Worse almost were the winged forms—ospreys, hawks, eagles, and ravens—that rose in a feathered cloud and then dropped again to the stony heights where they had taken refuge.
"I am not one," Firekeeper called, "not even with my 'dog' and these 'birdies' you see. I am many. Come though, and for me they will let you go."
Waln didn't believe her. The yarimaimalom were clever. Shivadtmon had told him this. They were using the girl as a mouthpiece—with her knowing or not. They would never let the northerners escape.
Behind him, the other men had gathered, peering around and sinking back in consternation.
"We going to surrender, Captain?" asked Nolan, always the weak stick.
"To be torn to shreds?" Rarby spat. "You really believe her?"
Waln was glad Rarby had spared him the rebuttal. He hadn't been certain he could keep the panic from his voice. Now he very carefully schooled it into a sneer.
"Surrender? I don't think so. I've been prisoner long enough—and have you forgotten? We have Shelby's lady love upstairs, just waiting to be our shield. We'll get away yet."
"Upstairs has another advantage," Rarby said. "They won't slip back and forth so easily when we've got the drop on them. Shel, help me wrestle these doors shut."
There was no protest from without as the doors were closed, and Tedgewinn brought over a couple of the wooden probes he'd cut earlier.
"We can use these to shim the door tight," he said. "Better than a bar, because pushing will jam them tighter. Elwyn, lend me a hand."
Waln didn't worry about these minor usurpations of his authority. The men were acting as might sailors in a storm, each tending to his own department, thus freeing him to plan and judge the larger picture. The stair up first.
"Shivadtmon," Waln said, "you were over inspecting the staircase. Will it take us? Some of us are much heavier than Rahniseeta."
"Should," Shivadtmon said. "They were good builders. The supports are anchored in the outer wall. Still, be wisest if we didn't go up all at once."
"Fine," Waln said. "Shelby, you've been panting to go after the girl. You first. When you get up, we'll anchor a line so if the stair can't take repeated use we'll have another way up and down."
After arguing for just this chance, Shelby could hardly refuse. He even looked eager and anxious as he coiled the length of rope about his waist, leaving his arms free to carry bow—and knife, if necessary.
No one was saying anything about whatever had made Rahinseeta scream, for no one wanted to do anything to make Shelby change his mind now that someone had to lead the way up. Of course Elwyn stopped pounding shims under the door to bleat loudly:
"Be careful, Shel. I bet Rahniseeta saw one of those big birds. They'd like it up there. They'd rip out your eyes faster than I fart after eating beans."
Shelby glowered at the fool, but his pride was too entangled with the venture now for him to stop.
"Thanks," he said, securing the last of the line, and checking his bow. "I'll remember to shoot high."
He went up the stairs one at a time, and to Waln, watching with Shivadtmon from the foot of the stair, it was evident he was testing every block.
"Creaks a bit," Shelby called down, "but I think it's sound."
He tried the first door he came to. The latch wouldn't budge, but when he pounded his shoulder against the old wood, something snapped and the door creaked open.
"I'm not going in there," Shelby announced. "The floor is rotted. Looks like a mouse's weight would make it give. No way Rahniseeta went in there."
Leaving the door open behind him, Shelby mounted the stair. There was something in how he took the steps that made Waln guess the sailor was thinking about turning around, but he kept going until he came to the next landing.
Once again, the door wouldn't move, but the latch lifted easily beneath the pressure of his thumb.
"Something's holding the door fast," Shelby called down. "Rahniseeta would have had time to throw a bolt, and presence of mind to do it, too. She's a clever lass. Have someone bring me an axe. The door's only wood. We can cut through."
"Tedgewinn, bring Shelby an axe," Waln called.
The carpenter not only did so, he braved the stair to help with the chopping. Wiatt, speaking from where he was looking out through a narrow slit left between the front door and jamb by weather warping, gave impetus for this boldness.
"Can't see clearly," the cook reported, "but there's motion out there. Those giant wolves are sniffing around, sure as yeast makes the bread dough rise."
