That idea hit him hard. Never to see Telicia again!
Yet he was torn – he thought about K-Kwan, how she had helped him, and how she had transformed before his eyes.
***
Second City, Lornwater
Ranell was doing his rounds of the various sentries and guards, trying to instil in them enthusiasm for the morrow’s attempt to take the Old City.
It was completely unexpected. A phalanx of thirty of Saurosen’s troops pushed their way out of the Old City’s Long Causeway gate, swords and spears slashing at the two soldiers and the group of townspeople who mounted a desultory guard.
Ranell recognised several accomplished soldiers, all of them battle-scarred warriors.
Ranell hollered, “To me, men, they’re counter-attacking!”
Twelve soldiers wearing General Luascar’s sigil hurried to face the sudden onrush. Behind them came a handful of townsmen wielding pitchforks and axes.
Ranell dodged a piercing spear-head and slammed his sword down on the attacker’s shield, splintering it. The man shrieked in pain as his arm was severed and dropped with the shield. Hastily, aware of the other attackers closing, Ranell silenced the man’s screaming.
It was no good; the weight of numbers and experience was taking its toll.
Half dragging a tailor who should have been sewing rather than bleeding from multiple stab wounds, Ranell shouted, “Back off, men, retreat to the barricades. We’ll hold them there!”
Ranell reckoned they left five men wounded or dead by the time they reached the barricades. He clambered over the stack of chairs and doors, heaving the bloody tailor as he went. Standing on top, he called, “Archers, give us covering fire!”
Obediently, twenty men with longbows let loose their arrows; some missiles found their mark, a forehead, throat or chest, while others were impaled on defensive shields.
Ranell helped the wounded onto the barricade and lowered them behind it. The archers continued their withering onslaught, arrows sending up a rataplan against the wooden shields and metal helms.
He crouched behind the barricade and exhaled a breath of air. Only then did he realise he’d sustained a number of cuts and bruises on shoulders and forearms. He brushed away a small trickle of blood from his forehead. At least they had halted this fresh onrush of Saurosen’s men.
***
New City, Lornwater
“We’re in luck!” Jumo Bem exclaimed to Murar Hun as he held up an earthenware pot he’d found at the back of a clothing cupboard. The clothing lay scattered over the flagstone floor, trampled by them both.
Hun walked over. “What is it?”
“Loot!” Bem tipped it up, poured the contents onto a linen shirt. The coins – mostly finars, but the odd carst among them – chinked. “We’ll have a drink to celebrate this!” He threw the pot to the floor and it broke into fragments.
At that moment a vast flabby woman of indeterminate age entered the room. Her mouth wobbled. “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Helping ourselves!” Hun rushed forward and punched her in the face, and flung her to the floor. She landed awkwardly and yelped in pain.
Bem hunkered down and grabbed most of the coins. “Let’s go – I don’t fancy tupping her!”
Cackling at the jest, Hun followed Bem, running out the door.
A short while later, Telicia returned to her home to find her mother sitting in a chair, her face drained of blood, one of her eyes bruised and half-closed.
“What’s happened?” Her heart somersaulted. “You didn’t get caught in the rioting?”
“No, no… I – I tried tidying up after them…”
“Them? Who? You’re not making sense!”
“Two men, they ransacked your house, took your savings!”
“Oh, no! Who were they?”
Her mother put her head in her hands. “I don’t know, but I think they were Saurosen’s men.”
Telicia knelt and hugged her. “Oh, mother,” she sobbed, “that money was for spending on the baby!”
“You never did tell him, did you – before he went to the mine?”
“No. I didn’t want to add to his money worries. I tried saving a little whenever I could manage it. By the time of the birth, we could probably afford to feed and clothe the little mite.” Tears streamed.
Then, abruptly, she let go and stood. She hastened to the door.
“Where are you off to now?” her mother asked in an exasperated tone.
“The smalthouse!”
