In Lowespass, women soldiers have always successfully fought Insects. The culls follow procedures; the women help each other and men sometimes back them up. The difference in strength was not important when six or seven infantry recruits can tackle an Insect together, or women can join the cavalry and ride destriers. But in this crush they were fighting one-on-one against men, and I gravely feared for them.
Capharnai families peeked from the windows of their houses above the shops all along the street. They were stranded in their homes, witnessing a scene they couldn’t hope to understand. They saw the heads of men wrestling and stabbing along the center line, and behind them, filling the street above and below, a pack of foreigners in strange clothes facing each other, putting pressure on the breathless crush. The strangers were so eager to push forward to the fight that they trampled dead bodies. At the end of the street, flames piled up from the civic center and smoke boiled like spit in lamp oil. The Capharnai neighbors looked helpless, not knowing what to do. I shouted, “Stay inside! Don’t get involved-they fight each other, not Trisians!”
They saw their own shops vandalized below them. Their faces disappeared from the windows as they began barricading themselves into their upper rooms.
I glanced back; the library was now a roofless shell, the floors were falling through and just the façade was left. Flames leapt in the windows surrounded by blackened stonework-it looked like an animated skeleton.
Coruscating sparks and dull fragile ash dropped on us. I beat my wings to dislodge flakes from the feathers, thinking: the town is being covered in burned knowledge.
Gio was looking for Wrenn, carving his own men aside. I landed on the nearest roof to watch, searching the alleys below for a crossbow to pick up. Gio, wild-eyed, saw Mist’s bodyguards and Wrenn beside them in an area of calm because no fighter would engage with him.
Gio raised his rapier and saluted. “Well, look if it isn’t the novice.”
“Good morning,” smiled Wrenn.
Gio snarled, “You could have chosen better last words.”
First-blood fencing in the amphitheater was just an entertainment; no rules apply in a duel to the death. They watched each other with cool anticipation; Capharnaum didn’t exist for them. They were in a world of two people, challenger and challenged.
There are no words in that world. I know, because I have been there.
Gio swept his rapier down in the rage cut. “You stole my name,” he said. “I’ll be Serein again. I am good enough. I Challenge you, Serein Wrenn.”
Wrenn leveled his blade. “Just run onto this and save me the effort.”
I took off and climbed above them through the deafening battle’s noise.
They dropped the pretense of faking other styles to conceal their own. They flew at each other eager for blood. Gio rushed to chop at Wrenn; at the same time a bystander tried to catch him but Wrenn smashed his teeth with the rapier pommel.
Wrenn lunged at Gio, reprised. Gio swiped it aside with a blow that would have shattered a lesser blade than the 1969 Sword. I thought: How long can they keep this up? But I knew the answer-at least four hours.
Gio pointed his rapier, its lanyard loose around his wrist. He lunged to Wrenn’s dagger side. Wrenn swept his rapier across-clash!-disengaged and cut down aiming for the sensitive bone of Gio’s shin.
Gio jumped on the spot then attacked. Wrenn parried, riposted, enveloped Gio’s blade in quatre, made as if to beat him on the arm and tried to stab him in the forehead. Gio spun away in a move that took me two years to learn. His thigh boots slipped on the pavement. He was trying to predict Wrenn’s actions four or five moves in advance.
In a split second Wrenn slid his rapier tip through Gio’s swept hilt, sliced the skin off his knuckles, withdrew the blade. Gio’s grip became slippery on the freely running blood. He hid his sword hand with his dagger, so Wrenn couldn’t see to predict the direction of the next blow.
Their motions were wide; their heads ducked to avoid being cut in the eyes, watching with the faster speed of their peripheral vision. Their flexed sword arms were close to the body for strength. They hacked at the nearest enemies whenever they had a chance and the melee backed away from them, leaving them in a clear space. The fighting was spreading up and down the street and fragmenting. Tussling groups of men dispersed down the side alleys. The densest part of the fighting eddied around Ata’s bodyguard; spearmen behind, rebels ahead. Five sailors linked arms, trying to preserve a space around her so she could breathe.
I’m doing no good here, entranced by the duel. I need a firebrand to drop on Gio.
I flew back to find Lightning. It was easy, because he was the only person in Fourlands clothes walking down the middle of the broad street. Behind him, the road rose up the hillside backed by the incredible blaze. He was oblivious to the Capharnai around him, with their crying children, bucket chains and packs of belongings. He sniped unerringly at the small groups of rebels-turned-pirates who were all busy with different intents. Some scavenged like wolves; a man pulled down a gold street-lamp bracket; two lechers were held at bay by a Trisian man defending his daughter.
