by K. Johansen
But with the sword strapped to his pack—because it was only going to pull him off balance climbing if he wore it at his hip and he’d be dead if he grabbed for it in a fight anyway—he rubbed his hands over his upper arms, as if he were cold, checking, and was a little startled at just how solid his muscles were getting. Not so scrawny after all.
They ate there, by the waterfall, as if the dead were miles away. Crows circled, landed, hopped closer. Things bigger than crows, rough-throated. Ravens, Ahjvar said, when he asked. It was only noon. The sun grew spring warm. Flies gathered, summoned from rocks, from the earth, he couldn’t guess where. The taste of blood in the air, maybe, like the ravens. He didn’t look when the first bird grew bold enough to perch on a body. Ahjvar didn’t bother to chase it away. Ailan shut his eyes, concentrated on cold water in the silver cup, the taste of the food—they were living mostly on biscuits sopped in water and Marakander sweets that were nuts and raisins and dried apricots and figs all mashed together with honey and rolled in seeds, which were marvellous but more something you’d want to share with a friend sitting on a bench in the sun with a little cup of bitter coffee and a warm evening to look forward to, not—
Three ravens began to squabble over the priest with the cracked skull.
“Time to go,” Ahjvar said, washing his fingers in the stream.
“Which way?”
“Up.”
Ailan, sighed, looking up the crack down which the waterfall plummeted.
“Do I go first, so I can knock you off when I fall, or do I go first so you can catch me?”
“I go first, and let down a rope. Which you will tie around yourself. And then I can catch you when you fall.”
“Oh. Do we have a rope?”
“I always have a rope.”
“I wish you’d said ‘if’ about the falling.”
“Yeah, I wish I could have.” But Ahjvar smiled.
Gods, Ailan almost wished he wouldn’t.
No. That was stupid. He could just—enjoy that Ahjvar was good to look at, and not need to think of him that way. Because that wasn’t what he really wanted from the man anyway, was it? Not really.
“We’ll take a few more days getting to Marakand,” Ahjvar said, testing an edge of rock, which proved to be loose. He chose another handhold. “Maybe a week. Head into the mountains first. Lose any others that might be behind. Though if Jochiz has turned the Blackdog loose on us after all…well, I’m doing what I can to hide our trail even from a hunting devil.”
“Maybe you really did kill him.”
“The more I think about it, the more I doubt I did anything to him at all.”
“Someone else did?”
“I don’t know. But maybe.”
“Your god.”
Ahjvar grunted. Well, it was a stupid suggestion, Ailan knew it. A god couldn’t reach beyond their own land, or he wouldn’t dare even be thinking the thoughts he sometimes had. Watching Ahjvar climb…
He should be keeping watch behind. There might be a second band of hunters after them.
“Look where I’m going,” Ahjvar ordered. “You’re going to want to know where to put your feet.”
“I am. But remember I’m shorter than you.”
Ahjvar looked down, up, considering. Changed where he had been reaching to.
“Alright. You’ll want to move over to the left here, then, if you can’t pull yourself to the ledge above…see?”
He killed people and sat down to eat by their dead bodies as if it were normal not to be bothered by the blood and ravens and flies, and then he was…kind.
Oh. This wasn’t…it wasn’t falling in love, what he felt, what was warm and safe and something he could feel wrapped around him like a blanket, like a hand resting on his head a moment as he was falling asleep, a touch in affection, not desire. It was—this was—not a father— this was a brother. What having an older brother might have been.
CHAPTER VIII
…spring, and it is two weeks since Ahjvar fought the Blackdog in the Malagru
Nikeh had had troubled dreams in the week since she had executed Dimas. Nothing she could remember clearly. Voices muttering in another room. Aunty, whom she had not thought on for years. A baby crying. Dreams like that. Usually she could ignore them, but she had not been sleeping well since Teacher deserted her. She should go back to the city, perhaps. Find the blond Nabbani man Teacher said was to be addressed as the Rihswera, though she called him something else herself and spoke to him in a language she had never taught to Nikeh and which was not any dialect of Nabbani—though that scruffy Taren servant of his seemed to get by in it well enough, and presumed a familiarity to which he had no right with Teacher on the basis of it.
