Just then the bloody dregs of the Vast rose up from their kill. They turned in unison toward Mux. He slammed the iron door and bolted it. He looked out through the bars. The Vast storm surge now moved away from the broken scaffold. The enormous, unyielding tide receded, then surged again in a mass up toward the lip of the amphitheater, toward the line of guards to Mux’s right. Mux heard a voice, Huk Tuth’s voice, from upon the Rampart calling for reinforcements, ordering all men down to the Green. Good. Reinforcements would be needed.
Mux had left the main mass of his troops outside the Rampart walls to protect the Old City from the counterattack he still believed was planned by the sly Vast leaders. He had ordered what he believed were more than enough guards to manage these beaten dregs of Vast society. But now he knew he had miscalculated. And only now, finally, did the idea occur to him that if the reinforcements did not arrive quickly, his men might not prevail.
Mux raised Packer to his feet and hurried down the stone stairs, the boy’s leg chains clattering, and into the safety of the prison itself.
He tried not to think that somehow, in some way, Packer Throme had once again called forth the Firefish.
CHAPTER 25
The Turning
Ward moved with the crowd in the midst of the melee, helpless to do anything. He had not followed Bench and his men forward as they attacked. He had a pistol in his own belt, but he had little skill with it, and no armor. He would let the raiders raid. But now he was a part of the throng, moving without willing it, soaked in the downpour, pushed along in their frenzy through the growing mud, yet untouched by their emotion. He was thinking only that his luck had not changed one bit.
Packer was alive, maybe, but definitely not rescued. Mather was hung, and most likely dead. Bench and the raiders were almost certainly dead; the Drammune on the perimeter and on the Rampart walls had aimed exclusively at them. And so here was the perfect end to his far-from-perfect mission: the Vast crowd in a total uproar, screaming, mad, their emotions completely overruling their senses. It was as if something had been released into them, and thus into the world, that would not be stopped without great loss of life.
So Ward gave up. He didn’t even bother to curse himself. He was beyond that now. They would all die here in the rain, surrounded by the Drammune. This was nothing but mass suicide.
As he surveyed the chaos, his heart fell into his shoes for the stupidity of it all. But at that moment he caught sight of a priest’s hood, not ten feet from him, worn by someone who clearly was not a priest. As he watched, the hood fell back and revealed a girl with long, dark hair. It was Panna Throme! He suddenly found himself setting his sullen sights on a new objective. Panna Throme might still be saved.
Packer did not struggle against his captor. He could have taken the man’s pistol or his sword, could have killed Mux with either. But Packer would not. He had trusted God, and God had done something, something enormous. He still wasn’t sure what, or where it would lead, but he was sure it was God and not Packer doing it, and he was not about to intervene.
Packer’s chains signaled far in advance of Mux’s entrance that they were coming. When Mux maneuvered Packer into the main hallway of the prison, he stopped short. Two Vast dragoons blocked his way. Each had a sword in his hand.
It was laughable to think he could rescue her, Ward told himself as he began moving toward Panna, attempting just that. He hadn’t been able to spring Packer out of prison when he had a secret entrance and five trained raiders. How could he possibly extricate Panna from this horde? But chasing her was better than being moved along, wondering when he would be shot or trampled.
He pushed through the throng after her. But he quickly realized she was doing an expert job of escaping without his or anyone else’s help. She pushed her way through the crowd also, but then ducked down, invisible for a time, only to pop up again ten yards away.
The crowd pressed, moved, fists now raised in defiance. They attacked, fell, screamed their rage. Then the cacophony grew into a chant. It was hard for Ward to understand at first, but then he caught the words. “For the King, the Prince, and Packer Throme!” It had a cadence, a rhythm that seemed to energize them even further. He felt it himself. “For the king! The prince! And Pack-er Throme!”
No gunshots could be heard any more. It was all the crowd. It was the storm and the sea in one voice, boiling up from the earth, crashing down from the heavens.
