Their commanders bawled and cursed everyone too slow to figure out that making targets of themselves was deadly, and after that, the swooping runs resulted in fewer deaths atop the walls and the lookout towers. The Marlovans were still out there watching, shooting the moment they saw something to shoot at—and every so often loosing a lethal rain of arrows over the wall into the courts.
The defenders kept shields lined against the walls inside the courts; orders were passed down to hold one overhead when passing to and fro. The number of dead and wounded dropped to one a day, then none.
Terror had turned to derision. There were those who liked to stand below the castellations and shout insults in what they were told was Marlovan. But scorn didn’t quite settle into complacency: three times they tried sending people out in the worst hours of the night, under the cover of terrible weather, to gather those spent arrows. Nobody returned.
Then there was the steady diminishing of their stores. At least, they reassured one another day after day, night after night, as the hours were broken by the sinister drumbeat of those galloping hooves, the Marlovan horses couldn’t really fly. There was no way for them to get into the pass. They hadn’t even attempted the gate.
Warm days arrived, then the occasional hot day under the cloudless sky, heralding the dry heat of summer soon to come. There was still plenty of water running down from the heights, captured in barrels against the dry months, but the supply caravan had yet to appear.
Moods lightened when a rider came down the pass to report that the snows had melted off the heights at last, and travelers should start coming through. The supply caravan was always first let through at the other end, though oxen being much slower than horses, it was never the first down to the west end. Still, the news that the pass was clear meant supplies were on the way.
Then came the day they felt more than heard the shivering of the fortress, and the rock beneath them. And the next morning, the eastern sun was obscured by a weird golden cloud.
Three days after that cloud formed above distant Skytalon, two more riders arrived, both with stories of quakes and rocks raining down, but they didn’t know any more than that. The top of the pass had been fine, if muddy, when they rode through, and yes, they both passed the supply train—twelve wagons in all.
A few days after the weird cloud dissipated, morning light revealed the sight the captains had feared: a roofed caravan bringing their own battering ram, cut illegally out of timber from the northern mountains and reinforced by iron.
So much for the claim that the Marlovan barbarians were too stupid to know what to do with one. Covered with overlapping shields, the ram was safe from both arrows and fire.
The first thud happened late the next night. The defenders’ own lanterns and torches kept them from seeing the figures down below. When they tried dropping oil-wrapped brands, those were immediately extinguished by furtive figures. The best shooters nailed two of the shadowy enemies, but missed the rest, as the ram began its rhythmic BOOM, swinging back and forth in its cradle of chains.
“I alerted West Tower when the ram was first sighted,” the commander admitted to his captains as they met in his quarters. I’ve received nothing back. This morning I wrote—”
BOOM.
“—to East Tower. No answer so far, and say what you like about old Tharvitre, he always got right back to you, if only to curse you for being incompetent, and how in his day they fought pirates off the coast with their—”
BOOM.
“—bare hands.” The small joke fell flat as the stones of the walls ground minutely around them. He looked around, mouth pursed, then said flatly, “I think it’s time to alert Lord Elsarion.”
No one disagreed.
It took three drafts before the commander was satisfied with his note, which had to be factual and not look cowardly, but at the same time convey the seriousness of their situation.
A gratifyingly short time later, Thias Elsarion transferred to the Destination. He had clearly been at some sort of entertainment, for the torchlight played over his flowing silks and caught in the diamonds in his hair, on his fingers, and at one ear as he strode out, his sword with its jewel-chased, elegant hilt clasped in one hand.
He entered the command center, brows lifted. “What is it? You pulled me from hosting a ball for the Duchas of Marsael—”
BOOM.
Elsarion stilled, then glanced around. “I see. Well, let’s take a look, shall we? And you can give me a report, beginning with how many of them.”
“Right now they have fewer than half our number, but that’s what we can see,” the commander said as they ran up the stairs to the southwest tower. “We can’t get anyone out to scout beyond the ridge—ah, please halt here, my lord—”
BOOM.
