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Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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One

the tyrant of lochos

799.M30
Lochos, Olympia

The last of the rain cleared away. Fresh moisture was drunk eagerly by the thirsty earth, turning it dark. In the morning the ground would return to its sandy hue, but until then, the sharp scent of rain on arid ground hung about the mountains.

Through the cool last watch of the night, along a drying path of hard-packed earth, the boy Perturabo was taken to Lochos.

Four men in white-and-gold armour escorted him, two before and two behind. If the boy had lacked anything but the greatest confidence, he would have seen himself as their prisoner. That was the warriors’ purpose, to be his guards, but they doubted it themselves now that they had found him. When Perturabo spoke, they listened keenly, as if his words compelled them to hearken. All of them saw the sham of guard and guarded for what it was.

The boy was called Perturabo at his own insistence. The leader of the men was named Miltiades. His coloured helm crest proclaimed him Sub-Optio in the 97th Grand Company of Lochos, a man of authority among his people. The other men did not offer their names, and so the boy did not know them. Boy, man – these terms were purely subjective. Perturabo looked like a boy, and so it was reasonable to assume he was a youth. He was not. There was an unearthly air to him. He moved and spoke like a man used to high office. They kept up the pretence that they were men and he was a boy, and therefore they were in command, but none of them believed that either. Perturabo’s manner suggested that he was better than them, superior in every way, and they accepted it meekly.

Low cloud became mist that writhed down the cliffs into the valleys, uncloaking diamond stars. The star maelstrom glowered with imminent menace at the centre of the sky. Though the men had said they could not see it, Perturabo was aware of its malevolent gaze at all times. Not wishing to feel fear, he ignored it and focused his attentions on the world beneath his bare feet.

The road was rough, studded with rock polished smooth by the feet of generations of animal herders. Thorny plants lining its edges scraped at the boy’s legs. He examined them cursorily as he passed, curious about them even though he already knew their fundamental essences intimately. He breathed deeply, thrilling at the rain smell even as he formulated hypotheses as to where the rain had come from, and why it affected the world the way it did. Everything was new, and everything familiar. Knowledge came into his mind without active recollection. It was simply a part of him. He was a newborn burdened with wisdom beyond his years.

Lochos rose immense and massy on a horizon foreshortened by bladed mountains, yet made distant by the valley between the party and the city’s bronze gates, dull in the dark. Its golden domes hunkered down behind towering walls and bastions, like the helmets of men sheltering from their enemy. Weapon barrels protruded from its many embrasures. It was a place of strength with pretensions to beauty that it could not quite carry off; its warlike nature was too pronounced for that.

The boy and his party crested a steep ridge in silence. The world had the preternatural hush of the dying night. Their feet scuffed the path and their battlegear jingled too loudly in the quiet. A dry, tussocky stretch of sharp montane plants sloped away, the spaces between the scrubby grasses and gorse broken by rocks sharp as teeth. The ground was poor, but boundaries of the same stone, expertly fitted together, divided the upland into fields nonetheless. Man’s habit of jealously separating his possessions from those of his neighbour was strong even here, though the land in question was barely worth definition.

The walls ran right to the point where the ground came to a precipitate finish and the valley plunged deep. The grey light of predawn blurred everything together. Although the valley was still invested by night, the boy had superb vision, and on the far side he saw terraced fields and forests of coniferous trees and towering, thorny succulents.

Out of sight, animals bleated. The road turned to follow one of the dry stone walls. The path brought them to the brink of cliffs where the valley yawned wide and deep. Village lamps gleamed in the depths, their light reflecting from tumbling brooks and the flat waters of stepped reservoirs. The damp, rich aroma of quickening plant life filled the valley brim to brim. The road went over the edge, down steps carved into the side of the rock, carrying Perturabo from the dry air of the high mountain to the forest-moist atmosphere of the valley in a few paces. The guards fell into single file, Miltiades in front of Perturabo, the rest after.

Lochos dominated this fertile slash in the unforgiving land. Perturabo’s memory was a blank, devoid of meaningful content, but he understood what he saw as if he had direct experience of it. He apprehended the geological processes that had created the valley. He appreciated the reason for Lochos’ situation, what it was meant to protect, and why people would wish to protect such a place at all.

