by David Drake
“So the Firsts win again,” said one of the ragged lot in the corner. There was a look of defiance on his dirty face. “Do you think that they were not answering for a hundred, a thousand, harms they’ve done to me and them that’s mine?”
“And is this the way you get them back?” Abel said. He shook his head. “No.”
“They deserve it a hundred times over. All of them von Hoffs do. All the Land-heirs.” The man’s voice rasped as if these words were pulled from a deep, dry place.
Abel looked at him sadly.
“Throw this one in first.” He gazed around the interior of the building. “When that’s done, have the well filled in. Then have this place torn down. All of it. The compound, the servants’ quarters, the barns.”
“And these two?” Tim and nodded toward the two women.
“Give them clothes, food, and a pack animal. Send them on their way.”
“You can’t!” shouted the woman in the corner. “By the Land and the Laws of Zentrum, I demand justice! As a woman. As a First. What kind of Landsman are you to deny this to us?”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Abel said. “Now take the child and be on your way.”
Abel turned and left through the door maw and stepped back into the bright sunlight of day. He paused a moment on the porch, shook his head to clear it.
Center, this is where I need you most, he thought. The fighting I can handle. But this kind of thing . . . it’s a guess. I’m not good at it. I’m fucking it up. I know I am.
He sighed. “Nobody’s making you take any of this on,” he mumbled to himself. “Just yourself now.”
Old habit, talking to myself. And expecting an answer.
Abel stepped down from the porch. Even though the outside air was hot and filled with dust, it felt good to breathe unconfined once again.
6
Ingres District
The Wheatlands
Twilight
The Blaskoye dead and wounded were arranged like flotsam from a receding flood, a mangle of dont and man, portions of which were gruesomely twitching with the last impulses of life. Each wave of attack against the eastern trenches had been cut down en masse, and the mounds of dead and dying were piled up in striated bands.
Already the insectoids were buzzing, searching for meat into which to deposit their eggs. And the flitterdaks were flocking about as well, gobbling up the insectoids and munching on the occasional bit of soft carrion such as eyeballs and tongues.
“We’ll have to pursue,” Abel pronounced.
“Sir, the men are exhausted. It’s almost dark. I don’t know how much good that will do.”
“No choice,” Abel said. “We can’t let them ride into the capital without fear at their tails.”
“Yes, sir.”
From the dirt and smoke ahead, a party on dontback rode toward them.
Something about them. Abel reined Nettle up short, took a closer look.
Ah, yes. He recognized Timon’s dont, Blazes. Timon sat tall in the saddle, as always. The sun caught him from the side, accentuating the smoothness of his right side, where an arm ought to be but wasn’t. Beside Timon rode a standard-bearer with the flag of the True Goldies.
Odd. There were two banners. On the opposite side of Timon, another standard bearer rode. A sudden breeze caught the other banner, and Abel gasped in astonishment and happiness. It was Treville. How the cold hell they’d gotten here, or why the cold hell they’d come after letting the Blaskoye through, he couldn’t say. But he was glad to see them.
Then the group got close enough to make out faces, and Abel’s happiness turned to pure joy.
There was a fourth rider who moved along beside the Treville standard.
It was Joab Dashian.
Abel had presumed his father was dead since he’d been told in Progar that Joab had gone missing. He’d tried to come to terms with it on the march to Cascade, had not.
But then the problems of bringing together an army on a moment’s notice took him over and he buried the sadness in the back of his mind. Temporarily, he knew. Along with his worry for Mahaut. And when he came back to it, it would only have grown darker and stronger.
Now, in the blink of an eye, the sorrow evaporated like so much River mist.
His father was alive.
Abel got down from Nettle and waited for the group to arrive. When they did, Joab wasted no time. He slid down from his mount—with some effort and grunt of pain—and turned to face Abel.
“Goddamn dak ride hasn’t worn off,” he said.
“Your eye,” Abel said, noticing the patch.
“They took the one that saw fuzzy. Good riddance,” his father said. “The idiots left me with the good one.”
With a few steps, the two men embraced.
7
Ingres District
The Wheatlands
Twilight
“The problem is we have a large group of Blaskoye making for Lindron, and there’s not a thing standing between them and the populace,” Timon said. “Joab’s Major Courtemanche estimates maybe a thousand riders. Enough to wreak havoc and burn the town down.”
“And us?”
“We’re nearly done in,” said Joab. “We killed the hell out of those Redlanders, but Courtemanche tells me we lost more than two thousand ourselves.”
Abel looked into the distance and smiled as the answer came to him. “I’ll take what troops of mine can march. I’ll take the Scouts,” he said. “They’re used to picking themselves up after hard fighting in the Redlands where there isn’t any choice.”
He turned back to his father and Timon. “Gentlemen, send me what you can. I’ll need you both here to bring your boys along at first light. You’re to follow me. They won’t feel like moving out, but they have to be made to. Lindron depends on it.”
Timon shook his head tiredly. “I’m going with you.”
“Somebody has to look after your Goldies.”
