The Devil's Armour (Gollancz S.F.) Read online

  Also by John Marco in Gollancz

  The Eyes of God

  THE TYRANTS AND KINGS TRILOGY:

  The Jackal of Nar

  The Grand Design

  The Saints of the Sword

  THE DEVIL’S

  ARMOUR

  JOHN MARCO

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © John Marco 2003

  All rights reserved.

  The right of John Marco to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 10088 6

  This eBook produced by Jouve, France

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For their commitment to freedom, for their courage, and for their ongoing sacrifice, this book is humbly dedicated to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by John Marco in Gollancz

  Part One

  1 The Fall

  2 The Diamond Queen

  3 The Bleak Territories

  4 Shalafein

  5 Ela-daz

  6 Dreams of Fire

  7 The Blind Kahana

  8 Vanlandinghale

  9 The Long Road Home

  10 Beyond the White Wall

  11 Ruana

  12 Meriel’s Prayer

  13 A Time For Men

  14 The Defenders of Koth

  15 The Scholars

  16 The Richest Man in the World

  17 The Battle of Andola

  18 A Song Without Sound

  19 Mirage

  20 The Forging

  21 More Than a Man

  22 The Spirit in the Eye

  23 Amaraz

  24 Reunion

  Part Two

  25 The Princess and the Tiger

  26 The Dove

  27 Danger in Dreel

  28 The Valley of the Kreels

  29 City by the Sands

  30 The Calm

  31 The Storm

  32 A Place to Call Home

  33 In the Flesh

  34 Nith

  35 A Mission for Onikil

  36 The Return of Baron Glass

  37 Reunion in Koth

  38 The Queen’s Messenger

  39 The Audience

  40 The Lovers

  41 Dark Designs

  42 Lukien’s Promise

  43 Dark as Daylight

  44 The Hunting Party

  45 Seeing Stars

  46 Worlds Apart

  47 Vanlandinghale’s Wall

  48 The Ring

  49 The Rolgan Drums

  50 Thunder at Sunrise

  51 The Fall

  52 Battle in Bronze

  53 Between Two Worlds

  54 In the Ruins

  55 Alive Again

  56 The Machine

  57 A Farewell to Friends

  Part One

  THE KING

  AND QUEEN

  OF NORVOR

  1

  The Fall

  King Lorn the Wicked knew the knives were out. In the past days – days he knew were the last of his kingship – conspiracies were everywhere, with no one to be trusted. It was the reward for a life lived in treachery, where alliances shifted like sand in the storms kicked up by war. It was how Jazana Carr wanted him to end – alone and afraid.

  Tonight, darkness fell heavy on Carlion. Soldiers milled about the castle courtyard and its many towers, keeping an uneasy eye on their foes in the distant hills. Clouds obscured the moonlight. An abrasive breeze stirred Lorn’s cape. He drew his wolf-fur collar closer to his face and squinted against the dust and sand, filth that constantly tumbled through the streets of his capital out of the crumbling mountains. From atop the wall-walk King Lorn could see for miles. The turrets of Carlion provided an excellent vantage against invaders. As he had for the past three nights, he watched as Rihards’ forces waited in the hills, their many torches glowing defiantly, announcing their numbers. They had not yet advanced on Carlion, but Lorn and his men knew time was short. Perhaps the duke awaited more of Jazana Carr’s mercenaries to bolster his own forces from Rolga. Perhaps the siege would start at dawn.

  Or perhaps they were waiting for one more traitor to make a move. King Lorn’s mind turned on this as he stared into the hills. There was work to be done tonight and he had very little time. If he was to escape this trap he needed to be sharp. Jazana Carr was clever. The bitch-queen from Hanging Man had held his stones in a vice for months now. One by one she had co-opted his barons, cooing to them with her endless supply of diamonds. Lorn wondered how much Rihards had cost to turn. Not long ago, he and the duke had been close allies. They had even been friends, though Lorn had always used that term carefully. As he continued to stare out into the hills, counting up the torches of Rihards’ massed army, he was sorry the duke had betrayed him. Yet in an odd way he was also glad. It had opened his eyes to treachery. He turned away from the hills just for a moment and looked down at his soldiers. Twenty feet below, the main gate of Carlion stood in rock-solid defiance to the army in the hills, fortified with stout beams and armed with fighting men carrying bows and lances. Among these men stood Jarrin, his Captain-at-Arms and garrison commander. Jarrin was pensive as he milled about his troops in his distinctive armour, his head topped by a falcon-faced helmet with a crest of dangling feathers. A few of the men wore their helmets back, Lorn noticed. Not so with Jarrin.

  Afraid to show your face?

