The Palace Steps

The Imperial Palace looked considerably less welcoming when several hundred armed people were walking towards it.

I had visited once as a child, when the broad avenue leading towards the outer grounds had been crowded with carriages, guards and nobles pretending not to look at one another.

The red-and-gold banners had seemed enormous then, hanging from pale stone towers that rose above everything around them. Now, those same banners remained above walls lined with knights and archers, which had a remarkable effect on the building’s charm.

The forces from the north reached the palace district shortly before we did, while the south had already taken most of the square beyond the outer gardens.

The victory at the gates had cost enough that the difference was visible everywhere: units that had begun the morning in neat ranks now stood mixed together, wounded people had been moved towards the rear, and several officers were commanding knights they had never met because the people who normally would have done it were receiving treatment elsewhere.

Nobody seemed particularly concerned with maintaining appearances anymore, which was probably sensible considering half of us were covered in somebody else’s blood.

Isabelle found me near the remains of an ornamental fountain, her crimson ponytail partly escaped from its tie and dried blood marked one side of her coat in a place that did not seem to concern her.

“You took your sweet time,” she said.

“We had our own problems.”

“So did we.”

“Competitive as always, huh.”

Captain Arden stood beside her with a dent across his breastplate and a fresh bandage around one hand. Whatever doubts he had possessed about following me several days ago had survived long enough to become something I listened to.

“The southern approach is secure,” he said. “Most of their remaining forces pulled inside the palace district when the gate fell.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Enough to make the front unpleasant.”

Isabelle pointed towards the palace and explained that she had checked the western gardens before the southern force moved in. The sewers were sealed, guards occupied every section of wall that could realistically be climbed, and both underground passages Rafael knew about had been collapsed at the entrances on our side.

I studied the palace while Arden waited.

The outer approach narrowed between two long stone walls before opening into a broad courtyard beneath the main steps, with archers positioned along the balconies and Imperial Knights arranged behind the iron gates.

There were more elegant options available in theory.

None existed in reality.

“We go through the front,” I commanded.

Arden nodded as though he had expected the answer, while Isabelle looked considerably less impressed.

The first push began less than ten minutes later, with our archers forcing the defenders away from the lower balconies while Arden’s knights advanced behind shields through the outer approach.

The eastern fighters held what remained of their line, and the forces from the north pressed against the opposite wall, forcing the palace defenders to divide their attention almost immediately.

The outer gate fell quickly once our combined forces reached it.

Imperial Knights who had spent the day hearing reports of four lost city gates gave ground sooner than their commanding officers wanted, while several surrendered when Arden’s people came through the opening and made the alternative increasingly unattractive.

The revolutionary line spilt into the courtyard, and somewhere behind me a cheer began, before dying almost as quickly as it had started.

The palace knights were coming down the main steps. They moved in ordered ranks without rushing, their armour catching beneath the red banners while the knights retreating from the gate passed neatly through the gaps left for them.

Nobody panicked or tried to recover the outer wall simply because it had once belonged to them. Instead, the knights allowed us into the wider courtyard where the narrow approach no longer restricted our numbers, then spread far enough apart to use their weapons properly.

The first clash stopped our advance, and the next began forcing it backwards.

A Rochefort Knight near the centre raised his shield against an overhead strike and had it knocked aside hard enough to drop him to one knee. The knight opposite him changed angle immediately, driving the point of his blade towards the opening beneath his collar until my sword caught the strike from the side and turned it past his shoulder.

The man on the ground moved without being told, which left me free to step inside the knight’s second attack, let the blade pass my ribs and answer across his exposed side before he could recover.

That quickly became the shape of this battle.

Our numbers still mattered, but the palace defenders were good enough that small mistakes became dangerous immediately. A shield held slightly too low became a wound, someone following an opponent too far from the line found himself surrounded, and two fighters attacking the same knight without watching one another created opportunities the knight had never needed to manufacture.

The courtyard filled with those small emergencies faster than anyone could organise them, so I stopped attempting to keep track of the whole field and dealt with whichever one was about to become permanent.

An arrow struck the stones beside my boot as somebody screamed behind me.

I turned to find a palace knight standing over a mercenary I recognised from the guild, his sword already descending. The man had spent most of the previous year complaining that the guild watered its ale.

None of that improved his ability to defend himself from people in heavier armour, but that seemed like a poor reason to let him die.

The descending strike glanced off mine hard enough to drive both blades towards the ground. I kicked the knight’s knee, used the shift in balance to bring my sword back across his exposed side and pointed the mercenary towards the rear until he finally remembered how to move.

By then Arden’s centre had recovered enough to gain several steps, while Isabelle had reached the lower stairs with a group from the south and was slipping inside the reach of heavier weapons before the knights could use them properly.

Another palace unit emerged through the doors above her.

The pressure across the staircase changed immediately. Our advance stalled hard enough that people near the bottom began being pushed backwards into those still trying to climb upwards.

I ran towards it.

From there, the battle narrowed until there was very little worth saying aloud.

The first knight came down expecting me, so I changed direction before reaching him, caught the strike aimed at the fighter beside me and used his own movement to gain the next step.

Another blade arrived from the left; I turned it away, struck beneath the man’s chin with my guard and kept moving while somebody behind me finished what I had started.