Miltiades paused at a short landing in the stone-cut stair. Holding out his hand, he broke his silence. ‘This part is treacherous.’

‘I require no help,’ said Perturabo, staring at the sub-optio’s hand with the same kind of mild curiosity with which he regarded everything.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Miltiades. He turned away, failing to hide his unease at the uncanny youth.

The steps were worn and slippery with algae fed by water seeping out of the rock. Perturabo negotiated the section easily. From there it was a short descent to a wider, paved road. The outer edge was bounded by the precipitous slopes of the valley, and marked by a low, mortared wall. The men took up their positions around the boy, four corners to a square.

‘Is this the road to Lochos?’ the boy asked.

The road curved out of sight around a high bluff topped with wrinkled crags. The ground was dark with water yet to be absorbed, though not wet enough to turn the road surface to mud. Rising temperatures made the place uncomfortably muggy, but the change did not affect the boy at all. Temperature was a variable to be noted, appraised and remembered for later examination, nothing more.

‘This is the road to Irex,’ said Miltiades. ‘It joins the highway to Lochos below us. We must go further down to get there.’

They descended at a brisk march. The light in the sky turned from grey to a pale gold, and the overwhelmed stars withdrew.

Even the star maelstrom faded to a livid bruise. The boy was glad of it. With the coming of the sun, the maelstrom’s power to see him was lessened, and a part of himself relaxed – a part that he had not been aware of before.

Night clung on in the valley, and the deeper they went the darker it became. The air thickened with the shadows, as if the darkness were gathering there for a last stand in defiance of the strengthening day.

Colour seeped into the world. From the villages and farmsteads clinging to the slopes of the valley, the sounds of waking families emanated, carrying far in the rarefied air. The houses were built in precarious places, atop rocks and crags. By observing this, along with the elaborate terracing and soil traps that filled the hills, Perturabo measured the importance the inhabitants attached to every inch of arable ground.

The road fed into the highway. Close-fitted stone made a smooth surface, along which plodded occasional carts drawn by draft beasts. It was still quiet, and the party made good progress down the valley. The road met a white river and went onto a dyke beside it made from rocks carefully fitted into the spaces between flood-dumped boulders. A short while later, the road crossed the river via a broad bridge. On the far side it immediately began to switch back up a steep rise that quickly became a sheer cliff, unmarked by man’s hand save for the laboriously cut loops of the road.

The walls of Lochos grew from the mountaintop. They were fashioned from slabs of sandstone so closely fitted that the walls made a seamless whole, indivisible from the rock they were built upon. But although they grew from the peak and were of the same material, the walls were as different to the mountain as the boy was to the men. In art and majesty, the walls exceeded the mountain. They surrounded the peak, conquering it – the artifice of man surpassed that of nature. The boy and the fortress were the same in that regard.

Miltiades looked back to the boy, pride evident in his voice. ‘The walls of Lochos,’ he said. ‘Unbreachable and unbroken.’

‘Nothing lasts forever,’ said Perturabo.

Miltiades scowled.

The road went back and forth in precise zigzags. A central channel took water and provided a track for the braking poles of waggons. The road steepened, and ridges of precisely shaped setts broke the surface to provide traction. Small bastions guarded every switch near the top.

A semicircular plaza carved directly from the rock fronted the great gatehouse. The gates were thick wood sheeted with bronze and faced with hard spikes of iron. Two giant towers guarded them.

Miltiades stopped in front of the gates and rapped upon a tiny postern set into the rear of the left-hand tower. It had been placed at an angle awkward for rams, and when it opened it revealed a narrow stair guarded by an iron yett. Perturabo saw a weakness there.

‘Back so soon, sub-optio?’ said the guard. He wore a uniform that differed to Miltiades’ garb and spoke to him insolently. His face changed when Miltiades stepped back and held out his arm to indicate Perturabo.

‘Inform the palace,’ said Miltiades. ‘We have the boy.’

So Perturabo first came to Lochos, stealing in through a secret way.