“—they shoot soon as they see something to shoot at. So far, out of everyone catching an arrow, only six survived.”
Elsarion peered through the slit window, seeing nothing but a confusion of shadows below the glare of the torches lighting the sentry walk. “Douse the lights,” he ordered. “Use the moon. As they are.”
BOOM.
“Yes,” Elsarion said a few heartbeats later, still drawling. “I was at the moment your communication arrived endeavoring to negotiate an agreement with Marsael. He has a small army of his own. Let me see what I can do. The pass is clear, right?”
“Yes, we know that much. Snows melted off some time ago.”
“Odd. No one is answering at the towers, nor do the Destinations seem to be functioning. Magic,” he said under his breath, like a curse. “So useful until suddenly it isn’t. Never mind. As long as the pass is clear, I can send reinforcements if you think you can’t hold the castle with merely twice their number—”
BOOM.
Elsarion’s sardonic tone flattened. “Put everyone you have at this west gate, and hold it until I can get more people down here.”
He flipped a transfer token on his palm, closed his eyes, braced—and vanished.
A day passed, and he did not reappear.
Two days. Three.
The shocks kept up the entire time, making sleep difficult as it was impossible to get away from the noise. Those off watch tried to rest with their weapons lying next to them.
In the staff wing, a different set of worries confronted the cooks and servants as they studied the remaining stores. “Three weeks left, the way these brutes eat,” the head cook said, his brawny arms crossed. “Six if we go to half-rations now.”
BOOM.
“Better tell the commander,” said his assistant.
“Why bother, and get cursed for your pains? They’ll know when they see half of everything in their dishes come morning.”
BOOM.
Out in the field, the reverberations could still be heard, as Cabbage Gannan faced his captains. “Tevaca thinks the gate will break by tomorrow late, maybe the next day. Remember, they expect to see a charge, so we’re giving them a charge.” He addressed Henad Tlennen. “Make it slow and splashy as you can. Singing, whatever you can to get their attention on you, and stay there, while my boys slip inside through the ram house to destroy the horse killers.”
Henad opened her hand. “We’re not shooting, then? None of us can handle a lance and shoot while on the canter.”
“Right,” Cabbage said, mentally readjusting. “Then don’t use all our lances. It’s a fake charge, a decoy. Put your best shots on the wings, arrow to a target, as always.”
To his cousin Lefty and his other captains, he said, “From the looks of things, they’re stiffening the wall defense. Surprise will help us, but it’ll only last a heartbeat.”
Connar’s Winter Company could hear the boom echoing up the canyon as they approached the last turn in the pass.
His blood fired with anticipation. He waved his divided company forward, toward the eastern wall of West Outpost bulking against the moonlit night.
Connar flashed a grin. His plan had worked. “We’ll wait for nightf
all,” he said.
When the shadows had lengthened and melded, he signaled Ghost with a raised hand. Ghost’s picked archers shot the two wall sentries, one falling outside, the other inside.
The Winter Company stilled, waiting for someone to ring the alarm.
Nothing.
“Unless they’re crouching behind that wall, waiting to jump us as soon as we breach, my guess is, they’re all at the west end,” Stick said.
Connar turned his palm toward Jethren, whose men moved covertly to the wall. The huge east gate was shut, of course, but Jethren’s men had lashed spears together to make ladders.
At the rear of the Winter Company, Quill strapped his knives to his wrists, but he was determined not to use them unless in self-defense. The slaughter of the supply carters, the two couriers coming down behind it, and the single rider who’d ridden up the pass in search of the supply caravan had sickened him to the soul. He and the younger runners under Ghost and Stick had laid out the dead and Disappeared them, but there was no sense of virtue in that, only grief and disgust. It was all so useless.
