The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 80

THE WAR FOR CATEN RAGES around us beneath an enveloping night sky, stars shrouded by smoke and drifting grit. The dust-choked streets are lit now only either by torches carried by mobs, or the sporadic fires illuminating the devastation of the Will shells that lit them. Everything is cast in shadows and silhouette against deep, angry reds. Screams and clashing shouts echo. Sometimes distant. Sometimes so close and unexpected that we are forced to take cover.

Eidhin and I stagger on, and fight, and stagger on some more. I keep my metal mask on and arm half formed, barely enough pieces to complete the illusion and still be able to walk. We hide from the larger companies of both sides, but step in wherever we find Octavii and Septimii being hunted by individual legionnaires. Show ourselves to anyone who isn’t a threat, too. Each time I pretend I don’t feel the grinding ache of what I’m doing to my body, or the cold rage that drives me, or any of the grief that I keep buried firmly beneath it all, and stand tall, and tell all who will listen to spread the word that Carnifex is fighting for them.

Some curse me fearfully for what I have brought upon the city. Far fewer than I expect, though.

In between, we rest, and I send my imbued shards high into the air as a signal to Ka, and as we apprehensively wait I explain the missing pieces of my life to my friend. I don’t know how long it’s been since we started. Hours? Diago, at least, is being treated back at Domus Telimus, a brief stop and a dismayed Kadmos behind us. And I sent multiple messages warning Tertius Ericius of my bad information, though I have no idea whether any of them reached him before the first Will shells started to fall in the Forum.

“What happens if this other man—Ostius—finds us first?” Eidhin pants at one point as we stumble to a seat in a darkened alley, snatching a few precious moments of rest after another skirmish. He’s doing the bulk of the fighting. My metal blades are effective at range, but my lack of true mobility means I have to hang back and simply assist him most of the time.

“He won’t.” I tear another strip of cloth and bind the new wound on his leg. Shallow, but bleeding too much to ignore. “I destroyed the amulet he was using to track me.”

“The one he gave you for protection?”

“That’s the one.”

Eidhin takes a breath to say something, then looks at me, then just lets it out again. “I suppose it would be inconvenient if he tried to kill Ka while you were trying to negotiate with him,” he concedes with an exasperated mutter.

We fight on. At one point we stray too close to the front lines and suddenly there is a shifting in the air, a sweeping away of smoke and then a Transvect is screaming above us, its base lit orange by Caten’s flames. Sextii leap, slamming into the ground around us, eyes dark, breaking cobblestone with their impacts. We fling ourselves for the shadows of the nearest alley, unseen by the detachment who are already sprinting along the rubble-strewn street toward their target.

And then seconds later, an explosion from the sky. The Transvect plummets; there is a thundering, shattering roar not more than a few streets away. Dust is shoved in a wave away from the crash. Glass shatters. Through hands shielding faces, we see a plume of fire unfolding toward the heavens as the rest of the Will shells on board go up.

We stumble away. I’ve lost my sense of where we are, but Eidhin estimates the impact was close to the Forum.

I think of my remaining friends, and hope they are far from here.

Finally, though, it is too much. Even with Kadmos’s tea and my Will and fear and desperation all pulsing through me, my body cannot take anymore. I am becoming sluggish and I can see that Eidhin, stoic though he is, is the same.

“We can rest here. Just for a while.” We’re back in Alta Semita, I think. Hard to know; streets and buildings all look the same once they’re in pieces. “That house doesn’t look like it’s going to fall down.”

Eidhin barely grunts his affirmation, and we limp to the structure. Much of the back half is gone and we clamber over stone rather than use the door, but enough of the façade remains that it should hide us from the view of any passersby. I collapse to the ground, back against the wall. Eidhin crouches in front of me. Somehow, still able to stand.

“You are getting slow. Even with those blades,” he says abruptly. “You should rest.”

I stare at his eyes, red-rimmed from exhaustion, and laugh softly. “Sure.”

He doesn’t smile. “You have two broken legs, Vis. And that ‘brace’ you are using to walk is making you bleed everywhere.” I glance down, surprised to find he’s right; there are trails of blood all the way down my legs, and the base of my torn and dirtied toga is soaked in red. “I know you are a Quintus, and angry, and whatever your Dispensator made you might be dulling the pain, but your body will not last like this. It cannot . So rest, just for a few minutes, and I will keep watch. Rest, or I will make you rest.”