“They can damned well look after themselves,” Timon said. “Besides, Burridge will do fine rallying them after a watch and a half of rest. You know that.”
“No. You must, Timon. They will need you. Stay.”
Timon glared at Abel for a moment, but then nodded. “Yes, sir.”
It seemed for a moment that Joab would also voice some objection. A look from Abel cut him off. “Very well, General,” his father finally said. “Some shut-eye, and then we’ll be right on your tail.”
“We’ll look for you then,” Abel answered. “Let’s get to it. We have a night ride ahead. Even then I’m afraid the Blaskoye will make it to the city. Von Hoff maybe left a garrison force, but there’s basically nothing else to stop Blaskoye. I don’t think this so-called alliance will mean a damned thing to the Redlanders with Lindron open before them.”
Joab nodded grimly.
He looks like death itself with that one eye, Abel thought.
“Might not be as open as you think,” his father said.
“No? What do you mean?”
“I mean, believe it or not, but there’s a thrice-damned host of partisans in that town, and they’re hopping mad about this Blaskoye-Goldie team-up. They’ll do what they can to deny them entry.”
“They can’t have gotten themselves organized this quickly.”
Joab’s smile broadened.
“Might want to ask your woman about that,” he said.
“Ask my—what are you talking about, Father?”
“I’m talking about Her Grace Land-heiress Mahaut Jacobson,” Joab replied. “She leads them. And I know from firsthand experience: right now, the streets of Lindron belong to her.”
8
Lindron
Morning
Mahaut had considered taking out the small Guardian garrison force left in the city, but her partisans, though growing each day, were not yet supplied with weapons to accomplish that. What she could do was attempt to keep the garrison from being reinforced.
She also dearly wanted to find a
way to bring out and kill that knot of Blaskoye holed up in the Tabernacle. Blaskoye living in the heart of the Land, by cold hell! It made her skin crawl. Yet she held back from that task, too.
When she took them on, she wanted to be sure of their utter destruction.
Mahaut was putting together plans to do just that when word came from the countryside that a great clash of Goldies and Blaskoye with the Regulars had taken place in Ingres.
With Treville sidelined, it was fairly certain that the Guardians and the Blaskoye had won.
Now a Blaskoye horde was streaming toward Lindron. This did not bode well. Agreement or not, everyone knew that, with an undermanned garrison and no city guard strong enough to stop them, they would enter and they would sack. Lindron would scream and burn.
Despite wishing the Tabernacle pyramid torn out by its roots, Mahaut had a great fondness for her adopted town. She did not intend to watch it be ransacked, or watch its women and children slaughtered, despoiled, or even made into slaves.
Besides, if those Blaskoye were retreating, then the city had to be denied to them as a refuge. She didn’t have to attack and defeat them. If any hope survived, all she had to do was keep them out long enough for their pursuers to arrive. The Blaskoye Law-givers might be blaspheming the Inner Sanctum of the Tabernacle. The Esplanade and inner sectors might be patrolled by the few garrisoning Goldies remaining, but Mahaut’s partisans controlled Lindron’s outskirts.
Lindron was a maze of throughways and alleys two thousand years in the making. What civic improvement there had been over the years had only provided for four big boulevards to enter or leave the city on its north side.
The key would be to deny the Blaskoye those boulevards, and make them come in on side passages. Side passages, alleys, narrow streets—all could be made into killing zones. All that was necessary was to get the pest to enter the trap.
Mahaut had many days ago emptied the House Jacobson coffers to the last chit building and buying (or buying off) her force. Payment was effective enough, but it was the offer of free grain to the families of those who would fight that was the most persuasive. If it didn’t work out in the end, at least she wouldn’t have to hang her head when facing Benjamin Jacobson. Her head would likely have already been severed from her body.
Of the four main roads that led into Lindron from the north, she reckoned the middle two would be the most likely path the Redlanders would take into the city.
These boulevards were also the major routes for overland trade. Warehouses lined their sides in the outskirts of the city, and quite a few of those belonged to House Jacobson. At the moment, trade was perilous and most of the warehouses were filled with empty wagons and drays waiting to carry loads in more peaceful times. Daks filled the city’s stables, chomping at their rushgrass, unaware that doom might be approaching.
For communicating with her partisans, Mahaut had developed a grapevine of city urchins to carry her messages, and it served her well today. She sent word that the partisan boss in each area of the city should order the emptying of the warehouses of wagons. They might need donts and daks released from liveries to pull the larger carts—she could provide that with enough notice to her stablemen—but most transport wagons could be handled by several strong men or several more strong women. That is, at least for the distance the wagons and drays would need to go.
“Bring every wagon we have out of the compound,” she ordered her own House staff. The operation took longer than she liked, and when she went to the largest of the wagons, stood on it and stomped impatiently, the work rate doubled. Just seeing the consort taking an active interest in progress speeded things up immediately.
The consort was most generous if you did your job, but she gave no truck to layabouts. The rumor was she kept the black arrow she killed her husband with framed behind her desk.