The city was still waking as they marched up its steep, winding streets. Night workers and those whose trade forced early rising went to and fro.

Perturabo had never seen so many people – at least, as far as he knew. He had found himself upon a cliff. He had climbed it. He had met Miltiades and his men. That was the sum total of life experience Perturabo could recall. The city might hold far more.

It did hold far more. There was a pregnant air over its buildings, the sense of thousands of dreamers returning to the waking world. It fascinated him.

The city stepped up the mountain in tiers, with the palace filling the levelled peak, but the walls were truly monumental, rising higher than the lowest three levels and casting them into shadow while the sun warmed the stone outside.

Perturabo and his escort went along the main way, passing tight streets between small-windowed tenements. Every so often market squares opened up, full of traders chatting as they set out their wares. At regular intervals there were giant cisterns crowded by servants bearing water pots on their heads, while near the top levels rose huge temples and other edifices roofed with gleaming bronze.

The palace outshone them all. A huge plaza surrounded its walls, and three domes crowned its towers. The gates were decorated with glorious reliefs in gold and silver. A glance at the windows, and their ratios of construction, the load upon them and the mathematics needed to calculate both and more were Perturabo’s to command. There was so much to see that he had never seen before, but much was familiar. He knew it all: the materials, their properties and the effects the architect had intended to instil.

Perturabo looked upon everything and was at once amazed and jaded. His delight at each new observation faded as the knowledge sprang into his mind, leaving him feeling cheated of the joy of discovery. Even so, the palace impressed him by the way it dominated the city. It looked out over the roofs and the wall to the plunging view beyond. On the far side of the fertile lands, he saw the scrubby upland he had gained at the end of his climb. Beyond that was a wide void, blue with pollen, smoke and dissipating mists. Far away on the other side, more mountains rose. In every direction there were mountains stained orange by the young day, their flanks stepped with ancient quarries, their pinnacles crowned with forts.

Miltiades drew Perturabo’s attention back to the palace.

The great gates of silver and gold groaned wide, and the palace opened itself to him.

The tyrant was awake and ready. He had been expecting the youth.

Ranks of gold-and-white armoured men lined the marble hall, filling the gaps between its tall columns. Their faces were stern in their open helmets. Flambeaux competed with weak electrical illumination, but they were all being overwhelmed by the light of the sun.

Two titanic statues stood either side of a huge throne, their right hands held out in natural, lifelike poses. The totems they clasped in their left fists, and the robes that adorned their heroically muscled bodies, were rendered in iron.

Upon the throne between these two huge figures, the tyrant sat. He was small and middle-aged, a crown of stylised iron pine needles on his head. A pair of golden sceptres nestled casually in the crooks of his arms; here was a man who wielded his power with seeming carelessness.

At first glance, the tyrant was not an imposing sight, being spare-limbed with the hump of a round stomach clearly visible under his chiton of imperial purple. His black hair was sparse, and the style he wore it in, brushed up to feather his scalp, only accentuated its lack. His nose was prominent, and his eyes close set. Indeed, he seemed to have been poorly fated, for the men he surrounded himself with were lithe and clean-limbed and handsome of face, while the patricians gathered in a crowd before his throne were taller and more richly dressed than him.

But his courtiers seemed pompous in comparison, like peacocks around a hawk, and though his throne was scaled monumentally and should have engulfed him, somehow the many tonnes of masonry around the tyrant served to aggrandise the little man rather than diminish him. The statues to his left and right were superficially more impressive than him, but they were ridiculous in their size. There was no power in their pupil-less eyes. They were blind, and stone dead.

Dammekos, the Tyrant of Lochos, was vital.

A great will was caged in his modest flesh, and from behind his plain face a sharp intelligence looked out upon the world. He masked his eagerness at the party’s approach, but Perturabo saw it all too clearly, and suspicion stirred in his breast as to what this man desired of him.

The men and their charge halted at the dais of the throne. Miltiades grasped Perturabo’s shoulder and pushed down to force the boy to kneel. Although he was a head shorter than the sub-optio, Perturabo was as immovable as bedrock, and resisted without effort.

