The City (40 page)

Despite everything, Arish felt a bubble of hilarity rise up through him. The man was clearly a fool, possibly drunk. As an opponent, the boys could ask for no worse.

The prancing idiot told the audience of the day of the wilding as if it were a festival. Arish thought back to the youngsters running through the trees, rolling in the leaves like pups, and thought the man was not entirely wrong.

‘Then,’ the general went on, ‘these boys realized they were hungry. They had eaten when they left the palace, but the generous fare they were given was not enough for them. So they conspired to kill some of the imperial hounds which run free in the woods, to kill and to eat them.’

Ranul was growing red in the face, a volcano about to erupt in steam and fire. Arish whispered fiercely, ‘Shut your mouth, Ranul.’ Ranul gave him a venomous glance. ‘This fool can say what he likes. Our advocate will tell the true story. Give her the chance.’ Ranul scowled, but said nothing.

The general told the spectators that three dogs had been killed, and he ended his story with the boys returning home, drunk with freedom and replete with dog-meat in their stomachs. He bowed elaborately to the emperor and his fellow judges, then to the lady Archange as she stood and walked out to the sand. There was a sudden cacophony of jeering and catcalls, and Arish wondered whether it was for the prancing general or their woman advocate.

The day was warm and Archange took off her long outer robe and folded it and laid it neatly on the sand beside her. She was now wearing a straight pale blue tunic over a white dress. There were silver
chains round her neck and on her breast. She seemed as relaxed as if she were in her own chamber.

The heckling rose to deafening levels. The spectators, all of them men, content for their sisters and daughters to die on the field of combat, resented a woman daring to speak in public. Clay bottles and pebbles were thrown, and once Archange stood back swiftly as a thrown knife pierced the sand near her feet. Arish saw that even some of the soldiers were shouting abuse.

The woman stood and waited patiently, hands folded. She looked as though she could stand there for hours. At last the noise began to die down. Archange stirred and looked around.

She raised her chin. ‘Warriors,’ she cried.

This aroused more abuse, but it quickly died down this time.

‘Warriors,’ she repeated more quietly, and the remaining hecklers were quietened by others wishing to listen.

‘Warriors are trained first to defend our City, and to defend themselves, then to attack our enemy. That is why they are given shields and swords. The shield to defend, the sword to attack. They do not lie down and let themselves be killed. These young warriors before you have spent years in training to defend the City. Some of them have already fought at the side of seasoned soldiers. Some are still too young.’ She gestured to little Evan, and raised her voice. ‘And I echo the words of my friend General Galada. The emperor has also done
me
a great service today. He has permitted me to speak on behalf of his warriors. There can be no greater honour.

‘It is true these young men are the sons of foreign leaders, foreign kings. They are the sons of men who were once our allies. They came here in good faith to learn the City’s ways, and to fight for its honour. If their fathers have since turned away and betrayed the City, they are not to blame. General Galada here,’ she gestured to the old soldier, ‘was the son of a Fkeni chieftain killed in the Battle of Edyw. Yet he has spent forty years serving the Immortal with honour and integrity. No one would throw back in his face the fact that he is the son of a traitor.’

The old boy flushed and Arish smiled. There were some shouts from the spectators, at the expense of the general.

‘Now the dogs,’ Archange went on. ‘I have spoken to the imperial huntsmen, and to the foresters whose job it is to patrol the woodland where these boys were sent on their wilding. They tell me wild dogs
in this part of the City are a menace. Hundreds of people, most of them children, are savaged to death each year, and each year the packs grow larger. None of the foresters will go unhorsed for fear of dog attack. Yet these six young men were sent there, on foot, unwarned, on a training exercise.

‘They were attacked by a dozen or more hungry, savage dogs. They did not choose to kill them for meat. As the general himself told us, the boys had recently had food, and even in this City, in the dire straits we now suffer, we are not reduced to feeding our soldiers dog-meat.’ There was a ripple of amusement through the arena, and Arish felt his hopes rise. What the woman said was unarguable.

