by David Keck
Durand sweated and puffed, but found such stern joy in the work that he stayed on, helping townsmen onto carts, guiding beasts by their bridles, keeping children near their mothers—working like spokes and gears to get them through.
“Durand, what’s that over there?” Berchard squinted past.
Someone was calling from the low city end of the great vault: a tall man with cracked green eyes and a shock of white hair, waving vaguely. “Hello? Can anyone spare a moment? Hello?” The man wore a tabard of undyed wool—and stood near the head of a long line of men in the same plain garb.
Durand nodded to Berchard and fought the current to the tall man’s side. They found him with one hand on the shoulder of an adolescent monk.
The little monk winced up at Durand in dismay.
“Hello?” said the tall man. “Is someone there?” His green eyes were wide and empty. “Novice Gamel, someone here’s breathing like an ox.”
“I am Durand, sir. A knight in Lord Lamoric’s retinue. There’s little time for talk.”
“Novice Gamel, hadn’t you better ask him?”
The young man blinked up at Durand, gaping. There had to be twenty men behind him—all in the same gray tabards, all with the same vague gazes.
“I see,” said the tall man. “Our pilot Gamel here is a good boy, but we seem to have run aground at the very mouth of the haven. He has led us from the hospital, but I—”
With an army nearly in bowshot, Durand caught the man’s hand. “All right. Take hold of me, and I’ll see you through.” He slapped the man’s hand on his shoulder and bulled his way into the crowd.
People shouted, “Let them through. They’re up from the Sleepers Mercy.” And the crowd made way, Durand leading the line in the wake of a heaped cart.
As they emerged from the gatehouse tunnel, Durand found himself face-to-face with Deorwen. Almora was riding above the crowd on her pony, Star. Deorwen had the animal’s bridle, and an anxious guard trailed behind.
“What are you doing in this mob, Ladyship?” Durand asked.
“Almora and I were talking, and Almora was concerned that her brother had not been seen in some time.”
“He hasn’t,” the girl declared.
“I thought there wasn’t much harm in taking a look. Seeing that he was all right. And how brave he is,” said Deorwen. The little girl was scowling at the mob from under her bangs.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Durand said. “Neither of you.” It was already ugly.
“I think it’s better to deal with these things rather than to run off and pretend nothing’s happening.”
“They are seeing Radomor’s men in the streets outside these gates. People aren’t always themselves when—”
The tall man touched Durand’s elbow. “Milord, we’re very grateful.”
“I’m sorry,” Durand said. He had nearly forgotten about the stranger.
The tall man nodded to Deorwen and Almora. “There was no one but young Gamel here to lead us. Father Abbot finally found a cart. They needed every able hand to clear the infirmary.”
At this, Durand discovered that the sturdy, redheaded woman who’d been driving the heaped cart was peering down. “Here,” she said. “Do you mean to say there are folk still in the Nine Sleepers? There must be a hundred men in the infirmary.”
“I imagine,” the blind man began, “that everyone thought someone else had—”
“They ought to be ashamed. How many carts did you say?”
“The abbot’s man was grateful to have found the one he did—”
“One cart?” the woman said.
Durand glanced west. The army was too close. “Where’s the hospital?”
The blind man opened his mouth, but the outraged woman beat him to the answer. “The Sleepers Mercy backs on farmland. Yrlac will stumble on it anytime.”
“How many men did you say are loading this one cart?” Durand demanded.
“There are five orderlies.”
“Five will not be nearly enough for such a place,” said Deorwen. “Many won’t have left that hospital in years.”
There wasn’t time enough. Durand imagined Radomor’s wolves coming upon a hospital. “They will have one more anyway!” he said. A few others had been looking on, and many gave fierce nods along with him. Berchard blanched. “Right.”
The woman on the cart shouted, “Come on, you lot.” She looked back at a cart piled with cupboards and benches and linen. “Help me drop all of this in the square.”
As many hands seized the accumulated possessions of the woman’s life, the blind man got Durand by the arm, his green eyes flashing. “I’ve got a strong back still, I know where you’re going, and, I think, a blind man has as much chance against an army as anyone.”
