by Bell, Hilari
Kavi had spent many nerve-wracking weeks preparing for this night. The tattoo on his shoulder might get him into Hrum camps without question, but finding out when essential supplies were going to be shipped, and doing that without showing so much interest that he might be remembered later, was far harder. At least finding men in and around Desafon to aid him hadn’t proved as difficult as he’d feared. Their sons were already in training with the army, and the first group was due to march out in little more than a month.
Given the amount of anger that had stirred up in the town, it had been absurdly arrogant of the Hrum to hire local people to build their big warehouse. Despite his discomfort, a slow grin spread over Kavi’s face. In fairness to the local Hrum commander, he hadn’t had much choice. Substrategus Arus’ ever-mounting demands for more troops to assault Mazad, and the need to take and garrison the smaller Farsalan towns, had stripped the garrison left in “quiet” Desafon to the bone.
The barrels lurched again, knocking against one another. It was like being inside a drum, and Kavi flung up his hands to cover his ears and then winced as his elbow banged into the wood. Then the barrel jostled to a stop. Kavi’s heartbeat quickened as he realized that the cart had stopped. They had arrived. He tried to brace himself inside the barrel. At least he needn’t worry that the difference in weight would be detected—the Hrum guarded the carts going in, and there were two soldiers patrolling outside the warehouse, but local people drove the carts and did the heavy work of loading and unloading.
The hardest part had been to set this up in such a way that no local carter or merchant would be implicated, but with Kavi’s connections in the countryside, it had proved possible—easy in the end. No reason for anyone to suspect a bargeload of wine barrels floating up the big, slow Hamaveran River. The grower claimed he had a good crop coming on, and needed ready coin to pay the cooper.
The Hrum ordnancer had tasted the wine and approved it—Farsalan wine was good, and this was the best Kavi had been able to coax out of the farmer, who had big grape fields and three half-grown sons. Of course, the grower’s mark on the barrels in no way resembled the farmer’s own. The farmer himself, an unaccustomed mustache obscuring his face and his hair stained dark with walnut dye, had consented to come and act as the seller. Kavi had wanted to do that himself, but a twenty-year-old farmer with a scarred hand would be too easily connected to a certain young peddler whom all too many of the Hrum were coming to know.
The farmer had done well, even bargaining up the price when he offered his bargemen as loaders. After all, if the Hrum used local men they’d have to pay them, and the Hrum paid fair. Just as they would be too fair to blame the local carters when the load of wine they carried turned out to be something quite different. For two other men rode in barrels alongside Kavi’s, and while most of the barrels were filled with wine, several were filled with lamp oil, to act as an accelerant.
And one was filled with water, to give the men who would set the fire time for rescue to arrive.
Kavi’s barrel tipped to one side, and rolled on its bottom rim. Kavi’s forehead slammed into the wood, and his stomach rolled at the motion. Please, Azura, don’t let me get sick in here. Within moments the barrel was lifted and fell off the cart into the waiting grip of the loaders, two of them for each barrel. Kavi’s barrel rocked and bounced as it was carried into the warehouse and banged down on the floor, but at least they hadn’t dumped him on his head.
Kavi listened while the rest of the barrels were unloaded. A few bumped against his, but for the most part he was able to relax—as much as he could in such a cramped space. Eventually the muffled sounds of trampling feet and moving barrels ceased. A few more moments passed. Kavi guessed they were now locking the supply depot’s big double doors. The carts would soon be on their way back to town, but they still had a long time to wait. Time for the carts to reach their destination, for the loaders to rejoin the barge, which would set off down the river as soon as darkness fell. Time for the Hrum in the nearby encampment—which was a town now, all built in wood—to settle into sleep, leaving only the sentries patrolling. The reason the Hrum felt safe with just two men marching around the warehouse was that a single shout would alert the camp’s watch, and the troops could arrive as soon as they put on boots and grabbed a sword and shield. That, too, was a part of Kavi’s plan. In fact, his life would depend on it.
The padded mallet, thumping on the lid, made the barrel ring. Kavi crouched with his arms over his head as the lid thumped twice more, then it tipped down and was lifted out.
“Why so early?” he whispered. He could barely make out Dalad’s face.
