The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6)

by Lee Duigon

“King or no king,” added Jod.

  Ryons slept cuddled with Cavall, his arm around the dog. A few feet away Obst was on his knees, oblivious to his surroundings, deep in prayer. Helki stood looking at him, wondering if God was speaking to him. “He does,” Obst always said, “but not in words.”

  The chiefs and their warriors had dispersed to get what rest they could before the fight tomorrow. They hadn’t been able to devise any better plan than to allow the Abnaks and the Fazzan to storm the weak spot in the wall, while the Hosa assaulted the gate. If they could make a breach anywhere, Shaffur’s Wallekki would charge into the city.

  The Hosa had neither scaling ladders nor a ram. “There’s no time to chop down trees and trim the trunks,” Xhama said. “If they see us preparing, then they’ll prepare for us.”

  “We can get up without ladders,” Chief Hawk said. “It’s not a very high wall. Let the Attakotts protect us with their archery added to our spears. We’ll get to the top by standing on our tallest men’s shoulders. We’ll be up before they realize how we’ve done it.”

  Helki knew nothing of the art of war, but he knew a daft plan when he saw it. What was the use of stone walls, if they couldn’t keep out an army that had no siege equipment? But every chieftain in the army had more experience of war than he, so who was he to speak against any plan they favored?

  “Helki the Rod, the Flail of the Lord—that’s rich!” he said under his breath. “More than likely we’re the ones who are going to get flailed tomorrow, but good. And there’s not much I can do about it.”

  “Helki!”

  He almost dropped his staff when Obst spoke.

  “Your heart is troubled,” the old man said. “Mine, too. But the Lord sent us here, and we’ve obeyed. He’ll give us victory tomorrow. I don’t know how, but He wishes us to trust Him.”

  “Is He going to open up that wall for us?” asked Helki.

  “The Lord will fight for us,” said Obst. “You’ll see.”

  A trick of torchlight showed Helki the red streak in Ryons’ hair: the mark of King Ozias, the Lord’s anointed.

  “Then I guess I’ll try and get some sleep,” Helki said.

  CHAPTER 41

  Coronation Morning

  Encamped on the plain between Obann City and Lintum Forest, Orth woke suddenly.

  The armed men escorting him to the forest, Gallgoid’s men, slept on. The campfire had gone out. Stars still shone in the sky; it was yet two hours before dawn.

  Now he discovered what had awakened him: the horses were uneasy. Hobbled, and tethered to stakes in the ground, they fidgeted and snorted softly, as if they were afraid to snort any louder. Orth used to have fine horses of his own; he knew these horses were more upset than they sounded.

  Twice on this journey Orth and his companions had spotted gigantic flightless birds stalking the plain as the day drew to a close. They’d heard of these creatures; now they’d seen them. Both times, happily, the birds were at a distance and never tried to come any closer. Maybe they saw that two of the riders carried spears: not the kind of prey a bird would choose to tackle. But if the men were sleeping, that might be a different story.

  He didn’t like to disturb them, but in the interests of sane prudence, Orth woke the men.

  “What is it, First Prester?”

  “Something’s frightening the horses.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Nor do I. It doesn’t take much to make these horses skittish, though. Maybe they’ve scented a fox.”

  But then the first man said, “Over there,” and pointed with his spear. “Better get behind us, my lord,” he said to Orth.

  Only then did Orth perceive a dark, massive shape stirring in the grass, perhaps as close as fifty yards. With the moon having set, he couldn’t make out what kind of animal it was.

  But it was big—almost as tall as a horse, but longer, with a long head held close to the ground. And then it raised its head and seemed to sniff the air. It uttered a low, rumbling growl. “This is going to be bad,” one of the men said.

  The other yelled, “Hi-yi!” and brandished his spear. “Yi, yi!” They both yelled and threatened. Orth’s heart fluttered. But the beast, whatever it was, turned and galloped off into the night.

  “Whew! What was it?”

  “Burned if I know. Something that growls like a bear and gallops like a horse. I’d rather not have a closer look at it.”

  “Let’s get the fire going. Are you all right, First Prester?”

  “Just mildly terrified!” Orth said. But truly, it was only mildly. He remembered an incident from his journey to the mountains with Lord Reesh, in which the sight of such a creature, in broad daylight, had pushed him over the brink of madness. But this time he could endure it. “God has changed me,” he thought. “I’m not the man I was.” For which he gave thanks.

  Soon Gallgoid’s men had the campfire burning again, crackling reassuringly, and the horses had stopped fidgeting and were going back to sleep. After taking a moment to pet the horses, Orth sat down with the men.

  “There never used to be animals like that,” one said. “Why do we have them now? Where do they come from?”

  “Any ideas, my lord?”

  “Not really,” Orth said. “All I know is that God has shaken the earth, as all the prophets said He would. I suppose these beasts are a sign of it.”

  “I saw that beast King Ryons rode when he rescued the city. Big as a mountain! Scattered the Heathen like chaff!” The man shuddered. “I still have dreams about it sometimes.”