I scowl at him, but now I’ve sat down it feels impossible to get back up again straight away. “Fine. But I’m not going to sleep. I’ll raise the signal again.”

I send my metal shards high into the air, well above the rooftops. Carefully form them into the only meaningful shape I can think to make. An inverted Hierarchy symbol, three lines descending into a single point.

Eidhin peers upward, looking a mixture of impressed and worried. “You’re sure he will be able to see them?”

“They’re imbued. If he’s like me, and anywhere close by, it’ll catch his attention.” Alone, the Will in each shard wouldn’t be enough. Arranged together as they are, though, they pulse in my mind, clear against the smoky night.

A massive arrow in the sky, pointed directly down at us.

“Are they going to fall on top of us if you lose concentration?” Eidhin gazes upward worriedly.

“Maybe. Probably not. Don’t think so,” I reply hazily. My pounding heart is easing. No immediate danger, and as the fear departs it leaves only exhaustion in its wake.

Unwillingly, I close my eyes.

“FOR A MAN NOT SLEEPING, you are not very alert.”

I start and twist awake at the gruff voice in my ear. “Rotting gods.” I sit up, repressing a groan at the action. “I was thinking.”

“Ah. Practicing. This is good.” He pats me on the shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

I consider. “Better.” Not a lie, insomuch as I don’t feel as close to dying as I did when I closed my eyes. I check the pulsing symbol high above us. Still hovering where I left it. “How long?”

“A half hour.”

Too long. Not long enough. I take in Eidhin’s spent visage. “Your turn.”

“I don’t need—”

“ Your turn .” I gesture upward. “It’s a big city. If he’s looking for me, we need to give him time to get close enough to see it. I can manage.”

“Not if you can’t walk and don’t have a weapon,” Eidhin observes.

I sigh, hating the logic, but he’s right. Command the hovering pieces to return, to form the braces around my legs again. The fiction of my arm. My mask. None of it’s comfortable, but once set it will stay in place. Better to do it now than be forced to under pressure.

We sit mutely for a while, and though I can see Eidhin’s eyes droop more than once, he doesn’t drift off the way I did.

“What made you change your mind?” The question comes abruptly, out almost before I realise I’m asking it. I smile weakly. “It sure as all hells wasn’t this plan.”

“That, I promise you, is true.” Eidhin stirs. Massages his shoulder, which took a hit from a Sextus earlier. “No. The measure of a man is not whether he does the wrong thing. It is whether he accepts that he has. When you told me the truth—showed me that mask…” He sighs heavily. “I was angry. I still am. But you were right. About crossing lines because we feel forced to. Perhaps we will save my people from Redivius, perhaps we will not—but if I had pressed on, if I had stayed trapped, it would have eventually been the latter.” He frowns at the ground. Speaks slowly. “But Vis? It was also because you came. You came on two broken legs, and you asked. You would not have forced me to stop, but you were willing to strip yourself bare to save me. You reminded me that we are not friends. You are my brother . My kin. To abandon you to the right and narrow path…”

He trails off. Silence, and then he drags himself to his feet. Walks over slowly and offers his hand to pull me up. “If we are staying here longer, we should try and find a position with a better view.”

I let him haul me to my feet and then wrap him in a fierce embrace before he can resist. Impossible to describe what his words mean to me.

He grunts. Allows it, then pulls away. “It is still an awful plan,” he growls.

I cough a laugh, and we start to pick our way out again across the rubble.

I round the broken wall and immediately shrink back, motioning urgently to stay quiet. Someone is standing in the street. Visible as little more than a silhouette.

Watching the house.

“Carnifex.” The voice rings out into the black.

I glance back at Eidhin, who motions that he’s going to circle around the other way. I nod affirmation, steel myself and emerge at a safe distance. “Who are you?”

“The one for whom you have been calling.” The man speaks in crisp, formal Vetusian, and it takes me a moment to recognise and translate it.

I stare. Not saying anything, thinking furiously. It’s hard to make out features but the silhouette is unsettlingly still.

No doubting who he’s saying he is, though.

