If the axe-handle really had been a blade it would have gone clean through.
The head was hardly less broad than a fist, and the awesome weight of the blow catapulted the guardsman clean out of the saddle and over the rump of his mount. The horse reared up, but Andris had already dropped his weapon and he leaned sideways, groping at full stretch for the trailing rein. He was 133
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fortunate enough to touch it with his fingers, and he clutched it with gleeful tenacity Merel Zabio let out a mighty cheer mighty enough to have brought a horde of avengers hurtling towards them had there not been so many other voices trying to out-scream one another. Within ten seconds he had brought the horse back to her. She thrust the captured sword into his hand as she took the reins, then clambered up into the saddle in a most ungainly fashion.
"Can you ride?" he shouted, as she settled herself rather uncomfortably.
She did not deign to answer. Instead, she said: "Go for the City Gate, and don't stop for anything!"
The advice was far easier to offer than to take. The crowd in the courtyard was so dense that it was well-nigh impossible to force the horse into a gallop, and now that they were in plain sight others were beginning to realise that they were enemies. Another guardsman ran towards them on foot, but had to turn aside when Andris raised the sword to strike at him, and Merel saw him in plenty of time to keep out of harm's way. The soldier cried out an alarm, but the cry was wordless and half-strangled, and would not have been heard or heeded even in far better circumstances.
Another man- presumably a servant- grabbed at the mare's bridle as Andris went by, and' actually caught it for a moment, but he was no hero and he let go rather than risk being trampled or stabbed. By now Andris was gathering momentum, and the clatter of the mare's hooves seemed to have a marvelous magical ability to cause the crowd to melt away from the animal's course.
The great majority of the people in the crowd were so well used to dodging horses that it had become a kind of second nature- they may not have been consciously aware of hearing the hoofbeats, but they could pick them out from the general cacophony well enough to take the appropriate action.
Now that she had picked up speed the mare changed her paces with remarkable alacrity, and her battle training stood her in good stead.
Andris was soon able to fall in behind three other riders, who were also heading full tilt for the City Gate, letting their mounts help to clear the way. None was in uniform but all were bearing arms- whether they were servants of sufficient rank to be so entitled or guardsmen roused precipitately from their beds there
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was no way to tell, but no one could
doubt their determination or their authority. As they moved out of the Great Courtyard the crowd thinned and the noise abated slightly, but this only gave the three riders the chance to shout at their comrades to clear the way and the way was, indeed, cleared. There were a dozen armed men at the City Gate, but they were not making the slightest attempt to stop anyone riding out.
Indeed, they were waving riders through, shouting something about the need to catch carts before they could be unloaded.
As the three men ahead galloped under the arch of the gate Andris lowered his head, hoping that the gleam of starlight on his stolen helmet would be signal enough to obtain free passage. He pressed so hard on the heels of the three horses that he became the rearmost element in a diamond shaped wedge.
Neither of the men to either side looked back they dared not take their eyes off the route ahead- and the man in front must have been well known to the guardsmen at the gate, for they yelled encouragement to him as he raised his arm in salute.
Had the soldiers on foot had their way all four of the horses would have galloped on unimpeded, but there was a crowd outside the gate as well as one within, and its members were pressing forward with eager curiosity. They probably had no intention of blocking the pursuit of the carts which were carrying away the contents of the king's coinery, and certainly had no intention of exposing themselves to danger, but the leading rider in the diamond had to snatch up as he faced a wall of faces, cursing loudly. Andris hauled on his own reins, and bumped the horse to his right, which nearly came down.
There was a moment's awful hesitation, when everything gained might have been lost, but the sheer momentum of the horses carried them through in spite of the narrowness of the gap, tumbling citizens of Xandria to the left and to the right as they tried, unsuccessfully, to get out of the way.
The horse to Andris's right veered off as soon as it was clear of the crush, and Andris veered too, taking his own mount out of the tight formation. As he came away he was seen clearly for the first time, and he heard a shout of
"Darklander!" from way behind him. Others must have heard the shout too, but none could have known for certain which way to look, and the people around him now were unarmed, with not a red skirt in sight. He ducked low over i35
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the mare's neck again, and rode for dear life across the open square and into the first street that yawned invitingly before him. He looked round as he moved into the star-shadow of the houses, and saw that Merel Zabio was right behind him.
Unfortunately, she was not alone.
A guardsman with a spear was riding after her, and was almost alongside. She must have known he was there but she was staring dead ahead, concentrating all her efforts on the guidance of her horse.
The pursuing rider was already raising the spear, trying to get into a position from which he could contrive a mortal thrust. Andris reined in hard. The mare couldn't stop, and certainly couldn't turn, but she slowed dramatically, and that was enough to bring the other two horses rapidly up behind. Andris caught Merel's eye, and knew that although there was no time to signal she knew what to do. She steered her mount so that it came to Andris's left, while the guardsman found himself forced to choose between going to the right or cannoning into Andris.