Dammekos waved Miltiades away irritably, too excited by his guest to care for the niceties of deference. Miltiades stepped back, and he and his three men knelt.

A herald came forward.

‘All hail Dammekos,’ he called in a clear, beautiful voice, ‘eighth of his name, Tyrant of Lochos, third of the twelve Tyranthikos, Lord of Irex, Kerroitan, Domminiki, and the Septologies of Alka. All hail Dammekos!’

The soldiers in the hall stamped once. The herald stepped smartly back.

Dammekos adjusted his sceptres.

‘Well then, Miltiades, what have we here?’ His voice was quick and prying. Not unpleasant, as there was a generous measure of warmth to the words, but his charm could not mask his intellect, nor his greed. ‘The mythical boy of Chaldicea, I’ll warrant. No myth at all!’

‘It is he, tyrant,’ said Miltiades.

‘I admit, I had not expected you to return so early, Miltiades,’ said the tyrant. ‘You have outdone yourself. You only set out last night! Weren’t you just saying last week how long it would take you to cover Chaldicea to find him? It appears you were wrong.’

His courtiers laughed. They whispered behind their hands.

Miltiades looked up. ‘We found him here, my king, climbing the Phrygean cliffs. We got little further than the Irex road. Shepherds saw him yesterday, attempting the climb. We went to meet him.’

‘And where are these shepherds?’

‘With their flocks, my king,’ said Miltiades.

‘Miltiades!’ Dammekos scolded affably. ‘What kind of example are you setting to our guest? Where is your sense of generosity? See to it they are rewarded – five lochans apiece.’

‘It shall be so, my king,’ said Miltiades.

Dammekos turned his attention directly upon the boy. Until then he had been examining him covetously but had not engaged with him, as if Perturabo were a work of art he might purchase rather than a thinking being. Now Dammekos smiled broadly and looked into Perturabo’s ice-blue eyes.

‘You must be the boy who has been roaming the Chaldic highlands. You must be,’ he mused. ‘I do not see how it could not be you. I have never seen so finely formed a youth. You outmatch the stories.’

‘I do not know if this person is me,’ said Perturabo mildly. Now it was Dammekos’ turn to be appraised by the boy. The king smiled indulgently at the boy’s boldness.

‘You do not know?’

‘I have no memory from before yesterday. I was halfway up the cliff. I finished my climb. That is all I remember.’

‘How came you to be climbing the cliff?’

‘I do not know. I remember nothing,’ said Perturabo.

‘My king!’ hissed Miltiades. ‘You will address him as “my king!”’

Perturabo looked back at the officer. ‘He is not my king. Or if he is, I do not know him.’

Dammekos let out a disarming laugh. ‘Now now, sub-optio, we cannot rebuke our guest for neglecting the proper form of address. If he remembers nothing, how can he know what to say?’

‘Then he should learn, my king,’ said Miltiades. ‘He is in your hall.’

‘He will, we can be sure of that. But he is correct. If he does not know who he is, then how can he know me for his master? For now, let us be kind and forgive him his ill manners. Tell me boy, there have been reports for several months of a youth of your description coming from the plateau of Chaldicea. What do you know of that?’

‘I said I know nothing.’

‘It must be you,’ said the king again. ‘The wanderer who comes down from the mountains. The boy who slays jalpidae, and who bested a hydraka with a wooden club. The child who wields a smith’s hammer with the skill of an artist.’

Perturabo looked at his hands. The cuts inflicted by his climb had scabbed over already. Was that normal? They were thick and heavy, digger’s hands. Could such hands be artful?

‘I do not know this person,’ said Perturabo.

‘Shall we see then?’ said the tyrant pleasantly. He bent forwards in his throne, embracing his sceptres to him. ‘Shall we find out together if you are this boy?’

‘You mean to test me?’

‘If you are agreeable to the proposition.’

‘What if I fail?’

‘You will not be harmed,’ replied Dammekos. ‘I am sure such a fine example of manhood could be found a role here of some sort. You will be cared for.’

‘And what if I pass?’ said Perturabo suspiciously.

