She asked him how the militia had fared so far, but the news from the front was not good. The walls were solid stone and heavily defended. The Descendant guards had well-trained crossbowmen, which stopped the militia from getting close. The rudimentary weapons weren’t accurate beyond two dozen paces, but they were keeping the militia from moving up in numbers.
Daneesa soon understood that if it came to a siege, the militia were at the end of a long supply line, and up against an almost impregnable fortress. They had to find a chink in the Descendant defences and exploit it in the next few days, or their situation would rapidly worsen. It was not good news, and Daneesa stood for a long time leaning against Hudnee while he held her close.
Menona kept herself busy unloading supplies and stacking them. She tried not to think about her husband, somewhere on the other side of those threatening walls. At night time she collapsed into the back of one of the wagons. She was so tired she slept soundly, and was delivered from her constant worries about his safety.
CHAPTER 24
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Menon and Metris waited patiently with the rest of the militia squad in the storeroom under the Descendant offices. At one stage they heard a commotion some distance away, and guessed someone had discovered the guards they had tied up.
A fairly anxious time followed, until it was clear a systematic search of the building was not underway. Menon had guessed that would be the case. It made more sense to assume the militia had headed for the safety of Roum’s back streets, and that was where they would head – but not yet.
When night came the squad moved out. They left the guards’ swords behind, not wanting to draw attention to themselves. Their attire blended in well enough among the many and varied modes of dress in Roum. Once they’d made a clean exit from the building, Menon led the squad through the darkness toward the poorer quarters of Roum. Metris happily deferred to the more experienced woodsman as they negotiated the night.
Menon could see smaller buildings and narrow alleys to his right, and the squad struck out in that direction. They kept their heads down, as if they were villagers working for the Descendants who had finished a day’s work and were hurrying home.
No one challenged them, and they soon disappeared among the rough dwellings of the laboring families of Roum. Ahead of them weak light shone from the windows of a larger building. The windows were small, and covered with some sort of membrane, perhaps an oil-soaked cotton weave. Menon figured its purpose was to let daylight in, and the yellow light of oil lamps out onto the street at night.
The building had the look of an alehouse about it, and Menon decided it was a good place to hang out, somewhere they could hide in plain sight. The squad were soon seated at rough tables in the back of a large room. They shook their heads when a young man came to take their order, and Menon got up and made his way to the serving area.
The southern militia scout, still working with the squad, had said the southern militia had a contact in Roum. It was a risk, but Menon decided to use the militia contact. He needed more information about the layout of Roum, and the weak points of its defences, and he didn’t know who else he could trust.
The Shellport hunter stood at the long wooden table and looked around the room carefully. As far as he could see, this place served food and drink. But also, judging by the corridor off to the side and the people coming and going, it offered some sort of accommodation.
“I’m looking for Tindel,” he said to the older man who stood behind the long table. The man was keeping a watchful eye on the food and drink orders coming through from the back, and occasionally scanning the customers.
The older man didn’t reply, keeping his eyes straight ahead of him, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I said I’m . . ,” began Menon, a little louder this time, only to be cut off by the other’s low growl.
“I heard you the first time,” said the man bluntly, “and if you want to get yourself killed, there’s no better way to go about it than to keep asking.”
Menon moved back a little, making room to defend himself.
“Calm down,” said the older man, “you’ll draw too much attention to us.”
Menon took a step to the side and relaxed against the wall. The older man returned to his previous duties.
“Much better,” he said, still looking straight ahead. He was talking in a low voice out of the side of his mouth.
“See that door to your left,” he said. “Don’t nod! It leads to the privies. Go through there and out into the yard. Just you. Wait there.”
Menon stood in silence for a few moments, considering his instructions. When it became clear that nothing else was going to be said, he made his way back to the squad at the back of the room.
“Hang around for a while,” he said. “I may be onto something. Stay put and don’t bring any attention to yourselves.”
They nodded. Menon took the route through the privies as he had been instructed. When he entered the yard a door opened in the back of the building, and a hand beckoned him in. With one part of his mind looking out for a trap, Menon made his way through the door and looked around him.
It was a back room that looked dusty. Judging by the bins to one side, it may have been a storeroom once, but now it looked too bare for that. A younger man stood by the far wall, and the older man from the alehouse sat at a rickety table.
“Sit down,” he said quietly.
“And if I don’t?” said Menon.
The younger man drew a long dagger from inside his jerkin, and shook his head slowly.
“Just asking,” said Menon conversationally, and took the chair on the other side of the table.
“You were asking for Tindel,” said the older man.
“That I was,” said Menon guardedly.
“Why?”
Menon thought for a moment. “Let’s say I’m more of a friend than an enemy.”
“Being a friend of Tindel can get you killed.”
Menon shrugged. He’d laid his cards on the table, and wasn’t going to back out now.
