In a way, it was a similar battle he continually waged against the Angevanellian; the actuality of his mortality had always been with him, but lately it had impinged upon his consciousness more than before.
He might not survive this quest, and what then of Ranell? He was resigned to die one day. But for the product of Ellorn’s and his own loins to die too, leaving nothing but a barren Inn. He had hoped that Lorar, daughter of the master goldsmith would make Ranell a good wife.
He cursed his morbid introspection. Another sign of his approaching old age – or death? His faith in Ranell should tell him quite plainly: his son could now fend for himself. Was he involved in the Lornwater rebellion? He felt certain that the answer to these questions was Yes. If Ranell had been wounded or slain, he believed he would have experienced something.
If he came out of this, Ulran decided, he would visit Sianlar again.
He was slightly shaken, for this was the first occasion that his immutable faith had wavered in the slightest.
Did it have something to do with the capture of the red tellars? How did the Overlord allow His beautiful birds to be so ill-treated without offering any defence or retaliation?
Ulran smiled, lapsing into a light slumber. The Overlord indeed worked in mysterious ways.
***
For the entire day he remained beneath the stairs, only coming out briefly to stretch his legs, relieve himself and eat, at which times Sapella kept watch on the landing above. He ill-liked this fugitive existence, but it was necessary to his plans.
As Sufinma fell upon the city, both of his protectors sighed with relief. Essalar bolted the shop door and joined them. “They should be here soon, I think.”
The candle had reached low and sputtered before a pre-arranged knock shook them out of drowsiness. Ulran was instantly awake, hand on sword-hilt.
The group consisted of five this night and the newcomer was introduced. Bindar was a tall, broad-shouldered red-haired man who stood out from the crowd; for this clandestine existence he seemed far too conspicuous. Ulran observed him closely for he recognised a kindred spirit.
“We agree to what you ask,” said Bindar. “If I could have dragged myself away from my beer-hall last night, I promise you none of that unpleasantness would have occurred.” He looked scornfully at his companions.
“It is forgotten already,” said Ulran. “I believe we could stand a good chance of releasing Yip-dor Fla, and using him to rally the populace.”
All nodded agreement, hope burning in their eyes. “But,” protested Elmar, “he is heavily guarded – and – and we have no information as to his health or state of mind.”
“If what Essalar says rings true, which I believe, he will be alive and only slightly damaged. His mind? I don’t know. I cannot speak for a stranger. Cells do fearful things to men sometimes...”
“What will it cost?”
“If my plan works, perhaps thirty men. I would estimate losing five at most; with luck, none.”
His co-conspirators looked at each other with approval yet concern in their eyes.
He had won them over. “Now, for the plan... I want–”
Ulran’s plan crumbled irretrievably at that instant for a sudden deafening crash sounded from upstairs.
“The door!” exclaimed Essalar as rending and groaning wood suddenly screamed and slammed violently.
Sapella woke with a start.
They rose as one, hands releasing swords from scabbards, metal glinting in the candle-light.
Three guards barged the flimsy inner door and their onrush propelled them with door into the banister; they flew over it to land upon the table with a clamorous clatter. All three soldiers unwillingly spread their blood upon the table.
Sapella screamed as she huddled in the corner of the room, bedclothes pulled taut.
But there were more: three rushed down the stairs whilst another leapt over the shattered banister, shield protecting his legs; he landed heavily and the table overturned at a touch from Ulran. Bindar silenced the soldier as the other three waded in, steel clanging.
Two others were on the landing; one of them had fitted an arrow to his short-bow. Ulran’s sword ran through his attacker; he whirled round and his poniard flashed from his fingers and settled up to its hilt in the bowman’s forehead.
Four more joined the trembling soldier upon the landing; but there were no bows between them.
Ulran backed away as the troops slowly descended the stairs, wide eyes taking in their slain comrades.
Only one of Essalar’s companions had sustained an injury, a flesh wound on his thigh.