“Come then,” said Durand.
He turned to Deorwen. “I am sorry to leave you so soon, but there’s no time.”
Deorwen slapped Star’s reins into the guard’s hand. “Almora will return to Gunderic’s Tower. Sir Durand, you will need more hands, and I have two.”
The woman on the cart shouted, “The dogs will be on them anytime!”
THEIR COMPANY—MOST in the empty cart—juddered into the deep stillness of the lower city. Doors and shutters hung open in the rain. Belongings—those too heavy to carry—stood heaped at doorways. Here and there geese or pigs wandered. Durand winced at the grating echoes of the cart’s axle, shooting looks at Deorwen. She was mad to be here. He wanted her locked in the farthest tower of Castle Acconel. This was such a risk. And so he walked while the others rode. He couldn’t have sat still.
Berchard, bouncing on the back of the cart, peered up among the empty rooms, whispering, “Lady Deorwen, it’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I’m not sure what I think about your choice of outing. If Radomor knew you were with us, I think he’d take an interest.”
“The city is surrounded and caught without provisions or defenses. My husband is ranging the walls within sight of Radomor’s archers. Abravanal is mad with grief. And, I am told that I am to sleep in the chamber of my late brother-in-law to night.”
“So you’re safer out here?”
“I would prefer not to be useless.”
Berchard scratched his beard. “I can see that.”
Durand waited for a troop of green knights to storm into the street.
“Now, Durand,” Berchard said. “I was meaning to hand this over to you.” He fumbled under his cloak, revealing a sword. “I told Coen that I’d cost you another blade. He said you should have this. Some carrion crow tried to sell it to Guthred.”
Scowling, Durand took the sword and pulled it from its scabbard. The blade was a hand’s span longer than any of Durand’s lost swords had been. Rainwater tumbled off the edge. “This was Ouen’s.”
“We reckoned you should have it, and I thought, if we’re all riding out under Radomor’s nose again, I’d rather you had it now.”
“Quiet!—Your Lordships,” said the redheaded woman from her bench. The rumble of the army’s march poured from a hundred alley mouths.
“What’s your name, madam, by the way?” asked Berchard, never looking from the streets.
“Bercta. And I’m no damsel for you to sweep off her feet.”
Berchard risked a glance. “I wouldn’t have a damsel, ma’am. Not at my age.”
“I’m Hagon,” said the blind man perched beside her.
Now Bercta turned. “Hagon Leech? You’re not Hagmund Cobble’s brother?”
Hagon raised his finger. “That’s a name Hagmund doesn’t like.”
“It’ll be that wife of his put you away in the Sleepers Mercy, I’d wager. Wasn’t it?”
The blind man shrugged loose shoulders. “The inmates needed a man with some—”
A slam in a passing street shut all their mouths: whether it was wind or dogs or God knows, they all stood silent for a dozen galloping heartbeats. Durand pulled Ouen’s sword, thinking Deorwen shouldn’t be there.
“
Hagon,” Berchard whispered. “He lays cobbles, does he, your brother?”
Bercta put a hand on the blind man. “It’s the way he lets that wife of his walk over him makes them call him Cobble. You can see why the soft bugger don’t like it—his wife likes it even less.”
In Durand’s hand, Ouen’s long blade beaded and gleamed. If their party met outriders, he would send Deorwen and the rest down an alley, and see how long he could bottle the end of it behind them. He watched for movement down every road.
“And she’d make sure you knew it!” said Bercta.
They hesitated on the threshold of a broad street: Greensmith. It allowed them a long look through the veils of rain toward the army on the Fuller’s Bridge Road. They’d be in plain sight. “The hospital’s that way,” said Bercta.
“Hells,” breathed Berchard.
They could do nothing but hope that no one happened to look. Durand set his teeth.
Bercta twitched the reins of her old gray carthorse.
Berchard squinted from the back of the cart. “Madam, I don’t suppose this fine animal has a gallop in him.”
“Maybe if you pulled and he rode?”
