by David Drake
“Any notion what the excitement's about, boy?” he asked Thalemos in seeming nonchalance. He gave a minuscule nod toward the crest behind them; the millipede's segmented body was still crossing it.
The youth shook his head vehemently. “I don't know any more about this place than you do!” he said. Then he managed a wry smile, and added, "And I don't like it any better than you do either.”
Vascay chuckled. “Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe so.”
“Chief?” Hame called from the midst of the other men on the third segment. “What's going on?”
“Nothing we need worry ourselves about,” Vascay replied in a cheerful tone. “Though I'll tell the world I'm going to be glad to get back to a place I've been before, even if there's Protectors in it!”
Turning his face away from the bandits, Vascay added under his breath, "Nothing we need worry about, because there's not a single damned thing we can do about it, eh?”
Metron began chanting in time with the motions of his athame. He'd stoppered the flask again. Around the hexagram the wizard had drawn words in the Old Script, using the brush and bottle of cinnabar as previously. In the center of the figure glittered the sapphire ring.
“Maybe the ... the glow, maybe it can't get over the hill that we just crossed?” Thalemos suggested.
Garric shrugged, looking toward the rear. The ground was less heavily forested here, but now that they were on the level he'd lost sight of the crest behind them.
“I'm afraid,” he said, “that if it were that simple, your advisor there wouldn't be working so busily at...”
He nodded toward Metron, chanting words of power over the hexagram.
“Sadly true,” said Vascay calmly. He bobbed his javelin's head off to the right. Light glimmered through the trees in that direction, stretching well back the way they'd come.
Driven by a grim need to know the worst, Garric turned his head and looked to the left. As he'd expected—as he'd known, for he had known as soon as he saw the gleam coursing them to the other side—the light showed in that direction as well. The pool must have been very deep to be able to form horns about the millipede in the fashion it was doing.
The pearly liquid slid over the ground like beer spilled on a polished bar top. It had no depth, rising only a finger's breadth as it flowed around the giant grassblades and dead vegetation littering the dirt. The horns began to draw in, preparing to circle the millipede.
“Here it comes...” Garric said.
“Get ready, boys!” Vascay called. The Brethren had seen the fluid also and held their weapons poised. “I figure our best bet is to cut through it on our own if we lose our ride the way it looks like we're going to.”
There's no chance at all, Garric thought. There's nothing to cut and there'll be nowhere to run.
He drew his sword, smiling at himself and at mankind's unwillingness to surrender. He wondered what it'd feel like when the glowing liquid flowed over him.
Metron shouted in a crackling voice, “Akramma chammari!”
Garric's head jerked around by reflex. The athame poised motionless above the ring. A red spark spat from the ivory tip, merging midway with a blue one from the sapphire.
There was a flicker of white light. The hexagram caught fire with the rushing sound of flame flooding a pool of oil.
Metron jerked his hand and athame back. Saffron fire leaped toward the heavens, then paled and spread outward soundlessly. Ademos cried out.
Garric felt a constriction in his chest as the flash passed through him; then it was gone and he drew in a normal breath again. Vegetation shimmered as if reflected on a wind-ruffled pond.
The yellow tinge had faded so that it was barely distinguishable from air by the time it reached the glowing fluid. Red and azure wizardlight sizzled at the line of contact, dulling the pearly gleam like frost on a silver mirror. Cracks appeared in what had been a surface as smooth as the sky; the rushing encirclement shuddered to a halt.
Metron collapsed over the figure, which had become no more than ash on the purple-black chitin. Garric knelt at his side and held him steady.
“He did it!” Thalemos cried. “Master Metron, you've saved us!”
Vascay didn't speak. Like Garric, he continued to look back at the thing which had pursued them. Before they passed out of sight, Garric saw that the cracks were widening and beginning to leak glowing liquid. The fluid came on again, tentatively at first.
Garric massaged the wizard's cheeks. “Wake up, Master Metron,” he said. “We're going to need you again soon.”