‘They defended themselves,’ she went on. ‘They defended themselves against attack, as they were trained to do. As any warrior would.’ She swung round. ‘What would you have done, general?’

The general shook his head and said something unintelligible. Then he raised his voice to the crowd. ‘The dogs belong to the emperor,’ he cried. ‘It is against the laws of the City. Even the emperor cannot break the laws of the City.’

Archange spoke towards the imperial balcony. ‘We are not talking about puppy dogs, general. Nor the faithful hounds which accompany the Immortal on his hunts. These were wild dogs which wandered into the imperial domain. Rabbits which roam the City’s meadows are snared and killed by citizens for food, and the streams and rivers are fished for their bounty. We do not bring to trial the rabbit-hunters and fishermen.’

Some people in the audience shouted agreement.

‘Let me remind you, these dogs would have presented a similar peril to anyone coming across them – innocent workman, traveller, or child. In past years the emperor has organized hunting parties to run down and kill wild dogs in his domain. We of the City should be grateful to these young soldiers for freeing us of them.’

She paused, then she repeated the concept she wanted the crowd, and the judges, to understand and remember.

‘We should be grateful to these soldiers as we are to all our brave troops. We should be applauding them, not putting them on trial!’

Archange bowed to the balcony and walked away to a spattering of applause.

The six boys stood waiting while the emperor and his two judges talked. Arish squinted at them in the sunlight. The emperor seemed
to say little. It was the merchant, Goldinus Vara, who did most of the talking and, by his gestures, Arish guessed he was debating with the emperor. The old academic seemed to be asleep.

Arish felt a hollow place in his stomach where fear gripped him. Debate or not, he had no doubt what the verdict would be. They would all die here on the sand, in front of a happy, cheering crowd who would then go home to tell their wives and children that they had seen enemies of the City executed this day. His life would end here. The idea was not so bad. What he had seen of life he had not enjoyed. It had been full of brutality, terror, need and loneliness. The fear gripping him dissolved a little and he felt calmer. He hoped the method of execution would be quick. To one side of the imperial balcony he could see the emperor’s executioner, Galliard, who had served the Immortal as long as anyone could remember, standing waiting for the verdict, his hands on the haft of a huge axe.

Arish looked at the other boys. Evan was leaning against Sami, who had his arm round the youngster’s shoulder. In the last few days Arish had discovered that Sami was essentially a kind boy, now the false bravado had been stripped away from them all. Sami had looked after Evan when the others ignored him, and it was Sami who always made sure the small amounts of food and drink they had been given were equally divided.

Sami saw Arish watching him and gave a rueful smile. He patted Evan on the shoulder and the small boy looked up at him trustingly. Arish thought that no one had ever looked to him like that. He resolved that if he survived the day then he would also become worthy of trust.

The murmuring of the crowd softened as the merchant Goldinus stood up and stepped to the front of the balcony. He held up a hand for quiet.

‘The verdict of the judges is that the case is proved,’ he announced. ‘The six boys before us are guilty of killing imperial hounds, for which the penalty is death!’

There was a roar of excited approval from the crowd and sighs of fear from the boys. Arish felt a wonderful sense of calm overcome him. This was the end. There were no more decisions to be made. No more struggle. No more dreading what each day would bring. He looked up at the blue sky and told himself he would not see it again. But instead of regret he felt only relief.

Goldinus was still standing, and after letting the crowd have its celebration he held his hand up again and the noise quietened.

‘But the emperor is magnanimous and, above all, fair,’ he cried. ‘He concedes that the Lady Archange made a valid point in her argument. Therefore, generously, he has decided that just one boy will die to satisfy the requirements of the law. The rest will live. They must decide between themselves which these will be. They have until the sun touches the top of the Shield to choose.’

There was a murmur of resentment from the crowd for the spectacle they had been denied. The boys stared at each other in confusion and shock, then turned to look at the falling sun.

‘No, no,’ stuttered Sami, ‘they cannot make us choose. It is not fair.’

Arish said, ‘Nothing about this is fair.’

