Heresy

Chapter 1

1

Fingers of weak morning sunlight crept through the streets and across the rooftops of Karpella as across the city its inhabitants stirred from their nervous, restless night. As the sunlight grew in strength, thousands of people held their breath, hoping beyond hope that the threat to the city and to their lives had slipped away in the night. It did not take long for the Sharisian army, which lurked within the rapidly shortening shadows beyond the city’s wall, to make their presence felt once again on the inhabitants of Karpella.

Just as it had been every day for the last two weeks, the morning barrage of the walls was preceded by an ominous swish and snap of catapult arms flicking their deadly cargo into the air, shortly followed by the resounding crash as the missiles slammed into the walls. Occasionally one of these shots would go awry, pinging off the top of the walls or flying over them all together to wreak havoc amongst the buildings of the mainland portion of the city beyond. The strength of Karpella’s defences was beginning to wane, and more and more of the shots were beginning to leave tangible signs of damage. Though the catapult stones dissolved into a cloud of dust and flying rock chips on impact, they left the stonework scarred and cracked, with the ground beneath littered with chunks of masonry that had been nibbled from the walls. Even from behind the lines of the Sharisian siege camp, the weakened state of several parts of the curtain wall could be plainly seen. The Sharisians knew that it was only a matter of time before the defences of Karpella began to give way.

This morning, however, the men and women of Karpella’s City Guard had another threat in store for them. As they hunkered down behind the parapets and within the towers, desperately seeking shelter from the storm of razor-sharp stone that engulfed the defences, they were blind to the signs of movement that erupted from all along the siege lines, the pounding of rock against rock deafening them to the barked orders of Sharisian officers as they rallied their troops. It was purely a matter of luck that the City Guard were not taken completely by surprise.

As the Sharisians swarmed across the open ground between the siege camp and the city walls, one of their catapult crews set the trajectory of their piece a notch too high as they aimed for a weak spot they could see opening up on the wall in front of them. The thwack of the catapult arm reverberated through the wooden structure as they let fly, sending the shot hurtling towards Karpella, but instead of impacting on the weak spot, the shot smashed through the battlements and continued to sail onwards into the city, where it crashed through the roof of a nearby house.

Seconds before on the parapet, Osvald Thegnson, a rank-and-file Guardsman, had been sharing a measly breakfast with one of his comrades, Felthan. He had just torn a chunk of bread in two and was about to pass one half across to Felthan, when his friend vanished in a shower of stone and blood. Desperately clawing the dust and gore from his eyes, Osvald looked at the place where Felthan had been, now a mangled, blood-spattered hole that had been punched through the crenellations, and he crawled forward, hardly believing what had happened.

All that was left of Felthan was a ragged loop of leather cord with a battered brass charm, a bundle of ears of corn bound together, the symbol of the Goddess Freyd. It was supposed to have kept Felthan safe, but the Goddess of hearth and home held little power in this living nightmare… Osvald scooped up the charm and froze as he became aware of the sea of death that was surging across the ground below. Thousands of Sharisian troops were sprinting towards the walls, bearing ladders and grappling hooks, clearly with only one aim in mind. Osvald ran, shouting as loud as he could to alert the rest of the guards manning the walls, and soon horns sounded the warning up and down Karpella’s curtain wall.

There was a crash as the Sharisian artillery loosed one last shot at the walls before the ceasefire was called, but as the echoes of the impact of those last shots died away, the sound of the Sharisian battle cries swelled to the fore, followed shortly by the clattering of ladders being thrown up against the defences. Thanks to Osvald’s warning, the Karpella City Guard had been given few crucial moments to prepare, and as the first troops began to climb the ladders, the conical helmeted heads of the City Guard began to pop up all along the walls accompanied by the shower of spears, rocks, arrows and crossbow bolts. Screams of pain competed with the shouts of defiance from soldiers on both sides, and both the stones of the parapet and the ground around the ladders became slick with blood. For the Sharisian troops trying to scale the wall and for the City Guard desperately trying to defend them, it was impossible to know who had the upper hand. For hours, they remained locked in the bitter struggle for survival.

Eventually, as the sun crept up towards midday over the city, trumpets began to sound the recall from within the siege lines. The Sharisians retreated back across the killing fields, dragging their wounded along with them, leaving their dead piled up around the walls. Across the defences, shouts began to ring out from the City Guards, though they were not shouts of victory but shouts of relief. They knew that the Sharisians would be back, that their holding out today may just be delaying the inevitable until tomorrow. From his position in one of the towers, Osvald Thegnson watched the retreat joylessly. His keen eyes could already see the renewed movement of the crews around the catapults, and he knew that within a couple of minutes, the bombardment would begin again. He propped his crossbow against the tower parapet and looked across to where he had lost Felthan. There were several bodies strewn around the hole in the crenellations, obscuring the smear of blood that was all that remained of his friend.