The other man leaned forward. “His name is not Tindel, it’s Carakas. Everyone who works for the Descendants eventually gets a Descendant name. Using a common name can get you taken in for questioning by the guards.”
He eyed Menon suspiciously.
“If you had asked anyone else in Roum, you might have got off with a blank look, but more likely you’d be in a Descendant guardroom by now.”
Menon leaned forward. “I just came from one of those,” he grinned.
The older man considered this.
“Why did you come to this particular alehouse?” he said eventually.
“Just luck,” said Menon, “and I have been lucky, haven’t I? You can take me straight to him.”
Menon started to introduce himself, and the older man cut him off.
“No names,” he said, “and you never saw me before, got it?”
Menon nodded.
“Carakas has gone to ground,” said the older man. “The Descendants are being extremely cautious now this militia army is at the gates, and they had their suspicions about him well before the militia arrived.
“If Carakas says it’s okay I’ll take you to him,” he continued, “but only if he agrees to see you. What should I tell him?”
“Tell him I got his name from the southern militia, and tell him I need his help to end the Descendants’ rule.”
The older man raised his eyebrows at this. Then he got up from the table.
“Wait here,” he said, and then pointed at the younger man. “He will look after you. I won’t be long.”
“I’ve got a crew in the big room out front,” said Menon, “and I’ll need to bring them with me.”
The other two looked alarmed.
“It’s too risky, Da,” said the younger one.
“Maybe, but they can’t stay with us either,” said the older. “If Carakas agrees, we’ll take the lot of them down to where he is. There�
��s room enough in the cellars.”
He turned to the younger man. “Bring his friends from the front room through here. I think we can trust them that much.”
The younger man left the back room and quietly let the squad know Menon wanted to see them in the yard, and brought them through in ones and twos. From there they were secreted away in the old storeroom. Menon could only tell the squad members they had, by luck, found the militia contact, and now they had to wait.
It was good they had vacated the main room of the alehouse. A force of Descendant guards came through the alehouse shortly after they left, taking a good look at the customers. It was tense out the back until they finally departed.
“The guards are still looking for us I guess,” said Menon quietly.
The younger man looked agitated, and only began to look more relaxed when the older man returned.
“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” he hissed. “Godsdammit guards have already been through the place once. Thank your stars they didn’t come out here!”
“Take it easy, boy,” said his father. “Carakas has agreed to meet them. We’ll take them across tot he cellars right now.”
He beckoned the squad members. “We have to cross the street out the back, so keep your heads down, but after that we’ll be inside warehouses all the way until you get to Carakas’ little hideout.”
Heading out into the poorer part of town, and keeping to the shadows, they crossed to the warehouse that lay opposite. Once they were inside the first one, Menon could see how they would pass unnoticed through the others. They were really one long building split into sections for each merchant. There was little to stop them moving from one part of the building to the next.
The last part of the trip took them across a disused yard to the back of a more substantial-looking building. By now they had travelled to the edge of Roum. Moving through the dark interior of this last building they were taken to steps in one corner that led into the ground. They led to the cellars where Carakas lived.
Once they had made their way below ground level, they heard the entrance being capped behind them. At the bottom of the steps the members of the squad stopped and listened. There was light coming from a point ahead of them, and they could hear the sound of someone moving about.
As they walked toward the light at the end of the corridor they passed other corridors that branched off the one they were on, and room after room was filled with broad wooden vats. The air was heavy with a sweet mustiness Menon found familiar but couldn’t quite place
“This whole place is a storage pit for wine,” said the southern scout, lifting the lid on one of the vats to look at the contents more closely.
The squad followed the light to the entrance of a large underground room. The walls here were lined with solid props that looked like they had been put there to support something heavy above them. When Menon looked inside, he found a man seated at a table with an oil lamp in front of him. He was writing on a large sheet of thick paper.
Menon was impressed. Very few of the Sea People knew how to write – or read for that matter.
The man looked up. “Ah,” he said, “you must be from the militia outside the gates. You have the look of men who have had to harden their souls to strike at their fellow man.”
The members of the squad looked blank.
“Forgive me,” said the man, and rose. “It comes from being something of a philosopher. That is to say, speaking in riddles.
“I am Carakas. I presume you are from the militia outside the gates of Roum, a place that is currently somewhere above us. How can I help you?”
A philosopher, thought Menon. Well, he hadn’t been expecting that.
CHAPTER 25
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Menon introduced the members of the squad to Carakas, and they took seats around the room, mostly on the edges of vats and against walls. Menon took a rickety chair on the opposite side of the table. He explained how the squad had been captured near Harrow’s Crossing, then freed themselves while in the Descendant offices, and finally made their way to the man who, they were told, was the southern militia contact in Roum.
