The soldiers were shouting behind them, but a curve in the road that skirted a jut in the cliff's face hid them from the soldiers' view. Patience saw an open gate into a small garden on the cliff side of the road. She quickly scanned the area for possible escape routes. The garden was beside a two-story house, which led upward to a stone retaining wall built against the cliff face. The wall no doubt supported a road on the next level up. A sewer pipe protruded a couple of meters below the lip of the retaining wall; to avoid having the waste from above pollute them, the builders on this level had connected it to a thick masonry drainpipe that carried the wastewater down to a collector barrel. Until now, there had always been ladders or stairs or elevators connecting the different levels, but apparently these two states were feuding, and the sewer connection was the best they had seen so far. To Patience, it looked like a highway to safety.
The problem was that during the climb they would be hopelessly exposed. But if they hid in the garden, the soldiers might pass them by. It would give them a few moments until Unwyrm realized what had happened and began to guide them back. Powerful as Unwyrm was, he couldn't see through his minions' eyes, or even understand their conscious thoughts. He could only shove them in roughly the direction he wanted them to go, by making them want desperately to go that way. It gave Patience some time, some room to maneuver; it was the only reason Reck and Ruin had not yet been killed, or Patience separated from them.
All this thought took only a moment; Patience drew the other two through the garden gate. It had been open slightly, jammed in place by debris and built-up dirt that showed that the owner never moved it. Patience left it undisturbed. She had the other two move well into the garden, behind some barrels, out of sight. She waited near the entrance, her loop in hand. Only one person at a time could get through the gate. With luck, though, no one would try.
They heard the soldiers run by. Their captain was shouting orders to them. Then there was silence, except for their distant running footsteps as they ran farther and farther away.
Patience turned to leave the gate and join the geblings, but Ruin was waving to her frantically: get back, get back. She turned around just as a soldier, his sword leading, stepped through the gate. It was a reflex, with no thought at all, to lariat his head with the loop and snap it tight. By chance the loop fell right where cartilage connected two vertebrae of his neck; the force and speed of her attack were so great that the loop gave only a moment's hesitation in cutting right through the spine.
The man's head twisted and spun off his shoulders; both his own forward movement and the pull of the loop made the head tumble toward her, striking her chin and rolling down across her chest.
Angel said I couldn't do this, she thought. Said I couldn't cut off a man's head with a single pass of the loop.
And at the same time, she thought: The blood will never wash out of this gown.
The soldier's body still stumbled forward, his arms reaching out to break his fall. Then the last instructions of the head to the body were exhausted; the body collapsed.
Patience quickly dragged the body inside the gate, where it couldn't be seen from outside. Then she put the head back on the neck and propped it in place with rocks and a small keg. Let them not see at once that he was dead. It might be a useless gesture, but Angel had taught her to do that, since it usually bought more time than it cost; and because the person who discovered the body was the one whose action would make the head separate from the neck, it was all the more horrifying-and therefore demoralizing.
Ruin and Reck had already guessed the next move, and were climbing up to the roof of the house. After climbing dozens of similar buildings this morning, they had mastered the basic routine. They stayed behind chimneys and did their best to be invisible from the street.
Patience quickly joined them-she was a more practiced climber than either of them. In moments she was leading the way again.
There was a boy, about ten years old, working on the roof. He had a hammer, which he had been using to repair shingles. At the moment, however, he had a murderous glint in his eye. Unwyrm was in him, and all he wanted was to use his hammer to stop them. Patience knew she could get by him; already his gaze went past her, as he looked with loathing on the geblings behind her.
"I don't want to kill you," said Patience.
"Go back," he said to the geblings. "Go back, you filth!"
Behind her, Reck fitted an arrow to her bow.
"He's a child!" Patience shouted. "He can't help himself!"
"Neither can I," said Reck.
Before Reck could get off a shot, Patience kicked out, catching the boy in the belly and knocking the wind out of him. He fell back against the stone wall of the cliff face behind him. He didn't drop the hammer. So she had to do it again, and this time she could feel ribs break.
"Live!" she shouted at the boy. "Live and forgive me!"
Then she ran on, leading the geblings to the base of the sewer line.
"All Unwyrm needs to do to defeat you is send an army of children," said Ruin. "Save your compassion for a time when we're not fighting to survive."
"Shut up. Ruin," said Reck. Then she pushed on the sewer pipe. It wobbled. "We're supposed to climb this? It's pottery. It'll break."
"The frame is wooden," said Patience. "And there are gaps in the stone wall. Easy." She proved it by climbing up beside the sewer pipe, using only the crevices in the stonework. Reck and Ruin scrambled up behind her.
Shouts below; the soldiers had come back, and Patience and the geblings were clearly visible now. There was no possibility of hiding; they were as visible as roaches on a whitewashed wall, and could not scurry nearly as fast. Patience knew the only escape was to climb as quickly as possible, getting higher and harder to hit before the soldiers came within bowshot.
"Maybe I could get some from here," Reck said. The gebling woman was obviously frustrated at not having been able to use her weapon all day.