I finally hold up my hands, relieved to find they are not visibly shaking. “Then I wish to negotiate.” I say it in Vetusian too, though mine isn’t as smooth or elegant. The notion still ludicrous as it leaves my mouth, but we’re here now. “I believe we may be able to help each other.” I itch to move, to do anything to feel less vulnerable. But I have to trust Eidhin will find a good position to act, should things turn violent.

“An interesting proposition, from the man who has ruined so much.” The shadow shifts. “How do you believe we can do this, Carnifex?”

“You need a replacement for Princeps Exesius, and an end to this war.” I say it as if it is not a guess. I peer at him, then, reluctantly, let my metal mask and arm melt away. “My name is Quintus Vis Telimus Catenicus, and I can give you both. I have the legitimacy and the popularity to bind these pretenders beneath me. But to do that, I need something that will force them to the table, regardless of their legions.” I close my eyes. Gods help me. “Something that will make them fear me enough to temper their ambitions.”

Another long silence. A complete lack of motion from the shadowed figure.

“You decided upon this course only hours ago,” he says eventually.

I frown. “I have been thinking about it all week, but… I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Because my options were limited.”

“Yet you evidently knew I was already looking for you. Intending to kill you, given the chance. Just as, I assume, whoever so clumsily dangled you intended to kill me.”

I swallow. Thrown by the strange and unsettling veer in conversation. “They were really limited options.”

“Undoubtedly.” Still an absence of emotion, but I imagine dry amusement in the response, this time. “Even so. When a man is Synchronous, sometimes things bleed through. Small things. Inexplicable impressions, instincts you may not normally have. A whisper of the memory of knowledge. And I think, perhaps—unless the coincidence is extraordinary—this is why we are speaking now.” Another pause. Face still shadowed. “Do you know my purpose, Catenicus?”

“To cause another Cataclysm.” No point in pretending.

“No. That is means, not purpose.” The dark shape shifts. “More than nine in every ten dead, in this world. It is a horror and heartbreak that cannot be explained in numbers or words. But that sacrifice is to save the one in ten. It is to prevent the obliteration of two worlds, and the enslavement of whichever remains.” A pause. “And as of a few hours ago, you are now the only man alive who can fulfil that purpose.”

He steps forward out of the shadows, and the flickering light of the distant fires reveals a man in his thirties, haggard and unkempt, with shoulder-length black hair. A crooked nose. Dirty and unremarkable. “I will help you. I will give you what you need. This iunctus will guide you—and your friend lurking in the shadows, if he wishes—to where you need to go, while I prepare. All I ask in return is that you truly hear what I have told you. A choice of many lives, or all of them, Catenicus. That will be your burden, now.”

There’s a scream from a few streets over. Echoing and hollow and haunting as it drifts through the hush and then cuts off abruptly. To my right, Eidhin slowly emerges from the darkness.

I feel light-headed. Nauseous. Another deception? I can’t see its purpose. It’s not something I am going to believe without proof, and a lot of it.

But I have not been asked for anything except my attention. Not yet.

And he has that, now.

“I’m listening,” I eventually say quietly.

THE FIRST BRIGHT RAYS OF dawn kiss the uppermost tombs of Agerus as Eidhin and I trudge wearily behind the iunctus, the Necropolis and its thousands upon thousands of graves stretching away across fields divided by the flickering orange of the Eternal Flames. Beautiful, and utterly desolate. No sign of the Military personnel who would normally be here.

It took almost an hour for the iunctus to guide us to the docks through the burning and blood of Caten’s fracturing. Ka seemed to relinquish his control of the dead man before we could ask anything more; since Alta Semita our guide has been completely unresponsive to both conversation and command, calm and mechanical as he steered us unerringly around blockades and patrols and, finally, onto an empty bireme that immediately began gliding into the darkness of Caten’s harbour.

It was hours before our ship angled toward the shore again. Despite my weak protests, Eidhin spent much of the start of the journey checking my wounds and then applying fresh makeshift bandages, padding everything so that the discomfort of my crutches would not be so bad when I did have to walk again. He brushed off my gratitude with a familiar, dismissive grunt before finally tending to himself.

