Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

Spinner shuffled, staggered, but managed to keep his balance. There were scuffing noises above his head, and Haft grunted once or twice. Then there was a snap and water splashed onto him. A fresh piece of flotsam bumped into his chest. Haft’s weight suddenly lifted off him.

  Shafts of light provided enough light that Haft immediately spotted the cask they had hidden their clothes behind. He was half dressed by the time he realized Spinner hadn’t joined him. He lay down and stuck his head through the hole.

  “This was your idea,” he whispered. “Are you coming up?”

  “It’s too high, I can’t reach it.” Spinner sounded angry.

  “Oh. Right.” Haft reached his arm down the hole. “Grab hold, I’ll pull you up.” There was a splash as Spinner jumped up. Haft’s hand didn’t stretch far enough to reach Spinner. “Wait,” he said, and twisted around to grab one of the cloaks. He knelt by the side of the hole, got a solid grip on the sturdy material, and dropped one end through the opening. The cloak went taut when Spinner grabbed it, then Haft felt his companion climbing. A hand suddenly grabbed the side of the hole and Haft let go of the cloak with one hand to grasp Spinner’s wrist. In another second they were both inside.

  “You left me down there!” Spinner said. “You had to stand on my shoulders to reach the hole, and you expected me to reach it by myself. If we weren’t surrounded—”

  “I’m sorry,” Haft said, abashed. “I didn’t think of you needing help. I forgot.”

  “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t nailed on.”

  “No I wouldn’t.” Haft spoke sharply, but he looked away. “Anyway, I remembered, and I got you out of the water.”

  But Spinner was already dressing and arranging weapons on his person. Haft silently finished doing the same.

  Dressed and armed, Spinner put his eye to a crack in the door of the shed. “We’ve got a problem,” he said. In his brief look outside, he saw Jokapcul soldiers crawling over the ships and other soldiers using pikes to probe the water along the edge of the dock. They didn’t bother him; two soldiers were walking toward the shed. Clearly junior men, they wore no armor. One carried a sword scabbarded on his back, and the other held a pike in his hands. The one with the sword had a round buckler strapped to his left forearm.

  “Hide.”

  Haft ducked down behind the cask, his axe in his hand. Spinner stood against the wall on the hinge side of the door; he held his staff ready. They didn’t have to wait long.

  The door creaked open and one of the soldiers poked his head in to look around. He said something then turned back to scan the docks for a sergeant watching him. Evidently nobody was watching them. The soldier said something urgent and came in all the way. The second soldier dashed in behind him. The first one pushed the door shut and leaned against it. They weren’t looking in Spinner’s direction, so they didn’t see him even though he was standing an arm’s reach away. They laughed and said something that probably meant “We’re out of this worthless search now. Let’s rest here for a while and let the other men look for the intruders, who must be far gone.” Spinner and Haft didn’t understand a word the two men used, but under similar circumstances soldiers of all armies say the same things no matter what language they speak.

  But Spinner and Haft didn’t want to share their hiding place with two enemy soldiers. And they didn’t think the two Jokapcul would want to share with them either.

  “Now,” Spinner said, and rose to spin his staff at the pikeman.

  Haft was already on his feet, swinging his blade in a horizontal arc at the neck of the swordsman, who was closer to him.

  The two Jokapcul didn’t have time to react before one had his head cracked open by Spinner’s staff and the other one’s head flew off his shoulders.

  Haft sidestepped the falling corpse of the man he’d killed and strode to the door to peer out. “No one’s looking, let’s go.” He started to open the door.

  “Wait,” Spinner said. He knelt by the bodies and stripped off their shirts. The shoulders of the shirt of the man Haft had decapitated were saturated with blood, but the shirt of the man Spinner had killed was clean. Spinner tied a sleeve of the bloody shirt around the end of his staff and stuck it down the hole to swish around in the water. He pulled it back up at an angle so it wouldn’t slip off. He wrung the water from the shirt and held it open to see how much blood still showed on it. He couldn’t tell in the dim light inside the shed. “It’s wet. Any blood still on it probably won’t show until the shirt dries,” he said. “Here, put it on.” He thrust the shirt at Haft.