  “The world has changed,” said Orth.

  Just before sunrise, Merffin Mord sent a messenger to Prester Jod’s house. The man, when he was let in, was sopping wet.

  “On account of the accursed weather,” he said, “High Councilor Merffin Mord has been forced to move the coronation to the palace steps, facing Government Plaza. He begs to inquire whether King Ryons will be well enough to attend—or must we postpone it until tomorrow?”

  Despite the early hour, the prester’s whole household was awake. Over their protests, Gurun had already sent her Blays to guard the seminary.

  “We belong with you, O Queen,” said Shingis, their chief.

  “We’ll join you at the seminary,” Gurun said. “Very soon, I am sure, we will all have to leave the city. And there may be fighting.”

  “We fight for you, and for the Obann God.”

  “Our God, Shingis. We all belong to Him.”

  Jod answered the messenger. “Tell His Excellency Merffin Mord that His Majesty King Ryons has quite recovered and that I’ll escort him and Queen Gurun to the palace at noon today, rain or no rain.”

  “The council thinks it would be better if His Majesty came somewhat earlier, my lord.”

  “He will arrive at noon,” Jod said. The messenger bowed and went back out into the rain. Jod went back to Fnaa’s room, where the king’s double waited with his mother, Gurun, and Uduqu. Fnaa was having breakfast in bed, but no one else felt like eating.

  “I don’t like to eat before a battle,” Uduqu said. “It slows my sword.”

  “I doubt there’ll be much of an opportunity for eating afterward,” Jod said, “once Fnaa has refused the crown.”

  “Can’t we just sneak out of the city now?” Dakl said.

  “I have to tell them that I’m not the king,” Fnaa answered.

  “You should go to the seminary now, Dakl,” Gurun said.

  “And let this little fool out of my sight?” Dakl cried. “That’s the last thing I’ll do!”

  “We can’t be sure there will be violence,” Jod said.

  “I’d like some more of this porridge, please,” said Fnaa.

  When he returned to his office, Gallgoid found a message from Constan waiting for him.

  “It was delivered by a seminary student, sir,” said his agent, a man whose work at the palace was to sweep hallways. Gallgoid thanked him and dismissed him.

  “As you probably know,” Con
stan’s message read, when Gallgoid had deciphered it, “the boy in Jod’s custody is an imposter. He intends to refuse the crown and to denounce himself in public. If possible, Prester Jod’s whole party will then withdraw to the seminary, where Gurun’s bodyguard will protect them if they can. Perhaps you should join us. We are all in God’s hands.”

  Gallgoid smiled. This was better than his own plan to stop the coronation, which he instantly discarded. He would have to spread the word to his people to stand down and not to act, but that could easily be done.

  He wondered what Merffin Mord would do when the boy refused the crown and revealed that he was not the king. “Have an apoplexy, possibly,” he thought. But more importantly, what would Goryk Gillow do?

  “Nothing, for the time being,” he thought. There might well be time enough to get Gurun and the boy out of the city. “But not much time.” Goryk’s plans urgently required a crowned king. “They’ll say the king has lost his mind. They’ll crown him, wait a bit, and then depose him—and Merffin will have his precious Oligarchy.”

  But the real King Ryons, and the rightful First Prester, would be in Lintum Forest, safe from murderers, at least, if not usurpers. And what then?

  “Civil war,” thought Gallgoid. “Durmurot and Lintum Forest against the palace held by Merffin Mord and Goryk Gillow. With the Thunder King lurking in the East, awaiting the best time to send another Heathen army into Obann. And the ruin of everything we’ve known for all our lives.”

  Gallgoid destroyed Constan’s message and went to alert his people.

  CHAPTER 42

  A Game with Poisoned Arrows

  Throughout the night, some of the Attakotts made a contest of creeping up as close as possible to the walls of Silvertown and trying to pick off the watchmen. Only once or twice did they succeed.

  Inside the city walls, the effect of those few arrows went far beyond anything the archers could have anticipated. A dread of these stealthy little men, who killed with poisoned arrows, fell upon the garrison. No one wanted to stand sentry in the towers by the gate. No one wanted to raise his head above the walls. The screams of the men who were hit destroyed all possibility of sleep. Fear begot a rumor that King Ryons had a thousand Attakotts, all of them trying to sneak into the city by night and murder the defenders in the dark.

  “How the devil can I order men to sleep?” Iolo growled. His steadiest warriors, the Dahai, had deserted. His Wallekki were startling at every sound. Worst of all, the hundred or so Griffs he had were chanting death songs and everybody heard them. One of those men he practically killed with his fists to silence him. The Griffs’ chief advised him not to do it again.

  “Then make them stop their caterwauling!” Iolo said. “It’s keeping everyone awake and wrecking our morale.”

  “It is the custom of the Griffs and cannot be changed,” the chief said. “Tomorrow my men will fight bravely, having sung their death songs beforehand.”