Carakas listened carefully. “I’m not sure I can be of much help,” he said eventually. “I am not a fighter. I just gathered some information recently for the southern militia to use.
“I came from the south of Hud, long ago,” he explained, “so I’ve a loyalty there. I also believe in freedom of thought. These cursed Descendants won’t allow anything to be said that doesn’t agree exactly with their view of the world.”
Menon nodded. That was what the rebellion was all about, really. The freedom for each person to think for themselves, and come to their own conclusions.
“Well, information is what we want,” said Metris, from his place on the edge of a vat. “We want to know if there are any ways into Roum besides the front gate, and we also want to know where the guards’ armoury is.”
“And we want to know where Osteon Partheni can be found during the day, and where he lives at night,” added Menon darkly. He didn’t mention the Descendant captain who had beaten Metris. Carakas wouldn’t know the man, but Menon would know him when he saw him.
Carakas knew where the Descendant forge was, and also where the weapons store was. He knew where the ArchOrdinate’s offices were, but he didn’t know where Partheni could be found. There were a lot of tribunal chairmen who had retreated to Roum.
Lastly, he told them he had no idea what weaknesses could be found in the walls. He was not by nature a military man, and he didn’t know whether anything he knew about Roum might itself be helpful.
It was not the breakthrough the militia squad had been hoping for. Still, the older man at the alehouse might be able to furnish them with other leads to follow up. The problem, though, was time – or the lack of it until the militia attacked the walls of Roum.
Carakas provided them with a late night repast from his meagre stores, and then the squad found themselves a place to sleep in the adjoining rooms.
“I don’t need much sleep,” Carakas informed them, before hurrying back to his pile of papers.
The following day the squad roused late, but at least they had eaten well the night before, and recovered a little from the constant marching of the last few days. The two who had been beaten at the Descendant offices were sporting some nasty bruises, but were well enough apart from some stiffness.
The squad found Carakas still at his work, and some of them wondered if he had actually slept at all.
Menon was tense. The militia would have arrived at the gates of Roum by now, and Hudnee would have discovered for himself that the Descendant defences were sturdy and well-manned.
Menon was aware of the problems of a long supply line from Shellport. He knew that every day the squad delayed finding a way in for the militia meant unnecessary deaths attacking the walls, and an increasing chance the militia might have to withdraw from the plains of Roum completely.
He decided his plans for Partheni would have to wait. Getting the militia through the walls of Roum had to be their first priority. For that purpose the squad spent much of the day finding hiding places where they could look for patterns in the guards’ movements, and make a closer examination of the walls.
“It doesn’t look good,” said Metris bleakly, as they sat around in Carakas’ room the following night. More food had arrived from the alehouse, so at least they had eaten an evening meal.
“This is the only place we might be able to hold off the guards while the militia breach the walls,” said Menon, pointing to one side of Roum.
A map of Roum had been drawn in the dirt floor, and the others could see what he meant as they looked at it. One of the defensive walls, where it ran back along the bluff, had been the last part of the wall to be thrown up. The wooden palisade there was very makeshift.
There were only seven of them in the squad now, including the southern scout, but a concerted attack from inside Roum might be
able to make a hole in the palisade, and hold it long enough for the militia to pour through and establish a foothold inside the walls.
“We’ll have to make a raid on the armoury before long,” said the Menon. “We can’t take and hold a section of the wall without weapons.”
They all looked at the map on the floor again. It was a lot to ask, that the squad overpower the guards on duty at that point, and then dismantle enough of the palisade for the militia to enter before guard reinforcements arrived.
“We also have to find a way to contact the militia,” said Metris. “If we can’t coordinate our attack on this side of the wall with the militia on the other, it will never work. I’m guessing we try this under cover of darkness?”
Menon nodded. Then he turned to Carakas.
“How can we send a message out of Roum?” he asked. Carakas had so far seemed more intent on copying material from his endless supply of papers than taking a real interest in the battle for Roum.
“Oh, you won’t be able to do that,” said the old scribe absently. “The gates are shut now and nobody comes or goes.”
“There’s got to be a way for someone to slip out, or send a signal,” said Metris desperately. “Maybe something dangerous but still doable.”
“Hmmm,” said Carakas thoughtfully, for the first time turning his full attention to what they were saying. There was silence while he compared all the information in his capacious brain with the problem at hand.
“You could open the old hoist ports and send a code with a lamp,” he said absently, already turning back to his papers. He started making notes in the margin of a large document he was working on.
“You could do what?” shouted Metris, grabbing the scribe and hauling him to his feet.
“Er, what?” said Carakas, completely confused by the sudden turn of events.
“Where are the hoist ports?” said Metris, more quietly now as he slowly lowered the older man into his chair. Menon was shaking his head gently. They would get more out of the philosopher by not alarming him.
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