“Enough to take Varestia, wouldn’t you say, General?” Catheline enquired of Sirus.
“Given the ships we captured, yes,” he replied. “We were fortunate the city authorities had forbidden the harbour doors to be opened since the fall of Corvus.”
The harbour had yielded sixty-three ships in all, together with three Imperial warships, all captured during the massed rush of Spoiled following the destruction of the island forts. True to Morradin’s prediction the sight of so much destruction had unnerved the defenders. When thousands of Spoiled came streaming up the ropes from the barges and ships clustered along the length of the wall, resistance had been patchy. Some Imperial units fought with dogged determination whilst others fled almost immediately. Securing the wall took an hour of hard fighting by which time the waters both within and without the harbour were stained red and littered with bobbing corpses.
Resistance grew fiercer once they had swept over the docks and into the town itself. The garrison commander here was evidently a more able officer than his counterpart in Sairvek. Having correctly deduced that efforts to hold the harbour wall would prove fruitless, he drew his remaining forces back into a series of defensive lines, barricading interlocking streets and making good use of his remaining cannon to blast apart the repeated assaults Morradin launched against them. Sirus felt the man must have known the city would fall and the desperate struggle put up by his soldiers was intended to buy time for the residents to flee. Consequently, he had advised Catheline to forbid further assaults on the barricades, allowing the defenders the illusion of success. Thousands of people fled into the hills to the north, only to be confronted by packs of Greens and Reds who herded them back into the suburbs. Meanwhile Morradin led ten thousand Spoiled in a flanking move through the city’s outskirts, cutting the defending soldiers off from the refugees. It took another two days of vicious fighting to subdue organised resistance, and even now occasional reports would come in of Spoiled patrols being ambushed in the more constricted streets. Despite this the city effectively now belonged to the White.
“How long before we can strike south?” Catheline asked Sirus. “He wishes this matter resolved.”
“We’ll need at least two weeks to prepare the ships,” he replied. “The Varestians will prove fearsome opponents at sea and the more arms and armour we can add to our own vessels the better. Luckily, this port has excellent facilities and a skilled work-force to draw upon.”
“Very good. And where do we strike first?”
Sirus exchanged a barely perceptible glance with Morradin. They had expected this question and knew the answer would be a key factor in any design aimed at breaking the White’s control. “The Seven Walls,” he said, allowing a modicum of heightened concern to colour his thoughts. She would expect some degree of uncertainty. “The Varestian Ruling Council resides there, and it’s the most important port in the region. Varestian resistance will be most likely to concentrate there and around the neighbouring Iskamir Island, meaning we will be able to destroy the bulk of their forces in the first engagement.”
“Destroying their forces is a secondary concern,” she said. “Finding and killing Lizanne Lethridge is our priority, along with anyone she has been in close contact with. Gear all your efforts towards that end.”
Sirus and the other Spoiled present replied with a thought-pulse of subservient agreement, which brought a smile to her lips. “See to your fleet, General,” she told Sirus, moving closer to brush his hand with hers before she strode off towards the White. “I shall expect you for dinner tonight.”
“You take too many risks for my liking,” she told him, tracing a finger along the recently healed scar on his cheek. He had earned it leading a charge atop the harbour wall. It was the legacy of a final bayonet thrust from a wounded Corvantine regular, the needle-pointed triangular blade having come within a fraction of piercing Sirus’s eye and skewering his brain. Forest Spear pushed him aside at the last instant, saving his life and dispatching the doughty regular with a blow from his war-club.
“A commander unwilling to share the risks of his soldiers will lose their respect,” he replied. “Even in this army.”
This was true, at least to a certain extent. He sensed a definite warm regard for him amongst many of the other Spoiled, especially amongst the Islanders and, for reasons he hadn’t been able to divine, the Arradsian tribals. When the time came to move against the White he suspected such a depth of feeling might be useful.
“Morradin takes risks too,” Catheline pointed out, her hand broadening into a caress. “And they all hate him.”
They were in the sitting-room on the upper floor of the palatial mansion she had taken over. It had belonged to the city’s richest merchant family, all now vanished into the ranks of the Spoiled or slaughtered as being of no use. They ate dinner in a capacious, echoing ball-room of gleaming chandeliers and tall paintings. Throughout the meal Catheline allowed him to share a taste of her thoughts and he was surprised at the deep well of contempt she held for her surroundings. Frippery, luxury, empty art for empty souls. Just like those managerial bastards.
There was a discomfiting heat to these thoughts, a genuine hatred simmering beneath the contempt. Sirus was tempted to ask her about this, seek answers to the mystery of why she so detested her own class, but suspected that such enquiry might well be pointless. It was possible there were no reasons, none that made any rational sense given that she was an essentially irrational soul. He maintained a pall of fear to conceal all this contemplation of her nature, something she seemed to enjoy as she led him from the ball-room to her sitting-room.
“You wonder what I want of you,” she said, baring her elongated canines in a smile, hand smoothing over his scaled face. Sinking down next to him on the couch, she leaned close, letting her perfume assail him with all its terrible allure. “What does any woman want of a man she finds so interesting?”
“I am not a man,” Sirus pointed out. “Even before I . . . became this, most would have called me just a boy . . .”
“Before doesn’t matter.” She leaned closer still, Sirus feeling her breath flutter over his remade skin, the heat of it mingling with the effects of her scent to produce something intoxicating. He turned his face to hers so that their lips almost touched. “Now,” she breathed, “is all that matters . . .”
They both let out a pained gasp as a new thought invaded their minds, Sirus forced to his knees by the pain of it. Punishment? he thought, wondering if the White might harbour some dislike for such intimacy between its servants. But then he recognised the dark, alien stain of Katarias’s thoughts and realised it was a shared memory.
Another aerostat, he thought, seeing the elongated oval shape slipping through a darkened sky. It grew in size as Katarias soared towards it, the beast’s excited hunger swelling at the sight of the figure leaning out of the gondola beneath the bulbous air-bag. Drake eyesight was far keener than any human’s or Spoiled’s and, despite the goggles the woman wore, Katarias recognised her instantly.
Lizanne Lethridge! Catheline exulted, Sirus finding himself choking down a retch at the depth of her blood-lust. KILL HER!
CHAPTER 26
Lizanne