmen.  She saw matches glow in the darkness and flung herself down as they blasted as one with their muskets, shattering the quiet and gouging stone and plaster from the walls.  Two of her own clutched wounds and went down in blood, and then the guards rushed in with drawn swords and Jaya was on her feet, racing at the head of her warriors.

There was a man before her with a huge red beard, and she aimed and shot him through the eye at arm’s reach.  Then she flung the pistol in another face and drew her poisoned dagger.  Steel flashed in the light of the oil lamps, and the dark clashed teeth of battle.  Twenty guards howled and slashed in the half-light, guarded by their steel armor, while her own fighters moved like living shadows, or like smoke in the fire of the bloodletting.

There was no making sense of it, only the slash and parry of blades, the splashes of blood and the screams of the wounded.  She fended off sword-strokes and struck back viciously, piercing under arms and collars with her envenomed knife, leaving men writhing in paralyzing agony, meat for the strokes of her sword.

The sounds of shots had been the signal for the rest of her people, scattered through the palace.  Packages and flasks of powder were set alight and exploded like cannonfire, destroying the peaceful dark of the night, shattering walls and men, setting fire to pools of spilled oil.  In moments the palace was in chaos, men running to face a dozen different blazes and uprisings.  Those who came to fight the flames were cut down from behind, noosed from above and hauled kicking into the air.  Through the din came the screams of the jungle tigress, the howls of the night monkeys, the wailing of hawks.

Jaya lived in a steel-blazing instant of blood and torn flesh, moment after moment of quick-cut and parry, evading strikes by the narrowest thread and then dropping her guard to cut through the cords behind knees or slash through the artery in the thigh.  Men fell, bleeding and howling, and they died when she opened their throats.  Nothing touched her, nothing stopped her.

She was through the line, the way to her target open, and she raced down the hall, burst through the door into the high chamber of the viceroy.  The sea wind blew through the arched windows and the moon-touched columns, casting blue shadows on the polished floor.  Gauze curtains billowed like living things, and the light of a single, ornate lantern threw patterns on the wall like cut copper.

The bed was empty, the sheets scattered and twisted, and she was so intent on them for a moment that she almost missed the shadowy form that stood there, out of the light, poised like a statue with bared sword.  It moved in the edge of her sight and she hurled herself back as the great sword flashed down and cracked the stone floor like the blow of a hammer, and then she saw she faced another of the champions of the Mordani, the armored killers.  A paladin.

He was bigger than the last one, with shoulders like a water ox and a helm that covered his face with a bestial mask.  He bore his sword in both hands, and his armor was so deep a blue it was almost black, gleaming slightly in the moon like the shell of a beetle.

“The viceroy is not here,” he said, and she knew enough of the speech of the giants to understand him.  “We hid him away, and we hoped you would come to our trap.”

“I will find him still,” she said, hating the ugly, garbled speech.  “I have met your kind before.  I have killed your paladins.  I will kill you as well.”  She pointed her sword at him.  “I am Jaya, the Tigress, the God-chosen, the Fire-bearer.  You will not stop me.”

“I am Aurich, the Beast,” he said, steel grinding as he clenched his mailed fists around the hilt of his sword.  “You have not faced one such as me.  You cannot prevail against me.  I will slay you, and my ships will scatter your pirate fleet to the winds.  When the sun rises, you will have never been.”

He struck then, a great sweep of his blade, and she gave back, sprang in when he was open, but then a fiery blue glow surrounded him like armor of light and her sword glanced from it like it was made of steel.  He moved like a ghostly giant, the light forming around him like another body – one bigger and more powerful than his giant frame.  He smashed his sword into the wall and the stone shattered, plaster and rock showering down, and Jaya leaped back toward the center of the chamber, seeking room to move.

The blue light faded as he moved, flickering here and there, seeming to fade in and out of existence.  He struck again, and again, and she had to give ground.  She could not parry that great sword with her shorter blade easily, and the light he wielded armored him against her counters.  He snapped off the posts of the bed like twigs, ripped down the curtains and trod them underfoot as he sought to force her back onto the balcony.

She waited until he attacked and then she rolled past him, cut out quick at his leg with her poisoned dagger.  Caught by surprise, the ghostly armor failed him, and she cut the back of his thigh as she passed him.  He slashed at her viciously as he turned, the blade coming down and cracking the floor underfoot, splintering the wooden planks and leaving a rent that glowed like embers in a deep fire.

Jaya fell back to the hallway, watching for the tell-tale lurch that would show the venom beginning to paralyze his leg, but he showed no sign of distress, came onward with his sword held high, and she slammed the heavy door in his face and backed into the hall where her warriors stood over the fallen guards.  She heard gunfire through the palace, smelled smoke, and the viceroy was hidden somewhere.  They were discovered and did not have time to hunt.

