The Crown of the Conqueror

IX

Smoke hung over the city in a thick pall, coating every surface with soot. Blackened bodies lay sprawled in fuming ruins, and the streets were choked with the crushed and bloodied. At first the people had tried to move the bodies into the lower city, but now there were just too many and everybody was too tired.

Groups of people wandered the streets with vacant looks, some of them clutching children whose grimy faces were streaked with lines of tears. Others sat in the rubble and wept, or simply stood unmoving at street corners while the desperate and the traumatised shuffled past.

The gate towers had fallen shortly after the bombardment had recommenced at dawn. The parapet of the wall was like a row of broken teeth, and in places the wall itself was crumbling, slopes of stone tumbled into the streets behind.

Anglhan picked his way through the destruction, swathed in a hooded cloak, a handcart dragged behind carrying a small chest of coins and gems. His head throbbed from lack of sleep; for the whole of the previous night the Askhans had beaten drums, a slow, terrifying tempo that presaged the assault to come. For just three days they had battered Magilnada, but in three days they had brought Anglhan's city to ruins.

He was numb, in mind and body. He saw the remains of a mother and two children buried under a pile of bricks, their bodies crushed by the collapsed building, and it meant nothing to the lord of Magilnada. Blood stained the flagstones underfoot and he stumbled through ruddy-tinged puddles. Dust filled the air, coating his clothes, choking eyes, ears and mouth.

The handcart jarred against something, bringing Anglhan to a stop. He looked back dumbly and saw that a severed arm had become trapped in the spokes of a wheel. Disgust, despair, anger had all run their course, and now Anglhan bent down, tossed aside the offending object and carried on without a second thought.

A boulder smashed through the roof of a house ahead, sending up shards of tiles and a cloud of plaster dust. Anglhan did not flinch. He barely heard the shriek of a man who came stumbling out of the damaged building, a splinter the size of a sword jutting from his shoulder. He made a grab for Anglhan, eyes pleading, but the ruler of the devastated city swiped away the man's hand and pushed him back.

He had to get out.

The city was surrounded. As far as Anglhan knew, nobody had escaped the ring of Askhans. Until that morning, he had harboured the hope that he would be able to slip away in the confusion and carnage of the final assault. That hope had been dashed the moment he realised the Askhans planned to kill everyone in the city. It would not matter if he could disguise himself in a flood of refugees, he would be cut down all the same.

So it was that he followed the last-ditch plan he had concocted more than a year ago, when he had first considered crowning himself ruler of the Free Country. He did not do so with hope of expectation, or even desperation. He walked through the city simply because the alternative was to wait in the palace to die. He was not a fighter, and he was sure that Ullsaard would give orders to ensure he was captured alive. Anglhan bore no illusions about the fate being taken prisoner would bring. Torture and an agonising death would be his only future.

He came upon Spring Road, where the wells that served the city were found, fed by underground rivers from the Altes Hills. There was a large crowd of people, scrabbling with one another to get fresh water. People wanted to drink; none gave thought to the dozens of fires that still burned in the city.

Anglhan was not interested in the fresh springs. It was pointless to stave off death by thirst just to wait for a legionnaire's spear. He moved around the crowd, avoiding the gazes of the desperate citizens, and made his way over a shallow pile of debris into a half-ruined wooden hall.

Inside stank of shit and piss, for this was the wastehouse of the upper city. Separate from the river and pools that brought the city drinking water, another foaming rivulet cascaded down into the plains, accessed by three deep brick-lined holes. In normal times, the nightmen and pissboys would collect the waste of the nobles and flush it away down the open sewer; the common folk brought their own filth to dispose. Nobody knew where the stream went — Shit River as it was known — and until now nobody had cared.

Anglhan pulled a scarf from his belt and wrapped it over his mouth and nose; it did little to ward away the stench, but at least he would not get sprays of effluent in his mouth. He lifted the small chest from the cart and set it onto the lip of the closest sewer well. From the cart he brought forth a length of rope and tied it about his chest in the manner of a topman on his old landship. A memory flickered through his dulled mind, of teaching the same knot to a rebel chieftain.

Searching for something secure to tie the other end of the rope to, he spied a fallen beam from the broken roof. Tying the rope with nimble hands, he tested the knot and shuffled back to his chest. He passed the rope through a metal ring on one end and secured the chest to his belt. It weighed heavily at the moment, but it was only half-full, the rest of the space taken up by an inflated bladder that would keep the chest afloat once he was in the waterway.

Without any hesitation, no thoughts of what he had lost or the misery he had brought upon the thousands of people he had ruled, Anglhan flicked the rope over the wall of the well and heaved himself up to the lip. Inside, the bricks were coated with an uneven layer of dried waste, looking much like brown and black ice. The smell hit him with renewed strength as he swung his legs into the opening and dangled at the edge.

Working the rope through the special knot at his waist, Anglhan lowered himself towards the foaming water far below. In small drops, feet braced against the wall, the former lord of Magilnada left his city, face red with effort, the scarf across his face wet with his panting breath and sweat.

His foot slipped and for a moment he swung from side to side, toes scraping at the accreted shit for purchase. He eventually came to a stop and started down again. His feet were almost in the torrent when he noticed something different. He listened and could not place what he heard; then realised that it was quiet.

The Askhan drums had stopped. The assault was about to begin.

With a last effort, he slipped the knot free and dropped into the water. Foam bubbled around him as the current grabbed his legs and swept him away. His sodden clothes dragged at him and he clawed at the surface of the river. He snatched away the scarf and arched his neck to gasp for air, the small chest of money bobbing along beside him.

Only now did he feel something. Freedom. He laughed and spluttered, imagining Ullsaard's rage when he discovered Anglhan had escaped.

"Fuck Ullsaard!" Anglhan shouted, barely hearing his own voice over the rush of the river.

A moment later he was dashed against an outcrop of rock, his head cracking against stone, knocking him out.