He looked up. Stone faces, mouths open and screaming, framed all around with curling flowers.
‘The Gate of Weeping.’ Where the Emperor was cut down with poisoned swords by his own bodyguards, bribed with the promise of immortal souls. The gateway fell to dust as the Emperor died and could not be rebuilt save with bricks mortared with the murderers’ blood. But they got their reward: they were imprisoned inside the walls of the gatehouse, immortal but locked in stone, blind and dumb.
A particularly sick joke on somebody’s part that it should be their chosen means of ingress.
‘It should …’ Tobias pushed cautiously. ‘Ah.’
The gate swung open slowly on silent hinges. It gave onto a small courtyard, empty with an abandoned air. A dry fountain stood as its centrepiece, a woman with huge breasts carrying a water jar.
‘Wonder if the water used to spurt out of her nipples?’ said Rate.
The courtyard seemed to be used for storage. Wine and oil jars were stacked neatly against one corner, empty boxes piled in another. Rate unwrapped the bundle he was carrying and handed them their swords and helms.
So. Now they started killing people.
Two sides of the courtyard were high walls closing the palace complex off from the city beyond. A third was colonnaded, giving onto gardens rich in flowers. The fourth, immediately opposite the gate, had three doors, elaborately carved wood so heavily decorated they looked almost rotted. Tobias made for the middle door and gave it a push. Beyond it was a large near-empty storeroom. The walls were plain whitewash but the floor was a glorious jewelled mosaic of flowers and fruit trees, the ceiling richly moulded plaster, its peaks and arabesques now dingy with cobwebs. Once a wealthy part of the palace, now obviously fallen into virtual disuse since the unfortunate incident at the gate. This room in turn opened onto another, slightly smaller chamber in a similar state of abandoned grandeur.
A door opened in front of them and a serving woman appeared. She dropped the box she was carrying and opened her mouth to scream. Tobias skewered her with his sword. She slumped over in a pool of blood.
‘Everyone,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘That’s the orders. Everyone.’
They went cautiously through the door the woman had come through, into a windowless hall lit with tall yellow candles.
Another doorway. Another hallway. Two guards in gold armour stood before a marble staircase, armed with long trident spears.
Tobias gestured silently to them, counting down on his fingers. They came round the corner hard, flying at the guards. Tobias took one of them in the neck before he’d even turned round. Marith barely had time to think before the other was on him, shouting in panic. He pulled his sword up and parried a stab of the trident. A stupid weapon for close quarters fighting. The blunt end of it clattered against a sconce in the wall, sending candles flying. Hot wax splashed on the floor. Rate was on the man now, angled his sword thrust in above the trident, but the guard brought the weapon up and knocked the blade away from him. Marith dived in low and slashed across the man’s legs, drawing blood. Tobias finished it with a strike to the neck as the trident jerked down again in response. The gilded breastplate clattered loudly as it struck the marble floor.
Shouts came from further down the hallway. Two more guards appeared through an archway, this time armed with swords. They drew up short when they saw the chaos in front of them, then formed smartly into defensive positions, challenging the attackers to come at them first.
Tobias gestured to Alxine to watch the stairs and moved forward to engage the guards. Marith and Rate followed him. What the hell am I doing? Marith thought suddenly. Why don’t I just surrender? Why didn’t I just surrender and tell someone who I am and everything I know as soon as we first got here? Then one of the guards was on him and he parried and thrust and felt his sword bite hold and blood spurt up in his face and he remembered why. Fun. This was intensely, enjoyably fun. He hacked down violently and the guard fell dead at his feet.
‘Up,’ Tobias indicated. ‘Up, up.’ They began to run up the stairs, Alxine shouting that something was coming down to meet them. Screams and shouts were beginning to ring out from across the palace now. Up, up. Up to where the important people were. Clattering footsteps on the stairs as three more men appeared, swords out already dripping blood. Their momentum almost brought them colliding with Alxine, who got a nasty slash on the arm and stumbled backwards on the slippery marble steps. Rate howled and came at them while Tobias pulled Alxine to his feet. Marith whirled his sword, dancing across the stone, feeling wild laughter building up inside him. He threw off his helm and shook out his beautiful, shining hair; shouted ‘Amrath! Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr!’ as he lunged at the man in front of him. The man grunted with astonishment as he died.
Behind the guards, a pair of wide-eyed, terrified serving boys were crouched against the wall. Marith cut them both down, stabbing one in the throat, slashing the other in the belly so that his innards spilled out like lacework, slippery and lustrous as pearls. Would be a long time dying, like that. To stop him attempting to crawl away, he struck the boy in the left leg at the knee joint, hearing bone and cartilage crack. Lie there! he thought. Lie there and die slowly, watching your life run out of you! Look at your own body shrivelling and dying before your eyes. Nothing but meat and blood and muck, men are. Stripped you down to realizing that.