"They'll be sniffing back blood when we get up there," Rarby said confidently. "Stop dragging your feet, Shelby!"
Shelby ignored his brother. Tedgewinn had broken a hole through one of the door panels, and Shelby had stuck his hand through and was working it about. His head was thrown back slightly and his eyes were closed as if this would give his hand the use of the vision he wasn't using.
Idiocy, Waln thought.
He drifted over to where Wiatt was still peering out through the crack.
"Anything?"
"Nothing," Wiatt said. "Guess they figured they can't get through the door. Maybe they're figuring on starving us out."
The cook sounded rather anxious at the prospect, but Waln just laughed.
"We carried water with us, and food enough. We'll have convinced them a siege would be too costly long before we're feeling any hunger."
Wiatt didn't ask just how this miracle would be achieved, and Waln didn't offer details. He paced back to where Shelby was still working at the door.
"Any sign of the girl?" he asked.
"No," Shelby said. "Nothing but some sticks of old furniture. I've got the bolt open, but there's a bar, too, and that's harder to lift… "
He was twisting about as he spoke, obviously working to get an angle on the bar.
"There," he grunted, satisfaction evident in the sound. "Be just a minute now."
He pulled himself away from the door, and glanced at Tedgewinn. The carpenter had a crossbow in one hand, a hatchet in his belt. Shelby retrieved his own crossbow from where he'd set it.
"Be ready to follow us up," he said.
Then, taking cover behind the doorjamb, Shelby gave the door a push. It swung inward, but from beneath Waln could see nothing.
"What's there?" he called.
"Nothing," Shelby said, "just furniture, but from the marks on the floor someone's been in here recently enough to mark up the dust. There's another door. I'm going to check it."
Tedgewinn stood in the open doorway watching. A moment later he called down, "The other door is locked, too. Why don't you start coming up? Someone else can see where the stair goes above while we work here."
Waln nodded.
"Wiatt, you see where the stair goes. Rarby, you keep watch where Wiatt was. The rest of you, follow up but try and keep no more than two on the stair at a time. I'll stay with Rarby in case Lady Blysse and her critters try to break through."
The reminder moved them along nicely, and though the old staircase creaked and the occasional shower of mortar dust fell as the more heavy-footed made their way up, the old building proved solid.
Waln heard rhythmic thumping as Shelby put a hatchet to work on the inner door. The blows sounded heavy and angry. Waln smiled to himself.
Are you there behind the door, Rahniseeta? I hope you're scared, because I think Shelby wants to speak with you about running away—and somehow I don't think he's much a man of many words. He's so much more comfortable with using his hands.
When the sound of booted feet coming up the stone stairs reverberated dully into the room where Rahniseeta waited with the maimalodalum, she was surprised by the course of action her new allies chose.
Questioner crossed to one of the narrow windows and, standing on his hind legs, looked outside through a break in the shutter. He dropped then and said something Rahniseeta could not follow to his two companions. Sky immediately crossed to a door in the inner wall and opened it. Hope
and Questioner turned to follow.
"Are you still with us?" Hope asked when Rahniseeta didn't move to accompany them.
"Shouldn't," Rahniseeta asked hesitantly, "someone stay and make sure they don't get through?"
"There is no stopping that," Hope said. "You yourself pulled the bolt and set the bar we had put by for our own use in just such an eventuality, but surely you can see the door itself is very old. If those men are determined—as they have every reason to be—they will break through."
"But we could do something as they came through," Rahniseeta protested. "They couldn't get through more than one at a time."
"True," Hope said, "but we are largely unarmed. We had hoped to be out of here before this."
Her statement puzzled Rahniseeta, but something else the bird-woman had said demanded more immediate attention.
"Reason?" Rahniseeta said, moving somewhat reluctantly to follow. "You mean me?"
"Don't sound so guilty," Hope said briskly. "You are certainly one reason the men will come this way, but a greater one is that Firekeeper has shown herself to the men. She has offered them opportunity to surrender to her and the yarimaimalom. They have refused. As this tower is now their fortress, they must investigate it."