Teacher was an agent of the god of Nabban, and so was the Rihswera, so Nikeh supposed that as Teacher’s apprentice and ward, she ought to consider herself likewise a servant of that distant god. Would she be offered a place in the ambassador’s house? Their quarters in the historians’ college of the great library complex must presumably be given up, now that Teacher was gone. By whatever means she had gone.
She could offer to ride as a courier; that would get her back to Marakand in a single day. The city was almost fifty miles away, near the Eastern Wall of the pass.
She had no real rank or position here, though the captain of the south-end tower, Sulla Dur, was a cousin of Lia’s and seemed to accept Nikeh as some kind of auxiliary of her garrison even now that she lacked Lady Daro Jang’s authority to account for her presence.
She had no real rank or position in the city, either. She might be permitted to remain a scholar of the library, but scholarship seemed an empty thing at present.
Lia Dur had had command of the middle watch of the night and was still sleeping deeply, sprawled over most of the narrow upper bunk. Nikeh rolled off the edge left to her and landed softly on her feet. One of the two men crammed head to foot in the lower bunk grunted and leaned up on an elbow.
“Sorry,” she whispered, groping for her boots and the plate-reinforced vest, helmet, sword, bow…Even on a quick visit to the latrine behind the barracks adjoining the tower proper one had to think of such things. Teacher had taught her so. Be vigilant. Be prepared, when one sleeps with the enemy near. The kitchen was awake, hot and clattering. She passed it by and climbed the stairs to the platform of the roof. The night crew of the trebuchet were scattered about like cats in an alley, not sleeping, not entirely wakeful in the light of their lanterns, ready to react at a moment’s alarm. Those who kept watch on the enemy did not drowse. She exchanged a murmured greeting with Lia’s street-guard comrade Danil and pulled herself up into a crenel.
“Take care!”
She ignored his fear, crouched there as if she would leap away into flight like a devil in a tale, stone tight against either shoulder. The valley was still dark, cast in night by the wall, though dawn was greying the sky behind them.
Very dark, below. She looked up. The night was clear, stars sharp. The waning moon was just past its last quarter, bright enough to cast faint light on the hills, but still high enough, too, at this hour, that there should be no long moon-shadow of the wall.
“Danil? When did it grow dark, below?”
“Uh? Sunset, I suppose? You know, when night fell?”
Street-guard. But city-bred, and never out on night patrol without a nice bright pool of lantern-light to blind him to the shades of the dark. She leaned out, straining her ears. Danil seized her belt. She ignored him, save to risk leaning a little further. Wind. Leaves rustling below. The usual sparse scatter of lights still burned in the Westron camp, well beyond reach of even the great ballista built to Teacher’s design, which crouched like a lion about to spring on the platform of the gate-tower over the road. She cupped her hands around her eyes like the blinkers of a cart-horse, peered down into the nearer darkness, below, and towards the road and the fortress of the gate through which it passed. No straying lantern-light from behind to spoil her vision.
&nb
sp; She ought to see a little. The shape, the roughness of the land. Some mottling of moonlight, grey to black.
She could hear nothing but the wind. No owl, no fox, no first chorus of birds waking to sing, as they should with thinning of the night, the creeping dawn.
She felt no wind on her face.
Illusion. All illusion. Send Danil to Captain Sulloso, ask her to send up a wizard to peer into this darkness, to listen, to ask why they heard no birds and what else they did not hear, and why the moon above shed no light west of the wall.
What if she roused the length of the wall and there was only a little fog hanging below?
Then everyone still sleeping woke early, and cursed her, and Captain Sulloso Dur sent her back to the city as a nervy clerk better off stuck among old books in the library than twitching at shadows.
Fog would show as a paleness.
Teacher would not expect her to dither, when lives were at stake.
