Last Argument Of Kings: Book Three (The First Law 3)

Jezal watched in solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But escape would not be so easy.

‘Casamir’s Wall was first breached three days ago,’ Marshal Varuz was explaining in a monotonous drone. ‘We drove back the first two assaults, and held the Three Farms that night, but the next day there was another breach, and another. This damn fire-powder has changed all the bloody rules. A wall that would have stood a week they can bring down in an hour.’

‘Khalul always loved to tinker with his dust and his bottles,’ muttered Bayaz, unhelpfully.

‘They were in the Three Farms in force that night, and carried the gates into the Arches soon afterwards. Ever since, the whole western part of the city has been one running battle.’ The tavern where Jezal had celebrated his victory over Filio in the Contest was in that district. The tavern where he had sat with West and Jalenhorm, Kaspa and Brint, before they went away to the North, and he to the Old Empire. Was that building now burning? Was it already a blackened shell?

‘We’re fighting them hand to hand in the streets by daylight. We’re mounting raids in the darkness, every night. Not a stride of ground is given up without it being soaked with Gurkish blood.’ Perhaps Varuz hoped to be inspiring, but he was only succeeding in making Jezal feel sick. The streets of his capital soaked in blood, whoever’s blood it might have been, was hardly his first aim as king of the Union. ‘Arnault’s Wall still stands firm, though there are fires burning in the centre of town. The flames almost reached the Four Corners last night, but the rain doused them down, at least for now. We’re fighting for every street, every house, every room. Just as you said we should, your Majesty.’

‘Good,’ Jezal managed to croak, but he almost choked on the word.

When he so blithely turned down General Malzagurt’s terms, he was not sure what he had been expecting. He had dimly imagined that someone would soon come to the rescue. That something heroic would occur. Only now the bloody business was well underway, and there was no sign of instant deliverance. Probably there was heroism going on down there in the smoke. Soldiers hauling injured comrades to safety through the sooty darkness. Nurses stitching wounds by screaming candlelight. Townsfolk plunging into burning buildings to drag out coughing children. Heroism of an everyday and unglamorous kind. A kind that made no difference to the overall outcome.

‘Are those our ships in the bay?’ he asked quietly, already afraid of the answer.

‘I wish they were, your Majesty. I never thought I’d say it, but they have the best of us by sea. You never saw so many damn ships. Even if most of our navy weren’t ferrying the army back from Angland, I’m not sure what they could do. As it is, the men will have to be landed outside the city. It’s a damned inconvenience, and it could get to be a great deal more than that. The docks are a weak spot. Sooner or later they may try to land men there.’

Jezal looked nervously towards the water. Armies of Gurkish, pouring from their ships and into the heart of the city. The Middleway cut straight through the centre of Adua from the bay to the Agriont. A road invitingly wide enough to march an entire Gurkish legion straight down in a twinkling. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe evenly.

Before the arrival of the Gurkish he had hardly been able to have a moment’s silence for the opinions of his councillors. Now that he actually needed advice, the torrent had suddenly run dry. Sult rarely appeared in the Closed Council, and then only to glare at Marovia. The High Justice himself had little to offer beyond bemoaning the fix they were all in. Even Bayaz’ stock of historical examples seemed finally to be exhausted. Jezal was left to carry the responsibility alone, and he was finding it quite a weight. He supposed it was a good deal more unpleasant for those that were actually wounded, or homeless, or killed, but that was slender consolation.

‘How many are dead already?’ he found himself asking, like a child picking at a scab. ‘How many have we lost?’

‘The fighting along Casamir’s Wall was fierce. The fighting throughout the occupied districts has been fiercer yet. Casualties on both sides are heavy. I would guess at a thousand dead at least on our side.’

Jezal swallowed sour spit. He thought about the mismatched defenders he had seen near the western gate, in a square now presumably overrun by Gurkish legions. Ordinary people, who had looked to him with hope and pride. Then he tried to picture what a thousand corpses might look like. He imagined a hundred of them, side by side, in a row. Then ten such rows, one above the other. A thousand. He gnawed at his thumbnail, already down to the painful quick.

‘And many more wounded, of course,’ added Varuz, in a sudden twist of the knife. ‘We are very short of space for them, in fact. Two districts are at least partly occupied by the Gurkish and the enemy are landing incendiaries almost in the heart of the city.’ Jezal’s tongue sought out the still sore gap in his teeth. He remembered his own pain, out on the endless plain under the merciless sky, the stabs through his face as the cartwheels squeaked and jolted.

‘Open the Agriont to the wounded, to the homeless. With the army away there is room to spare. Barracks for thousands, and ample provisions.’