To Sharina, the walls of Donelle two furlongs away didn't look formidable compared to those of Erdin, Valles, and Carcosa—the latter mighty even in ruin, having served forty generations of builders as a quarry for dressed stone. Donelle's were about twenty feet high, originally built of stone but over the years repaired with brick or even cemented rubble.
Carus, Lord Waldron, their aides, and a dozen Blood Eagles rode up on horses and two mules captured from citizens of Tisamur. Their circuit of the siege works had taken hours. Donelle wasn't large compared to the capitals of major islands, but having to stay out of bowshot of the walls added considerably to the circumference.
Sharina stood up in the shelter of what was now a mantlet; it'd been one wall of a farmer's shed not long ago. A score of officers involved in building the entrenchments, supplying the troops, and goodness knew what all else, descended on the commanders like vultures on a dead ewe. Carus and Waldron didn't even get a chance to dismount.
Sharina relaxed again, looking at Donelle. She didn't need to speak to the king, and his officers did. Her only purpose on Tisamur was to help Carus rein in his temper. Even if she could fight her way to the king through the crowd of armed soldiers, she couldn't restrain him in so confused a setting.
The city's garrison was raising additional towers at intervals along the wall, giving archers on the upper platforms greater range and adding impact to stones flung on those beneath. The new structures were built of wood, wicker, and bull hides. They'd stop an ordinary arrow, but Sharina didn't need a professional soldier to tell her that the heavy missiles from the fleet's catapults and ballistae would shred the towers and everyone inside them.
Carus broke through the mob, shouting orders over his shoulder as he strode toward the mantlet. His bodyguards scrambled to keep up with him, elbowing officers aside with little consideration for rank.
With Lord Attaper and his Blood Eagles as a screen, Carus joined Sharina. He lifted the helmet he'd worn on the tour of inspection and used it to shade his eyes as he surveyed Donelle from this angle.
“Not much, is it?” he said conversationally. “I was half-minded to storm it when we arrived. The trouble is, I don't trust the troops—yet—to stay disciplined when they're not under their officers' eyes. If I'd sent them over the wall—”
His left index finger pointed: here, there, a third spot. The first where the foundations had shifted, forming a crack which, though filled, was a staircase to the battlements. Another where olive trees grew up to the stone as though espaliered; the fruit was ripe. The last the main gate itself, closed but obviously too rotten to withstand the impact of one of the roof beams ripped from a wealthy residence outside the walls and converted to a battering ram.
“—in an hour they'd have been all through the city in packets of half a dozen. And I'd have lost half of them before nightfall, from getting turned around in somebody else's twisting streets and burned when the fire started, as it surely would.”
He shook his head with a grimace. “There's always a cookfire kicked over,” he said, “or somebody just can't help tossing a lantern onto a thatched roof to prove that they've got a sword in their hand and they can do anything they please. Which, of course, they can.”
“What will happen now, your highness?” Sharina asked, smiling deliberately as she looked at her companion.
He'd come to Sharina because only with her and Tenoctris—who was back in camp with the ships—co
uld he talk freely. The Blood Eagles were keeping everyone else at bay by the prince's orders. If they heard what Carus said or Sharina answered, they wouldn't pass it on.
“Siege,” Carus said. He shrugged. “It won't take long. The town's packed with people, and prisoners say the whole south end of the island's inside. There can't be enough food within the walls to last for three days, and in six there won't be a rat or a scrap of harness leather to be found.”
Soldiers were digging a trench at a bare bowshot from the walls of Donelle; a little closer yet, Sharina suspected. The defenders weren't trying their luck, though, probably because Carus had brought some of his artillery up from the ships already. The catapults and ballistae were cocked and ready to reply to anything the city's bowmen chose to start.
“They'll surrender when the food runs out?” Sharina asked. She looked away from the city, then turned her head quickly so that she wouldn't have to think about what she'd see there.