He wondered at his own reaction. He had felt only relief when he heard they were all to die, but now there was a chance of life, and a good chance, he was reluctant to volunteer to be the one to die under Galliard’s axe. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He heard them arguing among themselves, yet no one stepped forward. They all hoped someone else would.

‘We must draw straws,’ said Sami. ‘It is the only way.’

He looked at their pale faces, one by one. Reluctantly they all agreed. Arish said, ‘Don’t include Evan. He’s not to blame for any of this.’

‘No one’s to blame,’ Ranul muttered, but the little boy said stoutly, ‘I want a straw.’

‘You understand what it means?’ Arish asked him.

‘Let him have a straw if he wants,’ argued Ranul and Arish gave him a cold stare. But the child nodded his head. He was old enough to know what he was doing.

Riis ripped the sleeve off his tunic and carefully tore it into six strips. He handed them to Ranul who, his back turned, tore the end off one strip and hid them in his fat fist, leaving the ends sticking out. Arish glanced at the sun, plummeting towards the mountain. ‘It is nearly time,’ he said, his stomach churning with fear again.

‘Ready?’ Ranul asked, turning round. Arish saw that his face was grey and he was blinking rapidly.

Evan was given the first choice and he chose a long strip. Then Arish, Riis and his brother Parr all picked long strips. Only Sami was
left to choose from the remaining two. He glanced into Ranul’s face, then picked one of the strips. It was short.

Ranul blew out his breath in relief. The rest stared at Sami. They had no idea what to say. Arish touched his shoulder in a gesture of comradeship, then the others did the same. Sami nodded to each of them. Then he stepped forward. There was a cheer from the crowd. Galliard walked across the sand, accompanied by two soldiers, who took Sami by the arms.

Then there was quiet from the spectators as the merchant Goldinus stood to speak again. His voice was thinner, more distant now, and Arish thought he looked smaller. Arish frowned. Dread gathered in the pit of his stomach.

Goldinus cried, ‘The emperor, in his great wisdom, has decreed that the criminal shall be put to death in the way the ancient gods decreed. He will be roasted to death.’

In the stunned silence Arish heard a thin, inhuman screaming. He saw Sami struggling in the hands of his captors, saw the boy turn and stare back at his friends, his mouth open, his face contorted with terror, his eyes panic-stricken.

And the crowd burst into delighted cheers.

FELL ARON LEE
was a patient man. It was a patience won by necessity and practice. The life of a soldier consists of long days of mind-numbing boredom interrupted by moments of gut-wrenching terror. Fell had learned to harness the long days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months, of inactivity. When he was young he had found that by closing his eyes and clearing his mind he could reach a place of calm, a sanctuary from the sights and sounds around him. It took a great deal of practice, for it was easy to be distracted by laughter, a loud conversation, or by the itching in his clothes, or the pleasant fantasies of intimacy that any young man enjoys. But then he had had a great deal of time.

Fell had been a soldier for more than thirty years. The state of calm still did not come easily to him, particularly in a cold cramped cell with two other prisoners, but when he achieved it it sometimes rewarded him with revelation.

After weeks of captivity he realized he no longer wanted to be a soldier. He had spent his life killing other men, and some women, even a few children. He rarely met anyone who was not either a soldier or the men and women who serviced them. But Mason was not a soldier, or at least not one on active duty. Fell enjoyed their conversations more than he could say, for they roamed across the world, encompassing religion and history, astronomy, music, and agriculture and animal husbandry. Mason was knowledgeable and
well read. Fell had not read a book in his life, but he had spent his years of service listening to the conversations of other men, many of whom were, in other lifetimes, farmers or blacksmiths or scholars, or had trained in the priesthood, before the war enveloped them all. He was surprised how much information he had retained. Each day he looked forward to meeting Mason and afterwards, back in his cell, he would ponder their discussions.

It came to him as a shocking realization that he preferred this life to being back on the battlefield, but it was the truth. And he wondered how impoverished his former life had been for this to be the case. When he returned to the City, he resolved, he would leave this war to others. He had no idea what he would do with the rest of his life, but he hoped it would include Indaro.