*
The watchtowers were empty.
That’s what the scouts were shouting, when they came pounding back on lathered horses with their uneasy news. Damen shouted back. Everyone had to shout to be heard over the cacophony of sound: the wheels, the horses, the metallic tramp of armour, the rumble of earth, the ear-splitting blow of horns that was their army on the march. The column stretched from hilltop to horizon, a line of sectioned squares that moved over fields and hills. His whole army was poised to descend in attack on the watchtowers of Karthas.
But the watchtowers were empty.
‘It’s a trap,’ said Nikandros.
Damen ordered a small group to peel off from the main army and take the first tower. He watched from the hillside. They cantered towards it, then dismounted, took up a wooden ram, and forced the door. The watchtower was a weird block shape against the horizon, with no activity in it; lifeless stone that should have habitation, and instead had none. Unlike a ruin, reclaimed by nature to form part of the landscape, the empty watchtower was incongruous, a signal of wrongness.
He watched his men, small as ants, enter the watchtower without resistance. There was a strange, eerie silence of minutes in which nothing happened. Then his men came out, mounted, and trotted back to the group to report.
There were no traps. There were no defences. There were no faulty floors to hurtle them downwards, no vats of heated oil, no hidden archers, no men with swords springing out from behind doors. It was simply empty.
The second tower was empty, and the third, and the fourth.
The truth was dawning on him, as his eyes passed over the fort itself, the lower walls of thick grey limestone, the fortifications above in mud brick. The low, two-storey tower was tile-roofed, and built to house archers. But the arrow slits were dark and did not fire. There were no banners. There were no sounds.
He said, ‘It’s not a trap. It’s a retreat.’
‘If it is, they were running from something,’ said Nikandros. ‘Something that had them terrified.’
He looked out at the fort atop its rise, and then at his army stretching behind him, a mile of red alongside dangerous, glittering blue.
‘Us,’ said Damen.
They rode past the jagged rocks, up the steep knoll to the fort. They passed unimpeded through the open forecourt gateway, which itself was four short towers, looming above them in a silent cul-de-sac. The short towers were designed to rain down enfilading fire, trapping an army on their approach to the gate. They were still and quiet as Damen’s men applied the wooden ram, and broke open the great doors into the main fort.
Inside, the unnatural quality of the quiet increased, the columned atrium was deserted, the still water of the simple, elegant fountain no longer running. Damen saw an abandoned overturned basket, lolling on the marble. An underfed cat darted across the wall.
He was not a fool, and he warned his men against traps, and contaminated stores, and poisoned wells. They progressed systematically inward, through the empty public spaces, to the private residences of the fort.
Here the signs of retreat were more evident, furnishings disordered, contents hurriedly taken, a favourite hanging gone from the wall here while another remained there. He could see in the disrupted living areas the final moments, the desperate war council, the decision to flee. Whoever had ordered it, the attack on the village had backfired. Instead of turning Damianos against his general, it had forged his army into a single powerful force and sent fear of his name sweeping across the countryside.
‘Here!’ called a voice.
In the innermost part of the fort, they had found a barricaded door.
He signalled his men to caution. It was the first sign of resistance, the first indication of danger. Two dozen soldiers gathered, and he gave the nod, approving them to proceed. They took the wooden ram, and splintered the doors open.
It was a light, airy solar still adorned with its exquisite furnishings. From the elegant reclining couch with its scrolling carved base to the small bronze tables, it was intact.
And he saw what was waiting for him in the empty fort of Karthas.
She sat on the reclining couch. Around her, she had seven women in attendance, two of them slaves, one an elderly maidservant, the others of good birth, part of her household. Her brows had risen at the crash as at some minor, distasteful breach of etiquette.
She had never made it to the Triptolme to give birth. She must have planned the attack on the village to stop him or stall him, and when it had backfired, she had been left behind, abandoned. The birth had come on her too soon. Sometime very recently, judging by the faint sepia smudges under her eyes. It would explain, too, why she had been left behind, too weak to travel while the others fled, with only those of her women willing to stay with her.
He was surprised to see that there were so many women. Maybe she had coerced them: stay, or have your throat slit. But no. She had always been able to inspire loyalty.
Her blonde hair fell in a coil over her shoulder, her lashes were pressed, her neck was as elegant as a column. She was a little pale, with slight new creases on her forehead, which did nothing to harm its high, classical perfection, and seemed only to enhance her, like the finish on a vase.
She was beautiful. As ever with her, it was something you noticed initially and then forcefully discarded because it was the least dangerous aspect of her. It was her mind, deliberate, calculating, that was the threat, regarding him from behind a pair of cool blue eyes.
‘Hello, Damen,’ said Jokaste.
He made himself look at her. He made himself remember every part of her, the way she had smiled, the slow approach of her sandalled feet as he had hung in chains, the touch of her elegant fingers against his bruised face.
Then he turned to the low-level foot soldier to his right, delegating a trivial task that was beneath him, and now meant nothing.
‘Take her away,’ he said. ‘We have the fort.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE FOUND HIMSELF in the women’s solar, with its light, airy fittings and the reclining couch, carved with a simple design, now standing empty. The window had a view of the approach all the way to the first tower.
She would have watched his army arrive from here, cresting the far hill and drawing nearer, watched every step of its progress to the fort. She would have watched her own people depart, taking food and wagons and soldiers, fleeing until the road was empty, until stillness descended, until the second army appeared, far enough away to be silent, but drawing closer.
Nikandros came to stand beside him. ‘Jokaste is confined in a cell in the east wing. Do you have further orders?’
‘Strip her and send her to Vere as a slave?’ Damen didn’t move from the sill.
Nikandros said, ‘You don’t really want that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want it to be worse.’
He said it with his eyes on the horizon. He knew he would not allow her to be treated with anything less than respect. He remembered her picking her way across cool marble towards him in the slave baths. He could see her hand in the attacks on the village, in the framing of Makedon.
‘No one is to speak with her. No one is to enter her cell. Give her every comfort. But do not let her get a hold on any of the men.’ He was not a fool anymore. He knew her abilities. ‘Put your best soldiers on her door, your most loyal, and choose them from among those who have no taste for women.’
‘I’ll post Pallas and Lydos.’ Nikandros nodded, and departed to do his bidding.
Familiar with war, Damen knew what came next, but still felt a grim satisfaction when the first of his alerts from the watchtowers began to sound, the entire warning system flaring to life: horns in the inner towers sounding, his men shouting orders, taking up positions on the battlements, streaming out to man the gates. Right on schedule.
Meniados had fled. Damen had control of both this fort and of a powerful political prisoner in Jokaste. And he and his armies were on their way south.
The Regent’s heralds had come to Karthas.