The panic-stricken people were entirely ready to respond to any threat, and they scattered with awesome alacrity before the juggernaut of fevered horseflesh and seasoned hardwood, whose clattering hooves and thundering steel-rimmed wheels struck sparks from the stones. The driver was standing up, plying a huge whip with considerable vigour, and Jacom had not the slightest doubt that a two-deep rank of tight-wedged pikes inscribing a line of steel before the horses would not have been adequate to turn them back. A single line of swordsmen had no chance at all.
"Look out!" he howled at his men- a quite unnecessary order, given that they knew only too well that anyone who tried to block the passage would be ridden down and crushed. They were already scattering in disarray. Four or five missiles were hurled at the cart-driver as he passed by, but he did not flinch and did not fall.
As the horses blasted their way through Jacom caught the edge of the driver's bench with both his hands and tried to vault up on to it, but the cart was travelling so fast that the wrench nearly dislocated his shoulders, and he could not complete the daring manoeuvre. The force of the impact threw him sideways and he sprawled full length on the cobblestones. His quilted armour provided some cushioning but the crash jarred him very painfully, awakening all his old bruises and inflicting dozens more.
Aaron and Kim attempted to catch hold of the back of the cart, evidently hoping to leap up behind. They might have succeeded where Jacom had failed, but there were half a dozen men on the back of the heavily laden cart, and one of them was quick to bring down a club of some kind to break Aaron's grip, while Kim simply could not get a firm hold. Aaron fell back upon the merciless stones, howling with pain, while Kim spun away.
Jacom looked in vain for a company of mounted guardsmen to pour forth in hot pursuit.
"Get horses!" he yelled from where he lay.
"Get after them!" But it was not clear to whom the order was addressed, and the men who had tried to block the gateway made no attempt to run for the stables. All but a few formed up again as a second cart came into view, while the remainder went to help "j
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their fallen comrad|^
it was clear, had any real stomach for the task of smiting the king's enemies.
Jacom struggled to his feet unaided, but he could see well enough that there was no scope for constructive heroics. Had there been a javelin to hand he might have been able to knock the second driver from his perch, but there was no convenient missile within reach. He staggered to the line and drew two men away. They were not at all reluctant to be drawn.
"Commandeer some horses!" he gasped, pointing at the still- swelling crowd outside the gate, which had parted to let the cart through as easily as the crowd within.
"Get after that cart! At least find out where it's gone! Alert the constables and the harbour patrol! Oh, no' The final cry of anguish was occcasioned by the fact that the second cart which was driving forward at the gateway was accompanied by half a dozen galloping horses- not one of which had a rider. The chaos which had claimed the citadel evidently extended to the stables. " Cut the horses' legs'. " someone yelled meaning the horses which were drawing the cart. Jacom would have tried it had he had a blade to hand, and one or two of the men whose swords were drawn did hack out half-heartedly as they dodged aside, but the second cart scattered the gate's defenders even more easily than the first. The loose horses bovyled one or two people over, but the guardsmen had by now been left in sole charge of their territory, free to discharge their duty un helped and unhindered by panicking civilians.
No one tried to jump aboard the second cart, the risk and costs of such heroics having been all too obviously demonstrated. Helplessly, Jacom watched the cart sail past him and out into the streets of the city. He tapped two other men on the shoulder, and looked wildly about in the hope that one or more of the loose horses might have baulked and stopped. None had.
"Get out there!" he shouted.
"Find horses get after that rotting cart!"
He was not in the least surprised when a third cart followed the second. He had few companions left by now, but this time the vehicle was pursued. Three mounted guardsmen were coming after it, and dozens more were flocking to the gate on foot. They were not Jacom's men, but he yelled at them anyway, telling the
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horsemen to split up and mark the progress of all three carts but he could do no more to slow the third cart than the others. When the third cart had gone, a kind of lull seemed to descend, although the air was still full of riotous sound. Jacom sagged back against the wall, feeling utterly defeated. He knew that what had happened tonight had never happened before, and the knowledge that it had happened during his watch, in the course of his second turn of duty, seemed monumentally mis fortunate His bruises seemed to be setting his entire body afire, and he had to close his eyes against the pain, but it was another kind of hurt which made him sick to his stomach, Why me? he complained. Why me?
He had to open his eyes again as another of his men, Pavel, ran towards him.
"It's the tower, sir!" said Pavel urgently.
"Come quickly. The Inner Sanctum!"
"Has it fallen?" Jacom asked, immediately jumping to the worst of all possible conclusions.
"Are they all dead?"
"Oh, no, sir!" the guardsman answered, blinking hard and pulling at his sleeve.
"But the women are terrified! The door was blasted open and they're everywhere running blind with panic. Some of them are hurt, sir queens and maidservants alike! It's terrible, sir!"