  Lorn’s gaze lingered on his captain. It was he who had brought Jazana Carr’s letter to the castle, he who Duke Rihards had summoned forth. And it was he who had agreed to the dangerous mission, almost without pause. Jarrin had always been a brave man. For a moment Lorn felt puzzled.

  He looked away from the captain, up over the castle toward the city beyond. His capital was bleak, blacked out by fear of the coming invasion. There were no peasants or drunks in the streets, no watchful citizens waiting to defend their city. They were all barricaded into their shabby homes, totally unwilling to bolster their king. Once, a very long time ago, the city had been a jewel. Now it had been bled dry, a necessary evil of civil war. Lorn grunted as he looked at his city, deciding its fate wasn’t his fault.

  ‘My lord is troubled,’ came a voice. Lorn turned to see his manservant, Uralak, crossing the wall-walk toward him. Uralak wore a doublet and chain mail shirt, both too large for his slight frame. He was an older, slender man not much Lorn’s senior. Years of hard work had roughened his hands and face. Like all those who had remained in Carlion, Uralak had prepared himself for battle, though Lorn doubted he would last more than a few moments in combat. He was a good man, one of the few whose loy
alty Lorn never doubted. ‘You should go inside, my lord,’ said Uralak, keeping his voice low. ‘It does none of us good to see you brooding here.’

  King Lorn kept his eyes on the capital, the city he was sworn to protect. Such was the weight of his kingship. It was a promise he had kept for almost two decades. Mostly.

  ‘They have never loved me,’ he said with a deep breath. He took note again of the city’s darkness. ‘Look, they do not even come to offer arms or comfort. Not one kind word has come from them.’

  ‘They are afraid, my lord,’ said Uralak. He did not argue Lorn’s point of being unloved. The manservant clenched his collar around his neck and turned to look out over the hills. ‘You were right, my lord. Duke Rihards is a patient man.’ His old eyes narrowed on the numerous pinpoints of torchlight. ‘And persuasive. His men follow him willingly in this treason.’

  ‘Rihards has a potent tongue,’ Lorn agreed. His old ally the duke had come from Rolga with a robust army, spurred by Jazana Carr’s promise of wealth. The Diamond Queen, as she called herself, had thusly persuaded many of Norvor’s fractured barons to join her. She had done what Lorn himself had never been able to do, bringing a kind of tyrannical peace to northern Norvor. She seemed to have all the wealth of the world at her pretty fingertips.

  ‘I should have killed him the last time he was here,’ lamented Lorn, recalling Rihards’ last visit to Carlion. It was hardly a month ago, when the two had planned their defence against Jazana Carr’s coming mercenaries. ‘Do you think he knew then, Uralak? Was he laughing at me while we drank our wine?’

  ‘Who can say, my lord.’ The old man’s face tightened. ‘We are strong. We will resist them.’

  Lorn leaned out over the wall-walk, wrapping his hands over the castle’s pitted stone. He ached to speak the truth to Uralak – to anyone, really – but knew he could not. For a moment he wished Rinka was with him, and that he could lie just one more time in her loving arms. But his third wife was dead and as cold as the mountains, leaving him an infant daughter to protect. Rinka had died with screams in her throat. On nights like this, it seemed to Lorn that he could still hear her cries echoing through Carlion’s battered halls, bloody and exhausted as she pushed their daughter from her womb.

  ‘And now that bitch wants to take my daughter away from me,’ spat Lorn. It was Jazana Carr’s final insult to him, delivered by a man he had once trusted. In her letter she had described her wretched plan, to kill every man in Carlion but to raise Lorn’s daughter as her own. And what was he to do? Kill his own child? He had considered it. There were many who thought Poppy should die simply because she was useless. And it might have been worth killing Poppy to keep her from falling into the bitch-queen’s care, but Lorn had a better idea.

  ‘We will protect Poppy, my lord,’ Uralak assured him. Unlike many of Carlion’s servants, Uralak loved the child. ‘We won’t let her be taken.’

  The King of Norvor, troubled and weary from what seemed like a lifetime of fighting, looked at the man who had been his servant for years. ‘That won’t be enough, Uralak.’ He studied him, astounded by his ignorance. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Duke Rihards has ruined us. When they come, they will kill us.’

  Uralak stiffened. ‘No, I don’t know that.’ He set his jaw a little higher. ‘And the men don’t know that either, my lord. They are with you.’

  King Lorn the Wicked needed to say no more. There had never been any question of Uralak’s fealty. There was no treachery in him.

  Soldiers, however, were a different matter. Lorn’s gaze flittered down once again toward Jarrin, who was walking aimlessly through the men of his garrison, giving orders that didn’t need giving.