  But Haft realized what Spinner was doing and had already put on the other shirt. “No,” he said. “You got that one wet, you wear it.”

  Spinner glared at him.

  Haft spread his cloak out on the floor of the shed, made a few folds and closed some snaps in it. The Frangerian cloaks were versatile: not only were they double-reversible so they could be worn with any of four colors on the outside, they also had snaps and concealed straps so they could be turned into packs. Finished transforming his cloak into a pack, tan side out, Haft put his own shirt into it along with everything he was carrying that he didn’t want to be seen wearing. He put a Jokapcul hat on his head. “I’m ready,” he said. “What’s keeping you?”

  Spinner muttered something under his breath but made up his own pack and was soon dressed as Haft was, though a bit soggier.

  They looked at each other. The sleeves of their new shirts were too short, and there was no point in trying to put on the pants of the much shorter Jokapcul soldiers, so they were only partly dressed in enemy uniforms. Still, at a distance, in dim light, and certainly to the townsmen of New Bally, they could pass as Jokapcul soldiers—Spinner more easily because his dusky complexion somewhat resembled the saffron skin of the invaders. But if a Jokapcul saw them close up, or if they had to speak, or if a Jokapcul even noticed the weapons they were carrying, there was no mistaking them for anything but what they were—impostors. “You know,” Spinner said, “if they catch us they’ll hang us as spies.”

  Haft shrugged. “If they catch us, we’re dead regardless.”

  Spinner nodded. He would never surrender, would not allow himself to be captured by the Jokapcul, and he knew Haft would also not allow himself to be taken alive. The Jokapcul were notorious for their ill treatment of prisoners. No, they’d rather die fighting and take as many of the enemy with them as they could.

  There was one chore left. Careful not to get any blood on themselves, they lowered the corpses through the hole in the shed floor so that anybody checking the shed wouldn’t raise the alarm. A quick glance inside probably wouldn’t reveal the fresh gore that spattered it.

  Spinner put his eye to an opening between the boards of the shed wall. Most of the soldiers were prowling the ships’ decks. The few on the docks were looking down into the water or watching those searching the ships. No one was looking toward them. “Let’s go,” he said. He opened the door and Haft stepped boldly through it.

  Without seeming to hurry, in seconds they had rounded the shed and entered the alleyway behind it. They headed back in roughly the same direction from which they’d come. This time they didn’t skulk through the shadows and sprint across the thoroughfares. Instead they marched in step, side by side down the middle of the streets and byways. They didn’t test their luck too much, though. When they saw a uniformed soldier, which was far more often than they wanted, they turned and marched in a direction that took them away from him, or into a street or alley where the enemy soldiers couldn’t see them. Frequently they moved in a direction that would have led them back to the docks if they continued, but never for long.

  “There seems to be more Jokapcul in the city now than there were before dawn,” Spinner said after they’d avoided getting close to enough soldiers to form a regiment.

  Haft nodded. “They’ve taken over the city like flies on a corpse.”

  Once, they stopped where they could see a small square without being seen themselve
s. It was filled with sailors packed hip to haunch. Chains linked the captives. Makeshift gallows, just posts with top arms, dotted the square. Bodies dangled from the top arms, two or three to each. More of the hanging bodies were Marines and other sea soldiers than were sailors.

  Haft hefted his axe but made no move toward the square. The prisoners were ringed by twenty sword- or pike-bearing guards and a half-dozen archers. As much as he seethed at the sight of the mistreated prisoners, it was obvious that a two-man attack on those guards would be suicide. They moved on.

  Twice they hid in alleyways while strings of prisoners shuffled by accompanied by guards who didn’t hesitate to beat a man for not stepping briskly enough. Once, they passed near a small stone building with two squads of Jokapcul guards around it. Cries and moans came from the building, and through its barred windows they saw it was filled to bursting with prisoners.

  They kept moving, in a generally northeast direction, toward the city wall.