Unfortunately, the guardsman was cast in the heroic mould. He looked Andris full in the face, aimed the spear at the gap between his shoulder-blades, and drove straight forward, heedless of the danger of taking a fall.
Andris yanked hard on the rein and pulled his own mount sideways, but all the advantage was now with the man behind and the point of the spear hurtled'
towards the middle of his back.
Andris ducked as low as-h? possibly could and suppressed the anticipatory scream that swelled in his lungs'. He felt the head of the spear glide along the bumpy line of his backbone, slicing cloth and flesh, but he knew immediately that he had escaped death. The point of the spear caught the rim of the stolen helmet and flipped it clear of Andris's head. Andris lashed out sideways with his right hand- which had somehow lost the sword it had been clutching but a moment before smashing his fist upon the nose of the guardsman's horse just as it ran into the mare's heels. Both horses could easily have come down, but the mare was both agile and courageous. She danced away from the bump while the other took a crashing fall.
Andris couldn't look back to see whether the rider or his unlucky mount had been seriously injured. As he tried to straighten up he experienced the strangest sensation, as if his back
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were on fire from waistline to neck. He
could feel the two halves of his divided shirt flapping wetly in the wind.
"Follow me!" Merel shouted to him, having by now taken the lead. Her voice seemed unnecessarily loud, and the command unreasonably difficult. Andris felt very sick and exceedingly giddy, and every fall of the mare's hooves
seemed to reverberate through his body. His back now felt as though all the elements of his spine had suddenly fused together, so that the least jar was like the scalding strike of a whip.
He heard himself moaning piteously, like a lovesick cat, and wondered why he had not the breath to howl like a man.
The sound of the vast crowd gathered outside the citadel died away in the distance, but Andris no longer knew where he was or where he might be going.
The mare was making her own way now, but she was slowing down. He was grateful for that.
The mare went slower and slower, but she had not quite stopped when he heard a voice saying: "Andris! Let me take the reins!" He would have surrendered the reins gladly enough had he only known how, but he no longer seemed to be connected to his own arms. He hardly seemed to be connected to the world at all. and such connection as he retained was rapidly unravelling.
He heard a voice saying
"Rot! Rot! Rot!" -- but the obscenity was spoken in a very strange way, more anguished than angered. Then he heard the same voice saying: "You can't die on me, you bastard. After I went through all that, you can't rotting die on me!" Andris summoned up every vestige of his strength, reminding himself that he was big enough to be thought half-giant.
"I'm alive!" he whispered.
"Ride! Ride! I'll follow to the Navel of the World, if that's what's needed. " It was all bravado, but saying it -- and having his valiant cousin believe it- was all that was required to make it true.
She rode on, and he followed, with no scope in his throbbing head for any thought at all save a defiant determination that he mustn't lose consciousness lest he fall off his horse and die. i37
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king be ling of
Xandria sat on his uncomfortable throne in his dismal throne room- it seemed dismal even by daylight nowadays, despite the heroic efforts invested in the maintenance of the carpet and wall-hangings- and listened with gritted teeth to report after report on the magnitude of the tragedy which had struck his realm. He was flanked to the left by the Prince- Commander of the Armed Forces and the Chief of the Secret Police, while the Chief Steward of the citadel and the Lord High Treasurer stood to his right. All four of these worthies were aghast and angry, not to mention desperate and determined; they wailed and they shouted and they blustered, and would doubtless have gnashed their teeth if they ha4 been slightly less well bred.
Belin, by contrast, was calm and diffident. He knew that this would be taken as evidence ofjregal composure, and was perfectly content to let that interpretation stand, but the truth of the matter was that he simply didn't carp enough to get excited.
He was past caring about the loss of twelve barrels of newly refreshed coin.
He was past, caring about the laxity of citadel security or the evident readiness of trusted servants to take bribes.
He was past caring about the violation of the Inner Sanctum. He couldn't even bring himself to care about the injury done to his household or the insult to his reputation.
He had to pretend to care, of course, about all of it- and more- but at least he had a reputation for regal composure to help him pretend with the minimum of effort. When he simply nodded his head at each new item in the long catalogue of atrocities and catastrophes, he could be confident that the observers would only admire him all the more for his awesome dignity and self-control. Privately, he was hardly bothering to listen.
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happened;
Belin liked life to be uneventful. Given that it had happened, though, the scrupulous accumulation of details seemed to him to be ineffably tedious and inconsequential. He would rather have shrugged his shoulders and forgotten about it but that, alas, was out of the question. A king had his obligations.
