The Broken Isles

at the efficiency of it all — those soldiers who had stepped from the front had their wounds tended to by military medics or cultists.

As the sun slipped lower, fading from the day, the Okun came again in dribs and drabs and small, vulnerable bands. The initial threat of their sheer mass had been nullified. It seemed a half-hearted effort at best and they were dispatched with the same efficiency as before. Row after row of Dragoons piled forward, seizing on islands of Okun, whilst the Night Guard themselves continued to fight like beings from another world.

The albino commander led from the very front, his presence on the battlefield unmistakable. Pale face caked in blood, and shifting back and forth with the agility of a dancer, he hacked and slashed his sabre into the gaps in the Okun shell, striking more vulnerable flesh. He exuded a confidence that Fulcrom admired and envied. All of Fulcrom’s fear had gone.

The adrenalin rush had dissipated as the minutes rolled by. He couldn’t tell precisely when it happened, that the threat was pushed back to the point where it was no longer a threat. Darkness came rather suddenly. Fulcrom looked up and noticed the sky-city had drifted slightly northwards, perhaps having hoped there would be nothing left here to see. A moment or so later a cheer started, somewhere at the far end of the defensive line, which progressed towards him.

Euphoria. .

ELEVEN

‘They tell me you’re in charge around here,’ said Commander Brynd Lathraea. He wiped his face with a small rag, leaving a few smears of blood across his cheeks, but it was better than before. He was a handsome man, remarkably pale-skinned, with eyes so dazzling they unsettled Fulcrom at first. There were other soldiers in the distance, milling around, and signs of order were returning to the refugee convoy.

‘I doubt you can call it being in charge,’ Fulcrom replied with a dry chuckle. ‘Most of this has seemed so completely beyond my control.’

‘It often feels like that, doesn’t it? But I can assure you that’s quite natural. The skill comes from eventually discerning the planned chaos from actual chaos. I’ve heard remarkably good things about you. It seems that without your leadership we may not have had any people left to defend this evening.’

Fulcrom didn’t know what to say. Had he succeeded? It didn’t feel like much of a success.

‘Do you think the Okun will return?’ he asked.

‘Not at night, I’d say,’ the commander replied. ‘We found from the defence of Villiren that their military activities took place during the day. I can’t work out their response to daylight — perhaps it has something to do with their biology — but such things ultimately work in our favour. Though I cannot vouch for any of their kin.’

Fulcrom nodded.

‘Walk with me,’ the commander requested. They turned and began trudging back up the slope, military personnel surrounding them. There were quite a few stretchers being carried to the hastily set-up medical tents with several dozen injured soldiers, some of them clearly not human.

‘Now tell me, Investigator Fulcrom — what the hell happened to Villjamur?’

‘When were you last there?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘A lot changed, even before we were forced to flee.’

‘I left before the Empress and her sister were set up for a crime they did not commit and were due to be executed on the city wall. They escaped. Urtica became Emperor.’

‘Is that the official story now?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘That they were in the clear?’

Brynd nodded. ‘As much as these things still matter, yes. We’re annexed from the Empire now,’ he continued, looking around, ‘but that is a situation which seems out of date considering there seems little from which to be annexed.’

‘That’s putting in mildly.’

Fulcrom gave as accurate an account as possible, starting with Urtica’s crackdown on law and order. ‘In the Inquisition, we thought it would be good — that we’d have powers to do our job thoroughly. The crackdown went rather far, though. The military upped their patrols on the streets and started harassing those from Caveside. Crime, ironically, started to rise.’

‘Soldiers shouldn’t be on the streets like that,’ the commander observed. ‘They’re not trained to deal with civilians in that way.’

‘I agree with you on that. Well, given the tensions in the city, things were bound to escalate. A woman called Shalev arrived in the city and organized the Cavesiders. She came from the cultist isle and she was remarkably efficient in targeting structures of power. The rebels became so efficient, in fact, that the Emperor panicked. He was beginning his programme of repairing the city and didn’t want a revolution on his streets — and so he created the Villjamur Knights.’

‘And they would be. .?’

‘Cultist-designed heroes. I was in charge of them, as it happens. There were only three of them and they were each given special powers to help fight crime. A little like the Night Guard but more specialized. Only one survives now, and her name is Lan. At the same time the underground movement had swelled to a point where tensions were simply too much. I’ve heard talk that there was an attempt on the Emperor’s life and that he was assassinated, but that all became overshadowed by the presence of the sky-city.’

‘Indeed. .’ the commander said. ‘Do you know where it came from?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fulcrom continued. ‘One moment there was nothing but the usual grey skies, the next it was just there — dropping creatures into the city and massacring people.’

‘You seem to have handled it well,’ the commander observed. ‘Getting everyone out here like this, getting them all moving — that kind of thing isn’t simple.’

Fulcrom grimaced. ‘It just. . happened, really. No one knew what to do. I’ve not even mentioned Frater Mercury yet.’

‘Frater who?’

The man who invented the rules — you’ll see.

That’s what the rumel investigator had said — the man who invented the rules, and the man who could probably save them — if he chose to do so. This, then, would be the person Artemisia mentioned back at the Citadel, the one so important to their world.

Brynd walked with the affable investigator up the slope, a little exhausted now despite the fact that the battle had been relatively simple compared with Villiren. His mind was thoroughly engaged in processing the mess that the Jamur Empire had become. Although a staggering number of people had died, more deaths had been avoided, and he couldn’t help but feel satisfied that the battle had proven successful. The Okun had been comprehensively defeated, thanks to combining forces with Artemisia’s people — an important gesture. Also, his new armour was everything he had hoped for.

When they crested the hill, Brynd stared in awe at the scene below. Enormous, strange vessels were drifting out to sea, the crude, flat outlines more akin to floating islands than ships, and how they were moving without sails was anyone’s guess.

‘That is what Frater Mercury does,’ Fulcrom said enthusiastically next to him. The relief was clear on the rumel’s face. ‘He changes all the rules.’

‘What are they?’ Brynd asked.

‘They were land-vehicles,’ Fulcrom said.

‘We had reports of such things, but what are they?’

‘So far as I can tell, exactly that — they’re moving vehicles crafted from the fabric of the earth itself — quite literally. Frater Mercury — the man, being, thing I mentioned — possesses some qualities that we can’t fathom.’

Fulcrom then explained the emergence of this being as the result of a priest coming to Villjamur, brought through worlds by means of some arcane ritual.

‘What happened to the priest?’

Fulcrom shrugged. ‘Gone. Presumably killed during the events in Villjamur.’ Fulcrom hesitated before