‘Burn it,’ Temrai interrupted him. ‘And no looting. Understood? I want everything burnt.’
For once, Ceuscai knew better than to argue. ‘I’ve put in twelve wagon-loads of barrels,’ he said, ‘and the fuses are laid. When are we closing the gate?’
‘When I’ve finished,’ Temrai replied. ‘Now get the fuses lit and pull your men out. I want everyone ready to go as soon as I’ve done here.’ He turned and faced his old friend, his eyes full of fear. ‘You haven’t heard anything of Colonel Loredan, have you? Nobody’s reported him killed, or taken?’
Ceuscai shook his head. ‘I’ve had all the sergeants questioned,’ he replied. ‘Nobody’s seen or heard anything. Is that why we’re…?’
‘Are you still here?’
Ceuscai dipped his shoulders and walked away. A detachment of men came up, returning from fire-raising duty. Temrai called them over and set them to work searching the wagons. ‘And look out for plunder,’ he added. ‘If you find any, I want the men’s names. We’re taking nothing out of here with us; I want that clearly understood.’
The men didn’t look at all happy, but none of them said a word. The search continued, and the longer it went on, the tighter the knot grew in Temrai’s stomach. Somehow he’d assumed it would be absolutely straightforward; that virtually the first thing he’d see when he entered the city would be Colonel Bardas Loredan, probably standing in the middle of the Grand Avenue with his sword in both hands, challenging him to single combat.
Maybe he’s escaped…
Temrai closed his eyes. If Loredan had escaped, then how in the gods’ names would be ever justify all this, all these thousands of burnt people and all this meaningless, horrible destruction? It’d be enough to drive a man mad; to burn down a whole city and destroy an entire nation just to kill one single individual, and for that one individual to escape… He drove the thought out of his mind, repulsing the assault it had made on the citadel of his sanity. The gods who had given him Perimadeia wouldn’t do that to him.
He bent down and peered under a wagon, and saw a pair of eyes fixed on his. It was a boy, eleven or twelve years old, his overgrown arms and legs folded awkwardly under the chassis, his face full of the sort of terror Temrai knew so much about. In his eyes, Temrai thought he could see an afterimage of fire and running, things he’d seen himself so long ago, as if he was staring into his own unpleasant memories. Did you see your mother burn? he wondered. Your brothers and sisters wearing fire until all the flesh and skin was gone and there were only black bones, like the ruins of a city? He felt pity clawing inside him, like a cat scrambling up a curtain, like the old white cat his mother had loved so much scrambling up the inside of their tent when it caught fire, and the cat had moved faster than the fire until he had nowhere left to go. He thought of a boy carrying that much fire inside him for the rest of his life, never being able to close his eyes without it being there. He thought about that, and took pity, and nocked an arrow onto his bowstring. I’ve become a very cruel man, he thought, but not that cruel. I’ll spare him that, at least.
He bent the bow and looked across the belly, taking aim. He felt the string biting the joints of his fingers; then there was someone calling his name, Temrai, look out! and a terrible pain as something hit him across the back and side of the head. The arrow fell off the bow and he slumped forward, hitting the ground in a heap. It had been Ceuscai’s voice; he looked up and saw Ceuscai, and between Ceuscai and himself the back of a man, familiar-
Colonel Bardas Loredan.
– Who was swinging a sword in both hands while Ceuscai was moving the shaft of his pike to parry the blow. Temrai could see Ceuscai had got it wrong, but there wasn’t time; Loredan’s sword hit him under the jaw on his right side and sliced, with a thick fleshy noise, the sound of butchers quartering carcasses or deer being dressed after the hunt, until it came out the other side; and Ceuscai’s head toppled off his shoulders and hung by a strip of unsevered skin over his left shoulder; and then he wobbled and fell over, and Loredan had turned to stand over him.
– Like a dream he sometimes had, in which the man he now knew to be Colonel Bardas Loredan had seen the boy cowering under the wagon, dismounted and walked over, stood over him, bent down and reached out a long arm, an arm that seemed to stretch for ever, following him wherever he scuttled and scrambled to, grabbing his arm or his wrist, pulling until he could feel the ball of the bone pull out of the socket and the arm come off, and when that happened the hand would grab his other arm or his leg or his neck, until he’d been pulled to pieces, the way children tear the petals slowly from a flower, and there was nothing left of him but whatever it was that was dreaming the dream; and then the hand grabbed that and he woke up…
Didn’t they say that if you could break into a dream and catch the moment in your hand, you could twist it round the other way, make things happen differently? Was that what he’d done-?
‘Get up,’ Loredan said. Temrai tried to back away, get under the wagon; he could see men behind Loredan’s shoulder, hurrying to rescue him, but just like in the dream they were too far away, there wasn’t time. Loredan’s hand was in his hair now, as terrifying as fire; Loredan pulled and suddenly he was on his feet, yanked round, one arm twisted agonisingly behind his back so he couldn’t move for fear of it being torn out. He felt something cold and sharp under his chin.
‘Get back or I’ll cut his throat,’ Loredan was shouting. ‘Right, you, for once in your life do something useful and tell them to go away.’
Temrai tried to obey, but all he could do was squeak. He had never felt so terrified. It was the worst moment of his life.
‘You,’ Loredan was shouting, ‘under the wagon, get out of there, you’re coming with me. Anybody lays a finger on him and I’ll kill the chief.’
Temrai saw movement out of the corner of his eye; the boy he’d been aiming at, wanting to spare him the pain, was scrambling out of the mud and standing up, scared out of his wits, not knowing what to do.
‘Over here,’ Loredan’s voice boomed. ‘Get the knife out of my belt and prod this bastard under the armpit – gently, for god’s sakes, it’s insurance, so if they try and pick me off their boss’ll still die.’ Gods, how calm he sounded, how terribly good he was at all this; how stupid, Temrai realised, even to try and measure himself against this man, who was clearly Death itself. All these years he’d been daydreaming of a grand battle, sword against sword like a Perimadeian lawsuit, with Justice guiding his thrust at the last and confirming the righteousness of his cause. How stupid-
‘Easy,’ Loredan breathed in his ear, ‘do as you’re told and everything’s going to be fine. Now, we’re going to take a walk, just as far as the bridge. You got that? Now move.’
A little twist on his arm, enough to have made him scream if he’d still had a voice; then Loredan’s knee against his, nudging him forward, completely under the other man’s control. He knew that Loredan could snap him in two like a twig, or slice off his head, or rip off his limbs one by one, and there’d be nothing he could do. He wanted so much not to die; or at least not this way, not killed by Colonel Bardas Loredan, as if death at his hands would be so much worse, more painful, more final than any other kind. Loredan could destroy him, break off his head, drink his blood and eat his soul; he was Death and the devil and all the horror in the universe, all the horror that he, Temrai the Sacker of Cities, Temrai the Slaughterer, had brought into the world-
‘That’s it,’ Loredan’s voice, intimate inside his ear, ‘we’re doing fine. Don’t you just love it when stories have a happy ending?’
It seemed as if the whole clan was there, watching, backing away as they passed; because in spite of everything, the engines and the fire and the several million arrows he’d had made and caused to be loosed, there was no power on earth, let alone one puny nation, that could stand up against the horror of Colonel Loredan, the eater of souls, the bringer of Death and Justice, this terrible force his blind folly had let loose upon the world. As for what would happen when the monster had finished playing with him, he couldn’t begin to imagine; the extremity of pain, or everlasting torment-