"If you killed five, there'd still be fifteen shooting at us," said Patience.
She reached the place where the sewer pipe stuck out from the stone wall. Unfortunately, the wall was newer here; it had not weathered as many years, and there were no crevices to which she could trust her weight. Using the last of the cracks below the sewer line, she was able to get up on top of the pipe. It was a precarious balance, not helped at all by the fact that the pipe was not firmly cemented in place; it wiggled slightly. Her face pressed against the stone, she carefully raised her arms above her head.
It occurred to her that if she really wanted to thwart Unwyrm, she had only to lean backward just a little, and it would be over. But as soon as she felt that desire, she was filled with a desperate urge to survive. Her fingers touched the top of the wall, with a few inches to spare.
The stones were firm; she began to lift herself. It was harder than hoisting herself onto a tree branch; she couldn't swing front-to-back in order to give herself momentum.
But slowly, with growing pain in her arms, she was able to lift herself till the wall was at waist height; then she toppled over to safety beyond the wall.
On this side, the road was half a meter below the level of the wall, so that the wall formed a sturdy curb to keep carts from toppling over the edge. Almost as soon as she was behind the wall, the arrows started flying from below.
Of course Unwyrm hadn't been willing to let anyone shoot when there was a chance of hurting her. Now, though, only the geblings clung to the wall, high and difficult to shoot, but open targets nonetheless. A chance arrow was bound to hit one of them sooner or later.
"I can't reach!" shouted Ruin.
Of course. The shorter geblings couldn't possibly climb as she had done. And she doubted she had the strength left in her arms to reach over and pull him up.
At the same moment, Unwyrm increased the urgency of the Cranning call. Leave them. She felt a sudden revulsion for the geblings. Filthy creatures, hairy and crude, imitating human beings but planning only to betray and
kill her. It took all her strength not to do as she desired, to run from the wall and proceed alone to where Unwyrm waited, her lover, her friend.
She clung to the memory of Will's voice, telling her that her desires were not herself. She pictured the passions that Unwyrm sent as though they stood outside her, while her passionless self remained inside the machine of her body, making it do what it so desperately desired not to do.
She pulled her gown off over her head and knotted it to her cloak. Then, clad only in her chemise, with a cold wind whipping along the road, she sat with her feet braced against the wall, passed the cloak behind her back, and flipped the gown over the wall. She held the knot in her left hand, the other end of the cloak in her right; the friction of the cloth against her back would allow her to support far more weight on the gown than her arms could have managed alone.
"I'm supposed to climb this?" shouted Ruin.
"Unless you can fly!" she shouted back. Unwyrm raged at her, tore at her in her mind, but she held, despite the impulse to let go, to let the gebling fall. I will do what I decide to do, she said silently, not what I want to do, and she felt the emotional part of herself become smaller, recede as if it were rushing away from her. This is Will, she realized. This is his silence, his strength, his wisdom, that he can send away all his feelings when he doesn't want them.
The cloth of the gown gave and tore slightly, then more, but in a moment Ruin scrambled over the wall.
Then he leaned over and shouted encouragement to Reck.
Suddenly there was a cry from the other side.
"She's hit," said Ruin. He shouted, "It's nothing, it barely hurt you, come on, come on!"
From the weight on the makeshift ladder. Patience knew that Reck was climbing now. Ruin leaned over, caught his sister under the arm, and helped pull her up.
The arrow protruded from her left thigh, but Ruin was right-the head had not buried itself, and he easily pulled it out. Reck was gasping, her eyes wide with terror.
"Never," she said. "I could never stand heights."
"And you think of Cranning as home?" asked Patience.
She was examining her gown. It was shredded where it had scraped on the wall. It pulled apart in her hands. "I'm glad there aren't three of you. The third one would have fallen."
She unknotted the cloak from the gown. A spent arrow dropped beside her. She flipped it back over the wall.
"Hope it lands in someone's eye."
Ruin was looking at her. Studying her. "Why didn't you go off and leave us?"
"I thought of it," she said.
"I know-we get the shadow of what he says to you."
"Well, if I'm going to be a bride, I need a wedding party. Have to have you along." It was a bitter joke. She wrapped the cloak around her waist to protect her legs from the cold wind that whistled down the unprotected road. "I also need a warm fire."
"At least we don't have to run for a few moments."
Reck tried out her injured leg. "Hurts," she said.
Ruin looked around. "If we find the right herb-"
"They say everything that grows anywhere grows in Cranning," said Reck.
"Somewhere in Cranning," said Ruin.
"There are trees that way," said Patience. "And if we're lucky, we won't run into anybody that Unwyrm can set to chasing us."
The houses, which were several streets deep for a while, thinned out and finally gave way to gardens and orchards. Soon they found themselves on a road that led along the rim of a large flat orchard area. The trees were stunted, for only dwarf trees could live at such an altitude.
Ruin wandered among the trees, which had long since lost leaf and fruit; finally he called to Reck and jammed a furry leaf against her wound.
"We can't rest here for long," Reck said, holding the leaf in place. "He'll have someone after us soon."
"I've never worked so hard in my life," said Patience.