Bayaz was shaking his bald head. ‘A risk. We have no way of knowing who we would be letting in. Gurkish agents. Spies of Khalul. Not all of them are what they appear.’

Jezal ground his teeth. ‘I am prepared to take the risk. Am I king here, or not?’

‘You are,’ growled Bayaz, ‘and you would be well advised to act like it. This is no time for sentiment. The enemy are closing on Arnault’s Wall. In places they might be within two miles of where we stand.’

‘Two miles?’ murmured Jezal, his eyes flickering nervously towards the west again. Arnault’s Wall was a fine grey line through the buildings, looking a terribly frail sort of a barrier from up here, and worryingly close. A sudden fear gripped him. Not the guilty concern he felt for the theoretical people down there in the smoke, but a real and very personal fear for his own life. Like the one he had felt among the stones, when the two warriors advanced on him with murder in mind. Perhaps he had made a mistake not leaving the city when he had the chance. Perhaps it was not too late to—

‘I will stand or fall alongside the people of the Union!’ he shouted, as angry at his own cowardice as he was at the Magus. ‘If they are willing to die for me, then I am willing to die for them!’ He turned his shoulder towards Bayaz and quickly looked away. ‘Open the Agriont, Marshal Varuz. You can fill the palace with wounded too, if you have to.’

Varuz glanced nervously sideways at Bayaz, then gave a stiff bow. ‘Hospitals will be set up in the Agriont, then, your Majesty. The barracks will be opened to the people. The palace we had probably better leave sealed, at least until things get worse.’

Jezal could hardly bear to imagine what worse might look like. ‘Good, good. See it done.’ He had to wipe a tear from under his eye as he turned away from the smouldering city and made for the long stair. The smoke, of course. Nothing but the smoke.

The Countess Shalere was still lurking around the palace somewhere, but it seemed she had learned to keep her scorn well out of Jezal’s way. The rest of Terez’ ladies she had sent back to Styria before the Gurkish blockaded the harbour. Jezal rather wished that he could have returned the queen herself along with the rest but that, unfortunately, was not an option.

Terez did not so much as glance in his direction as Jezal shut the door. He had to stifle a heavy sigh as he trudged across the room, his boots muddy from the spitting rain, his skin greasy from the soot in the air outside.

‘You are treading dirt with you,’ said Terez, without looking round, her voice as icy as ever.

‘War is a dirty business, my love.’ He saw the side of her face twitch with disgust when he said the last two words, and hardly knew whether he wanted to laugh or cry at it. He dropped down heavily in the chair opposite her without touching his boots, knowing all the while that it would infuriate her. There was nothing he could do that would not.

‘Must you come to me in this manner?’ she snapped.

‘Oh, but I could not stay away! You are my wife, after all.’

‘Not by choice.’

‘It was not my choice either, but I am willing to make the best of things! Believe it or not I would rather have married someone who did not hate me!’ Jezal shoved one hand through his hair and pressed his anger down with some difficulty. ‘But let us not fight, please. I have enough fighting to do out there. More than I can stand! Can we not, at least . . . be civil to one another?’

She looked at him for a long moment, a thoughtful frown on her face. ‘How can you?’

‘How can I what?’

‘Keep trying.’

Jezal ventured a fragment of a grin. ‘I had hoped that you might come to admire my persistence, if nothing else.’ She did not smile, but he sensed, perhaps, the slightest softening of the hard line of her mouth. He hardly dared suppose that she might have finally begun to thaw, but he was willing to seize on the slightest shred of hope. Hope was in short supply, these days. He leaned towards her, staring earnestly into her eyes. ‘You have made it clear that you think very little of me, and I suppose that I hardly blame you. I do not think so very much of myself, believe me. But I am trying . . . I am trying very hard . . . to be a better man.’

The corner of Terez’ mouth twitched up in a sad kind of smile, but a kind of smile nonetheless. To his great surprise she reached out, and placed one hand tenderly on his face. His breath caught in his throat, skin tingling where her fingertips rested.

‘Why can you not understand that I despise you?’ she asked. He felt himself go very cold. ‘I despise the look of you, the feel of you, the sound of your voice. I despise this place and its people. The sooner the Gurkish burn it all to the ground the happier I’ll be.’ She took her hand away and turned back to the window, a glimmering of light down her perfect profile.

Jezal slowly stood up. ‘I think I will find another room to sleep in tonight. This one is altogether too cold.’

‘At last.’

It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort. All the things that Jezal had thought he wanted – power, fame, the beautiful trappings of greatness – they were nothing but dust. All he wanted now was for things to be as they had been, before he got them. But there was no way back. Not ever.

He really had nothing further to say. He turned stiffly and trudged for the door.