"Firekeeper? How do you know all of this?" Rahniseeta asked. "By magic?"
"Hardly," Questioner replied, and his dry laugh sounded more like a bark. "When I went to the window just now, Bitter the raven told me the newest developments. His mate, Lovable, has been listening from just outside one of the open windows on the first floor. She's quick with languages, and has picked up Pellish quite nicely."
"How?"
"Listening to the classes the northerners have been teaching. She prefers someone named Barnet Lobster, I believe."
Shaking her head in mild astonishment, Rahniseeta passed through the door and helped Questioner draw the bolt and set the bar. Then she turned to examine the room.
The wall to her left was curved, the plaster that had once covered the stone fallen away except for a few patches randomly placed. The area around a large window about halfway into the room was uniformly devoid of plaster, and pale green-tinted light came through the vines that grew directly over the broken glass.
The room was minimally furnished, with a few broken sticks of what might have been furniture resting on what once must have been magnificent glazed tiles. The tiles were now cracked and their glaze dimmed, whatever patterns that had once been painted on them obscured.
At the far end of the room a door stood open, apparently stuck that way. Through the opening Rahniseeta could see a room that was even less hospitable, for the floor bowed near the center. Recalling the weakened beams she had noted below, Rahniseeta thought she knew the reason for this.
"Walk close to the outer wall," Hope said from where she stood with Sky near the window. "We do not trust the soundness of the floor near the center."
Rahniseeta's only problem in obeying was that even with ample evidence that the edge of the floor remained sound, her knees trembled when she thought of moving. Not wishing to seem a coward, she bit her inner lip and forced her feet to move. Once they were doing so and nothing collapsed beneath her, she regained her confidence.
"What next?" she asked.
"Before you arrived," Questioner said, "we were salvaging the last of what we think may be important. Since this tower began deteriorating beyond our ability to effect repairs, we have been slowly removing things, but you know how it is."
The jaguar-wolf body gave a very human shrug. "You always think you have time to finish an unpleasant and rather dull job. There were a few things remaining. Had we had a few more hours, this tower would have stood empty."
Sky turned from where he had been leaning half out the window and Rahniseeta saw he held a rope in his hand. The eagle head gave a shrill but distinctly conversational shriek.
"That's the… " Questioner was beginning when a loud crash from the other room announced that the door had been broken through.
Shelby's voice could be clearly heard, though what he said was—to Rahniseeta's hearing—dulled by the intervening wall and the fact that he was shouting to those below. Questioner's wolf ears were by no means so limited.
"They're going to be moving more quickly now," he said, helping Sky haul in a length of fairly heavy rope. "We've lowered down the last of the salvage. Rahniseeta, you down first."
"No," she said. "They have reason not to shoot me. They'll have none not to go for you. Someone else go first and I'll stand where I'll be the first thing they see when they come through the door."
"That's risky," Questioner said—not as if he was doubting the wisdom of her plan, just as one states a fact.
"I know," Rahniseeta said, "but it makes sense. Get to it."
She moved away from the window, and the maimalodalum did not move to stop her.
"Fine," Questioner said. "You next, Hope."
The bird-woman did not argue, and Rahniseeta wondered fleetingly at the rationale for choosing her as the first to be gotten away. Where they protecting her because she was female? Or because if it came to a fight she was the least naturally equipped for violence? Or some other reason that made sense only if you were a maimalodalu?
Certainly, Sky's eagle's beak was a nasty weapon and his scaled fingers ended in what looked rather like talons. Questioner's paws ended in something like fingers, but his teeth didn't look wholly human. He might wield a weapon and bite as well. And, frankly, either of the males was more dangerous-looking, more purely monstrous, than the bird-woman. Hope, if looked at without the element of shock coloring one's opinion, was actually rather pretty.
Rahniseeta searched among the broken furniture bits for something she might turn into a club. Though she carefully kept from the center of the room, she imagined she felt the beams beneath her groan, and as soon as she found a solid table leg she scooted back toward the edge.