Lightning limped on his left side, moving slowly. Conserving his energy, he held his mighty bow horizontally with the arrow on top, drawing back the heel of his hand to fit in the hollow of his cheek. He used short-distance arrows, color-coded with white flights, and let fly at the looters. Anyone who touched a shop shutter or ran from a house with an armful of gold was sent reeling with an arrow through bicep or thigh.
I glided over and called. I landed and ran to a halt beside him. “Gio and Wrenn are dueling! Ata’s caught in the crush-we have to help her.”
I drew my sword and we continued downhill toward the rotunda at the road’s midpoint. Lightning never missed a shot, counting under his breath, “Fifty-five. Fifty-four. Three…Two…”
I scanned the windows for any movement that might end with a knife in my back. Beyond the forum we passed a precinct of narrow streets. We looked down the nearest and saw a gang of rebels heaving at a solid door. The first was a weasly man with baggy, low-crotched jeans. He had his shoulder to the cracking panels and the others all added their weight. They noticed Lightning and me but renewed their assault on the building. Inside, women were screaming in Trisian so rapid and full of dialect I couldn’t understand. From the first-floor window an elegant lady with ringleted hair, a white chiton dress and red nails hurled terracotta dishes down on the besiegers. They angled their arms over their heads and kept pushing.
“Hey!” yelled Lightning. “Away from that door! Jant, what are they shouting? What is this place?”
I read a tiny inscription on a stone block set into the wall: Salema’s Imbroglio.
“It’s an imbroglio; in Trisian, I mean. A brothel.”
The Archer raised his eyebrows. “I see. Then we must save the honor of these ladies-regardless of whether they have any honor or no.” He loosed at the thin-faced Awian. The arrow rammed straight through the man’s leg and into the wood. Its shaft made a high-pitched crunch of gristle, dimpling his jeans’ fabric into his knee, locking it out straight. He tried to step forward but was fastened to the door. He screamed and hammered his fists and free leg against it.
“Are you all right?” said his friend, being slow on the uptake.
He screamed, “Pull it out!”
“You can’t, it’s barbed.” Lightning spanned his bow. “And if you try, I’ll kill you both.”
The gang sloped off, then broke up and ran toward the forum. Lightning called to the whores, “I promise you’ll come to no harm.”
“I’m sorry,” the would-be rapist pleaded, leaning forward with both hands over his knee.
“You will be,” Lightning commented, without moving the arrow trained on him.
“Saker, what are you doing?” I said, disturbed by this change.
The rapist’s eyes bulged. His left leg kicked, shoe sole scraping the step. He stuttered, “No, no! I’ll-”
&nb
sp; “You’ll do what, exactly?” Lightning said, driven to fury by the man’s Donaise accent. He loosed the arrow; it pinned the rapist’s left leg to a panel. It met some resistance at the kneecap but drove easily between the articulated surfaces of the joint behind and split the wood. Its arrowhead was a shiny stud in his flattened and mushy knee.
Lightning selected another arrow. “My card. Seeing as you need reminding who we are.” He shot again, pinning the man’s right elbow to the door. A wedge of broken bone clicked away from the metal point pushing past it.
The rapist howled and sobbed, “Why? Oh god, help…WhataveIdone?” He turned his head and vomited onto the top step.
“You know who we are!” Lightning shouted. “But still you have to plead, you have to ask! You think Tris is beyond the reach of the Castle! You take advantage of this gentle town!”
Before I could stop Lightning he whipped out a fourth arrow. He couldn’t be enjoying this. I dashed in front of him. “Stop! Are you mad?”
Stony-faced, he aimed over my shoulder. “The lout has an elbow left…”
“Leave him!” I shouted.
“Rape is the worst of crimes,” Lightning muttered. He shook himself and looked up to where the beautiful whores were leaning out watching, some timidly, some brazenly. “Interpret for me, Jant,” he said, and called, “All right, girls. Do with him what you will.”
We walked away from the man’s beast noise. With his whole shocking strength he made every breath a scream.
The Capharnai watched in horror from their doorways. They couldn’t distinguish Lightning and me from the rebels. A young lad, his trousers spattered with somebody else’s blood, ran from the piazza and confronted us. He glared and brandished one of our broadswords, holding it like a tennis racquet. Lightning hesitated. I flicked my dreadlocks back, spread my double-jointed hands and wings and roared, “Raaaah!”
The boy yelled and fled. Lightning looked impressed.
At the next intersection stood one of the unidentifiable poles topped by a right-angled black and white bar. A man stood beside it, manipulating levers that pulled wires to make the plank swing in well-defined motions, somewhat like a flag. He looked up the street to another pole at the foot of the smoke-obscured Amarot and operated the levers to follow its movements. A third device distant at the edge of the town replicated his signals a second later. I realized these were not standards at all; it was a system of communication, and quicker than anything I could provide. Even in the midst of the chaos I thought, I’ll make this innovation my own. I’ll put this system on the Lowespass peel towers instead of the beacons to monitor Insect advances lest someone else beats me to it.
