Hero Grown

‘You may be right, but there are many things done by people in all societies to impress each other that could be interpreted as such. On this occasion, however, walking when transport has been provided by the highest of the high would be deemed an insult. And also, to speak on equal terms with the rulers, Lord Einarr must act as they would expect a noble to act.’

Konall frowned. ‘Insult or not, should we not be making all haste to reach the Emperor with our news? It is the reason we have travelled here, cousin, and to be carried by ambling slaves would not befit the urgency of our mission.’

Einarr wiped his sleeve across his glistening brow and laid a reassuring hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘We are seeking audience with the most powerful man alive, and I have seen kings kick their heels for a week or more while they await that privilege. The Emperor does not know the importance of our message, or we would not need to bring it. To be admitted to his court the day we arrive may, I can only guess, stem from his curiosity or may just be our good fortune but, whatever the reason, we must fret not at the pace of our final approach but be thankful for the day it is taking place.’ He smiled. ‘And, believe me, these slaves do not amble.’

He stopped his party. ‘I’ll take my cousin and my page with me.’ He turned to the Scribe. ‘Narut, will you be travelling with us?’

He coloured at the use of his name in front of the carriage bearers, but his tone was as haughty as ever. ‘I shall lead the way afoot. A mere slave does not raise his station above that of other slaves.’

Hakon snorted. ‘If he actually believes that, I’m a mermaid.’

‘Good,’ said Einarr. ‘That leaves room for my local expert.’ He looked over to Hakon and the two guards. ‘You three can spread yourselves about the second one, but given the size of you, it’s probably for the best.’

They approached what was effectively a wooden box – albeit an ornately crafted wooden box – filled with cushions and with long handles protruding fore and aft to enable it to be lifted. A slender pole at each corner supported a canopy that afforded them protection from the sun’s glare if not from its heat, and a slave moved to open a door in the side. Einarr waved him away with a smile and instead stepped over the low side and seated himself facing forward. Konall took his place beside him, leaving the opposite space for the other two. The others were already lounging in the other carriage, grinning like small boys. Brann could understand Einarr’s choice in the two warriors he had brought: Magnus, wiry and quick, and tall Torstein were as skilled with their weapons as any of the other Northmen, but both were also considered enough of thought to carry themselves appropriately in any company. And, no mean accomplishment, they were almost as relentless in their good cheer as Hakon, so while the news they bore was grim, the mood in the party was lifted. Typical of his people, Einarr was practical in his outlook, and it achieved nothing to look constantly at the world through eyes fogged by the gloom of foreboding.

At a nod from the Scribe, the slaves hoisted them aloft, resting the handles on their broad shoulders. Smooth as the action was, Brann grabbed at the side, clearly uncomfortable and disconcerted.

Konall almost smiled. ‘Try not to fall out. It would probably cost a slave his life.’

Brann wasn’t amused. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to push me, just for the entertainment.’

The tall boy pushed his sweat-soaked hair away from his brow as the slaves set off at a fast trot. ‘Talking of entertainment, cousin, I couldn’t help but notice you enjoying yourself baiting that Scribe.’

His elbow resting on the broad wooden rail at the side of the carriage, Einarr shrugged slightly. ‘I hate pompous arseholes. He is just the first of many we will meet. Unfortunately, I am denied by diplomatic necessity the chance to bait the rest of them, so I take the chance when I can.’

‘Some would call that bullying, cousin.’

‘Given his attitude, others would call it a moral obligation.’

Konall looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose he does repress his emotions, somewhat. To a ridiculous extent, in fact.’

Grakk coughed and Einarr looked across just in time to stop Brann’s words with a stare. ‘Anyway, what is more important is what Grakk can tell us.’

Grakk grew serious. ‘You will see that the buildings here are several stories high and closely built, from the necessity of the area. The city started as a small port but the large and deep natural harbour attracted trade enough for it to grow quickly. With residential accommodation surrounding the original dock buildings and roadways wide to facilitate large amounts of traffic from warehouse to docks and docks to the great selling halls, there was little room to expand further inland, so once they had spread right across the harbour edge they built upwards instead. As we progress, we will enter more and more affluent areas, where the houses become bigger and with more space around them, and subsequently where the houses become villas and the space around becomes space within, for they are built to enclose central areas where nature is brought into the stone of the city.