“I thought you’d be more comfortable out here with us.” Dalad’s voice was low, but not a whisper. “You’ll be getting cramps if you stay in there much longer.”
“I’ve already got cramps,” Kavi grumbled, struggling to stand. “And it’s still light out. What if someone from the camp comes in for something? Are the doors locked?”
“If someone comes we’ll hear when they unlock the doors, and hide behind the crates. Don’t be such an old woman.”
Dalad was a year older than Kavi, a woodworker, like so many of Desafon’s townsfolk. But he already owned his own shop, which he would lose when the Hrum drafted him. When Kavi had started looking for recruits for this part of his scheme, Dalad had seemed sober and responsible—not at all the reckless lunatic he’d turned out to be. Of course, this part of the plan needed a lunatic. And his younger brother, Tur, who was mute though not deaf, and who worked as Dalad’s apprentice, was a reliable lad. In fact, when his frowning gaze met Kavi’s, he seemed like the older of the pair. The oldest of the three of them? Kavi grinned.
He reached into the barrel and extracted the scarlet cloak he’d been sitting on. It wasn’t an exact match to the Hrum soldiers’ cloaks, the worried dyer had told him, but in the dark, in the firelight, it was close enough to pass.
Kavi walked up and down the cleared aisles, stretching his stiff legs. “Have you found all the other barrels? I mean, do you know which is which?”
Tur nodded, but it was Dalad who answered. “Yes, grandma. The lids on the water and the lamp oil are already loose—just a push will open them, and then we can get started. I left the wine kegs sealed. It’s not water, but it doesn’t burn well. Not much better than beer.”
“All right,” said Kavi. In Desafon, the city of wood, they knew more about fire than any other town in Farsala. “What’s in the rest of these crates?”
“How should I know? Army stuff. Do you want to be trying to open them? Without making any noise?”
“No.” Kavi grimaced. “I just hope it’s something that will burn. If they get the fire out in time—”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Dalad confidently. “We built this place to burn. Those vents under the eaves, we were telling the Hrum they’d let out the summer heat. And so they do, but they’ll also act as chimneys and pull the fire up the walls. And all the planks are just dry enough to burn, but not so old the pitch has seeped out of them.”
Dalad grinned. “A couple of folk, they warned the Hrum that putting all their stuff in one big building like this was just asking for the Flame, but they said their safety techniques were ‘far superior’ to ours. Then they accused us of trying to create more work for ourselves. Of course”—Dalad’s grin widened—“it turns out they don’t know good wood from tinder. But that’s not being our problem, is it?”
Tur shook his head sadly, but Kavi had to stifle a laugh. He had given the country folk of Farsala dozens of suggestions for quietly hindering the Hrum in the last few months, but when it came to local matters they were always at least a step ahead of him, and often two or three.
Trust the locals always. They know their own business best.
If the Hrum had had the sense to practice that, they might have saved themselves a lot of trouble. Patrius had talked a good game about the Hrum seeking to learn from their conquered peoples, but the reality encounte
red by Farsalan peasants was an arrogant assumption that the way the Hrum did it was always best.
Yes, the Hrum were arrogant, and they had their draft. And they kept slaves. But they practiced evenhanded justice and paid fair. Kavi flexed his crippled hand, which wouldn’t be crippled if the deghans had paid fair—or even if the bastard who’d walked out of his master’s shop with a stolen sword, leaving a maimed apprentice behind him, hadn’t known that he could get away with it.
So were the Hrum better than the deghans, who hadn’t kept slaves? Or worse? The Hrum were both, Kavi decided with a sigh. Good and bad, all mixed. It was enough to make you believe in the deghan notion that the djinn and Azura fought for control of the world through the hearts and minds of its people.
Then a thought came to him, so startling that he stumbled on the smooth plank floor, and Tur cast him a worried frown.
Had the deghans also been both good and bad?
It was hard to think of much about them that was good. There were some evils, like slavery, that they hadn’t practiced. And they’d kept the old pact and fought, so Kavi’s folk didn’t have to. Fought with courage, give them credit for that at least.