After that, I dozed fitfully, carefully prone, metal bracing rearranged to best ensure the shape of my legs. Too exhausted to fully stay awake. Too angry, and anxious, and heartbroken, and in pain, to sleep for long. I would slumber and then wake with a jolt to the gentle motion of the boat, and remember Aequa, and all of the helpless injustice would come thundering back, and I would lie there and stare at the night sky and let the rage that pounded my heart lend me more of its determination, second by second.

Eidhin, I think, did not even try to sleep. I often stirred to find him nearby at the bow, leaning against the railing and watching as the inky waves of the Sea of Quus broke silver against our passage. In my waking times, we talked occasionally. About what Ka said, whether it could possibly be true. About what might come next. But mostly we gazed in silence. Captives of our own thoughts and worries and grieving furies. The sharing of heavy burdens in each other’s company, even if neither of us said them aloud.

And now as we trail the dead man past graves and mausoleums, I know where we are headed. Only confirmed as we turn down the almost invisible path into the mountain and pass beneath the archway, its writing barely visible in the early dim.

Death is the door to life .

“This is where Emissa took me, when we came to see the prisoner,” I tell Eidhin grimly.

He glances at the iunctus uneasily. “Why would the Concurrence have brought us here?”

“The Concurrence have not brought you here.” We both flinch and curse at the statement of the dead man in front, abrupt in the hollowness of the thin chasm. He turns to us, and I can suddenly see an awareness in his gaze that hasn’t been there since Caten. “They are the enemy. Humanity’s enemy, which I have fought my entire life. Do not conflate us.” Delivered emotionlessly again, but he pauses, staring at each of us as if to ensure we understand, before moving on.

Eidhin and I exchange shaken looks, and follow. It does, I suppose, suggest an answer to the main question we debated on our way here. If the Cataclysms are really to stop something worse, what could be the cause of the latter?

It seems we have our answer.

My mind reels, and I can see Eidhin silently trying to make sense of it too. Was Veridius working with the Concurrence, then? No. Surely no advantage to him in deliberately obfuscating like that—and he even admitted that he had drawn his own conclusions about the ancient enemy described in the ruins, and their role in the Cataclysms.

Still. The revelation unbalances me more than it should, challenging a truth I was somehow certain of. I feel sick. Oddly horrified. As if it were important to me that my original understanding was true.

“Who are the Concurrence, then?” I say it into the hush as the iunctus lights a lantern, and we forge into the darkness of the tunnel.

The iunctus moves steadily ahead of us. “Not a ‘who.’ A ‘what.’ A self-contained latticework of iunctii. The remnants of a rogue system which once controlled the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the world. Across the world, before the Rending.”

I exchange a look with Eidhin, who shakes his head slightly. Equally baffled. “A system?”

“A great, independent machine made up of the dead. Interlinked, each one carefully purposed. More vast and complex and impossible to fight than you can imagine.” We’ve taken a different path to the one Emissa led me along, and a dead end suddenly looms in the form of a massive obsidian slab, divided into three distinct panels. The gilded symbol of the Hierarchy slices down the one in the centre.

The iunctus gestures me forward before I can probe the bizarre statement further. “There is Will imbued in the outer two sections. You need to move it to the centre. But once this door is opened, we have a matter of hours, if that, before your Military arrive to stop us. So we must move fast.”

I nod. Take a deep breath, and do as he instructs.

The polished black surface shudders, and slides into the ground.

Eidhin and I stand there as the iunctus strides through.

“Vek.” I breathe it.

“Vek,” agrees Eidhin softly.

We’re on the lowest level of a space hundreds of feet deep and at least as high, painted in eerie green light. Ahead and behind, the floor slopes upward into multiple levels, accessible via carved stairs. To our left and right, the space stretches away in both directions as far as I can see. An enormous, semi-cylindrical tunnel.

Filling it—not just along the pathways of our level but on the tiered ones above—are bodies.

I stare. Frozen. Even the numbed, ongoing agony of my legs temporarily forgotten. The entire mountain, the entire Agerus mountain range , must be hollowed out to accommodate this massive crypt. At first I think it’s a much larger version of the ruins near the Academy; certainly it feels the same, with its jade light and corpses splayed upright against white stone slabs. None of them have blades pinning them through the heart, though. They’re not naked, instead clothed in identical, simple black shifts.