Mahaut had her personal dont brought from the stables. It had been a while since she had sat in the saddle, but the old instincts returned quickly. Besides, she’d made hundreds of rides between Hestinga and Lilleheim, and those skills were not easily lost even after several years away. With her bodyguards and a hundred Jacobson wagons trailing behind her, she then made her way down Tabernacle Boulevard, the largest thoroughfare in Lindron.
At first the street was easily negotiated, but closer to the outskirts walkers and riders began to clump ahead of her. With the aid of her bodyguards, and the weight of their donts, she pushed her way through these clusters of the frightened and fleeing until she arrived near the edge of town. There progress stopped entirely. Standing up in her saddle, Mahaut gazed ahead.
Wagons jammed the street—thousands of them. Many were piled upon each other willy-nilly, giving the illusion of mating. Her partisans—men and women she hardly knew beyond a trustful trading relation—had taken her orders and done their job here.
“Let’s go to the side streets,” Mahaut called out to the dakskinner on the lead wagon. “You go that way.” She pointed to her right. “When you find a cross street, block it. The narrower the street, the better.”
“Yes, Land-heiress.”
She went down the row of her Jacobson wagons and in the same manner ordered each to disperse to either left or right and do their best to trundle about until they could jam the streets of Lindron. After that, the drivers and crews should turn the wagons over and pile whatever they could on top of it to form barricades.
This job done, she rode east to Water Street, another north-running boulevard. When she arrived she was pleased to see that it was equally jammed.
Townspeople were milling about gawking at the sight. Somewhere music was playing, and a couple of vendors were selling steaming vegetables and spitted flitterdaks. It was a festive atmosphere.
Poor deluded fools. The Blaskoye might upset your picnic soon, she thought. But it does look like fun.
It would surely take hours, hopefully days, to clear this mess out enough so that the road was usable. She cut across streets and alleyways to reach the other boulevards. The two that ran straight north were shut down. The outer boulevards to the northeast and northwest had less drayage piled on them, but the locals had raided a lamp-oil warehouse and converted irrigation ditches that ran along either side of the road into a sluices filled with oil—oil ready to be set afire at a moment’s notice.
Donts hated fire when it was close by, and skittish Redland donts did not seem to care much for the city in general.
Now all that needed to be seen to were the porous alleyways and small streets of the very outmost houses and shops. A few more wagons placed correctly, and these roads could serve as funnels—leading directly into the maze of backstreet Lindron.
At about a watch after sunrise, the first of the Blaskoye horde arrived. These attempted to enter along Tabernacle. They thundered along until the last moment, then pulled up short at the jam of wagons. And while the riders sat gazing with bewildered expressions at the wagon pile, a rush of arrows flew from nearby windows and rooftops. Dozens of riders fell. The men and women of the outskirts supplemented their diets by hunting in the countryside, and they were good shots.
Evidently this did not deliver the message, because shortly after more riders arrived. These received the same treatment as the last. This time the riders broke off and spread out along the edge of the city in either direction, looking to find other ways in. Find them they did. In ones, twos, and threes, they turned down small streets and alleyways.
Mahaut rode to the nearest cross street she could get to, trying to catch a glimpse of the hapless Blaskoye as they tried to make their way toward the Tabernacle.
The women, children, and aged now had their way with the Blaskoye. Boiling water poured down from roofs. Arrows and rocks flew at the invaders. The riders might have shot these attackers down, had they been able to see who was firing at them. From street level, the alleyways seemed deserted. But when riders ventured in, down came the bricks, heavy pieces of furniture, boiling water and flaming oil.
So
me alleys couldn’t hold against their invaders, and these riders were then merciless in cutting down all who crossed their paths.
Regardless of the initial success, however, Mahaut knew that the partisans could not keep the Redlanders out for good. When it became evident that there were no Guardian troops marching behind the Blaskoye, she began to have hope. Maybe they were not returning in victory.
Maybe they’d gotten their asses handed to them.
One could hope.
She knew it was time for her to wait and figure out the situation, before letting herself and everyone else get carried away with either victory or defeat. But it was hard not to feel elation when the bulk of the riders spun their mounts around and rode back in the direction from which they had come. It was not long before they disappeared from sight, swallowed up by the broken lands that ringed the North and west of the city.
She’d done it. No, Lindron had done it. The city had hurled the Blaskoye out. They would have nowhere to go but into the badlands north of the city.
Into the Giants.
9
Lindron District
The Giants
Noon
The Giants. For the priesthood, it was a holy area. Even if it had been fertile, which it was not, it would not be used for agriculture. This was the region in which the mother of all, Irisobrian, was said to have suckled the young Zentrum from the miraculously flowing milk in her dead body. Abel supposed that he might be the only man in his entire army who knew what the area known as the Giants actually was.
For the Blaskoye, it represented something very different. This was the landscape that most resembled their home ground. Even though the Giants had practically no vegetation growing on it—the plague had left the earth there barren and without nutrients—it did somewhat resemble the Redlands in its roll and rise. All badlands did.