He closed his eyes to try and stop the tears from welling up, and for a moment, his legs felt weak and he shuddered. However, he quickly realised that it wasn’t him that was shuddering, but the whole wall. His eyes snapped open, and he clutched at the wall as a violent shock wave rocked the surrounding landscape. All around him, the City Guard were trying to keep their balance. Before his eyes, Osvald watched as the weakened section of wall, where he had first been stationed that morning, crumbled away to leave a gaping hole, strewn with rubble in the city wall. The shockwave passed as quickly as it had arrived, and for a second, all eyes on both sides of the wall were fixed on the breach that had appeared there. Then, the shout went up from the siege lines, and Sharisian troops surged back towards the city. Osvald snatched up his crossbow once more and loaded as fast as he could, his morning was far from over.

It was not just the defenders on the walls or their attackers who had felt the shockwave. All across the city people were picking themselves up from floors and flagstones, having been thrown off balance. As knowledge of the breach in the wall began to percolate through the streets, it was accompanied by speculation that the Sharisians must have undermined the walls, and it was the collapse of the mine workings that had caused the shockwave and made part of the defences collapse. At least one person, however, knew that this could not be true.

Admittedly, undermining of the walls had been the first explanation that had popped into Eleusia’s head as she had felt the shockwave from her hiding place within a disused tower room in Karpella castle. She scrambled to her feet after having been unceremoniously knocked to the floor by the tremor and tried to beat the thick dust off her clothes that had settled on every surface in the room. The clouds of dust that rose up from her made Eleusia cough and splutter. She rushed to the broken window at the other side of the room to gulp down mouthfuls of fresh air.

As the coughing subsided, she took in the view of the city her vantage point gave her. The window she looked from faced out from the castle towards the rest of the city of Karpella, where she could see the ant-like throngs of people still crowding around the base of the edifice, hoping to find shelter within the castle’s walls. Beyond, her gaze was caught by a plume of dust that drifted into the air from the curtain wall. Squinting, she thought she could make out a jagged hole in the defences emerging from within the dust cloud. As she tracked her vision back from the distant walls, however, she also spotted cracks that had appeared in the surfaces of the roads she could see, which appeared to emanate from the area of the castle, rather than focusing and spreading out from the breach in the defences.

Eleusia twisted her hair nervously around one of her fingers as she pondered what was before her. Though at first glance it appeared that the wall had been undermined, the cracks in the roads, and the fact that the shockwave had been felt so strongly within the castle itself, made Eleusia suspect that the real cause might well have something to do with the opening of the vault, deep below the castle. Regardless, the situation was not looking the most promising; the last thing she and her companions below ground needed right now were hordes of Sharisian troops running amuck within the city. She needed to warn them, and they needed to get moving fast.

Shaking her green cloak out one last time to rid herself of the last of the dust, Eleusia picked up her crossbow and stalked over to the door. Opening it a crack, she peeked out into the corridor and, confident the coast was clear, stepped out and pulled the door to behind her. As she was still wearing the armour and uniform of the Imperial Guard beneath her cloak, she walked quickly and openly through the corridors and down staircases, confident that in such a time of crisis, a soldier of the Imperial Guard moving swiftly and purposefully through the castle would raise few suspicions.

Moving through a large atrium on one of the upper floors, she nodded a greeting to a group of Imperial Guards who had liberated a large collection of chairs and tables from the neighbouring rooms to rest. They all looked exhausted, and many of them had soot-blackened faces and wore charred clothing. Eleusia had to conceal the smirk that spread across her face as she strode past them. She knew exactly why the guards looked so dishevelled because she was the one who had set the blaze going in one of the castle storerooms. She had heard the chaos from her hiding place in the tower, where she had decided to lie low until the heat had died down, and she hoped that it had provided enough of a distraction for Torben, Gwilym, Antauros and Hrex to reach the feasting hall and the treasure vault far beneath.

Turning down another labyrinthine passageway, Eleusia’s swift progress was halted by the fact that the way forward was almost completely blocked by chests, boxes and piles of books that had been unceremoniously dumped in the corridor. A large set of double doors at the epicentre of the massed detritus were wide open and led to a room beyond from which panicked, absent-minded muttering could be heard. Slowing her pace, she wove her way through what looked like the entire contents of the nearby room. Though it delayed her progress, Eleusia knew that this was the fastest way to reach her destination and that picking her way through the scattered junk would still be faster than retracing her steps and trying to find an alternative route. As she got closer and closer to the doorway, she began to hear snippets of the conversation that the room’s occupant appeared to be having with themselves….

‘They’ll never take all of this. Make sure to pack only the most important things,’ he said, ‘but everything is important! Now… medicinal herbs, very important, but largely useless without Phintel’s Guide to Vegetal Potions and Poultices. Where did I put that? I saw it just a moment ago. Mímir save me, but this is hopeless… And where are those damn porters? They should have been here over an hour ago.’

The voice was high pitched, though definitely masculine. As Eleusia drew level with the open doors, she saw that it belonged to a gnome, wearing a once elaborate, though now rather threadbare, set of blue ceremonial robes. A curtain of blond hair surrounded a prominent bald patch at the crown of his head and dangled down over his ears and onto his shoulders. The room he was standing in was a chaotic mess of discarded books, broken glass and overturned tables. Innumerable half-packed bags and crates were strewn around the floor, and they merged into the items that had been dumped in the hallway.