She listened intently as someone tried the door. There was a rattle as the latch was worked, than a few dull thuds as if someone was trying to ram it with his shoulder. Then Shelby's voice, distinct though muffled, said:
"Probably bolted again. Give me the hatchet, Tedge."
Rahniseeta skittered closer as the first blows hit the old wood, splintering it easily. The doors had been well made, but the maimalodalum had been right. Over a hundred years of damp, of summer heat and winter cold, had not been kind to the stuff. Apparently, the maimalodalum had made some efforts to maintain the towers, but when this one had deteriorated beyond their abilities, they'd given it back to the elements.
Rahniseeta hefted her club, inching closer to the opening as the hatchet widened it to permit questing fingers. She stayed out of direct line of sight, knowing how limited the scope would be. Whoever looked through might glimpse a little motion from over by the window, but probably not even that if he was accustomed to light other than the dim green-filtered sunlight.
As she had expected, a hand—Shelby's most certainly, she was all too well acquainted with his hands—came through, feeling for the bolt. Rahniseeta took a deep breath and swung her table leg, aiming carefully for the fingers.
She hit, and felt an atavistic thrill of pride as she heard Shelby howl in pain.
She heard Tedgewinn laugh very unkindly.
"I guess the lady doesn't want to be rescued," he said. "At least not by you, Shel."
No one had taught Rahniseeta the string of Pellish words with which Shelby responded, but Rahniseeta didn't need a translator to know they were profane. She grinned to herself, and readied the table leg for another strike.
From overhead there came a dull thumping and bits of dirt rained down. Worried, she spared a glance for Questioner and Sky. The human face with its wolfish ears gave her an encouraging smile, and Sky looked up from watching Hope make her descent and pointed with his beak toward the ceiling.
Rahniseeta looked where he had pointed and saw that the beams above were reassuringly solid. She also understood the
maimalodalum's silence. Best that Shelby and those with him didn't realize she wasn't alone.
But although they were in no danger from the roof caving in on them, the man above—Wiatt, so it proved—offered another danger. They heard him give an excited yell, which was followed almost immediately by a wolf's howl from without. Before the wolf's howl stopped vibrating in the afternoon heat, Wiatt's voice shouted excitedly.
"I saw one of them! I saw one of the bastards! I got off an arrow! Don't know if I hit anyone, but I think I might. Did you hear the bastard yell?"
Questioner dropped to all fours—he'd been leaning with his upper body on the windowsill helping Sky lower Hope—and padded over.
"No one was hit," he said very softly to Rahniseeta, "but we're going to have to wait to lower anyone else. We'd just be trapped at the base."
"Hope?"
"She's skirting the base under the vines and should get away. The northerners won't have it all their own way. Firekeeper will do something."
Questioner spoke with almost parental pride, and Rahniseeta wondered with a trace of jealousy at the relationship that had grown with such apparent speed between the maimalodalum and the wolf-woman. Not long ago Firekeeper hadn't even known them as legends. Now, apparently, she was their general.
But Rahniseeta fought back this unkind thought. Firekeeper had come to Misheemnekuru very quickly—probably as soon as she had learned of Rahniseeta's message. That meant that Derian and probably Harjeedian were near, too.
Rahniseeta felt very strange as she realized that she had not so much as thought of any of them for what seemed like a lifetime. Her universe had collapsed into a sphere in which the only realities had been herself, her captors, and now the maimalodalum. It was almost as if she had not dared think of those she had left behind, of the messages she had left, for fear that somehow what she had done would be discovered and undermined.
Now, though, she thought of it, and felt a thrill of relief. She and the maimalodalum need only hold out and rescue would come. She shifted her table leg in her hand and watched for motion coming through the hole in the door, determined to do her part.
There had been lots of shouting in response to Wiatt's announcement, much pounding up and down the stairs. Apparently, Rahniseeta had been forgotten in the greater excitement, but she did not believe for a moment that they would continue to forget. Shelby would want revenge for what she'd done to his hand, and if he was in no condition to get it, Rarby would take great delight in roughing her up on his brother's behalf.
Wolf Captured Page 68