by Sam Hawke
An-Hadrea shrugged. “I will try.”
“Thank you,” Tain said. “Do you want me to send a guard with you?”
“Credo Jovan will walk with me to the catacombs,” she said, her inflection suggesting it was not a question. She looked at me, straight-faced. “But it will be best if I go alone from there.”
My mouth dried up as I struggled to think what to say. She rendered the issue moot, in any case, starting down the stairs without another word. I shrugged at my friend and then sprang after her, struggling to keep up as she slipped down the stairs and into the growing crowd at the base of the tower. We made our way across Trickster’s Bridge, dodging dozens of carts dragging equipment and supplies to the old city, the press of people and oku and carts creating a blanket of smells and sounds. The buzz of their endeavors almost made it feel like a busy day at the wharf or markets; though the suffocating closeness of the crowd made me as anxious as always, it was balanced by a feeling of familiarity. Strange how I could feel both at peace and on edge at the same time.
“I have not eaten this morning,” An-Hadrea said, stopping after we stepped off the far side of the bridge. “I will visit the ration station before I go below. You will eat with me?”
I searched her expressionless face, frustrated by my inability to read her intent. “I suppose.” Truth be told, I was starving. I’d proofed Tain’s meal last night but been too tired to seek my own, so hadn’t eaten anything since early yesterday but a few mouthfuls of Tain’s millet porridge and some lukewarm tea.
“Do you have special access to the food? Or do you wait in the line with the rest of us?”
“I line up,” I said, terse. When I visited a ration station, I did. Usually I ate from the Chancellor’s kitchen, one of the few private kitchens not commandeered for communal food preparation. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Then let us line up,” she said, unruffled.
A passing group of men and women, approaching from the direction in which we headed, brushed too close for my liking, and one or two of them stared at the two of us walking together. We’d had no further reports of violence toward Darfri, but the air of ill feeling toward them was worse than ever. Given that the last Darfri to whom I had spoken had been murdered, I feared what our enemies within the city might do.
“Maybe you should think about dressing like a Silastian,” I told her, conscious that the wide gray scarf that covered her head and torso, while useful for blending into shadows, stood out among the crowds of white cloth and bare dark heads. She had not hidden her charm necklace.
She snorted. “I am proud to be Darfri. You have made us hide for your convenience for long enough.”
We were too early for a line at the station. “Porridge is just done, Credo,” the boy there told us. The ration station was a reconfigured school classroom with tables stacked with crude bowls and pots cluttering the floor.
“Mind if we take a few bowls?” As he scurried off, I said to her, “We’ve hardly time to wait to create a line to satisfy you, have we?”
She didn’t reply, but when the boy returned with two steaming bowls, she thanked him in her soft, lilting voice, and the lad looked at his feet, embarrassed.
I began the bland fare. Salt and spices had been the first things to be thinned from the rationing after fresh food. I didn’t need proofing skills to tell me this was millet and hot water, nothing more. Habit made me breathe in the scent of each mouthful first, and to work the food around my mouth as I ate, feeling for reactions.
My companion, on the other hand, dove into her food with apparent relish, using two spoons as she ate, the bowl nestled in her lap between her crossed legs. She looked up at me, midscoop, and laughed.
“What?” I stopped, self-conscious.
“Do you not know how to eat?” She dropped a spoon and mimicked a careful mouthful, exaggerating the chew with a grim expression. Then she laughed again. “Food is not so clinical. It is an experience. A pleasure. For all the indulgences of this city, have you forgotten this?”
I dropped my own spoon and frowned. “It’s just porridge.”
An-Hadrea shook her head. “No. It is nourishment. It is a gift of warmth and of satisfaction.”
I shrugged, defensive. Food was my job, my duty. It was difficult to take pleasure in something that from an early age had been analyzed for taste, texture, and smell to prevent sickness or death.
“You are an odd person, Credo Jovan.”
I changed the subject. “What are you going to tell the others in the catacombs? Will they help defend the old city once they come over the bridge?”
An-Hadrea shrugged. “I do not know. They have chosen to live here in the city. Perhaps they will defend it as their home. But then, they are Darfri. From what I have heard, even before this siege their beliefs were mocked and belittled. Their neighbors use what parts of our culture they find useful or charming, then discard them like a fashion. At best Darfri have been regarded with condescension and derision. What have they truly in common with the rest of you?”
There was nothing to add to that, really. After all we had learned, I didn’t want to fight the rebellion, either. The best we could hope for was that we found some way of stopping the army before open battle. But the people of this city did not deserve to be murdered for the crimes of their government, and if the rebels wouldn’t listen to reason or negotiation I wasn’t prepared to lie down and let us be trampled, sympathetic to their motivations or not.
“Not everyone will come to your old city,” she added. She blew on her porridge to cool it. “What will you do about those who will not follow?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s absurd to leave people in the old city to join the invading army, especially as they know the city like the mercenaries and the countryfolk don’t.”
Silence.
“But, nothing,” I said, sighing. “Tain won’t force anyone to come over. So if your people want to join the army, we won’t stop them.”