He turned abruptly towards her, worrying one of his thick blond sideburns with one hand and adjusting the small pair of spectacles that were perched on top of his long, angular nose with the other. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw Eleusia, who had been standing stock-still in the doorway, barely breathing, hoping that the gnome wouldn’t notice her. He took a step forwards and peered up at her, his brown eyes magnified by the lenses of his spectacles.

‘Ah, you must be here to help porter this down to the ships?’

‘Errm, no, I’m not.’ Eleusia straightened up and tried to inject a sense of authority into her voice.

‘Oh, well, what are you doing then?’

‘I’m…’ Eleusia’s answer had barely formed on her lips before the gnome’s high voice cut across her.

‘Well, it can’t be anything too important; otherwise, you’d remember it.’ He continued before she was able to speak again. ‘Regardless of what you’re up to, I need you to round up a group of porters and bring them here post haste! All of these items belong to the Imperial Mage to the Court, and it is imperative that they survive and are available for the resistance effort should the capital fall. As a member of the Imperial Guard, I expect you to take this order as if it had come from the mouth of Hastel himself.’

Eleusia nodded curtly and wordlessly to the gnome and then turned on her heel and continued on her way down the corridor. The tone of the gnome’s voice had left her thinking that he was neither used to throwing his weight around, nor to giving orders, so she judged that the best course of action was to simply appear as if she was carrying out his orders immediately, hoping that his naivety in the workings of the Imperial command structure would mean that she would be able to get away without him complicating matters further. As she finally made her way out of the barricade of detritus from the room, she could hear the gnome muttering to himself again.

Now that she was back on track, it did not take Eleusia long to make her way down to the ground floor of the castle and the large, elaborate hallways that led to the numerous state rooms and her destination, the Great Hall. As she approached the enormous, highly polished double doors, the main entrance to the Hall, she slowed her pace as she saw two figures in military garb, one wearing the uniform of the City Guard and the other the much more elaborate uniform of the Imperial Guard, moving swiftly towards her along the corridor. The Imperial Guardsman was clearly an officer, as they were grilling the weary-looking soldier walking alongside them, whose armour was scratched and stained with blood and dust, who looked as if she had come straight from the defences. She was clutching a battered leather messenger tube in one hand, which Eleusia guessed must contain a report from the frontline.

‘And you’re absolutely sure that the fighting is beginning to spread beyond the walls?’

‘Yes, sir’, the guardswoman spoke through gritted teeth; clearly this was not the first time that she had been grilled about the contents of her dispatch. ‘The wall has been breached in the western section, and the Sharisian infantry offensive has concentrated on the breach and has pushed back our forces almost to Medallion Square.’

‘And why can’t your commander bring in reinforcements from the eastern section of the wall?’

‘Because, sir, not only have the Sharisian’s begun focusing their bombardment on the eastern wall, they have also left an obvious contingent of infantry opposite the focal point of the barrage, so even if we could move the troops pinned down on the walls, that section of the wall would be almost immediately assaulted. Hence why Colonel Grimwold sent me up here, sir, to request reinforcements from the Imperial Guard.’

The conversation continued as the pair went past, the still unconvinced Imperial officer wafting a dismissive hand towards his forehead in response to Eleusia’s salute. As they disappeared around a corner, she slipped through the double doors into the Great Hall.

Though it was the first time that she had been in the gorgeously decorated edifice, her mind was focused on the task at hand, and she moved towards the back wall quickly and quietly, keeping within the shadows of the covered colonnade that surrounded three of the four walls. As she approached the high table, behind which was the ornately carved imperial throne, she slowed even more and began scouring the floor and the mosaic that covered the back wall, looking for the entrance to the vault below. When they had been planning their infiltration of the castle, Hrex had been incredibly coy about where the entrance to the vault was, and it had only been through a very careful studying of the few words that she had said on the topic that Eleusia had narrowed down its location to the back of the Hall.

She began to run her hands along the mosaic itself, starting at one end and working her way along, feeling the sharp edges of the minute tiles tug at her fingertips as she tried to pick up any irregularities in the pieces, anything that might give away the entrance. She shut her eyes, trying to focus her whole attention on the sensations running through her hands until her eyes snapped open as she felt an ever so slightly larger gap in between a line of mosaic tiles. There was a thicker line of bare wall, hardly noticeable unless one was as close as Eleusia was to it, that divided the rest of the mosaic from a panel depicting a kindly looking queen, her arms outstretched in welcome. Following the line, Eleusia could see that it framed and centred the figure, and she began to study the mosaic queen, looking for the mechanism to open the portal. She pressed down hard on first one, then the other of the queen’s sapphire eyes to no avail, and it was only as she stepped back to get a better view that her eyes were drawn to the large ruby set in the centre of her belt. Carefully, she pressed a long finger onto the gem and held her breath as it slowly began to sink into the mosaic and stonework behind. As it disappeared, the whole mosaic panel began to move, groaning as a set of double doors opened there, splitting the queen in two. Without stopping to find a light source, she plunged down into the darkness that rose to swallow her as the doors to the vault shuddered to a close behind.