‘This is not a city planned for defence, such as in your land, Lord, nor is it,’ he nodded at Brann, ‘a random arrangement that has grown according to opportunity and fancy, as often is the case where you were born. This is a city planned by wealth, prosperity, trade and social standing. Everything here is meticulous: the colour of the buildings to reflect the heat of the sun, the width of each road for its purpose, the area where each class lives according to purpose and logical placement for that purpose. For example, bakers near to the grain-storage houses, tanners near the beast pens and leatherworkers near to them. They love thinking everything out, hence the prominence of the Scribes. Even their army is created and operated with pre-planned purpose in every aspect: every free man must learn a trade from their fifteenth winter to their twentieth, and then serve the following five years as soldiers. Those proving to have most military value are retained as leaders and the rest return to their trade unless they choose to remain as soldiers. Those leaders help to train those who come after. They are drilled to work as one, to fight in formation, to fight identically, with identical weapons, to operate on the battlefield according to commands and not individual thought.’

Konall was confused. ‘Then they have no great warriors? No feats of valour and legend?’

Grakk smiled, ‘They do not, young lord, although they do have the tournament field where young nobles can prove their skill. No, they do not have great warriors. But they do have an empire.’

Einarr nodded, thoughtfully. ‘That’s interesting, Grakk, many thanks. But now I must think on this, if you don’t mind.’

Grakk looked at him. ‘It is the prerogative of a lord that my minding is immaterial.’

Einarr’s eyes narrowed in amusement. ‘But it is good sense for a lord to mind whether you mind or not, if I would like to increase my chances of the fullest of information in the future.’

‘Your logic is sound,’ Grakk acknowledged. ‘And I do not mind.’

Einarr nodded and they rode in silence, and Brann’s eyes drank in a world that could never have been successfully described to him had he not beheld it at first hand. Strange as the trade area around the docks had seemed, still the mix of nationalities bustling around the streets had lent it a recognisable feel and diluted the air of unreality. Here, though, in the heart of pure Sagia, everything was of this land and nothing of his own. Overwhelmed by the unfamiliar, he seemed to be floating through a dream.

Einarr’s voice cut so suddenly that he jumped, something that nearly amused Konall.

‘Pardon me, Grakk, but you covered but one aspect of the two that I had in mind.’

‘Of course, lord. You would know of the rulers. The court and the nobility. They are…’

The lord held up a hand. ‘Thank you, but no. I have knowledge of their court workings more than enough from the papers and documents I had to endure on the voyage. I would know of your friend Narut. You and he would seem acquainted beyond just a similar penchant for scalp decoration.’

There was a long silence, which served not only to make real the tension that Einarr’s words had created but also to let Brann realise that he had become accustomed to the awkward sensation of being carried shoulder-height in a box.

With hard eyes, Grakk said, ‘I have those few who I would consider friends but he is not, nor ever has been, counted among them.’

‘But you know him.’ It was a statement, not a question.

Grakk nodded. ‘I do.’

‘And your time with him is not remembered fondly.’

‘There was wrongdoing.’

‘By you or by him?’

Grakk’s piercing eyes gazed at the passing buildings, but appeared to see scenes distant in location and time. ‘By both. But though he has position, he is a slave and I now am not. So I cannot bear animosity towards one whose life has led him to greater suffering than mine has.’

‘That’s very noble of you, but that is what fate decreed for him and I am less interested in prying into your personal differences and more in the nature of the man. If he has the ear of a member of the royal family, I would know what he is like and if he can be trusted.’