  Without help there was no possibility of freeing the prisoners. All Spinner and Haft could do was try to escape the city without being captured themselves. Then cross a continent. Then cross the Inner Ocean. And find their way back to Frangeria.

  So it was that the only people who saw them up close were the few citizens of New Bally who were about on that day of foreign conquest, most of whom bowed their heads and ducked away at the sight of the conquering uniform. A few, bolder, spat at the two once they were past. Once or twice someone must have looked more closely because they heard muttered words that sounded like “traitors” from the shadows. Fortunately, the only things cast at them were words.

  The straight-line distance they traveled to the wall was little more than twice the distance their journey from the inn to the dock had been the night before, but it took four times as long because of how often they had to avoid enemy soldiers. The New Bally city wall was not as tall as the walls of most big cities, only fifteen feet high for most of its length. As a freeport, New Bally was not often subject to raid or conquest. Its status as a freeport was generally more valuable to would-be conquerors or raiders than its conquest or the fruits of a raid would have been.

  The top of the wall had a fighting step behind crenelations, but it lacked platforms for catapults. Neither did it have the archers’ towers with interlocking fields of fire that marked city walls meant to keep out determined attackers. A New Bally city ordinance decreed that a lane wide enough for a troop of cavalry and a company of infantry to pass each other while marching be kept clear on the inner side of the wall. But as New Bally rarely needed to be defended, the ordinance had long been ignored. Vendors had set up stalls along the lane, and shanties were frequently stacked against the wall. By using the city wall, the poor who built the shanties only had to come up with enough wood or brick to build three walls to their homes; two walls if they also built against another shanty.

  Spinner and Haft examined the wall from a shadowed position in the mouth of an alleyway. Every fifty paces a Jokapcul soldier stood watch on the wall’s top. Most of the guards watched the fields and forests beyond the walls, but many others kept watch on the city itself. To one side of the alley mouth a produce vendor sat cross-legged behind piles of fruit; to the other side, a small merchant hawked the virtues of his brassware. Few people moved back and forth on the lane, the normal cacophony of citizens doing their marketing in the military lane absent.

  Directly opposite their hiding place a row of a dozen shanties leaned uneasily against the wall.

  “You give me a boost there,” Haft said, pointing at the end of the row of shanties—a guard watching beyond the wall stood almost directly above it. “I’ll get on the wall and cut down that guard before he knows I’m there. Then I’ll toss down a rope for you to climb up. We’ll be over the wall and on our way before anybody can reach us.”

  Spinner calmly looked down at Haft. “And what will we land on when we go over the wall?”

  Haft looked up at Spinner, perplexed. “The other side, of course. What do you think?”

  “And what’s on the other side?” Spinner asked patiently.

  Haft just looked at him.

  “Is there a moat? Is there a palisade of stakes? Is there a passing company of Jokapcul soldiers? Is there a nearby troop of cavalry or line of archers to cut us down before we reach the cover of the forest? For that matter, how far away is the forest?”

  “Oh,” Haft said, looking away thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He straightened up. “Well, it’s easy enough to find out what’s out there. Let’s ask this fruit vendor.” He started to step out of the alleyway, but Spinner grabbed his shoulder and slammed him back against the wall.

  Spinner shoved his face into Haft’s and spoke low but sharply. “If a Jokapcul sees you, he’ll know you’re not one of them and will sound the alarm. Even if a Jokapcul doesn’t see you, the vendor will think you’re a traitor. Do you think he’ll give a traitor true information about the other side of the wall?”

  Haft’s brow furrowed in thought. “I guess not,” he finally murmured.

  “Right.” Spinner scanned the alleyway, looking for something else they could do. One of the two buildings flanking them was made of stone, the other of wood. Neither had a door or other opening into the alley into which they could step. Higher, though, perhaps twelve feet above the ground, wrought-iron fencing formed a faux balcony outside a small unshuttered window on the side of the stone building. No light came from within the window. Spinner craned his head back to look higher. The stone building was perhaps fifty feet high. If it had a flat roof that they could reach from inside the building, from the top of it they’d be able to see almost everything they’d have to face on the other side of the city wall.

