Eventually the time came for us to move out. Two small, barred wagons had been brought for Lacanta and her eunuchs, though she had one vehicle to herself. These mobile gaols were cushioned inside, and possessed a roof, so they were not entirely humiliating. It was, however, a world away from what she would have been used to as a royal. Once they had been marched to the top of the slope, the eunuchs were crammed into the other carriage. The huge trail of Sun Chamber officials, soldiers and prisoners eventually rolled up the hill and started on the long journey towards Tryum.
Siege Conditions
Two thousand soldiers marching towards my home city was a breathtaking sight. Through the dry grasslands that stretched for miles around the city, a handful of Sun Legion soldiers marched alongside auxiliaries from the neighbouring countries, following the line of aqueducts. Maristanian troops, it seemed, were only too keen to lend a hand in humiliating their ancient rivals.
Cavalry, spearmen, archers, engineers, siege towers and artillery troops armed with both stones and bolts, were all united under the banner of the Sun Chamber, a faming sun emblazoned on black cloth. Dredging up a cloud of dust, this slow tide of violence trickled across the landscape. The sky remained cloudless all day.
‘This is all your doing.’ Commissioner Tibus rode up next to me to admire the view, munching on an apple.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn’t know how to reply.
‘I was joking, Drakenfeld,’ she added. ‘Well, partially anyway. It takes one Sun Chamber officer to bring a common thief to justice, but it takes an army to force a king to submit, such is the nature of power. Two thousand soldiers is not that many, but we need to show the likes of Licintius that we mean business. If he protests, like he did with our initial envoys, we can always summon more. We’ll tell him that.’
‘Have our agents been at all successful inside the city?’
‘We’ve not heard back from them, so we must assume otherwise. Our envoys were turfed out without being given a proper hearing – that’s a slap in the face to the Sun Chamber right there. Licintius knows the law, oh yes. He knows what to expect.’ Tibus threw away the core of the apple and turned away.
Merchants – those who had not heard the news or noise of an advancing army – scattered from the roads to the city, drawing their horses across farmland at a rapid pace. A few people lingered to watch what was going on, unaware that their home city was about to be under siege. The gates to Tryum were closed and soldiers were lining the walls to the city. Behind us, the camp was being set up for a long stay.
Meanwhile, all the rest of us could do was wait.
A night passed while we waited for messengers to continue back and forth, for diplomacy to have its opportunity. The messengers had been perfectly clear: the king was to surrender himself for questioning on behalf of the Sun Chamber’s highest authority. The Senate would take charge of affairs for the matter to be resolved. Whether or not Licintius passed this message on to the Senate was another matter.
Day came again, and traders or travellers who wanted to flee the city were driven from the city’s gates without repercussion. Tryum was sealed. Small packs of cavalry rode around the city enforcing the blockade. Entry was forbidden by order of the Sun Chamber and it was at this point that Commissioner Tibus informed me that the river route towards the sea would shortly be blocked, too. All of this was to add pressure: to force Licintius to open the gates to the city and hand himself in.
Later, wondering vaguely how long it would take for a city to starve, an idea came to me. I rode over to find Commissioner Tibus, who was in her leather command tent along with Callimar, and I made a proposition to them.
The three of us walked back out to the viewpoint, looking down on Tryum.
‘I don’t want my people to go hungry,’ I said.
‘No one wants that,’ Tibus agreed. ‘What’s your idea, Drakenfeld?’
‘It’s in everyone’s interest for this whole thing to end as soon as possible. Well, that can be two ways – either Licintius hands himself in or we break down the walls or gates and march in to collect him.’
‘Stating the obvious, Drakenfeld…’ Tibus wiped her brow with her handkerchief, looking increasingly annoyed with the fact that I’d dragged her out into the heady sunlight.
‘Not entirely. The first point may never happen, but I believe there’s a short cut to the second version.’
‘Which is?’
‘The aqueducts.’ I gestured to the spectacular works of engineering that supplied Tryum with fresh water from the hills and mountains. ‘We can make our way into the city, through an aqueduct. There’s hardly been any rain around here over the past few weeks, except a storm that passed over Tryum – not the hills. There are access points throughout the structures, aren’t there? Admittedly it could be some distance between them – but there will be a way inside them. I know of at least one point where the walls were broken and in need of repair. A tiny force can sneak into the city while no one even realizes. I know those streets better than anyone here, and I know my way around Optryx, too.’
‘You want to lead a band of soldiers through one of those things,’ Tibus said. ‘I like it. General?’
Callimar smiled. ‘I’ll not let you go in alone and have all the fun. Who can we take with us?’
‘A unit to go after the king and a unit to open the gates,’ Tibus declared, commandeering the plan. ‘We could do with bribes being arranged where possible – and a couple of agents doing the dirty work. As young Drakenfeld keeps reminding us, nonviolence is the key – all of this is a gesture and a threat, nothing more. We don’t depose kings in these circumstances; we let the bodies within the nation decide on the best course of action.’
Callimar added, ‘We could arrange for a decoy on the opposite side of the city – move a few siege weapons into place, to look as if we are planning to gain entry from another gate. While the city’s forces are all looking in one direction, we’ll crawl in through the other.’
I took a deep breath, relieved that my whim was not as ridiculous as I had first imagined, and that the people of Tryum might not have to go without food after all.
We spent the morning resting in anticipation of the forthcoming operation, then later that afternoon Leana and I headed out on foot with fifty infantrymen and two of our engineers, short, cheerful and intelligent men who couldn’t stop arguing with each other. While the heat was beginning to fade, we set out on our route away from Tryum, heading along the largest-looking of the aqueducts, looking for a point of entry or a weakness that could be exploited. The aqueducts around Tryum were two centuries old, the engineers explained, designed at the start of the Detratan Empire, and formed the blueprint for the structures that today littered Vispasia. Each one was fundamentally the same and each shared precisely the same incline for the water to flow.
We only had to march for less than half an hour until our engineers located what they thought was the best way in. To gain access to the deck, which carried the water, we had to climb up onto the upper tier of two immense rows of stacked arches. At the top we would find one of hundreds of manholes, but it would not be easy for fifty-something people to climb up. Instead we marched to where the aqueduct collided with a hillside: there the tunnel would continue for a short way through the land itself.