Grakk’s head snapped to look right into the eyes of Einarr. ‘Lord, if there is one thing you remember always when you are in this city, it is that few you will meet can be trusted. I can only speak of the man I knew many years ago, but then he was arrogant, unfeeling and remorseless, and just as punctilious as a Sagian. He may have changed his nature, but I can imagine nothing in the Sagian way of life that would not encourage those traits rather than mollify them, which has in all likelihood been behind his rise to his current position. Be that as it may, his lack of emotion would ensure that he did nothing from a position of spite, anger or vengeance. Even when he did wrong, he always believed he was doing what was right. He is a man of obsessive duty, and probably more at home here than in the place of his birth, despite his slavery.’

A sound of disdain came from Einarr. ‘Arrogant, unfeeling, remorseless and punctilious? He has indeed found his spiritual home.’

Konall looked at him appraisingly. ‘You don’t much like these people, do you?’

Einarr sighed. ‘The ordinary people are fine, much like anywhere you will go. But my experience of anyone in authority here has not been good. I’m sure there will be exceptions, but I have not found them any time I have visited. And the higher the rank, the worse it tends to get.’

Brann groaned. ‘And we are about to meet the highest rank there is.’

‘It may be imminent.’ Konall pointed over Brann’s shoulder, and he turned to see a gateway taller and broader than he could have imagined possible, leaving the two pairs of stock-still guards looking as large as the toy warriors his grandfather had whittled for him what seemed like a lifetime ago. Intricate geometric shapes were carved with consummate care and skill into the stone that framed the opening, and just craning his head to squint at the lintel twice as high above them as the top of the Blue Dragon’s mast made Brann’s head swim.

‘Imminent may be a premature expression, young lord,’ said Grakk. ‘The castle, and the palace within, are what you might term extensive.’

Brann soon learnt how far the definition of the word ‘extensive’ could stretch. The massive wooden doors of the gate – bound for strength in metal unknown, for they were clad in more sheet gold than several Blue Dragons could carry – lay open, with the grim eyes and naked blades of the four guards enough to discourage entry by any but those already permitted. A tunnel, arched even higher than the gateway, stretched twice the length of their ship, testifying to the thickness of the walls. It is a mighty structure indeed, Brann mused, that you measure in terms of a ship. If the city had been built for trade, the citadel had quite obviously been built for war.

Grakk leant over to him. ‘And this is just the beginning, young Brann.’

It was. They passed through four curtain walls in all, each one higher than the last. Einarr was appreciative. ‘You would lose an entire army before you came face to face with a defender,’ he murmured.

Opulence and pleasure were everywhere, too, however. Between each pair of walls, ornate gardens were a picture of nature with shrubbery, winding streams and carefully arranged rocks. The noise and bustle of the city streets soon seemed distant as the occasional figure could be glimpsed strolling or resting in the calm.

A foot nudged Brann’s knee. ‘Don’t be misled by the look of it, mill boy,’ Konall said. ‘There is not a bush above knee height and the walls are high. This is a killing zone as much as the streets of our towns.’

Brann’s eyes narrowed as he looked around with new perspective. ‘Of course, there is no cover. And what bushes there are would impede movement, as would the streams. In a climate as dry as this, the shrubbery would also burn easily, I would think.’ He looked up. ‘And the battlements are on the inside of the walls as well as the outer side, so defenders on both walls are protected from below as they send down arrows, spears and anything else on the attackers from behind as well as in front. And,’ he finished triumphantly, ‘each inner wall is higher than the outer, so if a wall is taken, the height renders those on the outer one vulnerable to those on the inner one.’ He beamed proudly.

Einarr turned a hard stare at him. ‘I’m glad to see you are thinking again at last, rather than being lost in wonder. We may be here on a friendly visit, but never relax your guard.’

Made surly by his deflated ego, Brann stared to the side. ‘It seems we cannot relax our guard anywhere these days,’ he grumbled.

‘Correct.’ Einarr’s tone was hard. ‘Be made wary by the unfamiliar, not distracted.’

The instruction was hard to follow, though. As they passed through the fourth wall, which had already dumbfounded the senses with a height and thickness that surpassed the unimaginable dimensions of the three that had preceded it, the vista opened to reveal row upon row of villas that rivalled those of the most affluent area they had seen before entering the citadel. Beyond them, a massive keep rose like the bluffs of a great cliff, shining as white as the curtain walls, the houses and every other vertical surface they had passed.