Aside from that, there wasn’t much, even when he tried to be fair. They’d mostly sustained order in the land they governed, but their idea of justice was a joke—a bad joke, when it came to Kavi’s people. And for arrogance they put the Hrum to shame. They had some foolish form of honor, but as far as Kavi could tell it had only served to aggrandize them, not to help anyone else. Even their code of hospitality, feeding anyone who came to their door, was really just a subtle way of saying, “Look how rich I am.”
No, on balance the Hrum were better rulers. He’d been right about that—right, when he passed the Hrum the Farsalan army’s battle plans.
So what was he doing here, risking torture, perhaps his life, in order to get rid of them?
But he knew the answer to that. There were no deghans left now, or at least, not enough to burden his folk, even when the Hrum sent their slaves back. So if the Hrum were gone, there might be a chance for something truly right to grow, once Time’s Wheel rolled away from the Flame. Kavi’s job was to see that those who didn’t deserve it weren’t destroyed, as the Flame of Destruction burned down the old to make way for the new.
Memory of the lady-bitch, Soraya, flickered through his mind. Her father, with typical deghan indifference, had blackmailed Kavi into his service, taking goods to the croft where she was hidden—though, again in fairness, the man had promised payment and might even have made good on it if he’d survived. When Kavi had remembered her at all, he’d assumed that she’d stayed with the family her father had hired to look after her. But he’d seen them working for a farmer near the vineyard where he bought the wine, and the woman told him the girl had fled.
Probably got herself taken by the Hrum, but Kavi wasn’t worried about her—she was too cursed nasty to die. She would come back when the rest of the slaves returned, and doubtless cause more trouble in the world.
The sun had set. Only the fact that Kavi’s eyes were adapted to the darkness let him find his way to the crates where the two brothers had seated themselves. Even close up, their faces were just pale blurs.
“How long should we wait?” he asked softly. “Any idea?”
“There’ll be a bit of moon rising in a few marks,” Dalad replied. “I’m thinking when we can see it through the vents, that’ll be the time. The barge long gone; all the soldiers asleep in their beds.”
“We don’t want them too sleepy,” said Kavi. “They’re the ones who have to get us out of this.”
Tur’s hands flashed through a series of gestures. It was too dark for Kavi to see them clearly, but Dalad grinned. “He says, ‘Tell me again why we have to be on the inside to light this fire?’”
“Because the sentries are on the outside,” said Kavi. “They might be getting suspicious if they saw us painting lamp oil on the walls, don’t you think?”
Tur’s swift, white grin was his only answer. Madmen, both of them. And what’s that making me? Kavi sighed.
The candlemarks dragged on, until moonrise cast a line of silver rectangles on the wall opposite the eastern vents. After the total darkness of the last few marks, it seemed very bright. Kavi could make out his companions’ expressions now, and see when Tur’s hands began to move. A clenched fist over the heart in approximation of a Hrum salute, a hand to the lips, and several gestures Kavi didn’t understand.
“He says the Hrum are going to be asking about this,” said Dalad. “He wants to know what the townsfolk should say.” He smiled at his brother. “I’m for telling them that a djinn did it, like the deghans would’ve.”
Kavi’s breath puffed in a soft laugh. “No, tell them it’s Sorahb who did it. Restored to life, now that the land needs a champion and all.”
With Dalad and Tur, he’d made no pretense that this plan wasn’t his own—he’d scarce had a choice, since he’d made up most of it on the spot.
Dalad snorted. “That’s even less convincing than a djinn.”
“It serves a purpose,” said Kavi. “Most folk I talk to think some deghan is in charge of all this and is using that name to hide his identity. If we can get the Hrum to waste their time chasing after ‘Sorahb,’ then the rest of us are that much safer.”
“Hmm. Sorahb it is, then.” Tur snorted, and Dalad ruffled his brother’s hair, grinning when he ducked. “Never thought you’d be part of a legend, did you?”
Tur scowled and pointed to the moonlight, which was creeping down the walls.
“He’s right,” said Kavi. “It’s time.”
Kavi’s first thought had been to pour the lamp oil on the floor, but Dalad had advised painting it on the walls instead.