And—as I peer at one of the closest ones—they stare glassily ahead. Dead, certainly, but the eyes of these corpses have not been removed.

It’s a small comfort, confronted with the scale of the thing. There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They stretch on forever.

“What is this place?” I whisper it, almost to myself.

“This is the Necropolis.” The iunctus beckons us to follow him, and we start along the path to our left beneath the crushing weight of a thousand blank stares. From the set of his shoulders, Eidhin is as startled and troubled as I feel, though at least there is no sign of movement, no flicker of unnatural life in any of the men or women—or children, in some cases—who we pass. “It was entirely empty when your era discovered it—more than a century ago now, I believe. It is a remnant of another time. One of our earliest attempts to build something to rival the Concurrence. Of course, your Military never figured that out; they merely use it to preserve access to knowledge. Particularly that of their foes.”

I gaze around in dazed horror. “How many?”

“Near eighty thousand.” No inflection to the statement. No judgement. “This chamber holds the most recent, but there are dozens more like it. Your people have filled this place with the slain of a century of conquests. Everyone from great leaders, to the lowest servants who may once have overheard something important. Anyone and everyone who may have something valuable still locked away somewhere in their minds.”

I can barely comprehend it as our path angles upward slightly, toward a raised platform in the centre of the enormous tunnel. A twenty-foot-wide obsidian triangle, elevated above the rows of corpses on either side. “You want me to wake some of them.” It’s the only logical conclusion.

The iunctus starts climbing. “I want you to wake all of them, Catenicus.”

His statement hangs as we ascend. I open my mouth. Shut it again and glance across at Eidhin, whose furrowed brow says he is as lost as I am as to how to respond.

“How?” I ask eventually as we reach the platform. Its surface is not one piece, as I assumed from below, but four—three triangular-cut stones for each point, and a single, upside-down one in the centre. A corpse lies within each of the outer triangles. They would look almost restful in their repose if not for the thin, two-foot-high spikes of obsidian that protrude up through their chests.

“You need only imbue these three men—they do not need more than the Will of a couple of people each. The machinery of this place will do the rest.” He sees my dissatisfaction at the explanation. “A iunctus can cede far more than it takes to wake them, which means one of the primary strengths of Synchronic Will is the ability to perform what is called a Cascade. These first three iunctii will cede to you, then utilise the remainder of their Will to wake more. Who will cede to them, and then wake more. And so on, and so on. Due to the scale at play, they have been instructed to maximise efficiency and begin creating external pyramids, once the seven levels below you have been filled. But by the end, you will have the strength of a Princeps, and an army who can be compelled to follow your commands.”

I stand there. Head spinning, heart thumping as I try to grasp what he’s telling me. This is madness. “Eighty thousand.” Still not enough to compete with a legion—it takes four times that number to create five thousand Sextii—but… gods.

“Eighty thousand who need neither food nor sleep. And who can make more of their number, if you are forced to fight.”

I pale as I take in his meaning. Feel a slow, creeping horror as I imagine the power of an army that could do what he’s suggesting. The dead of every foe adding to their number. Growing, and growing. Each battle making them stronger, and larger, and more impossible to defeat.

In a strange way, not unlike how the Hierarchy conquered the world.

“Do not do this, Vis.” There’s true dismay in Eidhin’s voice as he gazes around at the three bodies pinned to the platform. “This is… sick. Wrong . No different to what we spoke of after you were here with Emissa. For a man to die, and then his body—his mind —to be used like this. To be so trapped without even death as an end…” He turns to me, places a large hand on my shoulder. Serious blue eyes locked to mine. “Do. Not. Do. This.”

I say nothing for a long few moments. “And your kin in Redivius’s camp?”

“We will find another way.”

I nod slowly. Something oddly comforting in the strength of his hopeless conviction.

“Catenicus. I accept this may seem abhorrent, but understand—that is a sacrifice that men like you and I must inevitably make. Instead of the easy gift of our lives, we must suffer the hundred little deaths of self in order to protect this world. Not because what we do is good, but because good will no longer exist if we do not.” The iunctus steps forward. “You were right, in Caten. I need you to stop this war. And beyond that, I need what you can do, because you are now the only one who can do it. So think well. Make your decision and make it without regret, but know that if you wish to truly make a difference, you have others to come which will be much harder and mean much more.”