The trouble is, Belin thought, as the Chief Steward interviewed yet another lackey as to the precise extent of the damage done by the petards, that a king has far too many obligations. There are people in the world who envy me my thirty-and-one wives, my ninety-and-nine children, my boundless wealth and my glorious empire. Every man who takes pleasure in one wife- and perhaps a mistress or two on the side imagines that I enjoy that pleasure multiplied many times.
Every man who takes pride in three or four children imagines that I possess that pride exaggerated to its limit. Every man who has more than enough wealth to live in the manner to which he is accustomed imagines that I experience his every appetite greatly magnified and yet fully satisfied.
Every man who has authority over a household and half a dozen servants imagines that I exert such power over a space which extends from horizon to horizon and far beyond. . .
And yet, a man who has thirty-and-one wives has no intimates at all, merely a flock of laying hens whose furious clucking is all envy and pride; and a man who has ninety-and-nine children has no true heirs at all, merely a herd of fattened pigs whose snuffling and snorting is all ambition and greed; and a man -who has far more wealth than he could ever spend can take satisfaction in nothing; and a man who rules the greatest empire in the world is nothing but the bulkiest and most tortuous knot in a huge net, whose one and only privilege is to be pulled this way and that. . and that . . . and that .
. .
until his every sinew and sensation is strained to the limit of human endurance . . .
The king had immersed himself so completely in this reverie that the Prince-Commander of the Armed Forces actually had to touch him on the arm to reclaim his attention. He was sufficiently skilled in such matters not to start. He raised his arm in reflexively negligent acknowledgement.
A young man had been brought to stand before the throne. He was, to judge by his face, an extremely unhappy young man. He seemed horribly conscious of the fact that he was weary, i39
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dishevelled and unwashed. Presumably, like
almost everyone else in the citadel, he VSd been awake for more than forty hours, twenty of which had been spent in furious- if ultimately hopeless-action.
Like everyone else, he would doubtless have done his utmost to salvage something from the disaster unfolding around him, and like everyone else he would doubtless have failed dismally in every possible respect.
"Captain Cerri, majesty," the Prince-Commander explained.
"The officer in command of the night-watch." The Prince- Commander clearly didn't want his august father to miss any part of this particular episode; it was to be a climax of sorts.
"Of course," Belin said, looking down at the damned man. Captain Cerri clearly knew that he was damned, but did not seem inclined to resist his fate. He was probably not much concerned about the magnitude of the punishment likely to be visited upon him, because he knew how thoroughly he deserved it and was bitterly ashamed of himself. He was all the more ashamed because he had to face his accusers looking like something which had crawled out of the gutter.
Belin, who had lately made stern efforts to cultivate a taste for perversity, instantly took a lining to the young man.
"How do your men fare. Captain Cerri?" asked the Prince- Commander, immediately taking the initiative. He was fully entitled so to do, by virtue of the fact that he was the man ultimately in charge of the king's guard.
"None dead, sir," the young man reported dully.
"Several struck down by the darts which the dark landers fired. Two trampled by horses, two wounded in the arms by knife-thrusts, one with a broken head.
All will recover, according to the doctors."
"No worse, then, than the injuries suffered by the other companies which came rushing to your aid," observed the Prince- Commander. It was obvious that he did
n't mean the judgment as a compliment. "No sir," the young man admitted.
"None dead," the Prince-Commander repeated, emphasising the words with ominous force.
"The citadel is invaded, the wall breached for the first time in a thousand years, and every single man set to guard it is so enthusiastic to protect his own skin that the intruders get clean away. Clean away!"
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The young man winced at the unfairness of the judgment, but knew better than to protest. Belin raised his hand to put a temporary stop to the torture.
"How did they get past the men you had stationed at the City Gate, captain?"
the king asked, in a much milder tone- although the young man did not seem in the least reassured by its softness. "My men were felled by anaesthetic darts, majesty," he said.
"While the petard was being set against the gate a dozen men or more must have come through the gatehouse- but the men who set the other petards were already inside, having entered during the day and secreted themselves.
Others must already have been in the stables." He did not add that they must have had considerable help from within the citadel from grooms and kitchen servants, perhaps even members of the royal household. It was not his place to make such accusations, no matter how obviously warranted they were. "Why did your sentries and patrols fail to see or intercept these men?" Belin asked, although he already knew the answer. The young officer cringed.
"I'd withdrawn some of the sentries, majesty," he said, as evenly as he could, 'and halved the patrols. I had to set a trap in the prison, because I had information regarding an escape attempt. "
"Which you did not report," the Prince-Commander put in. Belin raised his hand again. The officer was no more than a boy, and a country boy at that: the son of some provincial lordling sent to make his fortune in the great city, with the aid of a commission expensively bought with hard-earned coin fully trained in the Arts Martial, though not at the expense of the State, but otherwise utterly naive.
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