  ‘Uralak, keep an eye on things for me here,’ said Lorn. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to my chambers. In an hour send Jarrin up to see me.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Lorn picked his way along the wall-walk, climbed down a ladder leading to the courtyard, and gave the main gate of his castle fortress a cursory inspection. The garrison soldiers stayed silent, looking at their king with gaunt expressions. They had suffered for him and he knew it. If he hadn’t been so afraid of treachery, he might have appreciated it. Instead he crossed the courtyard without a word, making his way to the tower where his chambers were, where his infant daughter was asleep.

  They had made love in a poppy field, running through it like children, then lying down in the red flowers. And when Rinka had realised she was with child and had traced it back to that romantic day, she had proclaimed that any girl child from their love-making would be named Poppy, so that she could remember the time when she was so happy. War had seemed such a distant thing that day. Though it raged all around them, they were lost in love and in each others’ arms had forgotten the Diamond Queen and her minions and the noose closing around Carlion. Lorn was many years Rinka’s elder and had already gone through two wives before marrying his latest, youngest bride. The first he had put away for being barren, the second he had lost to a lung cough. That one had been a good breeder and had given the king three fine sons, all of whom had ridden off to war, and all of whom were dead. Edvar, his youngest, had served with Duke Rihards. Only a week ago his head had arrived in a basket.

  King Lorn thought of all these things in the quiet of his chamber as he studied his daughter’s tiny, sleeping face. He always kept her very near, a constant reminder of the young wife he had lost. Nine-month-old Poppy slept in a crib away from the window. Lorn himself reclined in a hard wooden chair beside the crib. His troubled mind reviewed his plan, but the sight of his daughter was a constant distraction.

  Of all things, Lorn had never imagined himself taking a woman in a field of flowers. He was well into his fifties now, and thought he had abandoned such notions forever. But Rinka had rekindled something in him. It was amazing how virile she had made him. And because he had so little to give, because he was a pauper king who had spent all his pennies in defence of Carlion, he knew that she did not love him for his wealth or the promise of a richer tomorrow. Rinka was a smart woman, wise enough to know Jazana Carr could not be stopped. It was Rinka who had prophesied a year or less till their demise. Had she lived, she would have predicted Rihards’ treachery, Lorn was sure. She was clairvoyant that way, and he missed her. She was the only woman he had ever really valued. And that was why – perhaps the only reason – he would do anything to save their daughter. Despite Poppy’s defects, she was the only thing to remind Lorn of Rinka.

  ‘Jazana Carr thinks us fools, child,’ he whispered. ‘She wants to raise you as her own, an insult to my eternal memory. Would you want that? To be covered in diamonds and to be a whore like her?’

  The infant did not respond. Lorn knew now that she was deaf. Quite probably she was blind, too, though she could make out shadows at times. So many in Carlion thought Lorn unreasonable for rearing such a child, who would no doubt grow up useless, a burden. Lorn himself had never understood those weeping mothers who cried endlessly when their husbands threw infants like Poppy into the river. Yet now, with his own child sleeping so soundlessly, looking so perfect in her sleep, his heart broke.

  On a table nearby stood a decanter of wine and two crystal goblets, among the best glassware the castle still could offer. Most things of value had been sold off long ago. Both goblets were empty, awaiting Jarrin’s arrival. Next to the wine decanter was Jazana Carr’s letter, written in her own offending hand. Lorn’s gaze moved from his daughter to the ugly note.

  She scorns me.

  It was not enough that she should announce herself the saviour of Norvan womanhood, or that she sought his kingdom and castle.

  She would take everything from me. So like a woman.

  Lorn was about to tell this to his sleeping daughter when a knock came to his chamber door. In the near-perfect silence the sound startled him. He sat up, his strongly featured face creasing.

  ‘Enter.’

  Jarrin, his Captain-at-Arms and commander of the dwindling garrison at Carlion
, pushed open the door and waited on the threshold. He was an impressive man in his armour, wide and forbidding. He held his helmet in the crook of his arm, the first time he had removed it in many hours. His divested head shone in the torchlight of the hall, cleanly shaven to a bald shine.

  ‘My liege,’ he said, bowing. ‘Uralak told me you wish to see me.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Lorn, though it wasn’t quite correct. He detested Jarrin now, and would have preferred the company of just about anyone else. ‘Come in. I want to speak to you.’

  Suspicion flashed through Jarrin’s eyes. He covered it by feigning exhaustion, sighing and saying, ‘Forgive me, my liege. I am very tired.’ As he noted the wine decanter he added, ‘I may not be proper company tonight.’

  ‘Come in and be quiet,’ said Lorn, gesturing toward his daughter. ‘She’s asleep.’

  Jarrin did as his king requested, entering the room as quietly as his bulky armour would allow and coming to stand before the sitting Lorn. The king pointed to the opposite chair.

  ‘Sit.’

  The captain did so, looking uncomfortable. Lorn ignored this as he poured oxblood wine into the twin goblets.