“I must?”
“I would advise so. Your subjects must know that you unquestionably command this army.”
Roper nodded. “I understand.”
Uvoren glanced down at Roper’s battered plate armour that lay resting against the surgeon’s supplies. The chest-plate had been punctured by a thrust of considerable power; damage sustained during Roper’s struggle for survival in the flood waters. “You must find some new armour as well. The Black Lord should appear invincible. You don’t want people to know you’ve been brawling like a gutter-rat.”
Roper nodded again. Uvoren stared at him a little longer before turning away, a strange smile on his lips. Roper did as he was told, donning fresh armour and taking the lead of the column as the shadow of the fortress fell over the horizon. The legionaries looked up at him with accusatory eyes as he rode past, though they said nothing. Roper hunched into the unfamiliar horse that he had had pressed upon him on the battlefield, looking away from his soldiers.
There was no shout of welcome as the Great Gate opened; just the clunk of the locking bars being withdrawn. It was a sapphire dusk; nearly nightfall. The first stars had begun to glow overhead. The rain had stopped but moisture clung to the air, creating a chill. Roper led the first ranks through the gate and saw that the streets beyond, as ever, were thronged with women and children. But they bore no herbs.
Roper straightened his back and stared ahead. Steady, now. His home had never felt so unfamiliar. Where usually they would have been cheering and calling out, the crowd was breathtakingly silent. The only movement as Roper rode past was of eyes: hundreds of eyes following him. His horse’s hooves sounded indecently loud on the cobbles and suddenly, in his shiny new armour, Roper felt abashed. The silence stretched.
And held.
He could hear the guardsmen trying to soften the pounding of their boots behind him; those heroic men attempting to withdraw inside their armour altogether. A low hiss escaped one of the spectators and was taken up by others around. It crossed the deserted road and rose like a waterfall on both sides. Roper’s lungs seemed to fill impossibly as the hiss grew and grew, as though it were Catastrophe herself, the great chain-mailed serpent that would overturn the world, rising from the earth. The hiss burst, and suddenly the crowd was in open disdain, hooting and whistling as the burning-faced legionaries entered the Hindrunn. A girl called that the legionaries should leave their weapons with the women; they would acquit themselves more honourably than their men had. The crowd laughed and jeered.
Roper rode alone at the front, burned by the contempt radiating from either side and the hatred at his back. He would be blamed for all of this. It might be the worst humiliation the legions had ever suffered and it was all his.
But this was not the worst realisation that was breaking over him. Another far worse, far more significant thought had invaded his mind. Accidentally, with no will or intent, Roper had made a terrible enemy.
Roper sat alone at the end of the great table that occupied the Chamber of State. The table was made of vast lengths of oak, so enormous that they could not have come from any living tree. Kynortas had explained to Roper that the wood had been extracted from a simmering bog to the south which preserved the ancient line of trees that had once dominated Albion. Now, the table dominated a large granite chamber, whose floor was covered by bearskins and which was well illuminated, even at this hour, by two-score oil lamps. Flames stirred in a brutally heavy stone fireplace that had been chiselled into one of the walls.
He had been here many times before at Kynortas’s side, brought to witness negotiations, campaign plans and even disciplinary hearings. He was not sure why he was here now.
An aide, one of the young warriors seeking a role in high command some day, had arrived at Roper’s quarters to tell him that he and Uvoren were to meet here as soon as Roper was able. Roper had hobbled down to the room as fast as he could on his damaged leg, expecting to arrive late to a full war council where the legates debated how to stem the tide of Suthern soldiers now sweeping across the Black Kingdom, aides galloping through the corridors outside to prepare their warlike nation’s revenge.
Instead, the room had been deserted.
Roper had sat down at first in his usual seat, to the right of the seat his father occupied—the Stone Throne. Soon afterwards, he had shifted to his left; he should occupy his father’s place. He had now been seated there for an hour. Only one person had come; an irritable legionary who trimmed and charged the oil lamps. He did not acknowledge Roper and Roper did not know what to say to him. He felt foolish sitting silently on the Stone Throne, and even more foolish after the legionary departed and he was left alone in the chamber.
Roper was tormented by the realisation that had come to him as he had entered the gate and left him more and more desperate as he sat alone in this room, waiting for Uvoren.
The Captain of the Guard arrived after an hour and a half. He threw open the door and marched for a seat at Roper’s end of the table, followed by ten companions. From the crests that they bore, Roper counted four Sacred Guardsmen, two Ramnea’s Own legionaries and two legates. With them were a pair dressed in embroidered robes: a Councillor and a Tribune. The final Sacred Guardsman, who drew his own chair as though he scarce