“Give the signal.  Fall back and leave the city.  We are finished here tonight.”  She heard a grating sound from behind the door and she leaped back as the wooden barrier disintegrated into a spray of dagger-pointed splinters and the stones of the wall ripped free and crashed into the walls like cannonfire.  Two of her men went down in the blast, and then Aurich the Beast burst into the hall, trailing azure fire like a falling star.

He lashed his sword like a stroke of lightning and Jaya flung up her blade to meet it, the force of the impact numbing her hands and driving her back, almost off her feet.  Another of her disciples leaped forward to strike and was ripped in half, the pieces hurled back to spatter the walls with blood.

“Go!” Jaya commanded, and her men turned and vanished from the hallway, racing down the narrow stair to leave her alone with the paladin.  He turned to her and she ripped a lantern from the hook where it hung and threw it at him, the oil splattering into flame as it shattered.  She saw the fire course over him, held away from his body by his armor of light, only touching him here and there.  It showed her that his armor only guarded him in some places but not others, that it flowed and moved, waning when his attention shifted.

He came for her with a whirling stroke, but she backed against the wall, ducking under his attack, using the walls to hamper his movements.  His fiery blade carved pieces from plaster and stone as he hacked at her, and then she pushed off the wall with her foot and threw herself against him.  She loosed the rain of intricate strikes that were the way she had learned the play of sword and knife.  Her blades glanced from his ghost armor, or they found a way through and struck at his steel shell.  She could not find his flesh.

Aurich snarled and came for her, the air around him glowing as he smashed into the wall and battered it down.  His sword struck with terrible speed, hissing when it passed close to her.  She got past him and backed down the hall, hammering at his guard, trying to keep the pressure on him so he could not easily marshal his great strength.

They fought down the hallway, blades clashing and sparking, blue fire flaring where steel met steel.  Jaya fell back and back, forced to give way as his powerful strokes hammered at her guard until her hands were numb and humming, and she felt the impacts in her teeth as she held him back.  She heard shouting from down the steps, running feet, and she knew she did not have very much time before she was overwhelmed.

She stood at bay at the top of the stairs, and she feinted high, rang a blow off his helm, and then she ducked low and cut at his midsection, seeking the wedge her dagger between the plates of his armor, and as she had hoped, he struck downward with all his force.  Even as he slashed down, his poisoned leg faltered and he came down even harder than he meant to, and his blade hammered onto the top step like a thunderbolt.

Jaya threw herself out of the path even as the sound of the impact split the night.  The floor shattered, and with a great grinding sound the staircase began to collapse.  Jaya saw Aurich turn to follow her, and then the floor caved away beneath him and he plunged out of her sight to be consumed in a great cloud of smoke and dust.

She cut down two more lanterns and flung them down after him, smashed another against the wall and set a fire crawling up along the plaster, over the wooden floor.  She spat into the pit he had made and then she ran for the viceroy’s bedchamber and out onto the balcony.  Quick as night she sheathed her weapons and climbed out over the parapet.  She had gown up climbing the cliffs of her island home, it was easy to make her way down over ivy-choked walls and into the darkness below.

o0o

It was almost dawn when she reached the cove where her longboats were beached, those of her force who had survived gathered there to await her.  She embraced Dhatun and waved the men into the boats.  “Come quickly, the paladin devil said he had ships on the sea.  Our fleet may be in danger.”

“Did you kill him?” another man asked, and Jaya shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  That one was filled with a power, and even good steel could barely touch him.”  She watched her fighters pile into boats, counting as they did so.  She had come ashore with forty, and now she had just under thirty remaining.  A costly raid, and she had not killed her target.

“Did you get the viceroy?” Dhatun asked as they climbed into a boat.  Jaya took the tiller, leg hooked over the rail to brace against it.

“He was hidden away,” she said.  “They were not so blind and foolish as I supposed them to be.  Tonight we have lost men, and gained little.”  It was a bitter taste on her tongue.

They rowed away from the beach and pulled out to sea.  Jaya steered carefully, knowing it was the turn of the tide, and rocks might lie concealed in the shallows.  They had to pass the promontory to the south before they turned, for if they cut too close to shore they might run aground.  Looking north in the first light of day, she saw the white points of sails, and she knew they were not her own.

“Ships!” she called out, and men turned to see them, cursed under their breath.  Her own ships were to the south, around the point of the island, and they were not expecting an attack by sea.  They had to reach them in time to warn them, to get them fitted for battle, if they could not escape.  “Pull until your arms sing,” she commanded.  “We must have speed!”  She watched the enemy coming with the sun, like a fire that stalked from beyond the red horizon.