His mood was the bleakest it had ever been in his life as he watched the three ladders tap against the castle wall, and Jethren’s men go up in twos. He and the runners were last, tasked to pull up the ladders after them, descend last, and undo the bindings to free the weapons, after which they coiled the bindings around their arms and divided the spears between them.
The rest of the Winter Company swarmed over the wall and down to spread out, encountering bodies sprawled, black blood splattered and pooled, marking the trail of Jethren’s company.
Quill had reached the ground level and began dismantling the ladders when the cry went up at last, “To the wall! To the wall! They’re attacking from—”
That voice cut off, but shouts, curses and shrieks swiftly followed as the defenders discovered the stealth attack from the unguarded east wall.
Quill picked up his share of the spears, then followed his fellow runners. They emerged into a court, and nearly tripped over a man lying across the threshold, open eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. Somewhere in the fitful, confusing torchlight through an archway steel clanged and clattered on stone. Voices rose in Adrani, “We surrender! I give up!”
Jethren shouted, “No prisoners!”
Quill caught sight of a pair of terrified children, probably kitchen servants from their clothing, and dropped the spears. He said in Adrani, “Over here!”
Two fearful faces turned toward him. He threw an illusion of shadow around them, then motioned them to follow him along the walls. One whimpered, the other muttering “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” jerking like a stringed puppet, until he got them to the destroyed west gate, and said, “Run.”
Two floors up the commander dropped his sword, breathing heavily.
Ignoring his dripping wounds, he grabbed a piece of paper with one bloody hand, dipped a pen, and wrote to Thias Elsarion:
My lord, I must report that I failed in my task.
The Marlovans attacked a short time ago from the east wall, which we left unguarded according to orders. We also lost the west wall when the gate came down. The fighting has reached the inner court. I can hear my men trying to surrender.
Gerainth just reported now that they are killing everyone, including those on their knees, weapons down.
I expect this will be my last communication.
TWENTY-NINE
A week to the west, Lineas crouched among the leddas and pricklestickle, head low as she watched the ghostly figures through the slanting rain. She had lain there since morning, when Neit had vanished with the dawn, exhorting her to stay put or they would never find one another in the murky marsh under a hard spring rain.
Lineas’s heart jolted as a figure appeared abruptly above her, then she recognized Neit’s outline despite the fact that she was covered with mud, including her hair.
“They’re definitely on the move,” Neit whispered as she dropped down beside Lineas.
“Let’s get to our relay.”
Neit’s hand came down on her wrist. “Wait.”
Lineas stilled, absently wiping a questing insect off her neck. It seemed she’d been crawling around this noisome swamp for uncounted ages, though she knew objectively it had been a matter of days. But the continuous fogs, the dank smell of the tangle of growth humming with life, broken intermittently by the sharp alarm of movement among the hiding Bar Regren, had stretched into a nightmare of little sleep and anxious striving.
All she had accomplished during her days of hiding and spying was to identify those gathering in the marsh as mostly Bar Regren, others speaking Iascan in an accent similar to what she’d heard in Larkadhe as they complained about the lack of food being passed out—the wait—sodden shoes—and above all, curses aimed at the Marlovans.
Presently Lineas whispered, “What are we waiting for?”
Neit’s muddy face turned her way, her teeth the only visible thing in the dim light as she flashed a grin. “Explain later.”
Another group of Bar Regren emerged as shadows in the rain. As soon as they’d passed west, Neit smacked Lineas’s shoulder and jerked her thumb sideways.
And so began yet another horrible hands-and-knees crawl among the cattails and leddas, but at least they had left the pricklestickle. Lineas had given up making sense of Neit’s movements. She knew there was a logic to them, and that Neit would explain when there was less chance of the sound of their voices carrying over the pools and streams.
At least the rain was beginning to wash some of the mud off her face and out of her hair. The grit in her soggy clothing was hopeless—but, she chanted to herself as she had over the past days, all things come to an end. Including living in wet clothes and itching in every fold of her body.