Despite Einarr’s warning still hanging in the air, the words were out of Brann before he knew they were coming. ‘It’s like a whole town within a city,’ he gasped.

Einarr sighed, and Grakk nudged Brann in amusement. ‘These buildings furthest from the keep are the servants’ quarters, while the more affluent properties belong to nobles of the highest order who are permitted to have a second home close to the centre of power.’ He seemed to particularly enjoy the boy’s desperate attempts not to react.

The Scribe led them to a wide and intricately decorated wooden ramp that rose at a shallow gradient and doubled back on itself over and over until it reached a yawning doorway around two-thirds of the way up the front of the keep. A few levels above the door, the wall facing them dropped back to form a massive terrace the full width of the building.

‘We have roads of this shape cut into our mountains,’ mused Einarr. He looked at Grakk. ‘I assume this will be for defence? They can burn it easily if they want to cut off this entrance. But what is the reason, when these lower doorways exist?’ He indicated a series of wide entrances at ground level.

‘The ground-level portals give access for the supplies and serving-slaves in peacetime,’ Grakk explained. ‘The lower levels are for storage and for the work of the slaves and have narrow passages that are easy to defend and hard to attack, and with lanterns rather than windows supplying light, while the doorways themselves have suspended above them slabs of stone, ready to be released were the keep requiring to be sealed. Furthermore, concreted bins above and behind the doorways hold rocks ready to be let pour into the alcoves of the doors to shore up the stone slabs.’

‘And the levels upwards from this door that seem to be our destination?’ said Einarr.

‘The province of the Emperor’s extended family and those they choose to accompany them. From that terrace upwards, they live a life like none other. There the corridors are wide, windows draw in light and air, and opulence serves both to enrich the lives of the ruling class to the extreme that they desire and to diminish the importance of those who visit. This is the heart of an empire, after all.’

Konall was unimpressed. ‘Not so easy to defend, then.’

‘They feel, young lord,’ Grakk said with a grin, ‘that if an enemy host has battled past four huge walls and the areas of massacre between, broken through to the lowest level of this keep while under attack from above and fought through several levels of narrow passages to reach this stage, they will be either too depleted in numbers and energy to resist the defenders or will be indomitable. Either way, one more stage of defence will not alter the outcome. And they like their opulent living.’

Brann looked at the tribesman, who had the appearance of a creature of the wilds but the words to rival a Scribe. ‘How do you know this, Grakk? Have you visited here often?’

Grakk smiled. ‘Never, young curious fellow. But there exists a place where all the knowledge of mankind is written and stored, and there I have been. Not recently, nor even as recently as long ago, but often.’

Any further questions were cut short by their arrival at the doorway, where a large platform afforded more than enough room for the bearers to lower their burdens onto broad boards that shone with the evidence of constant care. The eight slaves who had carried the party hardly seemed out of breath and, although impressed, Brann couldn’t help wondering if such impressive strength could not be put to better use than carrying people around a city.

Grakk seemed to read his mind. ‘It’s a better fate than finding themselves in the mines, quarries or war galleys,’ he said quietly. ‘There is always someone in a worse position than you, and someone in a better. It is life.’

The Scribe was waiting at the doorway and, on their approach, he turned without a word and led them into a world that drew a gasp of astonishment even from Einarr.

Grakk grinned. ‘The desired effect of the first impression has been achieved!’ But even so, his face showed his own admiration for the sight that greeted them.

The doorway opened onto a hallway the size of a town square, and extending above what looked like three full storeys. Two statues, each the size of a two-storey house, depicted in smooth white stone a lightly armoured warrior on a rearing horse, caught in the moment of thrusting a lance the size of a young tree, and his foe, a six-headed monster with each of the snake-like necks coiled to strike forward with massively fanged mouths. A large smooth black rock formed the boss on the warrior’s shield and gold gleamed on his helmet, bracers and greaves, sword hilt and the trappings of his steed, matched on the fangs and claws of the beast, while its many-faceted eyes were jewels of the deepest red.