“Like varnish,” he repeated now, “only it will burn even better.” He didn’t lower his voice till Tur glared at him. In all the time they’d waited they hadn’t heard a sound from the sentries patrolling outside, and they were getting careless. Kavi was beginning to wonder if the sentries were even out there. They’d better be! No, they would be. With deghans he wouldn’t have been certain, but the Hrum were as reliable as good steel.
They painted the walls as high as they could reach, using the short-handled brooms that Tur had brought in his barrel for brushes. Oil dripped onto their hands, and over the floor, but when they finished they still had half a barrel of lamp oil left.
“Pour it out?” Dalad asked softly. “It could make one corner of the room go up real quick.”
“No,” said Kavi grimly. “If it goes too cursed quick, we’ll be regretting it. Leave it here, where it won’t catch for a while.”
Dalad nodded. Even his expression was somber for once.
They had discussed the timing over and over. How fast would the building burn? How fast would the Hrum arrive? Dalad swore it would take time for the fire to take good hold, that painting the walls as they had was the only way to make certain it couldn’t be put out.
Kavi had sworn that the Hrum would respond quickly, arriving to fight the fire within moments. But in the end they were both guessing. Educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless.
“Get the striker,” he told Tur.
Before they set anything alight, they wiped the oil off their hands and soaked themselves in the water barrel, sitting in it to saturate every scrap of clothing, dunking their heads to soak their hair, tying wet scarves over mouth and nose. It was harder to breathe through the wet cloth, but Kavi knew he’d be glad of it soon enough.
The scarlet cloaks were the last to go in—they held water like sponges and seemed to weigh forty pounds, but no one wrung them out.
It was Dalad who took the striker and lit the torches, good Desafon torches, made by men who understood wood and pitch. The flames boiled up, revealing serious eyes over the scarves that concealed his companions’ faces.
“You two take the sides,” said Kavi. “I’ll get the back wall.”
They hadn’t pai
nted oil on the wall with the big double doors in it, by unanimous consent. This whole scheme was crazy enough—they had to set some limits.
To Kavi’s relief, the lamp oil didn’t instantly burst into sheets of flame, but wherever his torch touched the wall, flowers of fire opened and began to spread. There were lots of crates, bales, and canvas bags stacked against the back wall. Kavi had to detour around them in several places.
A startled shout from outside was echoed by more distant shouts. Kavi grinned, for he knew the Hrum word for fire. Right on time. So why was his heart beating like pigeon wings?
By the time he reached the far corner, where Dalad had started toward the front, flames were pouring up the side wall and reaching around the corner to ignite the back. The heat was fierce. Clothing that had been cold and clammy when Kavi started was now warm and clammy, and he drew the scarlet cloak’s hood up over his head, grateful for the thick, sodden fabric.
Even over the noisy rush of the flames, he could hear the voices of the approaching Hrum—not just cries of alarm, but firm, shouted orders.
One of the Hamaveran’s tributaries ran only a few hundred yards away. The Hrum would have a bucket line set up in moments. Then they would open the doors.
Kavi started walking toward the other end of the warehouse, where Dalad and Tur waited by the barrels. The cloth over his mouth was still damp, but smoke stung his eyes and was beginning to sear his throat, even though most of it was pouring out the roof vents, just as Dalad had promised. They should wet their scarves again.
But it wasn’t just the smoke that dried Kavi’s throat, he admitted wryly. Vines of flame were climbing up the walls now, and despite the certain knowledge that the Hrum would open the doors in a moment, Kavi was beginning to seriously doubt the wisdom of setting fire to a building when he was locked inside.
He began to run, eyes fixed on the brothers who were standing near the barrels, so he saw it happen.
Flames sprang suddenly down a pile of neatly stacked bags. Kavi didn’t know what was in them, grain perhaps, but the rough sacks ignited far too quickly. Tur, watching the doors, surrounded by flames, didn’t see it till his sleeve caught fire. His mouth opened in a silent cry. He leaped toward the water barrel, knocking into several others on the way, and thrust his arm inside. One of the barrels he’d run into was the one still half filled with lamp oil. To Kavi’s horrified gaze, it seemed to tip in slow motion, farther, farther, and then it fell and rolled, dispersing its contents in a shimmering stream of oil. It became a stream of flame before the barrel hit the crates and stopped rolling, cutting Kavi off from the rest of the warehouse, off from the doors.