“Sound the bells,” she ordered. “Danil, go. Ring the alarm. The All-Holy’s come to the wall.”
“What? No, I’ve been on watch these four hours. They haven’t broken camp.”
“They’re here.” She pushed back past him. “They won’t wait longer— the sun’s rising and even you’ll notice that darkness.”
“What darkness?”
“Gah! Wake up!” she shouted at the trebuchet crew. “Ready your sling! They’re here, they’re here!” The bells themselves were so close—the belfry rising past the inner corner of the tower. Didn’t do her much good. Pushed past the trebuchet crew, down the stairs to the rope-chamber, shouting.
When those charged with that watch failed to do more than ask pointless questions, she seized a rope herself. Ended up struggling with the man, kneeing him where she really shouldn’t have as he tried to pull her off. Got clouted across the ear, head ringing, but so was the bell, the triple toll of warning.
Picked up at the next tower along, reverberating between the hills, the cliffs, the rising mountains. Echoing and re-echoing, swelling louder—the bells of the great tower at the gate. There were signals to be lit to pass the alarm to Marakand, fires by night and smoke by day, at stations along the heights, mostly converted windmills…
Old Great Gods, what had she dared?
The man she had kneed was advancing on her, limping, eyes streaming with pain, fist raised, and she couldn’t honestly blame him, though she could have hit twice as hard if she’d really meant it and he should consider that he could still walk. She backed away.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Gabbling. “I was—”
Two of the watch were at the bells, heaving and heaving, three and three, but now all the bells were singing full-throated, up and down the wall, tangling with their echoes. Lia in the doorway, a cutting gesture. Something thudded. She felt it through the soles of her boots more than her ears in the din. The rope-pullers stood to and the clamour faded.
“She—”
“Archers to your positions,” Lia said. “Nikeh.”
“I’m sorry,” she offered again, as the man seized his bow from a rack and bent fumbling to string it. He scowled, but waved a hand. Apology accepted, she hoped. The two bell-ringers were already at the arrowslits.
“Gurhan and Great Gods defend us,” one said. “Lieutenant—” Another thump. Shouts above.
“I’ve seen. Gods be with us.” Lia turned on her heel, heading for the stairs to the roof. Nikeh went to an arrowslot, peered through. The sun had risen, lemon light touching the unfolding hills, running down towards the desert. Early morning mist smoked thinly, hiding nothing.
The All-Holy’s army had shifted in the night, marching in silence, muffled in wizardry, hidden by it. Wizardry or devilry. There were wizards keeping watch at the gate-fortress, day and night. She didn’t think sixth-circle priests could have worked any wizardry they wouldn’t have seen through. It had been the devil.
He would not have baffled and deceived Teacher, Nikeh was certain of it. If only she had been here.
Like a tide run in over the mudflats, water where there had been land. Dark, seething with subtle movement in its stillness. Wheeled towers.
She turned and ran after Lia, out onto the tower platform.
“No ram,” Lia said. “I don’t see a ram—do you?”
“No.” But there had been no engines, no materials for siege with the Army of the South at all, by the report of Istva and his fellows. The All-Holy, though, had brought timbers from the Malagru. They had been building engines in his camp. She had seen from the top of the belfry.
“He’s not going to try to force the gate itself.”
Just to overtop the walls, swarm them. Seize the gate-tower and open it from within. Or as at Emrastepse, have it opened for him, traitors in place to seize it.
Not here, where there were wizards to know the truth of a person’s heart. Surely not.
The trebuchet crew were reaching high on their ropes, ready.
“And pull!” Danil dropped his raised arm, and they heaved down as one, snapping the arm. The sling flew up. Not shaped stone shot, of which they had a goodly supply, but one of the clay cannisters marked with Nabbani characters. Wizards’ work.
A cheer. But, “Too far!” Danil called. They were already reloading.