Jacom suppressed an urge to laugh. The Inner Sanctum violated! The women of the royal household driven to panic! What unimaginable horror! When the smoke cleared, he knew full well, the king would be far more anxious for his newly refreshed coins than his thirty-and-one wives and their hysterical ladies-in-waiting. "Go back!" he told Pavel.
"Above all else, we must secure the gate. Do you understand me?"
"But you must come, sir!" the man wailed.
"You must!" Corrosion and corruption! Jacom thought. There are a thousand places I must be, a thousand stations I must hold, a thousand orders I must give and what will it all count for, when morning dawns? I'm as good as dead and damned . . . perhaps better off dead and damned. "It's the women, sir," Pave! said again, plaintively.
"You have to come, sir, to keep order. All chaos is breaking loose, sir!
Someone will pay for this!"
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"Not in ready moi^y, soldier," Jacom told him, revelling in the grim humour of it.
"You can be sure of that much."
His private thoughts, alas, could not raise quite as much sardonic bravado as his spoken words. Damn that amber and his filthy friends!
he raged inwardly. I'll pay them out for this foul trick if it's the last thing I ever do! Even as he thought it, though, he felt utterly impotent to do any such thing . or anything else that might save him from ruination.
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i7 the barrack-room at the bottom of the long stairway was ill-lit, although there were half a dozen narrow windows emitting starlight and a few tallow candles burning. Having come from the dark crawlspace above the cells, though, Andris had no difficulty adapting his eyes. The room held more than forty beds, most of which gave every evidence of having been quit in a desperate hurry; blankets, bolsters and items of clothing had been scattered in every direction.
Merel Zabio, who was still holding the door ajar while peeping through it, indicated with the briefest of nods that she was satisfied that
it was safe to proceed, and moved hurriedly on. She had only taken three steps into the room- with Andris two paces behind her- when one of the bundles of blankets suddenly stirred, and a man sat up in one of the bunks, pointing at the newcomers.
"Halt!" he commanded.
"Who goes there?" He must have realised immediately what the answer was, because he didn't hesitate for an instant before following the challenge with a cry of
"Here, mates! To me! To me! Escapers!"
Andris fully expected the guardsman to leap out of bed and seize the sword belt which hung from a hook above the bed, and made ready to fight- but the challenger remained where he was, in a sitting position, pointing his accusative finger. Andris realised why when he saw that the soldier's eyes had grown wide with excited recognition.
It was the guardsman who had been hurt in the brawl at the Wayfaring Tree-the man whose injury had landed him in prison in the first place. The soldier was still sitting down with his legs outstretched because he couldn't get up. His leg was still in plaster. "Run for it!" said Merel Zabio, following her own advice without the slightest hesitation.
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The barrack-roog^yas long and narrow, and the door at the far end seemed a very long way away- but no one had as yet come through it in response to the guardsman's cry. The noise in the Great Courtyard was so tempestuous that the probability of anyone having heard was virtually negligible. Andris picked up pace so quickly that he was able to draw level with his cousin within a few strides. This was the first opportunity he had had to see her clearly, and he realised somewhat to his surprise- that her skin was so dark that she might almost have passed for a purebred golden. Had he seen her at a distance, dressed as she was, he would have taken her for a boy rather than a girl. Her hair was cut very short and any feminine curves she might have had were concealed by her loose-fitting jacket and trousers. She was younger than he but not by much, and her skin had the weatherbeaten look of a sailor man He guessed that she might have been a deckhand on one of the wide-hulled galleys which traded between Xandria and the Thousand Isles.
Something heavy sailed through the air after them, landing less than a met behind Andris's flying heels. Andris winced as he half- turned to see what it was, imagining that he had just avoided being transfixed by a javelin, but in fact it was only a water-jug, which would not have done any substantial damage even if it had clipped his heels. He could not resist the temptation to look back at the angry guardsman and grin. ; "Come back, you bastard!"
shouted the wounded soldier optimistically.
"It wasn't me!" Andris shouted over his 'shoulder, as Merel paused to snatch something from one of the beds.
"I'm not the one who broke your leg!"
The guardsman had now managed to get down from the bed, and was standing awkwardly beside it with one leg rigid, but he had no spear within reach, nor anything else which would serve as a deadly missile. He could do nothing but shake his fist at the fleeing pair, shouting: "That doesn't mean you can just run away!"
Still no one came in response to the guardsman's shouts, and they were able to bound down another stairway to an open door which let them out into a shadowed corner of the Great Courtyard.
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direction,
shouting madly at one another. Twenty or thirty loose horses were galloping hither and yon across the courtyard, frightened by the racket and the clouds of smoke that were drifting from the Inner Sanctum and the coinery. The half-dressed grooms and soldiers who were chasing the beasts were adding to their panic. Half a dozen lantern-bearing servants milling about the stable doors were being shouted at from every direction by at least thirty others ardently desirous of light. Those horses still within were in a state of high excitement. No doubt they had been trained to remain steady under battle conditions- including all kinds of fireworks- but the present situation was quite unlike any they would ever have faced before, if only because of the astonishing number of frightened women who were spilling out of the central tower, wailing in terror and anguish. It was well-nigh impossible to tell the queens from the lowliest maidservants.