Ulran backed till his legs brushed against the bedclothes. “Stand up, Sapella,” he urged but she simply mumbled hysterically. “Stand up, woman, now!” he commanded.
Hearing the bed creak, he guessed she had finally done his bidding.
A soldier charged him with a halberd; Ulran parried, twirled his sword and abruptly sliced downwards, severing the pike from its staff. As the soldier stood dumbfounded, Ulran sank his blade into the man’s chest.
Then he lifted Sapella up in his free arm and met another attacker. Essalar’s wife went limp and he found her easier to carry. “Is there another way out of here?” he demanded, annoyed with himself for not checking before.
“Yes – behind the bed – a tunnel!”
Parrying and killing another assailant amidst the clanging and thrusting of the mêlée, Ulran kicked viciously at the wooden bed and pushed it free of the stone wall. There was a good-sized square hole: black, draped in cobwebs, unused. Escape.
Overturning the bed onto its side, he used it to shield the presence of the opening.
Then Ulran called to Bindar: “Send one of your men out first!” Before Bindar could respond, the nearest man dodged a glancing blow and fell to his knees in front of the exit: Ulran decapitated him without compunction. “Our traitor!” he called back, and kicked the corpse to one side.
He lowered Sapella to the floor, pushed her on her back inside the tunnel, and followed on his hands and knees.
If the gods whom Fhord so devoutly worshipped were kind, there would be nobody at the other end – if there was an end.
Ulran heard someone gasping behind him but kept on crawling. He grazed his knees and shoulders and bruised his forehead as, with difficulty, he pushed Sapella through pieces of rubble and shale.
“Bindar’s holding them off,” said Essalar from behind; “he’s too broad to get in here, he said.”
Faint greyness appeared up ahead, enlarging.
At last, they emerged in a garden amid sweet-smelling ferns, bushes and trees.
Shouts and whistles came from down the street, beyond a sculpted wall that bordered this garden.
“Reinforcements, I fear,” Ulran observed and helped Essalar out.
Night-breeze stung his grazed knees.
Only two others followed.
Sapella groaned, regaining her wits. “Essalar,” Ulran nodded towards her. The merchant knelt by his wife, told her what had happened.
“Is there anywhere we can hide before daylight betrays us?”
“If Elmar – the one you slew – was the traitor, then all our names will be in Por-al Row’s hands. We’ll be unable to use our warehouses, barns, shops or homes. As for our families–”
“Elmar attempted making his escape first, before Bindar told anyone to move. Only a man who had betrayed us would try that, for fear of being killed by his employers ‘by accident’. There’s little trust between this type.”
“Then, we must split up, fend for ourselves.” Essalar shrugged apologetically.
“First, we can see to our two friends here. We might be able to help their families. If only Bindar can hold them off long enough,” Ulran ended, though he had no fears for Bindar for during the fight he had seen the sword he was using.
***
The Fourth Durin: seven days to go, Alomar realised, shoving his own food between Fhord’s cracked dry lips. The mush was poo
r fare, but the immortal had not eaten for two days, in an attempt at keeping up Fhord’s failing strength. His own hunger pangs were almost continuous now, but he had starved before and he would doubtless do so again. His right arm was worsening, the suppuration having dried beneath the merciless sun, the great gash blackened at the edges. He wafted at the hovering black flies.
As he forced the mush onto Fhord’s swollen tongue, Alomar idly wondered if he would die of gangrene. The pain, surely, could not be worse than the Janoven poison potion so many years ago. Yet memories of pain are fleeting; the body and mind conveniently forgets. He smiled at the thought of incipient death. He would not surrender himself to the Great Leveller just yet.
Whilst Fhord lived, he must care for her and perhaps fight for her. If need be, he might have to die for her. No less a sacrifice had she given up to the gods as they shivered in those snow-filled mountains.
As they jogged along at a bruising yet frustratingly slow pace, he watched the Sonalumes diminish gradually, purple in the haze.
