The Crown of blood

IV

Noran paced restlessly, cursing the backward inhabitants of Magilnada for having neither water clocks nor watch candles. How in Askhos's name did anybody here know what the time was? They had some sundials, but they were crude and altogether useless at night, and it was sometime after Midwatch.

And time was important.

He ceased his striding and forced himself to sit down on a low wall that ran along the side of the street. The clouds obscured stars and moon, and all he could see were the torches on the gatehouse at the bottom of the road, and the flickering fire and candlelight from the windows of the small houses on each side of the street. Looking coldwards, he saw the glow of the huge bonfires lit in the garden of shrines, and the wind brought the shouts and chants from those celebrating the Midwinter festival of spirits.

He was aware of other people in the dark; thirty fellow infiltrators gathered close at hand, most pretending to be drunk. They were all Ersuans from the Fifteenth, picked because they looked the most like Salphors. They swigged from beer jugs and wine bottles and laughed and chatted. Noran thought a few of them were just a bit too convincing and wondered whether they were pretending at all. Then he remembered they were legionnaires, and they were under orders. Their company code would mean that none of them would be allowed to get the others intro trouble by actually being drunk.

Over half of them wore swords at their belts; not the short and easily recognisable blades of Askhor, but the clumsy, curved weapons Anglhan had bought for the rebels. Noran had to admire Ullsaard's attention to detail. Once Noran had passed on Gelthius's wisdom, the general had quickly agreed that Magilnada had to be overrun by rebels, not Askhan legionnaires. Having access to the stores of the genuine rebels helped in this regard, but he had also been careful to send in only those men not obviously from one of the more distant provinces of Greater Askhor.

Likewise the legion he had assembled to attack the city was drawn from across the army, leaving out Okharans, Enairians and Nalanorians who would be immediately identified as men of Greater Askhor. Nobody in the city was to realise that their new "liberators" were anything other than disaffected Salphors and their hillmen allies, with a few Ersuan and Anrairian opportunists thrown in.

Details, thought Noran.

Details like choosing the festival of spirits for the assault, when people were on the streets so that Noran and the others could move around with freedom; a night when most of the city's warriors and militia would be drunk, even those supposedly on duty.

Details such as the carefully drawn maps of Magilnada handed out to the captains in the legion waiting outside, so that they knew exactly where to go once they were in the city.

Details like the small box of gold coins Noran had in his room, melted down from the askharins Urikh had provided and smelted afresh as more debased, local coinage.

Details like choosing one hour after Midwatch, after careful observation of the guard routine on the wall; the watch changed around midnight, and so Ullsaard had allowed just enough time for the new men on duty to get comfortable.

Other details Noran had spotted, telling the men not to fall into step with each other whenever they were in a group; or the way the legionnaires acted around the handful of officers that had come into the city with them; or their altogether unSalphorian attention to personal cleanliness. Noran had almost been forced to order the men to piss in the street like everyone else in the city because they had chosen to designate a particular back alley as their latrine and would visit it in shifts like they were still in camp.

But they had all missed one detail.

"How the fuck do I know when to start things?" Noran muttered.

Over towards the dawnward wall, another group of men were waiting with oil and tinder to set a fire as a distraction. When that was blazing, Noran and his band would take the gatehouse, as stealthily as possible, and at that moment Ullsaard and his makeshift legion would be appearing out of the darkness ready to walk straight in and claim the city.

All of this was to begin at the second hour of Midwatch, but Noran had no idea when that would be. If they took the gatehouse too soon, they would have to hold until Ullsaard arrived; if they took it too late, some sharp-eyed sentry might spot the approaching troops and raise the alarm.

Ullsaard was used to his legions acting in concert according to his orders, every part combining to bring victory. If all went well, Magilnada would fall with hardly any blood being shed — another detail Ullsaard had been keen to emphasise once he had decided that he could not just storm the city and force everyone inside to submit.

But Noran gnawed at a nail as he considered the risks. Doubts troubled his thoughts. What if the firestarters got caught before they could set the blaze? What if the fire did not catch well and fizzled out in the damp night air? What if nobody noticed it until it was too late? And even if that diversion worked well, there was no guarantee that Noran and his band would secure the gate.

"This is the shit part," said a figure, appearing out of the smoky gloom.

It was Nidan, a second captain from the Sixteenth. He had been sent into the city because, unlike many lower officers, he was literate. He was a squat, bow-legged man who had grown a drooping moustache to blend in better with the Magilnadans. As he sidled up to Noran, the smell of stale sweat and strong ale came with him.

"What is the shit part?" Noran asked, wrinkling his nose at the stench.

"Waiting," replied Nidan, slumping against the wall a few paces away. "Done it a dozen times. There you are, all geared up, ready to chop some bastard's head off. You can see the enemy, a mile away maybe, looking back at you. You've got your orders, all the boys are ready, but it's not quite time for the off.