Thump and shudder. Something striking the side of their tower. “Short!” Danil called jeeringly over the valley. The Westrons—Nikeh didn’t like thinking of them so, when she was Westron herself and here they didn’t understand how many Westron folk had died at the hands of the red priests—would be aiming for the platform and the destruction of the trebuchet, the only one at this end of the wall.
Two more of the Marakander cannisters failed to burst, or burn, or whatever they were supposed to do. Wizardry quashing them. The trebuchet switched to stone shot, scored a hit on the swaying siege-tower, shattering timbers. It leaned. The shouting carried. Oxen bellowed. Something cracked and its upper storeys fell away. People screamed, crushed by the fallen timbers. Danil called down their success and the crew cheered.
The bows had been singing; more archers were rushing up. Others ready to fetch and carry, standing by the barrels of sand and water against fire, with hooks and halberds if the enemy closed with tower or ladder…
At first Nikeh thought this would be the way of it as they settled to their work. The thrum and snap of bowstrings, the ready-pull of the trebuchet-first’s voice, growing hoarser and hoarser. Trying to batter what was left of the siege-tower down past repair and smash the enemy’s engine. No more cheering.
Stone smashed, chips of the coping of a merlon flying, leaving faces cut and bleeding. The devil’s engineers had the range now and began to pound the battlements. A fire-pot of some kind landed next to the trebuchet, flung burning splashes of something that clung like tar and could not be beaten out till the two wizards of the tower wrote signs against it in chalk. By then there was a screaming, writhing woman, her face unrecognizable, to carry down, and one of the support beams of the trebuchet was burnt through. The burned woman, a slinger from the hills, died before the engineers got their beam replaced. Two other Marakanders died, smashed by stone shot, and half a dozen others were wounded by arrows. The enemy was closer now. Their wheeled tower was lost but they had scaling-ladders. Nikeh concentrated her shots on those carrying ladders.
The captain had come up from her post in the central chamber below the bell-ropes and was in urgent conversation with Lia. One archer more or less was going to make no difference. Nikeh traded places with one of the Marakanders. Her right hand was cramping, left arm starting to waver. She climbed the ladder to the roof of the belfry, joined Danil keeping watch there. A good vantage point.
She had thought of the ocean she had not seen in years when she first saw the army; from here the comparison seemed even more apt. The curve of the wall, down and back, the uneven motion—they were the cliff-face of the coast, and the devil-worshippers the waves curling, rushing and retreating from arrows and fire, pushin
g forward again.
Not much retreating.
Banners hung limp. The All-Holy’s white, with the black symbols of his cult, the script that Teacher said Nikeh could not learn to read, no human could.
Marakand’s banners were a tricolour, yellow over blue over white for its three gods, dead through two of them might be. The limp silk overhead stirred. Breeze touched her face.
“Nikeh, keep your head down!” Lia Dur, looking up.
“You’ve been told.” Danil grinned. “Bossy, eh?” He dropped to his knees, tipped over. Dark fletching stood from his eye.
“Down!”
But she stayed where she was, crouched behind the belfry’s low parapet. The enemy had reached the wall at another way-tower lower down, between her station and the gate, and soldiers were swarming up their siege-tower and across the bridge almost before it thumped down. Ladders ran up along that section. Some were pushed back or shoved sliding sideways, carrying down screaming dark figures that seemed hardly human. Others were made fast, defended by those who had been climbing even as they were raised. The Westrons already covered the platform of the tower, a writhing mass of human lives. Impossible to say which way it was going. Neither had any consistent uniform; there were street-guard russet tunics, but there were far more Marakanders on the wall than were street-guard, and few of the attackers had more than a red armband or a white badge badly copied from the flags to proclaim themselves. Too easy to kill a friend in that mess and she was glad of her clearly Marakander gear.
More up that tower, up the ladders, and more, and the tower seemed to absorb them. She could almost feel the terror, the fighting in the close spaces as floor by floor, chamber by chamber, the All-Holy’s folk fought their way down, the floors grown slick with blood—mama must have died so, defending the princess and her little heir in the tower of Emrastepse…