“Four days at least,” observed a straw-chewing soldier to his watchful companion as he re-tied Alomar’s hands after the meagre meal.
Four days would be in time, then. Though Courdour Alomar wondered if either of them would be alive to see the forbidding entrance to Arisa, let alone escape and resolve the mystery of the captive red tellars.
PART FIVE
FOURTH SAPIN OF DAROUS - FIRST DURIN OF LAMOUS
The Song of the Overlord – Part the Final:
Unto the sinful and vicious, He be evil
But unto the good, beneficent be He.
The light of life is cold
The light of death is hot.
For what is to die but to stand naked in the wind
And melt with fervour in the sun?
Build me more stately mansions for my soul
Sayeth He, let each new fane be nobler than the last.
He is the First Cause, the Prime Origin
All the Basic Essence is He.
Irreducible, munificent, knowledge all, is He
For He is the one, the only, the Overlord!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PALACE
Ominous in its beauty!
– Anonymous
Down cobbled streets, up winding alleyways, and over numerous bridges, the five of them had wended their way towards the homes of the two nameless helpers caught in the trap at Essalar’s. Thankfully, they had been in time to alert their wives and children, hastily pack their more valuable belongings and join Essalar and Sapella at the varteron gate.
Ulran determined to tackle the palace alone, leaving Essalar and his two friends to take their families out next morning when the gates opened for the few honoured merchantmen from Goldalese.
It was risky, but the only way they had of escaping the city-fortress.
But Essalar insisted on joining the innman and his argument was sound enough: Ulran had not been within the city before; he needed someone versed in its peculiarities.
Reluctantly, the innman agreed, much to Sapella’s distress. Ulran promised he would try to see that no harm befell her husband and then the pair left, to melt into the shadows.
The once-great city of Arisa was now shabby and over-populated and over-built. Only the artistry of the builders and the single coloration of rock preserved any sense of form, so that instead of looking unplanned and ramshackle, the city presented itself as an awesome maze of houses and bridges. The roads and alleys formed shadowy caverns and tunnels. Besides interconnecting buildings of all shapes and sizes, there were a surprising number of buildings under ground, gouged out of the very bedrock.
Through fear of a coup, the king had long ago banned all weapons after dusk; and his deadly henchmen patrolled the streets to ensure the decree was observed, often dallying to force some unfortunate woman to please them.
Shortly after leaving Sapella and the others, Essalar and Ulran rounded a corner to discover one such watchman forcing his unwanted attentions on a mature woman who loudly said all she wanted was to return home after visiting a friend.
The mêlée at Essalar’s house could not carry to this side of the city, and as they both set upon the watchman and silenced him, Ulran wondered how Bindar the red-head had fared: if alive, he would surely be a captive, suffering what indignities at their hands?
With the dead watchman over his shoulder, Ulran thanked the woman for offering them succour for the night, but refused.
Deep inside an alley, he divested the corpse of his garments and changed for the second time, becoming a watchman in rather tight-fitting clothes. “Essalar, go back to that woman’s house, apologise for my behaviour and ask to stay the night – no, I’ll join you shortly, after I’ve scouted around. Now, go, I won’t be long.”
Bindar, surprisingly, had escaped, through a combination of sheer audacity, swordsmanship, the cowardliness of some soldiers and the stupidity of others.
Keeping to the side-streets by Essalar’s house, Ulran overheard the groans and moans of searching troops.
Apparently, Bindar had killed so many and piled the corpses of others in the only doorway so that nobody else could break through for quite a while. He must have used the time to advantage, wielding the many fallen swords as picks and shovels. He hacked a hole in the wall under the street. The shop adjacent possessed a cellar – only the wall separating the two places. With all the shouts, mortally wounded cries, and clamour of swords on the doorway, his digging went unnoticed and he broke through, crossed the cellar and forced the door. He left the house next door while the soldiers tugged and heaved at their dead comrades piled high in the doorway.
Smiling to himself, Ulran retraced his steps to the woman’s house situated beneath a road-bridge of black stone, the entrance perpetually in shadow.