  There was nothing Iolo could do about it. Meanwhile, there was a half-starved, angry, potentially dangerous civilian population to control—at least two thousands of them, so many having already fled into the wilderness to escape captivity. Most of the farms around Silvertown had been abandoned by the farmers: the people remaining in the city were there as forced laborers. Iolo’s only recourse had been to work them so hard on shoring up the walls that they’d be too weary to revolt.

  Iolo, too, was weary. He knew that if he even tried to sleep, more men would desert. The only thing stopping them now was their fear that there were Attakotts all around the city waiting for them. There was no way out.

  “It will be better, once the fighting starts,” Osfal the Wallekki said. “What it comes down to is this: we have stone walls to protect us, and they have no siege equipment. They haven’t even made ladders. My own fear is that we’ll run out of arrows before we run out of targets. Then it’ll be work for swords and spears.”

  “Work that I’m eager to get started!” Iolo said.

  Ellayne rode sitting behind her father, and Jack behind Martis. Wytt clung to Ellayne’s neck, urging greater speed. But after they’d gone some miles from the city, and the sky had begun to turn grey, with the stars fading out one by one and the first few drops of rain falling, he changed his tune.

  “He says we’re safe now, Father,” Ellayne reported. “Whatever he was so afraid of, he doesn’t sense it anymore.”

  The baron called a halt for rest.

  “I wish we’d brought some tents,” said Kadmel. “It looks like nasty weather.”

  “Eventually we’ll find a barn,” Roshay said, “and we can stop there. There’s bound to be shelter somewhere.” The countryside still hadn’t recovered fully from the Thunder King’s invasion. Many farms and villages still lay deserted.

  They all dismounted to stretch their legs. The horses cropped wet grass. Roshay told Martis that King Ryons had marched on Silvertown.

  “He’ll be there by now,” he said. “I’m thinking we ought to have marched with him. Up and down the river, we might have raised a thousand spears.”

  “He might not need them,” Martis said. “From what I saw while I was there, Silvertown might fall. They’re fools to try to hold it.”

  “They’ll hold it if they can,” Roshay said. “It’s the Thunder King’s last foothold in Obann. If he loses Silvertown, he’ll find it hard to send another army across the mountains—provided we defend the passes.”

  “Which Goryk Gillow and Merffin Mord won’t do,” said Martis. “They think they’ve made peace with the Thunder King.”

  “There won’t be peace,” the baron said, “until there is no Thunder King. May God protect King Ryons!”

  At daybreak—such as it was, with heavy rain—Merffin commanded criers to be sent throughout the city to inform the people that the king would be crowned on the steps of the palace, under the great marble portico. Celebrations would be held the next day on the coronation field, weather permitting. Otherwise the great stock of food and drink would go to waste.

  “We are badly overspent,” he complained to Aggo. “As it is, we’ll have to give the stuff away!”

  “That, at least, will make us popular,” the wine king said. “Stop fretting about the money. It’s a small price, to restore the Oligarchy.”

  But Merffin couldn’t stop grumbling. “Everything’s going wrong!” he said. “And after such a good start, too! We have the new First Prester that we wanted, and we’ll have an understanding with the Thunder King. But we’ll never find the crown again, nor any of the jewels in it. And I don’t like Goryk Gillow’s mood today! He’s edgy, and I don’t know why. What does he have to worry him that we don’t know about?”

  He had not been told that Goryk’s aide, Jayce, was missing, along with the boy they’d brought from Silvertown. Maybe Goryk was worried that Lord Orth might yet turn up somewhere and insist that he was still First Prester.

  “I recommend you treat yourself to an early glass of wine to calm your nerves,” Aggo said. “Once the king is crowned, poor little ass that he is, everything we’ve worked for will be within our grasp. Whoever has been trying to upset our plans, even to the stealing of the crown—well, it’s too late. We’ve won, they’ve lost.”

  The palace hummed with activity even as they spoke. All the kitchens were busy, preparing the great banquets that would follow the coronation ceremony. Tailors, seamstresses, and launderers toiled over the robes and gowns of various officials and notables who would sit down to those banquets. Servants swept the corridors, the halls, to make the palace spotless: not a single cobweb would be allowed to remain in place. And if anyone chanced to notice that the cobwebs were untenanted, he was far too busy to give it a second thought.

  CHAPTER 43

  The Battle of the Brickbats

  The sun crept over the mountains behind Silvertown. The rain that fell on Obann was a long way from here. Hardly a cloud hung in the sky.

  The king’s army stood before the walls in such order as
Helki and the chieftains could coax into it. But the Hosa of the Red Regiment stood shoulder to shoulder in perfect order, still and silent.

  Just before the first glint of daybreak touched the sky, Ryons woke. He didn’t remember his dreams, but he woke with a new conviction in his heart.

  “Before the fighting starts,” he told Helki, “I want to say something to those people in the city. I know I’m only a boy and that I don’t know much about such things, but a king ought to say something! And the men who fight against us ought to see me and to hear my voice.”

  Helki gathered the chieftains to tell them what their king desired to do.