  “Stand here.” He positioned Haft under a corner of the wrought-iron fencing and, remembering what Haft had done to him when they were under the dock, vaulted without warning to his shoulders. One hand instantly found a fingerhold on the stone face of the building, the other wrapped around a picket of the wrought-iron fence. Under him, Haft collapsed from the unexpected maneuver and the sudden weight on his shoulders, but Spinner was already pulling himself up and finding toeholds on the wall. He yanked on the wrought iron to test that it was held securely enough to the wall to hold his weight. It gave slightly, but he saw that if he stepped softly it would probably hold his weight. He swung over the top of the faux balcony. The fencing was low, little more than a foot high, and the iron lathing was scarcely half a foot wide. The footing was cramped, but Spinner easily enough managed to hold his balance in the tight space.

  “Hey!” Haft snapped.

  “Shhh,” Spinner hushed at him. “You want someone to hear?”

  Haft hushed. He looked up and saw what Spinner had in mind. He wondered how he was supposed to get up to the fencing. Then he put his hands on the wall, looked up, and concluded that he could find enough purchase for his fingertips and toes.

  Spinner put his face close to the glazing and peered through. Inside, it was too dim to make anything out, but he saw no movement. His questing fingers found hinges along one side of the window and he swore about the outward-opening windows. He shuffled to the side of the balcony, away from the hinges. There, he stepped one foot over the side, found precarious purchase on the wall, and slid his other foot as close to the end as it would fit. Holding the wall with one hand, he pried at the edge of the window with his free hand. The hinges squealed but the window opened. Its bottom scraped across the top of the wrought-iron fencing. When the window was open far enough, he leaned into the opening and rolled through. As his foot came off the bottom of the balcony, he thought he felt the iron lathing shift, and he heard metal grating against stone.

  For a brief moment Spinner froze. At first he heard nothing. Then he spun around, holding his staff at the ready as he heard a slam and a grunt and the squeal of tortured metal behind him.

  Haft looked in through the bottom of the window. His arms were over the sill and hanging
on tightly—it was obvious his body dangled outside. His face wore a silly grin. “The balcony broke,” he said.

  Spinner snorted. “I ought to leave you there.” But he held his staff one-handed and grabbed Haft’s outstretched hand with the other and pulled him in. He cautiously peered outside. No one was looking into the alleyway. The faux balcony dangled from one end, the other end torn completely from the wall. He closed the window and turned back to examine the room.

  It appeared to be some sort of office. It held a desk, a chair, and three high-topped clerk’s desks. Along the walls were shelves stuffed with ledgers and cabinets filled to bursting with papers. On one wall hung a map of New Bally. Various locations on the map were marked. The marks all seemed to indicate storehouses, merchants’ stores, and government buildings. The harbor was clearly drawn, with the docks and piers annotated. But other than indicating the routes of the highways, the map showed nothing of what lay beyond the city wall. There seemed to be nothing in the room that could help them get away.

  While Spinner examined the map, Haft put his ear to the door. When he didn’t hear anything beyond it, he tried to open it. It was locked. Spinner joined him at the door.

  “This is the only way out,” Haft said. He hefted his axe. “I’ll break it down.”

  “Stop!” Spinner put his hand on Haft’s arm before he could swing at the door. “If the door is locked, it might be warded by a banshee.”

  “The window wasn’t,” Haft answered, and again prepared to swing his axe.

  “That doesn’t mean the door isn’t.”

  Haft stepped back and looked at the walls all around the door. “No red-eye, no banshee,” he said.

  Spinner quickly looked around the room again, this time for the telltale red-eye. “You’re right,” he reluctantly acknowledged.

  Haft looked smug. It wasn’t often he spotted something important before Spinner did.

  With almost no backswing, Haft slammed his blade into the door frame next to the lock. A shattered chunk of the frame fell out. He calmly grasped the handle and pulled. The door opened easily. The locking mechanism clunked to the floor. No banshee wailed its alarm. With a flourish, he bowed Spinner through the open door.