Ward saw Panna near the leading edge of the throng, just as it surged toward a line of Drammune soldiers. The citizens were trying to break through, perhaps to flee, perhaps simply to attack; it was impossible to tell.
The Drammune guards watched the approaching onslaught, quit reloading, and raised their swords and pikes. But it was the Vast citizenry who prevailed. A dozen men and women fell, but then a dozen Drammune soldiers went down before the combined wrath of hundreds of citizens. The Vast were pressing, screaming, rabid. They had opportunity now, but they did not seek escape. Those closest to their Drammune enemies saw the fear in their eyes, and that fear stoked their own anger. And suddenly they believed they could prevail.
Drammune weapons were snatched up, helmets and armor were yanked away, cheers that broke the chant rose first, then guttural roars, and then spine-chilling shrieks. The crowd was now a full-fledged mob. They could not be stopped. They would do what they would do. A hundred more Drammune warriors poured into the Green, prepared to do what they were trained to do.
Ward stood wide-eyed. He watched as Panna Throme bent down and came up with a Drammune sword. She held it high above her head, and moved with the crowd toward the newly arrived reinforcements.
“No, no, no!” Ward said aloud, and made a mad effort to reach her, throwing people out of his way, pushing, trying to get to her at any cost.
The mob overran the Drammune. Swords flashed, and a few shots rang out from those fresh troops who had not yet fired. But even a hundred reinforcements were quickly lost in this sea.
When the tide moved on, Prince Ward found Panna. She was hunched over a Drammune warrior, her back to Ward. Her sword went up, came down, went up, came down again. Ward grabbed her wrist. She turned on him, snarling. Then distantly, behind her wild eyes, there was recognition.
“Panna,” Ward shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”
She shook her head. “They killed Packer!” Her mouth was turned down, her lower teeth visible, her rage unappeased.
“No, he’s alive! Mux took him, but he’s alive, Panna.”
Her face softened some. Reason began to return to her. “He’s alive?” She had been standing near the front of the crowd, had watched Packer go to his knees. She knew then he would die. She couldn’t watch. Shots were fired, and the crowd pressed, and Mather was hung. But then her memory was a blur. The chant had started, and she remembered taking it up. Now she looked at the bloody sword in her hand. Ward gently pried it from her grip.
“Let’s go,” he said urgently.
She nodded.
Fen Abbaka Mux looked around for his troops, his guards, the ones he had left here in this dungeon. Anger rose in him; how could they allow two dragoons to stand here, armed? But he did not speak; he did not have time. At that very second, giving him not a moment to consider, a pike entered the base of his neck from behind. He let go of Packer and fell to his knees. Three swords found their way past his armor.
Stave Deroy’s big hands let go of the pike as Mux fell to his knees. Then those same hands picked Packer up by his shirt at the shoulders. “You all right, Mr. Throme?” Chunk asked him, great concern in his voice.
“There she is!” someone shouted in Drammune. Ward turned around to face two Drammune warriors. They were after Panna. Ward now had Panna’s sword in his hand. They had swords in their theirs.
He smiled at them. “Parley?” he asked in Drammune.
They charged. He braced for battle, holding his sword up against them as best he could. He didn’t think to draw his pistol, and wouldn’t have had time
even if he had remembered.
But they ran right past him, one on each side, as though he wasn’t there. Ward spun around and saw Panna sprinting away. She had seen the weak effort Ward offered in defense, assessed the situation instantly and accurately, and run.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ ” Ward muttered, and chased after them.
Bench Urmand sat on the ground, bodies piled up around him. He had gotten two shots off before the Drammune had opened fire from the Rampart. He had been hit in the shoulder and the thigh, and knocked to the ground. He had been unable to stand back up. When the crowd had rushed the gallows, he had been stepped on, trampled, his injured leg kicked and twisted, the wound opened. It smelled of rotten almonds. He breathed hard, and sweat poured from him, mingled with the falling rain. He shivered. When the surge had moved off it had left him in this small redoubt of the dead, with the broken boards of the destroyed platform serving as some further protection.