He knocked the pre-arranged signal and Essalar answered.
Once inside, Ulran divested himself of the uncomfortable watchman’s plaid cloak. “You’ll be pleased to know, Bindar escaped,” the innman said. As the merchant’s eyes lit up, Ulran went on, “Where will he run to, do you think?”
“His beer-hall, possibly – in Ram Street. But not for long, perhaps only to get money, a few things, clothes...” The merchantman stood in the hallway, thinking aloud. “But I should think he would head for the city wells – yes, the wells... I remember him telling me not long ago, they were an ideal place to hide. All you needed was some cured meat, a few vegetables. You’ve got all the water you’d ever want.”
“Can you take me there tonight?”
Essalar nodded. “We’d be safe there. This woman, she’s risked enough already.”
They accepted some provisions she could ill-afford to spare but forced on them; then they took their leave.
Once more they melted into the shadows. Ulran again wore the watchman’s cloak.
Soundlessly, they walked the streets and clung to the walls of cold drab stone.
Before leaving the house, Essalar explained that the wells had been tunnelled deep through the rock. The pavements they now trod were two hundred marks above the plain of Arion and the wells penetrated another hundred marks below the plain. But once the water had been located, the wells had strangely filled so that the water stayed roughly two-thirds up the well; which still left a hundred-mark haul for the water-carriers. “And today, even, memories fail as to the reasons for it, but at regular intervals down each well a small indentation has been cut – big enough to comfortably accommodate four men at a time.”
“Survey tunnels, I imagine,” Ulran suggested.
“Possibly. Anyway, I believe Bindar will have made for one of those ledges.”
They leaned over the rim of the fifth well they’d tried and looked down. Ulran could not see anything: it was too dark. Essalar tossed a pebble down, but instead of a splash Ulran heard a dull thwack as though the stone had hit some sailcloth.
“He leaves a few supplies on the ledge, just in case. A cautious one, is Bindar.” Essalar thre
w two more pebbles, in quick measured succession and a light showed to the left as a blanket was pulled back. “The blanket covers the shelf-opening. Keeps a small lamp to warm himself and to see by, as well.”
Bindar crouched some ten marks below, seen dimly in the purple light. Essalar called down and explained Ulran’s presence and their need for a hiding-place; his echoes died and Bindar replied succinctly: “Come, quickly!”
The descent to the ledge was simple enough, utilising the bucket ropes. As they went lower, Ulran felt the temperature gradually decrease, reminding him of the Sonalumes.
Their reunion and congratulations were brief. Bindar quickly secured the blanket again, blotting out the irregular circle at the top, which appeared from here no bigger than the brim of Alomar’s floppy hat.
Soon, they settled down, though ever conscious of the damp atmosphere, the dripping walls, and the chill on their backs.
In hushed voices they discussed Bindar’s intention of staying down the well for at least two days. Ulran agreed, but insisted he himself must penetrate the palace tomorrow night, Fourth Durinma.
“No-one knows Yip-nef Dom’s plans, but I daresay he’ll be rid of the red tellars in a like manner to his concubines,” Bindar said in answer to Ulran’s question. “Why’d he have them killed? They bore him no fruit. He little realised he might be at fault. Some say he might use the royal prerogative.”
Bindar’s suggestion rang a bell for Ulran; he wondered what Alomar would have to say about that.
Eventually, Bindar agreed to join Ulran and Essalar the following evening.
Before dawn they removed the blanket and extinguished the lamp.
The rest of the day passed slowly for all three on the cramped ledge. The monotony was broken by the infrequent raising and lowering of the water-buckets, being occasionally splashed, and the angelic singing of some young girl.
***
“A courier, sire!”
The parchment scroll was brief and badly written but its meaning was clear. A smile played on the king’s lips. Slowly, he turned, talked to someone concealed behind a beaded curtain; beyond this was the splashing of bathwater: “Good news, my dear.”
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