pleasure, and a bell ringing.
Ahead, an Acolyte was approaching the palisade with a camouflaged scout limping by his side. They stopped at the screen of wood and wire drawn across the entrance. Ash increased his pace a little, rehearsing a few words in his head as he strode towards the entrance himself.
And then his heart skipped a beat, for he saw the Acolyte stop and display the stubbed little finger of his hand to the guards behind the screen.
Ash cursed and faltered in his stride. He watched as the screen was dragged to one side to allow them through.
If he sprinted now, he might just make it through before it was closed again.
And then what? Fight his way through a hundred men?
He felt his chest convulse, and then he erupted into a fit of coughing from behind his mask. He stopped and doubled over, saw the guards at the entrance turn to regard him through the closing screen.
Ash straightened and walked away from the entrance, knowing how suspicious he must look to them. He wanted to hurry. Instead he walked calmly, his pace steady, waiting to be challenged at any second.
‘You there!’ came a man’s voice through the night.
Che looked up as he heard someone call out his name.
It was Sasheen who had called to him, from where she lounged on a couch in total nakedness, save for the grey plaster wrapped around her broken arm. Already, though, her attention had returned to the young woman who kneeled before her on one of the fur rugs, lapping at Sasheen’s heavy breast. Sasheen stroked the shaven head of the young aide, and whispered something down to her while she held a small pinchbowl of narcotics near the girl’s nostrils.
Klint the physician was walking around the edges of the tent with a joybell in his hand, a bottle of wine in the other. He was ringing the bell loudly each time he heard a cry of pleasure from one of the writhing forms he carefully trod around, all the while chanting wordbindings of devotion. He stopped before one of the alcoves in the tent wall, where the head of Lucian sat on a pedestal. The head blinked dully back at him as Klint shook the joybell in his face, and shouted, grinning, ‘ Free yourself, and all you desire you shall have !’ Sasheen laughed, egging him on. She was in high spirits tonight. They all were. The First Expeditionary Force had made landfall at long last, and they were alive, and having their fill of it.
A shriek cut through the smoky air of the great tent. Some priests in a far corner were having their way with one of the freshly caught slaves – their first taste of Khos, one of them shouted, as he threw a rag of clothing over his shoulder and fell upon the woman.
Che rubbed his eyes where he sat on a chair in one of the alcoves, and wondered when the Matriarch would relieve him for the night. He had never been one for these passionestas of the order. They exposed him in ways more than merely physical, requiring that he drop his guard while in the presence of his fellow priests. Even so, his was becoming aroused despite himself.
The floor around him was like a pool of merging flesh now, the air so heady with narcotics he was finding it hard to focus. He listened to the rasp of breaths and voices, observed the sheen of oil on interlocked limbs, the flash of eyes, pink tongues, teeth, smiles and scowls, whispers, genitalia.
All hail the divine flesh, he reflected sourly.
Everyone was there of Sasheen’s inner circle and entourage. The two generals, eyeing one another like fighting dogs as they each caressed a slave girl and partook of dried fruits and wine. Sashseen’s caretaker, Heelas, going down on one of his young studs. Alarum the spymaster, holding court to a ring of apt listeners, including Sool.
The priests around these figures formed the outer circles of Sasheen’s court, those of lesser status who vied always to climb higher. At their very edges were the Matriarch’s aides and hangers-on. The twins were there, Guan and Swan, the brother and sister frolicking with a woman between them.
Around them all, Sasheen’s honour guard watched with their scratch-gloves sheathed and resting lightly on folded arms, their stares hidden by smoky goggles.
And who is watching the watchers, he wondered absently, and scanned the priests who also sat around the edges of the tent in the little alcoves, talking quietly or looking on with steady eyes, some too old for this sport, or too weary, or too bored. Three priests of the Monbarri, the fanatics of Mann, sat within an alcove across from him. The largest, seated in the middle of them, wore a lipless scar-mask for a face, his skin etched by acids in a statement of intent that was extreme even for a Monbarri inquisitor.
His eyes were studying Che from across the tent.
Che casually stared back at the faceless man. The bodies were pressing closer now, like a tide pressing against him. A head brushed his boot as a pair of bodies heaved before his feet. He placed his sole against the smooth scalp, pushed until they rolled away from him. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Swan and saw that she was looking at him from afar.
He offered the young woman a nod of his head. She smiled. The moment of connection warmed him, sent a thrill up his spine.
The Monbarri was still watching him from across the room.
Che decided he needed to clear his head, and rose to his feet in the same moment. He paused to catch Swan’s eye, willing her to follow him, then turned and strode to the entrance as the Monbarri watched him leave.
As he stepped outside he took a deep lungful of untainted air. The sentries ignored him – just another priest of Sasheen’s entourage. Che looked to his right, where a bonfire burned high into the night sky. Two Acolytes were throwing another empty wine crate onto it, one of many the priests had already worked their way through.
It was to be expected, Che supposed. With the success of the crossing and the survival of most of the fleet during last night’s storm, the Matriarch and her general staff were in need of venting their tensions. Watching them tonight, feasting and gorging themselves, it had become clear to Che that until the very moment they had reached land with their forces largely intact, no one had been entirely sure if it was possible.
Che stepped a little further away from the noise of the tent. He waited in hope that Swan would emerge, while a slight breeze blew down the valley, carrying with it a hint of the winter still to come. They would have to make haste if they were to take Bar-Khos before the first falls of snow.
An Acolyte was escorting a scout through the entrance to the palisade, a weary middle-aged purdah covered in dirt and sporting a limp. His wolfhound was nowhere to be seen. Che squinted. Behind the messenger and scout, a second Acolyte had been approaching the entrance, though the man had stopped as the screen was drawn across the entrance again, and had doubled over in a fit of coughing, and now was walking off in a different direction entirely.
Odd, thought Che.
‘You there!’ Che shouted to the guards at the entrance. They turned to see who was shouting.
Another shriek broke the night air. It recalled to Che the sound of a scream from a boiling water-heater, the whistle that had finally obscured it.
Che’s eyes lingered over the retreating Acolyte.
‘Never mind,’ he shouted to the guards.
He looked back to the threshold of the tent. Swan had not ventured out to join him.
Che stalked off to his tent alone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Old Wants
Ash awoke to an iron-capped boot prodding at his ribs.
He opened his eyes, bleary with what little sleep he’d been able to snatch in the small hours of the night, and felt a warm body pressed against his own.
He tugged the blanket from his face and blinked up at the scowling face of an imperial soldier.
‘On your feet, old man.’
Ash groaned and covered his head with the blanket once again. The boot prodded him harder.