“Ah. A point.” Berchard, Deorwen, and everyone else who’d been catching a ride splashed into the roadway. “That’ll give the old fellow a fighting chance.”
Overhead, a black bird tumbled between the storefronts.
None too quickly, they ducked from Greensmith into a narrow lane under the outsized facade of a stone sanctuary; there was no room for the place in the alley.
“This is it,” said Bercta. “The Sleepers Mercy.” At the foot of the entry steps was a tall cart and stolid carthorse. The great tympanum above the door carried the alabaster likenesses of the Nine Sleepers and the Queen of Heaven. They looked real as bodies in winter.
On the sanctuary doorstep, they met the orderlies and the abbot: monks and lay brothers gleaming from the effort of shifting bodies. The abbot was short and round-shouldered as a mole, but he was working hard.
“We’re here to help, Father,” Deorwen said. “We’ve one more cart and a half-dozen able bodies. There’s little time left now.”
Past the sanctuary was a plastered hall with beams as twisted and dark as something dried in a smokehouse: the infirmary. Carved screens kept the inmates’ privacy.
Hagon grinned at Durand. “It ain’t such a bad place really. The brothers treat a man well. There’s prayers and decent food and clean clothes. I get to play at my old leechcraft when an inmate’s afflicted. And it’s convenient for the boneyard when a man’s finished—unlike something in the walls where they’re packed in and buried standing.” There was a war horn sounding beyond the shutters.
“You’re thinking we’d best get at it,” declared Hagon.
“You’re right,” said Durand, and they set to lugging inmates into the drizzle. Most weren’t so much ill as ancient or infirm. The peace of the Nine Sleepers wasn’t for the screaming wounded.
Deorwen directed their efforts outside while blind Hagon was good as his word, taking front or back end of any litter, moving with certainty, and never missing a stair.
Deorwen followed the pair into the sanctuary. “There are birds again. Like yesterday. But the first cart is loaded already, and I’ve sent them off.” Hagon could not see the pleading look she gave Durand.
“Good,” said Hagon. “We’ll have the second filled in no time.” He shook the handles of the litter, smiling.
They were about to part company when a mad yowling came down the range. One of the orderlies called, “Master Hagon? Could you talk old Giseler round? He doesn’t know us, he says. But you helped him with his oppressed liver, didn’t you?”
“For all he thanked me,” Hagon said, stalking off with one hand thrust before him, already calling, “Giseler, what do you mean you don’t know these fine fellows, eh? They’ve only been changing your bedding these past dozen years since your son stopped sending that woman round.”
Deorwen pulled Durand back among the idols of the little sanctuary: blank-eyed children, all.
“You’re making decisions for me, Durand.”
“We’ve no time.”
“When else? I’ve had enough of people taking charge of my troubles. I want my reins in my hands. You must speak with me.”
A pair of orderlies tramped through with yet another inmate.
“And what can we do?” said Durand. “What decisions are there for us to make? It’s mad what’s happening between us. What can we do?”
“A man doesn’t just leave a woman without a proper word spoken. You don’t leave me standing alone.”
Another stretcher team passed by, and Durand pulled Deorwen into the deepest shadows the place could offer, but even that brusque touch was too much for them. He caught her. Her hands played over his back and face and neck, conjuring walls of lust around him. They kissed like drowning.
“Durand? That’s old Giseler settled, I think. We’d better get on. Durand?” Hagon stood in the sanctuary, turning in place.
Durand took a step from Deorwen, trying to breathe. His hands were shaking. “Here I am,” he faltered. “Right.” There was an army. “Let’s get to it.” Soon, they had crowded the alley below the stone children with litters and crutches, and were lugging a last man over the rear of the cart as the abbot nodded.
Durand looked from Deorwen to the mouth of Nine Sleepers Lane, thinking that there would be half a thousand soldiers there in no time. The birds were sleeting past. “That it, Father?” he prompted. “They all out?”
The abbot blinked. “One left.”
“All right,” Durand said. “We’ll get him out, and then we can get out of this madness.” With Hagon in tow, Durand marched back through the sanctuary.
