EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (173 page)

I’ll have to marry Nairi soon. I’ll have to grow close to her father.
He clenched his fists.
And then my sister will die.

Nairi fastened the last buckle on her breastplate, then slung her sword across her back. She nodded down at Leresy, who still lay abed.

“Come see them roll in, my prince,” she said and grinned. “Lots of fresh meat for you to terrify. You should enjoy that.”

Oh, but I will enjoy their fresh meat,
he thought.
Though not the way you think.

He had spent his love only moments ago, yet already Leresy felt his blood heat again. Yes, he would break in many of those recruits—with sword, with whip, and here in his bed. He wondered briefly whether Nairi would like to join him in his conquests, then decided against it. It was best not to share this with her; at least, not until after he wed her and killed Shari.

He left the bed and smoothed his robe.

“Are there any servants in this pile of bricks?” He nodded down at the corpse. “The thing stinks already.”

She strapped her punisher to her hip; it was clad in the blood-red leather of a phalanx commander.

“Come, my prince,” she said, “and don’t worry; I’ll send up a recruit or two to dispose of the corpse. We have no servants here, but we have thousands of youths to break, to train, and to command. They will do your dirty work. Come, let’s go introduce them to the great Prince Leresy Cadigus.”

She patted his cheek, winked, and turned to leave the room, hips swaying with reclaimed swagger. Leresy stood a moment, admiring the view, then followed.

They climbed back onto the tower’s roof. They stood in the wind, looking down at the fortress. The smaller towers, the courtyard, the grand hall, the armory, the kitchens—they all looked like stone blocks from up here. Around them rolled the forests. A single, cobbled road snaked across the land, leading from the camp’s gates down south. Leresy was a child of the north; to him, Castra Luna was as south as he could imagine. But the empire stretched even farther from this outpost, all the way to the Tiran Sea where Cadport lay, and beyond that sea to the endless deserts.

My birthright,
he thought.
Once my father and sister are dead, all these lands will be mine.

Movement caught his eye. A convoy was moving north along the road, heading toward the camp. Leresy counted six carts, each one wide enough to house a phalanx of recruits. A dragon tugged each cart down the road, and smoke plumed from their nostrils.

“Here they are!” Nairi said, standing beside him. The wind ruffled her short blond hair, and she smiled crookedly and clutched her punisher. “The fresh meat rolls in. Let us go greet them.”

Her lips peeled back in a hungry grin, and she shifted. Gray wings burst out from her back. Her fangs shone. She took flight as an iron dragon, roared, and blew fire at the sky.

Leresy followed suit. He shifted into the red dragon, roared a spray of fire, and flew after her. They circled above the fort, howling their flames, and waited for the recruits to roll in.

As Leresy flew, he grinned and licked his chops. His chamber perhaps was bare, and the mattress rough, but Leresy thought he would enjoy his eighteenth birthday after all.

TILLA

T
HE
CART
TRUNDLED
FORWARD
,
AND
they were close now. Dragons shrieked ahead, fire crackled, and Tilla could feel it. After ten days in the wilderness, they were nearing their destination.

What fort will it be?
she wondered, standing in the dark cart as a hundred other girls pressed against her. She tried to remember all the forts she knew within ten days of Cadport, but there were too many. It would have to be one for training recruits—seasoned soldiers didn’t share forts with recruits—but that only narrowed it down by a couple of forts.

She went over all the names she had heard soldiers speak of. This could be Castra Nova Murus, a great fortress in the east; that would be good fortune, Tilla thought, for soldiers said a benevolent lord commanded Murus. Or it could be Castra Alira, a dilapidated fortress in the west; Tilla remembered soldiers saying the rooms there were rough, but the training light.

Or it could be... Tilla swallowed and twisted her fingers. She did not want to be grim but had to consider the possibility. They could be rolling toward the infamous Castra Luna.

Tilla clenched her jaw, remembering the stories. They whispered that Luna was not only the cruelest fortress in the south, but in the entire empire. They said obsidian tiles covered the old bricks of Castra Luna, as black and cold as the heart of its commanders. They said recruits were broken there—physically and mentally. Tilla had once met a soldier who had, they said, trained in Castra Luna; the man had been a mute, grim killer, a demon in human flesh.