***
Standing beneath the grey dusty building’s two stubby chimneys, Telicia called to the men and women clustering round the statue of Arqitor, Great Lady of the Land: “King Saurosen cares nothing for your men, he cares nothing for our families; he is a despot!”
“That’s seditious talk, Telicia!” Leel, a friend, shouted sympathetically. “Have a care!”
“Are we going to let the men do our fighting and dying?” Telicia persisted. “I say no, let us rise up now and join together to overthrow the despot!”
One after another, the women cheered and raised fists, their mouths twisting in anger, an ire that Telicia knew had been smouldering within their breasts for a long time.
A number of loitering smaltmen who were unable to go on duty, since the iron gates were still shut, came forward, and each shook her hand. One of them said, “You’re right. Lord Shatnerl was high-handed before! All lackeys of the king like him should be punished by the people!”
As if from nowhere, men and women in twos and threes emerged from the surrounding buildings, and walked out of adjoining lanes and alleyways.
Miners with faces permanently pitted by dirt, pregnant women clinging onto husbands, drooling children gripping onto skirts, all swelled the gathering group.
Telicia had never known anything like this. Her chest swelled with pride. If only Sos had lived to see her standing firm against the tyranny he abhorred.
“Willingly I will fight with my bare hands if I have to,” she shouted, “but I think we should arm ourselves first!”
Laughter and cheers mushroomed from the gathering.
As they all marched, seven abreast along the road, her friend Leel whispered, “Now you’ve done it, Telicia! By tomorrow we’ll probably all have cracked heads!”
“It’s too late to go back,” Telicia said, buoyed by encouraging calls from the rear of their growing throng. “I want a fair city for my children, and this is the way to get it!”
Leel gasped. “You’re – you’re not…?”
Warmth flushed Telicia’s cheeks. “I am,” she responded, grinning. “I’m going to have Sos’ child! Girl or boy, it will be something of him I can hold and cherish, now that Sos himself has perished in Saurosen’s dread mine.”
***
Underground
U-Gath crouched behind a huge upthrusting stone that rose to a point. “We must go back, Sos.”
“Why? We must be under Lornwater by now!”
“Ah, your hearing is not finely attuned yet. You have not dwelt with us long enough.”
“Long enough, U-Gath. I need to get outside, breathe fresh air.”
“Pandering to that need will be the death of you!”
Sos shrugged resignedly. “Yes, I know. My life now is below, not up there. If I could speak to my wife, explain, I would be able to tolerate my changed existence.”
“I have heard them, close by. Too many city-dwellers are down here now.”
“Couldn’t we speak to them, then, get a message to Telicia?”
“Most updwellers are frightened of us. Their fear translates to violence. Very few updwellers have survived to talk about us.”
“That explains the folklore about the Underpeople, I suppose. Yet, you’re not that different.”
“You have come to know us, Sos, to eat and even fight with us. Few have been fortunate enough to do that and learn from it. That is why you and your friend still live.”
“Oh, I see…”
&nbs
p; “And K-Kwan is fond of you, I think.”
“Is she?” Sos gulped, and added, “Can we go a little further, and try to find my wife?”
“No. I am sorry. We cannot hope to find her now. Something is very amiss in the three cities, something that even draws updwellers here, to threaten our realm.”
“But…”
“Your wife, what would you tell her? Goodbye? Better if she believed you dead in the mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TELICIA
“Lust is a wicked knife that cuts clean into the bone.”
- Anonymous
Second City, Lornwater
Ranell wearily rose to his feet and peered over the barricade. The wide Long Causeway that led to the gate into the Old City was crammed with soldiers. It gave him no satisfaction to note that a good number of them were bloodied. He wondered how many had relatives who were willing to fight against them. This was civil war on a small scale; for now. If Haltese couldn’t break into the Old City and wrest the throne from his father, it would result in a siege, and that could go on indefinitely. Though unpopular, Saurosen would importune other royalty to come to his aid. If outsiders joined him, then the civil war would spread wide and far – a dark pall across the land.