She took another spoonful, regarding me with a tilted head. “And what about people who are too scared to come across? Who do not want to join the army, but fear beatings or worse from your citizens?”
“I hope you’ll convince them Tain will protect them, and punish anyone who threatens them. His honor is everything to him. You must have seen what kind of man he is, by now.”
She pressed her lips together; agreeing, but reluctantly.
“So trust him. And let them see you do.”
“The Chancellor wants to do the right thing, I believe that,” she said after a pause. “But I have spoken to him in person and seen his generosity of spirit. The people below only know what this city and its people have been to them. Some will not come, you must know this.”
“I do,” I admitted. “You heard us before. We just don’t know what to do about it. We can’t drag them out by force. We can only hope they listen to you, especially families with children.”
“And if you leave them there, hiding from the army and from you, what are they to do for food?”
We looked at each other for a long moment. Then I looked back down to my porridge. “I think we both know they have supplies down there,” I said quietly.
It hadn’t taken me too long to piece it together. The missing supplies, the Darfri man who had knocked me out … Hundreds of people could hardly hide under our feet without food stores. With the stolen food they could continue to hide down there even if the city above them were occupied.
An-Hadrea stirred her spoon around her bowl. I saw a softening around her mouth and eyes: the hint of a smile, free of mockery. “You are not so bad,” she said, just as quietly.
We finished our meal in silence, but it was almost companionable.
* * *
I left An-Hadrea near the entry to the tunnels. Or, rather, she left me; one moment we were walking, the next she told me, “I will go now,” and I was alone in the ghostly street. Walking back, I stared at the ground, wondering what transpired ben
eath. An-Hadrea had not told me what she planned to say, or even how she planned to deliver the message. We would have to trust her.
I wondered what Salvea would say when Tain told her where her daughter had gone. An-Hadrea might be confident with that wicked belt knife of hers, and she had bragged that country children all brawled for sport and fun on the estates, but her mother wasn’t quite so casual about the potential danger. As I made my way back to the east side of the lake and headed for the wall, I catalogued the things that needed doing today.
“Ho!” Pedrag waved to me from the battlements as I ascended the stairs. “Credo Jovan!”
I joined the Craft-Guilder, clasping his age-spotted forearms as I stepped onto the stone walkway. “Good morning,” I said. “How does it look out there?”
His jaw trembled as he turned back to the view. “I think they’re coming for us,” he said.
I followed his gesture, out to where the rebels appeared to be massing into organized lines. A figure in red, mounted on a graspad, moved up and down the assembling lines, waving some sort of banner—the wind whipped it around and I couldn’t make out the symbol, if any—and as he passed, the army cheered and roared, stamping their feet and bashing their weapons and shields. Behind their front lines their war machines loomed: half a dozen catapults and the great siege tower, standing the full height of the walls. I felt cold. This was no tentative foray. They meant to enter the city today.
“Have you sent word?”
Pedrag started to answer, but the attack bell rang out from the nearest tower, and within moments the sound was echoed by the other towers around the city. His gnarled fingers clutched my forearm and we both stared, transfixed, over the ramparts as the army moved forward. Though I’d spent a lot of last night lying awake, picturing this event, it still didn’t seem real to see the catapults being wheeled out like great, silent soldiers, and to hear the baying from the army, like wild animals surrounding their prey.
Our own catapults, designed and built by people who had never done anything of the sort, were in position: one on each of the north and west tower gates and one that was set back on the road and intended to throw over the wall, essentially blind. Their accuracy was untested.
The first of their catapults went off without warning. The great rock sailed through the sky from somewhere to my left, oddly graceful and silent as it flew over the heads of the approaching army. The ugly chunk of boulder hit the wall not far east of where Pedrag and I stood, and the crack made the very stone beneath our feet vibrate. A cheer spread across the army at this first strike.
“Look sharp, Credo,” Pedrag said, and his grip on my arm became an encouraging pat. “Now’s not the time for gawking.”
I blinked. Sounds returned to full force, slapping me into action. Pedrag was right; there was no time left for watching and wondering.
By the time we reached the section of wall being attacked they had struck it again. A confused scramble of disorganization met us as our people filled the battlements and massed around the area in response to the still-pealing alert bells. Marco was up on the wall and Order Guards attempted to direct the hordes below. The first of our catapults retaliated at last, sending a hunk of white rock that might once have belonged to Bell’s Bridge flying over our heads. The visible deflation of our people on the wall moments later told me it must have fallen well short of the line.
Through the cluster of people streaming in I finally identified the small group I’d recruited to help make non-lethal weapons, struggling to haul in a barrow loaded with supplies. Relieved, I ran to join them, surprised to find Pedrag beside me. A mix of cooks, chemists, physics’ assistants, and artists who worked with chemicals to make dyes and paints, they had taken to the task with enthusiasm and ingenuity, improving on my rough ideas.
“Credo Jovan!” one man puffed. “This is all we’ve had time to make.”
“Let’s get them up there,” I said.