For Neit, the grim watch was over. The fun of the hunt was on. She glanced back, to find Lineas sticking grimly to her heels. She waved toward the south. Lineas’s anxious face eased: retreat, at last.
They crawled, slid, and splashed until they slipped down a bank slimy with mud and drowned grass after the latest rain, and into a stream. They dropped into the water and wiggled arms and legs to rid themselves of the worst of the nasty-smelling marsh mud. Then they rose, water surging off them, and climbed up the bank to head for their patiently waiting relay, who lurked in a dell with waiting horses.
Their clothes were nearly dry (and stiff with residual dirt) when the relay brought them before Braids Senelaec, camped alongside a stream in a sheltered vale outside of Ku Halir.
Braids had been sitting on a fallen log. He shot to his feet as Neit advanced on him, saying, “They’re massing on the river.”
“Then we can nail them before they reach Ku Halir’s gates.” Braids smacked his hands together. “Let’s ride.”
“No.” Neit caught his arm. “That’s just what they want you to do.”
“What?” Braids turned to her, anger borne of extreme tension tightening his mouth.
Neit spoke quickly. “Look, I spent my entire young life being the Venn so Olavayir Riders could defeat us. I’ve seen that kind of feint—I’ve run that kind of feint. That’s not the main group. I spent all yesterday and this morning making sure. I think these ones counted on being seen. They want you to chase them.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll lead you right into the marsh. Me and Lineas just spent a thousand years crouching in that marsh, being buzzed by every bug in the kingdom. We’ve been all over the east side of that terrain. You get these horses into that marsh and they can kill you, and the horses, any time they like.”
“But I was told they attack in mass,” Braids said.
“Oh, they will. Ovaka Mol, second son of Ovaka Red-Feather, will have to lead them if he really expects to take over as new Red-Feather. He ran at Chalk Hills, so now he has to prove himself.”
Here Neit glanced at Lineas, who opened her hand in confirmation. “All the gossip I listened to mentioned him,” Lineas stated. “Even if
you allow for how rumor changes facts, it sounded like he’s been making all kinds of promises in order to get all these villages—including some North Iascans—to join together with him. The North Iascans want Ku Halir because it sits directly on the northern trade route. The Bar Regren want their kingdom back.”
“They’ll get their kingdom back by taking Ku Halir?” Braids repeated, incredulous. “Even I know that their kingdom used to be all those mountains west of the Andahi Pass, up to the Nob!” He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. Where is this Ovaka Mol?”
Neit said, “Don’t know. My guess is, they’ll attack from the west while this marsh feint draws us to the east. I tracked a mass of them yesterday moving west along the lakeshore. It’s treacherous. All black rock and thick woods. Their territory.”
Braids’ head ached. “That’s where Noth will come from.” That’s where his own Senelaec people would come—but he didn’t say that out loud, lest it seem like they were the only ones he cared about. “Did you see any drill? Overhear battle plans?”
Neit flicked her hand away. “Bar Regren are all captains with only servants as followers. They attack in a mass, trampling all those they don’t kill outright. The ones closest to the edges are considered the bravest.”
“And so....” Braids said.
Neit sighed. “My guess is, they’ll hit the road from the north side when they see a column. Then storm the west gate. They might even try to do both at the same time, if there’s enough of them.”
Braids frowned, wondering how long it would take the runners he’d sent to find out what was keeping Noth. Right now, all he knew for certain was that he was outnumbered.
“Shit,” he said under his breath. In the background, runners grimly began packing up the camp, everyone aware that their gamble with Rat Noth bringing extra forces might very well be lost.
Braids glared at Neit. “Did you really command in Olavayir wargames?”
Neit saw the anxiety in that glare, and met it straight on. “Small games, for years. Only a couple of the big games, when the captains were elsewhere. I was always the attacker. And if I didn’t command, the jarlan always put me in as second runner to Tanrid or Cousin Hal. Ah, he’s—”
Time of Daughters II Page 46