He used his hands to move himself a few feet toward a four-foot high piece of the gallows, then he propped his back against it. He was almost but not quite in a seated position, his legs straight out in front of him. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and it took an effort to pull it away. He winced as a pain shot through his leg.
He would die here. He knew that now. He couldn’t last another hour. So why had he come, he asked himself? Why had he insisted?
But he knew why. He was no minister of defense. He had skills, but they were not about musters and proclamations and evacuation strategies. Certainly not about crowd control. Only too fitting that he be trampled to death, he thought. No, he had insisted on leading this mission because he did not want to die of the rot, or the fever, talking out of his head, lying on a dirty bedsheet in a farmer’s field while his Army cowered, waiting their turn to follow the same path.
He looked at Mather’s body where it lay just a few feet from him, the noose still around his neck. The rope had been cut by some citizen trying to save him. But his neck was already broken. He had no doubt died instantly. Why had he stayed on his knees even as gunfire erupted? Why hadn’t he tried to stand up, move off that trapdoor?
Bench didn’t understand that behavior at all. Both the prince and Packer had put up no fight, none whatsoever. And Packer was supposed to be this legendary warrior who could inspire his people. All talk.
Bench would have fought to the death; that was simple fact. The Drammune commander, he’d have fought to the death, too. Bench loved his country, and served his king and his prince, but he had to respect the Drammune. They knew how to fight.
The sound of a musket shot brought him back to the moment. But it was on the other side of the Green. He took stock. Two of his men were dead for sure. One of them lay on his back not an arm’s length away, eyes blank and dull. He was little more than a boy, a dark-haired kid with fire in his belly, name of Camble Canady. He had been with Bench when they’d served papers on Scat Wilkins. He must have been hit with a dozen musket balls, probably more, the way they bounced off that armor. He just kept going. But it only took one to find its target. The other raider he could see was Gildon Trouth, a tough old coot, hard as a leather saddle horn, now on his face fifteen feet away. Like Camble, Gildon still held his pistol in his hand. They were good men. He was proud of them.
Bench’s hands felt cold and far away as he reloaded his pistol. When he finished the task, he laid the weapon down on the wet, muddy grass beside him. He hoped he had kept the powder dry while reloading, but he doubted it. Then with a pained effort, he found the pistol tucked into his waistband at his back. And then with an even greater effort, he pulled the two-shot derringer from his boot.
He closed his eyes for a moment, collecting his strength. What else did he have? Nothing of any value now. He looked at his dead comrades, wondered if they still had unfired weapons. Didn’t matter. He had at least three shots, maybe five if the powder didn’t fail him. That would be enough.
Ward followed the Drammune guards at a dead sprint. He still had his sword in his hand, but now he remembered his pistol; in fact he could think about almost nothing else because he was losing it down his pants as he ran. He fished for it as he turned the corner that opened up onto the greensward near the Seminary, and then he stopped. He pulled the pistol free, finally, and aimed.
Panna was still running at full tilt across the grass, down the hill toward the little cottages, but from this angle, above them, he could see she had actually opened up space. She was faster. But Ward was winded. His lungs heaved; his hand was ridiculously unsteady. He’d just as likely hit Panna as anything else.
This mission was going precisely as well as the last.
He watched Panna cross the street, run through the iron gate and toward a little cottage with broken windows and a door that hung open. She had a good twenty or thirty yards on them now. But why run in there and be cornered, Ward wondered? That cottage…She was last seen at a priest’s cottage; isn’t that what Mather had said? Yes, and the dragoons had searched it. That’s where she had disappeared.
Then it hit him. A chill ran down his spine. There was a hiding place in there.
He threw away his sword, turned and sprinted for the King’s Arms. For the first time in a very long time, he prayed. It was a simple prayer, but as earnest as any ever prayed by a Sennett of his generation. God, save that woman.