His voice echoes away down the green-lit tunnel, until finally we three stare at each other in silence.

I hesitate, then close my eyes. Sway from exhaustion, from the throb of my legs and the abrading pain of their braces. Kadmos’s tea has almost worn off.

The strength of the few is all that matters.

My father once told me that men become their choices, not their intentions. I wonder what he would say to me now.

Before I can change my mind I take two steps, and crouch by the first corpse, and place my hand on his forehead, and imbue him.

The thin obsidian spike jutting through his chest retracts, sliding slowly downward and vanishing into the man’s body. He sits up and his hand finds mine before I can move. Nothing spoken, but I immediately feel the small portion of Will flow into me. He releases his grasp again. Every motion stiff, deliberate. No interest or recognition in his eyes.

I shudder and don’t pause to watch what happens next. Step across and place my hand on the second cold body. Imbue. All my training makes it so easy, now.

“Vis?” Eidhin’s voice. Distant beneath my pounding heart.

“He has made his choice,” comes the iunctus’s soft reply.

As soon as the second iunctus has ceded to me, I’m moving across to the third impaled form. There’s motion in the corner of my vision. The first one is on his feet, descending from the platform with calm, mechanical intent.

I imbue the third man. Watch the black, glimmering sliver of stone retract. Allow him to give up half his Will to me.

Then take a weary seat as he stands and heads purposefully after the other two.

Minutes pass as I just watch in horrified, vaguely sick silence. First there is only the movement of the three iunctii. Then six. Then a dozen. On and on, a widening ripple of waking corpses. The Will being ceded to me builds in ever growing increments. My weariness begins to wash away, even if my misgivings do not.

“They will continue until each node is filled to its most efficient level,” says the iunctus behind me. “Once their pyramids are set, they will be unable to attack one another, or you, or leave—but will otherwise regain control of themselves. Their memories. Any further restrictions will be up to you.”

I can see more empty white slabs than occupied, now. Swathes of iunctii begin vanishing farther down the tunnel in both directions.

After a while, Eidhin finally joins me. His eyes are sad as we watch together.

“Fear is a lack of control, Eidhin,” I tell him eventually. “And I am tired of being afraid. I want to be able to see justice in the world again.”

He looks across at me sorrowfully. Nods.

“I am still with you,” he promises quietly.

I don’t know how long it has been before the first voices start to ring out. Questions echoing. Anxious, more than angry. I see iunctii slowing, shaking their heads and looking around in confusion, as if waking from a dream. Soon the tunnel is filled not with the slow shuffling of feet, but the mutter of bemused conversation.

I stand again. Gaze out over the throng. Some are starting to gather around the base of our platform, though none are climbing the stairs. But we’re the natural centre of attention up here. I am going to have to explain what is happening, soon enough. What I have woken them all to do.

“Diago?”

My heart stops at the female voice cutting through the low hubbub, from off to my left below. I turn slowly. Disbelievingly. Scan the milling crowd.

I spot them. Rows back but pushing their way forward and through. Dark, curly hair and sun-kissed skin. The younger’s long hair tousled, wild in a way it never is. The older’s is the same, just the way I remember it.

Their deep brown eyes, mirrors of each other’s and my own, on me. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. I cannot speak.

And then I am scrambling down the stairs as fast as my broken legs will take me toward my mother and sister.

The confused crowd parts like water before my rushing and suddenly I’m there. Standing in front of them. It’s them .

There are tears on both their smiling cheeks.

I don’t ask about Father, or Cari, or how. I am holding them. Sobbing with them. Laughing with them. No explanations, no words at all except our names, repeated over and over again in incredulous joy. I forget about what I have just done, or what is surely to come. I forget about my legs. My pain. About the war. The last five years have dropped away and I am wrapped in the safety and unconditional love of their embrace, and it is enough.

It is enough.

When my tears clear enough to focus again, I see Eidhin has descended after me. He’s staring. At first I think it’s at Ysa, but then I realise his gaze is fixed behind, over my shoulder.

For the first time since the Iudicium, I see him smile.

And before I can turn, before I can process it, the familiar voice emerges from the murmurs behind. Wry, and quiet, and utterly perplexed.

“Hail, Vis.”