‘So the fables are true,’ Grakk breathed. ‘Sometimes words on parchment cannot do justice to the wonder of reality.’

Hakon clapped him jovially on the shoulder. ‘The desired effect of the first impression indeed, oh wise one.’

Grakk still looked dazed. ‘I have a feeling it will not be the last impression we will have.’

They paced the length of the hall between the looming might of the statues, their boots clacking against tiles of alternate squares of white and pale yellow and the noise echoing off walls of a shiny white stone that, Brann saw on closer inspection as they neared the far end of the room, was streaked with veins, much like the strong cheese made in the southern parts of his homeland, though far more impressive.

A stairway the width of the Blue Dragon (again, he was measuring in units of ships, Brann realised) took them a third of the height of the chamber before it split right and left, the two arms sweeping round on themselves and meeting close to the ceiling where a golden balustrade edged a broad balcony that encircled the room, murals stretching the length of each wall in myriad colours.

Closer examination of the murals proved impossible at the summit of their climb as the Scribe took them straight forward through a wide opening into a wider corridor, rising at a gentle angle. Closely spaced windows, tall and slender and high-set, cast beams of sunlight onto a row of alcoves in the inner wall, each bearing a statue a little taller than a man. As they passed, Brann saw that many of them were actually carved in the likeness of men or women, while others were animals or even small trees or ornate flowers. All were in the same white stone as the two in frozen conflict in the hallway, and all were crafted to the same impeccable standard, down to the last crease at the corner of an eye or insect on a leaf.

The passage stretched for what seemed an eternity before turning abruptly, repeating the pattern. Each turn, sometimes taking them into the interior, sometimes back to the outer walls of the building, revealed more artistic treasures: statues, murals, tapestries the length of a bowshot, ornate weapons and armour, stuffed exotic animals – many of which Brann and, from their expressions, several of the others, had never imagined as existing – and carvings etched into the white veined stone of every wall.

Einarr spoke, directing his words at the back of the Scribe’s tattooed head. ‘We must have climbed a fair part of the building by now, Narut.’

‘The noble sir is correct,’ the man said, his neck colouring at the use of his name. ‘We shall in time reach the highest levels, where the royal residences are located, though we will not, of course, enter that area, but pass it by.’

‘Of course not,’ Einarr agreed.

‘Immediately above the royal chambers are the rooms of state.’

‘Thank you, Narut.’ Einarr’s voice was amiable. ‘That is very helpful.’

‘As the noble lord commands.’

The royal floor was evident both from the huge doors – gold plate beaten into similar geometric intricacy as the frame of the first gate they had encountered – and the ten fully armoured warriors, as impassive as the statues they had passed, lined in front of them. Only their eyes moved, every movement noted as the small party passed across in front of them until they left the open hallway before the entrance. Their watchfulness was matched every step across the chamber by Torstein and Magnus, warriors’ instincts drifting their hands onto sword hilts and setting their shoulders with tension.

The Scribe’s cold voice drifted back to them. ‘We approach the Throne Room of the Empire.’

The passage abruptly angled upwards towards another hall, this one with the carvings on the doors cut directly into the dark wood and inlaid with silver, the contrast startling. One guard stood each side but the doors lay open and the soldiers didn’t even twitch as the Scribe led them directly through.

The room was vast, the omnipresent white statues lining the left side in front of murals that populated the length of the wall, from floor to ceiling, with images of the tiniest detail and finished in gold leaf. A row of wide windows ran opposite, more like doorways as they stretched to the floor and appeared to give access to a series of balconies, and the ceiling bore from the near end to the far a map that seemed to show every stream and hillock of what Brann assumed was the Empire as it stood.

And the room lay empty.

They walked in at one end, facing in the distance a great throne of plain unadorned stone, with a simple white ceremonial canopy above it and two smaller replicas either side of it, their footsteps echoing in the silence. They stopped, forcing the Scribe to turn.