Her own brother had trained at Castra Luna. He had never come home.

Tilla sucked in her breath.

No,
she thought,
the odds are against it. It won’t be Luna. Please, stars of my fathers, don’t let it be Luna.

She moved through the crowd of girls, heading toward a cart wall. Two days back, the cart had overturned, and a crack now opened in the wall, too high for the other girls to peek through, but just the right height for Tilla. She jostled her way forward. The other girls moved aside, mumbling prayers. Tilla reached the crack, stood on her toes, and peered outside.

Her heart sank.

A snowy forest rolled around her, the trees bare and dark. Above the branches, still about a mile away, Tilla saw black, glimmering walls.

Obsidian. Castra Luna.

A hand tugged at her sleeve.

“Tilla, what do you see?”

Tilla turned to see Mae peering up at her. The baker’s daughter bit her trembling lip. Other recruits gathered around and peered at Tilla, all whispering.

“What do you see?”

“I hear dragons flying, are we close?”

“Tilla, where are we?”

In darkness,
Tilla thought.
At the gates of pain. In a world we might never escape.

She raised her hand.

“We’ve reached a fort,” she began.

“Which one?” demanded Erry Docker. The scrawny waif’s short, brown hair lay in tangles, her knees were skinned, and her eyes flashed. “Tell us the bloody fort’s name, Tilla.”

“Are we at Castra Murus?” called another girl. “My brother trained there.”

Mae Baker began to weep. “But I want to go home! I don’t want to go to
any
fort. I want to go back to Cadport... Please... My father will be so angry, he’s going to come save me...”

Tilla had to shout over them all. “Be quiet! Don’t make noise or Beras will hear. You know he hates noise. We’ve reached the fort of Castra Luna.” The girls began to whisper and weep, and Tilla raised her hands and spoke louder. “You will be safe here! I promise this to you. I know men who trained at this fortress, and I will protect you.”

“How will
you
protect us?” Erry said and spat onto the floor. “You’re just a pissant recruit like us. Bloody bollocks, I could take you in a fight, I reckon.”

“No you couldn’t, Erry!” said Mae, tears in her eyes. “Tilla is stronger than us, and she’s about twice your height, so be quiet. And stop cussing; my mother said a girl should never cuss. Princess Shari liked Tilla too, you all saw it, and even Beras was a little afraid of her.” She clung to Tilla and her lips wobbled. “Tilla is going to look after us here.”

Erry rolled her eyes and groaned.

The shrieks of dragons grew louder, and Tilla peered out the crack again. She cursed under her breath. Two dragons were circling above the fortress, blowing pillars of fire. One was red, male, and long of fang. The other was female, and her scales were an iron gray. Both sported gilded horns; these ones were nobility.

And they are cruel,
Tilla thought.
I can see it in their fire. They will try to break us.
She clenched her fists at her sides.
But I will not be broken. Whatever horror awaits here, I will survive it. I will see Cadport and Rune again.

The cart kept trundling, and the black walls grew closer. Cannons lined their battlements, and soldiers in leather armor manned each gun. Tilla had seen cannons before, long and narrow things along Cadport’s boardwalk; not far from the Old Wheel stood the oldest cannon in Requiem, a rusted sentinel watching the sea. But these cannons dwarfed Cadport’s like greatswords beside daggers. Each gun was long as a dragon; she could have climbed into the barrels.

She swallowed. These cannons were not built to blast ships, she thought. They were built to slay dragons.

“Tilla, bloody dog dung, what do you s—“ Erry began, but Tilla hushed her and kept staring outside.

The gates of Castra Luna rose ahead. From where she stood, Tilla could only see half of one door. That door loomed twenty feet tall, its oak engraved with carvings of the red spiral. The sigil also appeared upon black banners that draped the walls and fluttered from the tower tops.