“I didn’t expect my father to command such loyalty from his troops,” Prince Haltese said, approaching.
Briefly nodding in greeting, Ranell replied, “They are loyal to the Black Sword, Prince, not your father. As long as Saurosen holds that symbolic weapon, he can expect their obedience.”
“Just so.” Haltese let out a heavy sigh. “I did not want it to be like this.”
“You plotted otherwise?”
“Indeed. I had arranged – not directly, you understand – for an unfortunate accident to occur while father fenced with his swordmaster…”
“But your father bested Cla-Damen Estan?”
“It would seem so. My spies tell me father held up Cla-Damen’s head to show off to the crowd. Rather theatrical of him, I thought.”
“Have you always been critical of him?”
“No. At one time, when I was a stripling, I idolised him.” He shuddered. “Until I saw what he liked to do to his subjects, what he enjoyed inflicting on the weak and vulnerable. As soon as I could, I tried to place myself as far away from him as I could manage.”
Despite himself, Ranell found he warmed to the prince after these unexpected disclosures.
“What’s that?” Haltese asked, pointing to their right.
An intersecting road was filled with people. All of them shouting and chanting.
Ranell recognised the sounds. “They’re miners – singing their digging ditties!”
“And they’re armed!” Haltese exclaimed.
***
Telicia ran with the leading group of miners, many of them wielding shovels, picks and axes. A meagre minority carried swords and spears; these were in the van. She held a washboard in one hand, which served as a modest shield, and in the other she gripped a meat cleaver. She had used it often enough to butcher a cow or sheep, but didn’t baulk at employing it against a man.
As one, they turned towards the armed soldiers who blocked the Long Causeway at the Old City gates. Her heart stumbled for an instant at sight of them.
She glanced to her left and noticed that the townsmen and soldiers in General Luascar’s livery were clambering over their barricades. Her heart thumped faster and her face flushed warm with the exhilaration. She didn’t want Sos’ child to work in the mines. Perhaps if it was a boy he could be a soldier, destined to fight for what is right and good; if it was a girl, then a marriage blessed with love and money would be desirable.
She was snapped out of her reverie as arrows rained down.
Her senses seemed more acute – she’d gathered that happened in pregnancy. She heard the fall of hundreds of feet on either side, the strained breathing of men and women running. There was no breath left for shouting battle cries. Her heart throbbed, her head swam with the excitement and the danger as arrow shafts zipped close.
She was elated as the young innman, Ranell, and many men with the eleventh toumen livery, rushed from the barricades and joined her group. She felt invicible and understood a little why soldiers fought. Blood sang in her veins!
Then they hit full force into the defenders at the Old City gate.
And in an eye’s blink Ranell was beside her, cheering her on. His sword hummed in the air as it tasted blood. The first time she used her cleaver, the sudden shock of meeting resistance – bone, not flesh – alarmed her, but she forgot she was hitting a man, it was a carcase – which proved true enough.
It didn’t take long for her to become splattered in blood – the blood of Saurosen’s men, men like those who had robbed her, who’d stolen her baby’s birthright!
She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes, cleared her vision of blood and gore. She remembered that Ajishand twinge and rejoiced.
Suffused with a glow of wonder at her state of grace, she was momentarily distracted by a huge warrior to her right. He was aiming his crossbow at Ranell.
Instinctively, she stepped in front of Ranell and threw her cleaver at the crossbow-man.
Her blade cleaved asunder the man’s head, but the bolt lodged in her chest.
Alarmingly, her pace faltered and her legs were without volition. Cries surrounded her, shouts of victory and pain in equal measure.
As she hit the ground, she worried about the baby, would the fall endanger it? Strong arms cradled her. Hazily swimming in front of her vision was the face of Ranell. His eyes glistened. Her last thought was that she hoped he was crying for her baby, a life that would never be.
***
Ranell wasn’t aware of when it happened, but they finally beat back Saurosen’s men, pushing the remnants through the Long Causeway’s Old City gate.
The gate slammed shut.