"And I'm so tired."
"We haven't slept since we left the boat," said Ruin.
"But Unwyrm couldn't be happier. We've got to sleep sometime."
"Now," said Patience.
"Not now," said Reck. "We have to get higher.
Where there's no human or gebling to send after us."
Patience could see heavy clouds moving in from the west, at their level. "There'll be fog. We can hide in the fog."
"It won't be fog, it'll be snow," said Ruin. "We need shelter. And we need to get higher."
"Can't we use the tunnels yet?" asked Patience. Tunnels would be shelter and a passage to Unwyrm that they could follow easily.
"Oh, yes, of course," said Reck. "But the entrances are pretty rare up this high. We're nearly at the top of the inhabited area now. We'll just have to find another way up."
The herb acted quickly, taking away enough of Reek's pain that she could keep up, though she kept losing blood in a thin trickle as a scab formed and broke, formed and broke. Finally they found a stairway along the surface of the steep and polished wall that led up to the next level.
The gate at the bottom was wide open. The gate at the top was less cooperative.
"They could at least have had the decency to lock the gate at the bottom, too," said Reck.
But Patience had been trained as a diplomat, and among his other lessons. Angel had taught her that a simple lock like this meant that the owner wasn't really serious about wanting privacy. Using a short stick and a dart, she had it open in a few moments.
They emerged in another garden, this time without trees. Behind the garden Skyfoot rose steeply again. This time, however, it was no polished wall. It was the raw mountain, with a few caverns yawning in its face. They had not seen natural rock like this since they reached Cranning. It looked as though no human hand had ever cut into it.
"Is this the top?" asked Patience.
Reck shook her head. "The top is a glacier, but the city may not go any higher than this. At this point, anyway."
"Do you know where we are?"
"I would if I could stand in that cave," said Ruin.
They began to trot toward it, between two low hedges that seemed to lead in that general direction. Then the clouds moved in, and a few seconds later they couldn't see at all.
They stopped at once and touched each other, held hands so they wouldn't be separated.
"You're cold, Heptarch," said Reck. "You're trembling."
"She doesn't have fur," said Ruin. "We'll have to hold her until the cloud passes."
"He doesn't want me to wait," murmured Patience.
"He's waited so long already."
They lay on the ground. Reck in front of her, Ruin behind, shielding her as best they could from the snow that now fell heavily from within the cloud.
"Are you all right?" Reck asked her once.
"All I can think about," said Patience, trembling, "is how much I want him." Then she laughed slightly. "All I can think about is sleep."
They held her tighter, and in the warmth of the geblings' embrace she slept.
The cloud was gone and the stars were out, but the snow half-covered them and the air was thin. Reck felt the wound in her thigh throbbing. The pain was not intense, but it had been enough to wake her. Reck felt no breath on her back from the human girl that slept behind her. She called her brother silently.
Ruin opened one eye and looked at her.
"How is she?" Reek whispered.
"She's weak. But then, I think he wants her weak."
"The caves won't help much. They're colder than outside."
"Stand up and see if there are any lights," said Ruin.
"I'll hold her."
Reck pulled herself away from the sleeping human.
There were some lights twinkling far away. A long walk in the darkness.
"A long way," said Reck. "But we can't go for help.
So we'll have to take her, cold as it is." Reck knelt and stroked Patience's cold bare arm, then shook her lightly.
"She won't wake up."
&nb
sp; As if in answer. Reck suddenly felt what she had not felt in all the time they had been with Patience: the repulsion of Unwyrm. But here, so close to his lair, it came with such power that she could not breathe. She cried out with the pain of it. "We're too close to him!" she cried. With Patience asleep, Unwyrm could focus on them, on pushing them away.
"Wake her!" Ruin gasped.
Reck hardly heard him. She could hardly think of anything at all now except her urgent need to run to the wall of the garden and throw herself over the cliff, downward, all the way through the air down to the water at the base of Skyfoot, to sink into Cranwater. She got up and started staggering toward the wall.
"No!" screamed Ruin. He clutched at her feet. Strong as the repulsion was, he was more practiced at resisting it; her wound had weakened her a little, too, and so he held on to her. "Wake up, damn you!" he screamed at Patience. "Wake up, so he'll have to call you again!"
In answer, Patience began to tremble from the cold.
She whimpered. She called her father softly. She did not wake up.
"Let go of me!" shouted Reck. "Let me fly!"
"He's trying to kill us!" cried Ruin, though he, too, felt the need to leap.
"What is it!" called someone in the distance.
"Where are you, ta-dee, ta-doo!" sang someone else.
"It's kickety cold!" cried someone else. Obviously the group was in a good mood, whoever they were.
"Here!" shouted Ruin. "Help!"
"Let go of me!" cried Reck.
The would-be rescuers bounded up to them. Ruin saw only that they were humans. "Let go of her!" said one of them. "Help him," said another.
They were old, and they sounded either drunk or stupid. Ruin doubted they could hold Reck if she wanted to get away. There was only one hope. "Wake up the one that's lying there! She's lying there, the girl in the snow-wake her up!"
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