The king smiled. ‘Then we shall see. Pass or fail, in either case I promise no harm will come to you. What manner of king would I be to slay a living legend, one that brings joy to my people? Tyranny is an art. You will not find me an artless man.’

‘I agree to your test then,’ said Perturabo. He had nothing to lose, and he was curious to see if he was this boy, and what the test would be.

The king raised a hand and nodded. A gong sounded. A door in the side of the hall was flung open, and a bald eunuch heavy with flab-coated muscle strode in. Behind him, six of his fellows dragged a portable cast-iron forge into the room. Great heat radiated from the metal cylinder holding its fires, and an orange light glowed through a grill in the door. Bellows were set up, along with a quenching butt. Lastly, an anvil was brought within and placed upon a tree stump. The wood was freshly felled and still yellow, while the anvil’s dull grey was as yet unmarked. Both were new, untested. Perturabo was pleased with the parallel.

The eunuchs opened the side of the portable forge and removed a plate from the tapering roof, exposing a bed of fiercely glowing charcoal. The eunuchs pumped the bellows and the coals glowed brighter. Thin smoke streamed from the short chimney, winding its way up into the palace’s hammer beams. A barrel of iron rods was set beside Perturabo, and a wooden carryall full of tools.

Everyone in the hall looked at him expectantly. Perturabo looked at the king.

‘Begin,’ said the tyrant.

Perturabo let his instinct guide him. He decided then and there to make a sword. He took up a bundle of iron rods and sorted them, testing their weight and their tone by striking them upon the anvil. He listened carefully to each. He had no idea which ones to choose, so selected those that felt right. He thrust them deep into the fire without gloves, his hands coming so close to the flames that the king’s courtiers gasped, but Perturabo did not fear the flames and did not flinch from them, instead continuing to hold the rods as they took on the heat of the furnace.

‘Bellows,’ he said, releasing the metal. The eunuchs recognised the power in him and obeyed instantly, pumping long, curved bellow irons until the fire roared and the metal turned white.

To draw out the metal, Perturabo put on a thick hide glove, sized for an adult but already tight on his fist. He did not use the pliers offered him, but dragged out the metal in his gloved hand and commenced beating upon it with the smith’s hammer. He worked slowly, methodically. The iron was unyielding; it required the application of heat to change it. Only in this way could its uncompromising nature be moulded into a weapon. There was a warning there, perhaps, but Perturabo did not recognise it as such, being drawn into his work with the total absorption shared by geniuses and the simple-minded alike. He worked far faster than any smith known to the court, striking the metal as quickly and surely as the steam hammers in the foundries. Showers of sparks rained from the blade taking shape under his hand, skittering away across the marble flagstones.

For hours he worked. The court receded from his attention. There was only the iron on his anvil. With his indomitable will he shaped it, refusing to acknowledge its strength as he forced it to accept its new form. Iron was honest and true, without guile.

A warrior’s metal, with none of the sickness of gold, he thought.

How did he know that? Did it matter? He liked the iron; he did not care for gold. It sang to him as he struck it, and his heart knew the refrain.

Seven times the blade went into the fires, came out, was beaten and quenched. Mists of metallic steam billowed from the water butt, filling the hall and raising the temperature as the morning passed. Dammekos watched, fascinated. The rest of the court grew restive, requiring food and drink but unwilling to leave before their master. Neither the tyrant nor the boy noticed.

One last time the blade went into the water. Perturabo wiped the sweat from his brow and held up the weapon by its tang. Dammekos gestured that Miltiades take it.

The blade was plain and unadorned, lacking fitments and yet to be ground to an edge, but it was clear that it was fit for its purpose.

‘It is perfect!’ said Miltiades in amazement. He weighed its balance in his hand, sighting down the edge. ‘Perfect.’ He held it up to his lord. ‘This was done with just a hammer.’

Whispers went around the great hall.

‘It is not finished. It needs sharpening. No weapon is complete until it is honed,’ said Perturabo. Another thing he knew without knowing, as innate to him as his sense for iron.

‘Indeed,’ said Dammekos thoughtfully. ‘You may hone it later, in my engineering workshops.’