After so many deaths, they were in the same place they had been last night.
***
First Durin of Darous
Red Tellar Inn, New City, Lornwater
Retiring to his father’s office, Ranell had discarded his blood-spattered tunic and shirt and examined his cuts and abrasions. He wasn’t badly hurt. Others needed the healers’ hands more than he. Only wearing his blood-stained trousers, he lay down on the trestle bed near the desk. His fitful sleep was invaded by violent and irrational dreams, and when he was gently shaken awake by Jan-re Osa, he sat up with a start, sweat beading his brow and torso.
She held a mug containing a hot drink, her dark eyes big and round, studying him. Her pale blue shift draped elegantly from her thin frame, the gauzelike material disclosing tantalising hints of full breasts and a triangle of black between her thighs.
Shaking his head to rid himself of the enticement, he swung his legs out of the bed, took the mug in both hands and yawned. “Thank you, Osa.” His whole body seemed to ache.
“You are tired, Ranell,” she said solicitously. “Let me massage your neck, ease the kinks.”
Still foggy with lack of sleep, he nodded and sipped his drink, a honeyed estar without scent.
She walked round the bed and mounted it behind him. The first light touch of her cool fingers on his shoulders sent a pleasurable shiver through him. Her hands pressed and teased at his flesh, bringing instant relief. “That is good, Osa. You have a gift.”
“The greatest gift I have is to serve you, Ranell… In any way…”
He spluttered on his drink.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her hands now rigid on his shoulders. “Is it too hot?”
“No, the drink is good. But your comments contain a certain inappropriate heat.”
She sobbed, thrust herself away and stepped round the bed to face him. “I meant no disrespect.” She bowed her head.
He stood, reached out to her and she folded into his embrace.
She was warm, vibrant, and smelled of heady musk. Her heart beat against his chest and
her tears fell onto his bare shoulder. Gently patting her shoulders, he whispered, “You are not here to serve me or anyone. You are free. My father gave you freedom. You can go anywhere you wish, do anything.”
“I must care for my child. That is my priority.”
“Of course. You must stay and do that.” He disentangled himself, yet was still trapped by her deep brown eyes.
Her thick lips parted slightly and her eyes darkened, and her lids half lowered. He sensed a warmth emanating from her and gazed down at her rising chest.
Knocking sounded insistently on the door and shattered the moment.
He walked past her, grabbed a clean shirt as he made for the door. “Who is it?”
“Aeleg, sir. General Luascar is assembling our people downstairs.”
“I will be there presently.” He returned his attention to Osa.
She sat on the bed, hunched forward, arms resting on her knees. Tears streamed over her cheeks.
He didn’t have time for this! He donned the shirt, plucked the blood-spattered tunic from the back of the door and went out.
As he entered the room, he found that those gathered were clearly very weary but jubilant.
Baron Laan was present, and Lorar with her damnable agnate, and of course the prince. He had eyes for nobody else, though the place was crammed, mostly with men.
“Glad you could join us, Ranell of the inn!” cheered Haltese. “I trust we didn’t steal you away from your serving girl too abruptly?”
He barely gave Haltese a glance. His heart overturned when he saw Lorar’s face at mention of Jan-re Osa. “You speak out of turn, Prince,” he said evenly. “I did however enjoy the hot estar she brought.”
Haltese bowed mockingly. “Forgive me, I jest.” He turned to face all those assembled. He smiled broadly and raised both hands high above his head. “I congratulate you all on yesterday’s efforts. Victory was plucked from almost certain defeat!”
“Thanks to the intervention of the miners,” Baron Laan added.
“Yes. Of course. Loyal subjects all.”
Recalling the woman who died in his arms, Ranell sensed a shiver run through his frame. Was it the prince’s choice of words? “Subjects” wasn’t inappropriate, after all. Or was it, since he wasn’t king quite yet? Haltese was full of praise for everyone, but he didn’t seem to acknowledge the dead and maimed. Yet, by all accounts, he fought hard, and his armour was covered in blood.
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