"Or the night before you know there's gonna be a battle. That can be a real fucker. Those long hours, the bells ringing in the watches and you just know that in a day's time you could be dead."

"How do you deal with the fear?"

"Fear? I'm talking about the boredom. No need to be afraid. Do your job, kill the other son of a whore first and you don't have to worry about anything. Although… I do end up pissing quite a bit on those long nights. I don't know if that's important."

"Easy as that, is it?" said Noran. He glanced up and down the street and considered sending the runner to the other group with the order to start the fire; better, Noran figured, to be early rather than late.

"You should send Lihrin off with the word, I reckon," said Nidan.

"Do you think it is time?"

"We're a bit behind, really."

"What?" Noran jumped off the wall and looked around, searching for some sign that the plan was going wrong. "How can you tell?"

"Three patrols." Noran looked at Nidan with confusion. The second captain pointed towards the gatehouse. "The guards time their watch by the number of patrols from the gatehouse along to the next tower and back — twenty before a change. I've been keeping an eye on them, and they make twelve patrols in one of our watches, so that's three in an hour. The third patrol came back across the gatehouse just now."

Noran held the second captain on either side of his face and planted a kiss on the surprised man's forehead.

"Nidan, you are a fucking credit to the legions!"

Noran signalled to the runner, Lihrin, who set off up the street at a steady trot. Nidan gave Noran a wink, and headed back to his troupe of pretend drunkards. The noble realised how lucky he had been that the officer had chosen to talk to him at that moment.

Noran corrected himself with a further realisation; he was not lucky, he was an idiot. Nidan had talked to him precisely because he knew the runner was late being sent, and had even shown the good grace not to remark on Noran's ineptitude.

Noran checked that his sword would come out of the sheath easily, and glanced around at the other men. Now that the plan was set in motion, all his anxiety was gone. His eyes turned towards the dawnwards walls while he waited for the first bloom of the fire.

V

Cities stink, thought Gelthius. Not the natural smell of cattle dung or the musk of sweating turncranks, but the rotting stench of refuse, the smoke from a thousand fires, and the accumulated waste of too many people living in such a small place. The tanneries, where he was crouched in an alleyway with three other men, stank of the piss used to treat the leather.

Since coming to Magilnada, he had decided that he didn't care for cities, not one bit. Magilnada was too crowded and everybody living there considered themselves far more important than everybody else. Part of him wished that the fire he was about to set would spread out of control and eat up the whole wretched place in a glorious blaze.

But that wasn't the plan, so he and the others would be careful to set the fires closest to the stone wall, and they would raise the alarm quickly before disappearing into the night. When Gelthius had first heard of the distraction the general wanted, he had thought about the poor tanners that would lose their businesses. They had families to feed. The guilt did not last long, not when he considered the huge amount of trade that would come their way once the city was in the general's hands.

The padding of running feet drew his attention to the street. Lihrin appeared out of the darkness, emerging like a shadow from the lingering smoke that blanketed the city from the festival fires.

"We're on!" Lihrin said, waving for the group to join him.

Checking that nobody on the city wall was looking down on them, they gathered at the side door to the closest tannery. It was not barred; the owner and his family would be at the celebrations. Gelthius was the first inside, the gloom within the low stone building no darker than the unlit street. He fumbled around with the flint of his firebox and managed to strike a small flame into life. Lighting a candle from the small bag hanging at his belt, he found himself in a side chamber. The noxious reek of the tannery was even stronger here, and Gelthius wondered how anybody could live so close to such a stench.

"Let's just do this and get going," whispered Grendlin, pulling a flask of lamp oil and a rag from his sack.

Gelthius and the others soaked their rags with oil and stuffed them between vats and barrels. They splashed more oil onto the piles of treated leathers, and on the frames where the stretched skins were hanging. Their work done, all but Lihrin retreated back to the door. Lihrin walked backwards after them, dribbling a trail from his flask. Gelthius checked outside and, seeing that no one was nearby, tossed his lit candle onto the slick stream of oil on the floor.

They bolted out of the door one after the other as flames licked in a line across the room. None of them was sure how quickly the blaze would take, but their orders were to raise the alarm only when the fire was large enough to take considerable time and effort to put out. They headed back to the alley where they had been hiding before, and watched smoke wreathing from the windows and around the doors. A distinct orange glow could be seen through the slot-like windows, and the wooden planks of the roof began to smoulder. Pops and crackles could be heard from inside.

"Do you reckon that's big enough?" asked Gelthius. "Should we start shouting?"

"Let's just give it a f-"

Lihrin's reply was interrupted by a huge sheet of flame that shot up through the boards of the roof, scattering smouldering planks into the street. As the debris clattered down onto the stone, Lihrin turned to the others with a jubilant grin.

"I think that's going well enough," he said. Lihrin ran out into the street and headed towards the tower on the wall, hands cupped to his mouth.

"Fire!"