Panna heard the footsteps behind her, kept running in a panic. Her heart beat so fast she thought it might explode. Her lungs burned. She needed to make it to the cottage, to the kitchen, to the stove, to safety.
She entered the priest’s home at a dead run, and as she did it occurred to her she would be found this time. Surely, this time they would not stop searching until they found the secret shaft. But she had no other choice now. She hit the stove at a run, slamming the cold iron aside. She climbed down the ladder, stopping just long enough to pull it over her. It slid easily, as though oiled; she wondered at that, not realizing it was her own strength in the full boil of emotion that made it seem so easy. She climbed down to the bottom, trying to control the sound of her own breathing.
At the top of the shaft, she could hear the footsteps enter the cottage slowly, the voices cautious but gruff and commanding. Calling for her. Then she heard shouting, anger. Then the voices spoke softly among themselves. And then she heard the breaking of windows, of doors. Shattering of wood.
They were taking the little cottage apart, piece by piece.
The Drammune soldiers were baffled, but they were not deterred. They had a mission, orders given directly and personally from their supreme commander, and they would obey or face his wrath. The girl had come into this house. There were no other doors. Windows were broken, and so she might have escaped through one of them, but they were sure they would have seen her. She had gone in; she hadn’t left. She was here, somewhere.
One man went outside to walk the perimeter of the house, to look for some means of escape, a cellar, a roof hatch. He checked the toolshed and then brought his comrade a shovel and an axe and a hammer. Both men began in the living room. Every floorboard was tried, pried, overturned. Every wall was attacked and hacked. Then they moved to the bedroom. The bed was overturned, the wardrobe smashed, the floorboards uprooted, the ceiling joists prodded, pried, and broken.
Then they went to the kitchen. The floors and walls and cupboards were treated to the same depredations. And then finally, when all else was a shambles, they turned simultaneously and looked at the stove. The only thing not ransacked. The two men pulled it toward them, muscling it off its track, and stood, sweating, panting, and in no good mood, looking down into a dark well.
“Tai!” one of them called. He pulled a pistol and pointed it down the hole. “Tai ar nocht!” Come out or die!
No answer came back.
They held the lamp over the hole; it helped only a little. It was impossible to see the bottom of the pit. The man with the pistol grunted his displeasure, then climbed down.
A mome
nt later he climbed out, and put his pistol back into his belt. He took off his helmet, ran stubby fingers through dark, sweaty hair.
“Zona,” he said simply. Nothing.
Bench looked around him, trying to find a Drammune soldier to shoot. But he couldn’t see one. Where had they gone? He wiped at his eyes, squinted against the rain. He looked up at the Rampart. No one. He couldn’t see clearly, apparently. Across the space of the Green the Vast crowd was now milling about, kicking and stabbing at various things they came across lying on the ground. But where were the Drammune? It baffled him.
He closed his eyes. He heard a gurgling sound in his own throat, but it didn’t worry him. It was comforting, almost like a snore. He was very tired…very tired.
A moment later, his pistol slipped from his hand onto the wet ground.
Panna followed Prince Ward through the dark passageway. “Glad I remembered this little offshoot,” he said breathlessly, putting a hand to his chest. He was still recovering from his sprint back to the King’s Arms, and then through the passage that led to the priest’s little cottage. “I knew it went to the Seminary somewhere, but I was never tempted to follow it. Mind those cobwebs.”
“Father Mooring doesn’t think it leads anywhere,” Panna told him as she brushed the gray webs aside. “He just keeps potatoes down there.”
Ward laughed. Potatoes. Why did that strike him as funny? He was giddy with this sudden, unexpected success, he supposed. “Well, that door may not even open from his side. The system was built for escaping the palace.”
Ward stopped where two cramped paths intersected, and he studied his choices. “This way.” But before he moved, he held up the lamp, looked at Panna. He put one hand on a knee, resting. “Did you see what happened out there?”
The question surprised her. “What happened?”
“They tore down the gallows. Did you see my brother?”
“Yes.” She let the memory come back. “I don’t think he survived.”
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 84