The countryside around Donelle had been pleasant and prosperous, a mixture of successful farms and the country houses of wealthy townsfolk. In less than a day, the royal army had transformed it into a devastated wasteland.
“The people in control, these Children of the Mistress,” Carus said grimly, “they'll have some food. So will the mercenaries they've hired. They'll keep the gates closed for a while yet. But it won't be long, it can't be long.”
“And your dreams?” Sharina asked quietly.
“I can stand the dreams longer than the people inside can live on air!” Carus said, though his face went gray at the thought. He added, looking at the city instead of his companion, “I thought about that when we arrived and I was deciding whether to storm the walls. I could've said, 'Kill everybody wearing the black-and-white robe.' I could've said, 'Kill everybody who might have worn the black-and-white robe.' ”
His right hand clenched on his sword hilt; the blade rustled against the iron reinforcement at the mouth of the scabbard.
“I could have said, 'Kill everybody!' ” Carus said, “and they'd have done it. My men would have done it because I said so. Not every man in the army, but enough; and when they were done, the dreams would have stopped.”
"Carus?” Sharina said, touching the king's sword hand. He stiffened, then took a deep breath and relaxed at least his body.
The ruin of the countryside wasn't vandalism. Wood is the first thing a siege requires: wood for mantlets, wood to shore trenches and earthen walls, wood for the heavy siege engines to batter through stone. Orchards, sacred groves, beeches planted to shade a house or a bower—all of them fall in a flurry of axe chips, then slide toward the entrenchments behind teams of men and captured oxen.
The quickest sources of finished timber are existing buildings. On the short march from the harbor, Sharina had seen hundreds of houses torn down in a few minutes apiece by squads of troops who'd quickly learned the swiftest ways to convert a home into beams and a pile of rubble.
“I killed people when I wore my own flesh,” said the ancient king softly. “Killed them myself and had them killed. I never killed everybody in a city, though.”
He knuckled his eyes, then his temples. Sharina had never seen anyone more obviously weary.
Carus lowered his fists and gave her a wry smile. “If I don't get some sleep soon,” he said conversationally, “I don't know what I'm going to do. But Donelle'll surrender soon enough.”
A trumpet called. The army's first action on reaching Donelle had been to raise a spindly watchtower, a tripod supporting a laddered mast. The basket at the peak put the lookout a good hundred feet in the air. From there he could see most of what went on in the city as well as in the surrounding countryside.
He blew another attention signal, holding the trumpet to his lips with one hand while the other arm pointed south. The eyes of besiegers and those on the city walls both turned in that direction, toward the fleet's encampment.
Sharina glanced at the mantlet. The wattling was of thumb-thick branches woven about saplings of twice the diameter. The hut's corner posts, trimmed cedar trees, now held the mantlet upright against any arrows that got this far.
“What in blazes—” Carus wondered aloud.
Sharina half jumped, half climbed to the top of the mantlet and stood barefoot on its edge. She kept her arms out for balance while her eyes searched the western horizon.
“There's a horseman coming,” she said. Nearby soldiers looked up at her. “He's got a red pennant. He's one of our messengers, your highness!”
“Is he, by the Lady!” Carus said. “So what's Zettkin got that's so important he sends a mounted courier?”
In the excitement, several archers on the nearer gate tower sent arrows toward Carus and Sharina. “Down!” bellowed a Blood Eagle. He grabbed Sharina's ankle and jerked her toward him.
If he hadn't let go, Sharina might have hit badly—on her back or even her head. The bodyguard was satisfied merely to get her down where she didn't draw attention. She landed on her toes and flexed knees, just as the flight of arrows whistled into the ground. The nearest was twenty feet away.
A ballista fired from an earth mound thirty yards behind Sharina. The bow arms slammed forward to their padded stops, sending a bolt screaming overhead to strike in a shower of sparks on the side of a firing slit. The iron projectile glanced through without hitting any of the defenders. Chips the bolt'd shattered from the battlements sprayed stingingly across the platform.