The steps were choking but we forced through, up the north river gate tower, past weapons stockpiles and a readied firepit, and unloaded our collection. The wind was blowing hot and fast, and the approaching army drew closer, unhurried but menacing. My team had produced three kinds of defense: one to form a smoky, burning barrier around the most vulnerable part of the wall, to make it harder for the rebels to identify weaknesses; one a flammable liquid to be poured on any close-range siege structures; and finally a collection of miniature sedative pouches that would release Art’s tonic in gas or powder form to cause unconsciousness. The goal was to protect the city while harming as few people as possible.
First, barrels of ash. “Mixed with the last of the hot spices,” one of the cooks said. “The Chancellor gave us permission.” I had wondered about the abrupt absence of spices from the ration stations. Bland food seemed a fair exchange.
We staggered ourselves, three to a barrel, along the wall. The ash mix would form a kind of border across the most vulnerable section of wall. “Make way for the barrels!” I yelled, and Chen’s familiar voice farther down the line echoed my shout. I helped haul one to the edge, then together we upended the mess below.
“Now the oil mix!” One of the engineers had rigged up a kind of tube operated by a bellowlike contraption that pumped oil down into the piles of ash. The marching troops were almost within arrow range. Marco’s voice, elevated by a speaking trumpet, boomed an alert to the archers to get into position. The smell of smoke from the firepit in the tower carried in the air. People ran along the battlements, setting up or restocking containers of broken pottery, cutlery, metal scraps, rocks, and other shrapnel. Others delivered buckets of hot sand to the murder holes. The cacophony created a kind of disjointed song in my head: the beat of the approaching feet, horns, shouts, my own breath in my ears.
A woman no taller than my shoulder held a lit torch in one hand and shuffled her feet nervously as she waited for the call, and a thickset man with a copper helmet and an open mouth scurried through, barking orders in a reedy, nervous voice.
“And … loose!” The archers drew back, and the high whine of flying arrows filled the air. “Back! You, there! Keep a clear path! We must be able to move!” He spotted us and wiped his forehead. “Credolen. What do you need? I’m in charge of this stretch here.”
“A bow, if you’ve one handy,” Pedrag said. I glanced over, surprised by his vigor. He smiled, his eyes disappearing into the heavy creases of his face. “I’m not a bad hand with one.” He slipped into a gap between archers in time to loose with the next cry.
“The tower is on the move,” someone shouted, and I peered out through the crenellations to see, only to be faced instead with the sight of another huge chunk of rock from a catapult hurtling toward us. “Brace!”
The crack it made as it connected with the wall was louder than before.
The physic’s assistant beside me scrambled to her feet and squirted the last of the oil below. I checked the flag on the tower; it whipped off to the east, same as the last few days, still favoring neither side. If only the wind would turn more southerly and blow back against them. Already the ash swirled about, masking the wall, but it would disadvantage us as much as them if the wind turned against us.
“Archers ready!”
My companions unloaded another set of tricks—this time a viscous, treacly liquid in thin jars that we could light and hurl at the siege tower. I coughed, assaulted by the putrid stench. “What’s making it smell like that?”
The man looked confused, shaking the bottle slightly. “It shouldn’t be—” Then he gestured behind me, where someone tottered past carrying buckets of what appeared to be human waste in each hand.
I glanced at my companion, grinning despite myself. “Can something be both a horrible idea and an excellent one?”
“Well we certainly aren’t short of shit,” he said with a snort of laughter. “We’ll all need to take a squat for the city if it comes to that.”
The woman next to him gave us a hard look. Chagrined, I started
to apologize, but calm as anything, she spun and yanked up her tunic to expose her bare backside to the parapet. “Shitting for the honor of my city!” she bellowed, and the group of us around laughed so hard at the unexpectedness of it that I barely felt the next crack of stone against the wall.
Credo Pedrag, between shots, wagged a finger. “Discipline in the armed ranks clearly isn’t what they say it is,” he said. His eyes crinkled into a grin under his helmet. “Why, in my day, we knew how to really expose an ar—”
The arrow struck the side of his helmet and he fell so fast that it took a moment to even register what had happened.
“’Ware!” someone shrieked, and everyone scampered against the parapet as the clattering of wood on stone signaled that the army’s arrows had found their range. “We need shields!”
“Pedrag!” I yelled, but the old man lay motionless on the walkway. I scurried over, cowering at every sound, and tugged the Credo’s closest leg, pulling him back closer to the wall edge. “Physic!”
But they were already calling the next volley, and my shouts were lost in the crush of noise. I dared a glance between crenellations and saw the great tower tottering closer and closer; built something like one of our own wall towers, but wooden and on wheels, narrower at the top but not substantially. I couldn’t tell what was propelling it toward us. I dropped back down and checked Pedrag’s pulse. For a few agonizing moments, nothing. Then, there it was. The arrow had punched down above his ear, denting the helmet but not penetrating it. One small blessing, at least.
“Light arrows!”
“Hit the tower! Aim for the tower!”
Someone came racing by, handing out arrows with oil-soaked rags tied around the heads, followed by the torch carrier. People on either side of me drew back now-flaming arrows. As we settled into the attack the panic was subsiding and Marco’s careful defense plans were starting—slowly—to come together.