‘I thank you. It would...’ Perturabo thought for a moment, unsure of how to describe the emotion he felt at the thought of leaving the blade dull, ‘displease me if I were not to complete my task.’

‘Commendable, young man.’ A calculating look came into Dammekos’ eye. It saw all of the value of Perturabo, but none of his worth; the youth, though new to the world, was sure of that. ‘Perhaps you might wish to work here, and be prenticed to our metalworkers? It would be a fine life.’

‘Perhaps,’ replied the boy. ‘But I feel this working of iron is not my true strength.’

‘Then what is?’ asked Dammekos.

Perturabo looked around. He pointed to the gun at the sub-optio’s waist, a complicated device of bulbous protrusions and flanged edges built around a glass flask crackling with captive lightning. ‘That,’ he said. ‘I would learn its workings. And this…’ He gestured at the high roof. ‘I wish to build, I think. The stone speaks to me, as much as the iron.’

Dammekos clapped his hands in delight. ‘Do you still doubt, sub-optio? The boy is he, the wanderer. Well! Well, well, well. Anoinkai’s hand is in this, it is sure! He is a gift from the gods!’

‘Who is Anoinkai?’ asked the boy.

‘The goddess of fate,’ said Miltiades. ‘How can he be of the gods if does not know that?’ The sub-optio’s hand rested on his sword hilt warily.

‘What are gods?’ asked Perturabo. The term was alien to his ears.

‘The beings above us, who watch from the summit of Mount Telephus and judge all men. These are their likenesses,’ said Dammekos, gesturing at the sculptures either side of him. ‘Gozek and Calaphais, the twin tyrants of the gods.’

Perturabo looked at the statues doubtfully.

‘Has anyone ever seen these beings?’

A shaven-headed man, perspiring in ornate robes, stepped forwards.

A priest, thought Perturabo contemptuously. He recognised his sort instinctively, and just as instinctively, he did not trust them.

‘They are removed from us by their own design,’ said the priest. ‘The divine and the mundane are separate, overlapping spheres that are distinct, but which influence each other.’

Perturabo sneered. ‘A world you cannot see? The existence of such things is illogical. All mortal experience can be encompassed by the rational laws of reality.’ He paused. How could he prove what he had just said? Nevertheless, he felt it deeply, utterly, as an unshakeable conviction.

‘Blasphemy!’ said the priest.

‘Make-believe. A modesty curtain for ignorance,’ said Perturabo. ‘I do not like these gods. They are the enemies of reason.’

‘Then if not from the gods, where are you from?’ asked Dammekos.

‘I do not know.’ He paused again. A fierce yearning tightened his throat. ‘I want to know.’

‘Then stay here, with me,’ said Dammekos. ‘You shall learn all we can teach you. I will help you discover your place of origin, but you must serve our city in return.’

‘In battle?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What of peace?’

‘You made a sword. You could have made a plough.’

‘What of peace?’ Perturabo repeated. A hot feeling stirred in him. He did not like it.

Dammekos smiled unconvincingly. ‘There will be peace. No one attacks Lochos. They see the walls of our city and they give up in despair and retreat. Lochos has not been successfully sieged in six hundred years! War is necessary boy, but never desirable. There is always time for peace.’

The boy’s cold expression froze the tyrant’s mirth. Dammekos’ smile set on his face.

Liar, the boy’s expression said.

‘What use are walls against someone who refuses to give up?’

‘I have not yet met such a person,’ said the tyrant, but in his heart he knew that very person was standing in front of him, dripping with sweat from the heat of the forge. ‘If you are to serve me, I must know you. Tell me your name.’

‘It is Perturabo.’

‘That is not a name of Lochos. What does it mean?’ asked the king.

‘I do not know,’ said Perturabo. ‘Only that it is my name, and was always intended to be so. As to its meaning, I will find out.’

He looked around the hall, at all the artifice that had gone into its construction, and at the people it encompassed, the clothes they wore and the jewels they displayed. Their weapons, their habits, their footwear – he wanted to know how they all worked.

‘I will find everything out.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017.
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