For a moment, they were alone with the empty eyes of the child idols populating the sanctuary. Beyond the windows, black shapes laughed. Durand stalked through into the infirmary.
“It’s only birds,” Hagon said.
“Aye,” searching the alcoves.
Hagon cocked his head. “They say a blind man can see more than others. Which is right—and wrong. What’s between you and that girl, eh? It’s that kind of thing gets me wondering. You couldn’t tell her no. And you can’t stand her here.”
A black shape rattled against shutters; Durand flinched.
“There’s more than birds on your mind.”
Durand stalked past murky alcove after murky alcove, reaching the last screen.
“I see it often,” said Hagon. “Haunted men. The worst here—Well. You’ll meet—”
Durand rounded the last black screen.
“Get away!” spluttered a voice.
“You see what I mean,” Hagon finished.
Durand could make out little more than a shin and a pale hand. “I’ve suffered enough!” said the voice, wet-edged. “I saw one man, his foot. Another his eyes. Throats cut. Bones like branches. Blades at hands, mouths. I fought at Hallow Down. It was enough.”
“Friend, we’re getting everyone to safety,” said Durand.
The stranger leaned into the light. Someone had struck him a fierce and rising cut to the jaw—axe or falchion. For an instant, his eyes were clear. “You are a fighting man,” he said.
“The army of Yrlac has crossed the Fuller’s Bridge. They’re in the streets. We’re leaving now.”
“Too much!” Once again he was ranting. The man threw himself from his bed, hauling his body along the floor, short an arm and a leg.
Thinking of Deorwen and Berchard and the armies on the doorstep, Durand ducked close and swung the madman over his shoulder. They were soon stalking down the range.
“I saw things on Hallow Down I knew I could not see and live!” the man wailed. For a moment, he clutched Durand like a spider. “They threw me in the wrong tent: a common man with lords and masters of physic. On Hallow Down. My face!” He twisted, spitting a hot whisper into Durand’s cheek. “I’d be dead now if the savages had spared it; I’d s
tolen some lord’s mail coat. I could have been him. How could the bearers know with me all blood?”
“They’re going to drop the gates on all of us,” said Durand. “I can’t lift you if you’re twisting.”
Durand saw a flash of the man’s wild eye. “They carried a great lord in,” the man confided. “Full of mud, he was. The surgeons, they had their knives. But they were clucking their tongues. The great man doomed. A hero, his back broke. His eyes rolling.”
Durand ducked into the sanctuary.
“But two men: clerks by their black gear. They wheedled at him as he lay. There were things that might be done. Bargains made. They said that dreams had drawn them north to Hallow Down. Whispers. Black as ravens.”
Durand clapped onto a sculpted head, tottering. Could the man be talking of the Rooks? But wings flapped at the high windows, and there would be riders in the street any moment. There wasn’t time.
“I heard him through the night, catching breath and catching breath. A hero, dying. A great lord. And sometime in the dark, them wheedlers came back.”
Durand made to step into the lane, but the stranger caught the door frame. “I did not mean to hear!” he spluttered. “The next day’s fighting, Mad Borogyn has the king cornered. But our man comes with his vanguard and nothing but a cricked neck.”
Durand pulled at the man’s hand. “Let go!”
“It was them two, I tell you!”
Durand lurched onto the sanctuary step and into wheeling birds. People were batting them off, afraid for their eyes. Durand saw Deorwen cover one of the sick men, but the soldier caught Durand’s neck.
“What did they do? None of his men came back! How many shining comrades did His Grace send to—”
Now, one of the wheeling shapes struck the man full in the face. Durand flinched. Another swooped close. People were screaming.
Durand swung at the things, torn between the maimed soldier and breaking for Deorwen. The stranger wrenched his arm, fighting. “They’ve come! I didn’t mean to witness. It was my face!” Wings beat the shrieking air. Beaks whistled past like knives and hatchets, throwing everyone to their knees but Durand. He could not hold the man as the stranger lashed at the storm. Durand reached, blood stinging his eyes between the wings. And just as it seemed the man must drop, the crows caught hold—