Merel pulled Andris into a quiet covert from which they could see everything.
"Wow!" she said.
"Checuri certainly knows how to put on a show. He said it'd be worth watching."
"But how the rotting hell do we get out?" Andris wanted to know.
"It's three hundred mets to the City Gate and there's at least five hundred people in the way."
"This is the most difficult part," she admitted.
"The carts Checuti's men were sent to steal have long gone, and every guardsman and groom who can ride will be saddling up for the pursuit. On the other hand, nobody's got a thought to spare for the likes of us. If we can just cover up that big pale face of yours no one'll give us a second glance.
Can you ride?"
"Of course I can ride!" he told her.
"OK no need to take offence, prince. In that case, we either grab a couple of saddles and rig up our own chargers, or we go for ones that've been kit ted out already and dispossess whoever's on top. I vote for number two, provided you're up to it. Are you?" The way she said it implied another insult, but he knew that was just a tactical ploy.
"I'm up to it," he assured her, 'but I can't do much about the colour of my face. "
"Stick this on," Merel said, handing him a guardsman's helmet. He realised that it must have been what she paused to pick up in 131
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the barrack-room.
He took it. It fitted tightly, but it did cover his forehead and the sides of his face.
"What about. . . ?" he began, but shut up very abruptly as Merel, who had crouched down while he was donning the helmet, splashed something wet and sticky over his chin and cheeks. It was mostly mud, but not entirely; he dared not open his mouth to protest until she had finished smearing it.
"It's not much," she said, 'but whatever you look like, it isn't a dark lander Go get a horse, cousin. And when you've got yours, get another one for me. "
Andris didn't have to look far for a likely target. Providence was obviously taking his side for once. Not fifteen mets away two young grooms had grabbed the reins of a bucking mare and were doing everything possible to quiet her while a guardsman tried to put a saddle on her back. The task completely absorbed the attention of all three, and Andris was able to come up behind the guardsman as soon as the girth-strap was fastened and tightened.
Everything fell into place perfectly. The horse consented to be calm and the guardsman put his left foot into the stirrup. Andris tapped him on the right shoulder and he turned reflexively, just in time to line up his chin with a Vicious right hook. Fortunately, the unlucky guardsman's foot slipped smoothly out of the stirrup, and Andris slipped his own in its pace while the two stable-lads stood gawping.
; "Privilege of rank," he assured them, as he swung himself up.
"I'm the ambassador from Ferentina." ' The mare tossed her head, but seemed'
to find his weight reassuring, and the lads surrendered the reins without objection or alarm. While he looked around for another horse to steal, Merel hurried out of the covert carrying what looked like an axe-handle.
"Sorry," she said, as she passed it up.
"It's all I could find."
As Andris turned away, lifting the makeshift weapon like a mace, Merel knelt beside the guardsman he had knocked over. The man was already sitting up, dazed but not unconscious. She put out a hand as if to help him up and he took it- but while he was only halfway up, still reliant on her support, she let go, and hit hi
m in the face with her other fist as he fought for balance.
Then she grabbed at the sword he wore at his waist, and managed to pull it free from its scabbard.
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By this time the stable-boys had finally reached the conclusion that something was amiss, and moved as if to tackle her, but now the sword was in her hand she had only to scowl at them to make them change their minds.
Andris would have hauled his cousin up behind him, but their combined weights would have put far too much strain on the poor mare, and Andris wanted to be sure of getting well away from the citadel before his mount ran out of strength. He looked around again, and this time saw a fast-approaching problem. Another mounted guardsman had noticed Merel's ploy, and had leapt to the conclusion that anyone laying low one of his comrades was likely to be one of the perpetrators of the dire chain of events which had brought chaos to the citadel. He was already charging, yelling for support as he came.
The weapon he was wielding was no axe-handle but a very solid sabre.
Andris, somewhat to his own astonishment, was not in the least intimidated.
Almost five years had passed since he had last been in the saddle, and it was nearly seven since he had been tutored in the skills of fighting from horseback, but he suddenly felt very much at home. He tweaked the reins, hoping that the lore of horse-training was more consistently universal than the law or the making of maps, and was glad when the mare did exactly as she was bid, turning to put him in the right position to receive and counter the assault. As the point of the sabre thrust for his heart he swept the blade aside with the axe-handle.
There was no time for a riposte, but the attacker unwisely tried to check his horse's momentum rather than carrying through so that he could win space on which to turn. While the guardsman was still reining back Andris urged the mare after him, and by the time his adversary had everything back in balance Andris was all but on top of him. Using the axe-handle exactly as if it were a sabre Andris thrust with all his might, driving the head of his weapon into the other's ribs.
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