But Castra Luna hadn’t always been a Cadigus stronghold, Tilla knew. She thought back to the old, banned books Rune kept hidden under the Old Wheel’s floor. Once this had been a castle of House Aeternum. The great Princess Mori Aeternum had raised this place from a small, southern outpost into a great castle, and many princes and princesses of Aeternum had ruled here, a beacon of southern light. In old drawings, Tilla had seen a castle of bright bricks, of green-and-silver banners sporting Aeternum’s two-headed dragon, and of justice and light. Today... today she saw a prison of darkness.

The doors creaked open, revealing lines of soldiers. A chill ran through Tilla. Each soldier stood stiff as a statue, clad in leather armor studded with iron. Each bore a longsword. Helms hid their heads, bowls of black steel. They seemed to her not human, but automatons of metal, leather, and cruelty.

This will be me soon,
Tilla thought.
I will no longer be Tilla Roper of Cadport. I will be one in a line, a soul broken and remolded into a killer, nothing but a machine—no more alive than the cannons upon the walls.

Several carts rolled ahead of her own. They vanished under the archway, and Tilla’s cart soon followed.

And so we enter the long, cold night,
she thought and her throat tightened. She missed Rune so badly her belly clenched. Perhaps, she dared to hope, when he was drafted in summer, he would be sent to Castra Luna too. Would Tilla still be stationed here then? And if so, would Rune even recognize whatever demon they molded her into?

Six carts rolled into Castra Luna’s courtyard. Through the crack, Tilla saw the brutish Beras lumbering about. He was howling, banging on cart walls, and unlocking the doors. Saliva sprayed from his mouth as he shouted.

“Out, vermin!” He growled and spat. “We’ve carried you maggots for long enough. Out, you miserable lot of bastards and whores!”

When the brute reached Tilla’s cart and tugged the door open, the light nearly blinded the recruits inside. A few whimpered and covered their eyes. They had not seen daylight for ten days now, not since leaving Cadport, aside from what little light fell through the cracked wall.

Cadport’s youths stumbled out into the courtyard like prisoners from dungeons, pale and blinking and frail in the sun. The sky was white, and the small winter sun reflected off the fort’s obsidian walls. Tilla blinked and struggled to steady her limbs. Throughout the journey, they had been fed but scraps—old bread, burnt sausages, and some moldy cheese. Their training had not even begun, and already Tilla felt weaker than she’d ever been.

She looked around her, trying to focus her eyes. The recruits stood in the courtyard, still wearing the same tunics and leggings they had worn when leaving Cadport. A thousand other youths surrounded the square, but these ones were not weak. They did not tremble or blink or whimper. They stood in armor, silent, faces blank.

Tilla looked beyond them to see walls and barracks, all carved of the same obsidian, all bearing banners of the red spiral. A tower rose above them, the tallest she’d ever seen; it must have stood three hundred feet tall. It sported a great clock as large as a wagon; its hands were shaped as swords, ticking in an eternal battle. A hall stood below the tower, large enough to house a thousand men, and upon its walls perched two dragons, red and gray.

The red dragon stared directly at her, and Tilla felt as if an icy fist punched her.

Lust filled that red dragon’s eyes—lust for her flesh, for her blood, and for her very soul. The beast stared into her, licked his chops, and snarled. Smoke rose between his teeth, and Tilla tore her eyes away. Her heart thrashed and her fingers trembled.

“Form ranks!” Beras bellowed, lolloping around the courtyard. “By the Abyss, if you embarrass me now, I’ll flay your hides. Form ranks, sons of whores!”

Standing beside Tilla, Erry smirked. “He still walks like he got a stick up his arse. I bet he stick ‘em there good himself.”

Tilla glared at the skinny ragamuffin. “Don’t you ever stop talking? Come on, form ranks; stand behind me.”

Cadport’s recruits shuffled together, forming ranks as Beras and his fellow soldiers barked orders. They had formed ranks every night for ten days, and they moved faster now. The girls stood in lines to one side, the boys to another. As always, Erry Docker stood to Tilla’s right, smirking to herself, and Mae Baker stood to her left, biting her wobbling lip.