The palace defenders began recognising where I was, and the orders coming from above changed with it.

“Centre! Contain him!”

Four knights shifted towards me, followed by another two from the upper steps. Their movement left fewer opponents in front of Isabelle and Arden’s people, which made their decision far more useful than they probably intended.

I entered the first pair before the others could close properly.

One attacked high while the second waited for the obvious retreat, so I went forwards instead, turning the first blade over my shoulder and forcing the second man to abandon his strike before he hit his own ally.

That brief hesitation gave enough time for the knights and mercenaries beside me to close the distance, but more palace knights immediately moved towards the centre and abandoned positions that had been holding Isabelle below.

They had decided I was the larger problem.

And I had no objection.

Every knight trying to reach me meant one less person cutting through somebody else.

Isabelle saw the opening before I looked towards her. The southern force surged up the left half of the staircase while the remaining eastern fighters pressed from below, forcing the defenders who had controlled the steps to divide again.

The palace doors began closing before we reached the top.

“They’re sealing the entrance!” Arden shouted.

Isabelle reached the narrowing gap first, slipped under the strike of the man guarding it and drove her blade beneath the edge of his armour. His falling weight stopped the door long enough for Arden’s knights to hit it from below, and several shoulders against the wood were enough to force the entrance open again.

The knights inside understood what that meant almost as quickly as we did.

One lowered his weapon after looking from the open doors to our forces filling most of the stairs, and another followed when nobody struck him for doing so.

Weapons began hitting the stone in scattered places as individual knights recognised that the position they had been ordered to defend no longer existed. Some stepped away immediately, while others hesitated until the people beside them did the same.

An officer near the upper landing shouted for those still willing to fight to form up around him, and perhaps a dozen moved away from those surrendering around them.

They were the ones who had caused most of the damage in the courtyard: better armour, better weapons and none of that uncertainty that was spreading through the rest of the defenders.

Their attention settled on me.

The knights and mercenaries near the stairs began closing around them, but the space at the top was narrow enough that adding more people would mostly create more targets, so I moved forwards before Arden could commit his line.

The first knight met me halfway, his sword coming towards my shoulder while another attack followed from the opposite side. I turned through the space between them, felt the second blade catch the edge of my cloak and used the first man’s overextension to strike beneath his arm.

I backed across the upper landing with the railing to one side so they could not fully surround me.

Their weapons overlapped whenever too many pressed in at once, yet each of them was experienced enough to recognise the problem and adjust without offering much in return.

Prisoners were being disarmed and pulled clear, the palace entrance was being secured, and officers were sending wounded people down the steps towards the medics.

The fight had narrowed to us.

Another came from my right while two kept pressure from the front. I gave ground until the man on the side committed far enough to block the ally behind him, then turned underneath his sword and drove him into the railing before the opening closed.

My blade reached the man behind him before he could adjust.

The remaining knights changed their approach after that and stopped trying to overwhelm me quickly.

They forced me backwards in turns, keeping fresh men at the front while the others waited for fatigue to create an opening that technique had not.

Smart.

Also irritating.

My breathing had already become rougher, and blood from the cut near my shoulder had begun working its way beneath my cloak, but neither mattered while their attention remained fixed on me.

A knight lunged low.

I caught the blade, but the impact opened my guard to the man beside him, whose sword came directly towards my chest.

Another blade intercepted it.

Arden stood half a step behind me. I looked at him, then towards the remaining knights before shaking my head once.

He clearly considered ignoring that.

Then his eyes moved past me towards the surrendered knights, the open palace doors, and the people still trying to secure the landing, so he stepped backwards.

Trust went both ways.

I still wasn’t used to that.

The next attack arrived before I could think about it any further, and after that everything reduced to distance, balance and openings.

A shoulder turned before a strike, weight settled too far forwards, and one knight stepped across the path another needed half a second later.

They were better than almost anyone I had fought during the uprising, but they were still people and people made patterns.

They were predictable.

One came forward hard enough that I almost mistook desperation for carelessness. The opening appeared beside his shoulder exactly where he wanted me to see it, while the man behind him waited for my blade to commit.

Instead of taking it, I struck somewhere else.

The knight’s expression changed before my sword reached him. The remaining defence collapsed shortly afterwards. One knight dropped his weapon when he realised nobody beside him was still standing, while the final two continued until they no longer could.

By the time the last blade hit the stone, the palace steps had gone strangely quiet compared to the noise that had filled them only minutes earlier.

Not completely quiet, of course.

Medics still shouted below, more prisoners were being moved towards the courtyard, and somebody near the outer gate had already begun arguing about where several surviving horses were supposed to go.

Normal problems had returned with impressive speed.

I stood at the top of the steps and looked back across the palace courtyard, where discarded shields and broken weapons lay between wounded people being helped towards treatment areas and exhausted knights who had somehow made it through every part of the day.

Beyond them stood hundreds more.

People from the north, south, east and west had started the morning in different parts of the capital and ended it beneath the same palace walls: mercenaries, Rochefort Knights, defectors, volunteers and people who had probably never expected to stand on the steps of the Imperial Palace when they woke that morning.

I raised one arm above my head, and the cheer hit the palace walls hard enough to come back straight at us.