The archers were Tisamur militiamen, not hired professionals. They threw themselves down, then as one rose to look out at the ballista which wouldn't be recocked for another five minutes at the quickest.
The sailors crewing a catapult well down the curve of the siege lines had horsed their weapon around to bear on the gate tower. While the defenders looked in the other direction, the catapult's head-sized stone hit and smashed a section of the battlements inward. The archers went down again; some screaming, the rest unable to. No one showed himself on that tower again while Sharina watched.
The courier charged into the siege lines and slid from his saddle while his horse was still moving. He was a short man, lightly built—a natural jockey in size and with the bantam feistiness of so many little men. Ignoring Lord Waldron and the senior officers around him, he made straight for Carus.
Blood Eagles hunched, lifting their shields into position. Their job was to doubt the goodwill of others—and institutional suspicion aside, a Confederacy assassin could find a pennon to mimic a royal courier.
“Let him through!” Carus ordered.
Attaper turned to eye the king sidelong while keeping the courier in sight. “Stay as you are,” he snapped to his men. “You, messenger? You can tell your news from where you are!”
The black-armored guards took their commander's orders, not the king's. The courier made as if to push through; the curve of a shield butted him back. Lord Waldron, glowering like a thundercloud, and the other nearby officers came crowding closer.
“Yes, go on!” Carus said, frustrated but philosophical about it. “What word do you bring from Admiral Zettkin?”
“Your majesty...” the courier said. “The Count of Blaise has landed with his whole army in the bay west of us. Admiral Zettkin says there's at least fifteen thousand men, and that he's sure from the equipment that some of the regiments are from Sandrakkan! The admiral is awaiting your orders.”
“May the Lady show us mercy!” cried a gray-bearded officer, the adjutant of the regiment building this section of siege works. “They knew we were coming, and they've trapped us! We'll die here as sure as—”
Carus, as swiftly as a stooping hawk, pushed two Blood Eagles aside in his rush. He grabbed the old soldier by the throat and slapped him, forehand and then backhand. His callused hand cracked like the ballista's cord.
“Your highness!” Sharina screamed, grabbing Carus' right arm from behind and clinging with all the strength of her supple young body. “Not this! Not here!”
Looking dazed, Caru
s released the adjutant; he fell as though heart-stabbed. Two of the old man's juniors caught him under the shoulders and drew him back out of sight.
Carus looked around at the shock and fear filling the eyes of the watching officers. He shook himself, then clenched and unclenched his right hand to work feeling back into the numbed fingers.
“No,” the king said, “we're not going to die here—and we're not going to give up the siege of Donelle either. Lord Waldron, I'm leaving you here with half the heavy infantry to continue the siege. I'll take the other half, the skirmishers, and the phalanx back to the fleet and size up the situation. And then”—he looked at the gates of Donelle, then around the arc of his officers again—“I'll teach Count Lerdoc what it means to rebel against the King of the Isles. I'll teach him, or the Sister take my soul!”
A few of those listening started to cheer. All Sharina could think of was that the Sister might very well have Carus' soul soon—and the souls of every man of his army as well, if the king's haste led him into yet another mis-judgment.
Chapter Eighteen
Alecto leaped onto a bench, then set one foot on the crossbar and braced the other against the sidewall so that she could look out through the small circular window in the transom. A villager shouted a warning.
The wild girl jumped down. A torch smacked the opening, knocking sparks into the temple. Alecto responded with an oath that Ilna—who didn't believe in the Great Gods or much of anything else—found disgusting. Ilna snatched the bedding clear, but the sparks burned out before they landed.
“They're not trying to break the door down,” Alecto said quietly. “They're hanging back on the porch, looking at the lizard I killed.”
“They probably don't see any reason to hurry,” Ilna said, thinking through the pattern which connected the past to the future here at this point. “Hunger will bring us out before long—if they don't decide to block the door from their side.”
She smiled with wintry humor. “A pity that the creature ran outside that way,” she added. “We wouldn't have lacked for food if it'd died where you stabbed it.”