We reached the rotunda that stood over the main crossroads, a domed folly no bigger than a room. It had round columns supporting arches taking in the boulevard and the north-south road. Someone had hacked great chunks of plaster off the interior walls surfaced with blue gems.
A woman wearing a fyrd greatcoat with the collar up was energetically prizing squares of sapphire out of the mosaic. Seeing Lightning’s arrowhead leveled at her, she shrank back, tossed up her knife and caught it by the point, made as if to throw it at him.
Lightning swung slightly left and shot at the edge of the nearest pillar. The arrow hit it obliquely, glanced off into the shade inside and she felt the breeze as it zipped past her face. She burst from the northern arch, away between the empty pavement tea shops, her coat streaming behind her. Lightning bowed-he could even bow sarcastically.
The rear of Gio’s column was two hundred meters below us on the road. We could see the backs of heads, sallet points or bandanna knots at the napes of their necks. Two men in the last line noticed us, nudged their friends and the motion rippled out until everyone at the rear turned around. They were only inclined to watch us until one man, with a look of hatred, pulled a bolt from his bandolier, cocked his crossbow and raised it to his shoulder. Nine or ten others followed suit; I dodged inside the rotunda but Lightning stood still, in disbelief. I urged, “Come on!”
Lightning shook his head as the men pulled their triggers and a barrage of bolts flew at us. Out of range, they dropped and struck the pavement, and the broken pieces skidded, stopping two meters from Lightning’s feet. He stepped forward and kicked them, as if to check they were real and he wasn’t imagining it. He sounded aggrieved. “What have I done to warrant all this? They think they can outshoot me. I’ll attempt to confer with them.”
“Talk to them?” I stopped because Lightning took a handful of distance arrows, long thin shafts with stiff triangular red and yellow fletchings. He held them together with his bow grip, and shot rapidly along the line. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen.” Another handful. “Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen.” The rebels ran like their arses were on fire, but they all ended up lying on the ground moaning or yelling. People in the next line pointed us out then made a break for it, forced to run toward us to reach the side streets’ empty entrances.
The horn tips of Lightning’s longbow shook. He lowered it, breathing deeply, gazing downhill to the churning front of the fray where Gio and Wrenn appeared and disappeared. His legs were trembling and he was pale with pain.
I watched the Sailor’s bodyguards, in dark blue and steel, hacking at the rebels with Ata close behind. From the midst of Gio’s rabble a spear looped up, fell steeply onto them. It hit Ata, impacting on her breastplate. She staggered, unhurt but knocked off balance. The mob surged forward and she fell under their feet, out of view. Her bodyguards lurched back, tried to stay upright by grabbing each other and the soldiers around, but simply pulled people down together, opening a hole in the crowd.
“Get up,” I said. “Quick, Saker; shoot!”
Lightning now shot to kill, aiming at the rebels standing over Ata, in the most accurate volley I had ever seen: an arrow every two seconds.
“Get up! Get up!” he muttered.
The rebels fell around the place where Ata had gone down. He picked them off in the solid crush, no space between them. They couldn’t even raise their shields. The arrows started to hit the same men again and again; dead bodies kept upright in the crush were filling with them, their heads and shoulders pinned with the bicolor flights, but Ata and the men stabbing her were underneath. We couldn’t see her.
The bodyguards tried to shove forward, stabbing the rebels facing them in chests and stomachs. They shouted and tugged at the clothes of the men to either side, urging them to push ahead.
Lightning hissed in exasperation. “I can’t get a clear line of sight. Nine. Eight. Seven. Move out the way!”
His quiver was nearly empty. The ends of his bow vibrated; rapidly his right hand reached down for the short nocks, pulled one up and fitted it to string. Hooked the string with three bent fingers. Drew it past his ear to the side of his head, swinging his shoulder back for a couple of extra centimeters.
He shot with unflagging speed but dimples appeared around his pursed lips. “Five, four. Jant, brace yourself; the Circle’s going to break.”
Zascai are slaughtering Mist. And there’s nothing I can do. I tried to feel it starting-couldn’t-and it hit me. Time rushed past us; I felt torn across the middle. My awareness raced out, expanding in all directions. It stretched, flattened, spread thinner and infinitely thinner until my own identity and individuality vanished. I lost consciousness of my surroundings. I ceased to exist. The Circle reformed with a snap. I woke and blinked around at the battered shopfronts and blue domed ceiling overhead.
It happened so quickly I was still on my feet but I had dropped my sword. I felt cold, very aware of my body and the battle’s noise.
“Three, two…” Lightning stopped with an arrow at string. “I…I am still here,” he said deliriously. We looked at each other.
“Killed by Zascai,” he whispered.
At the battlefront crush, Serein Wrenn staggered. New to the Circle, he didn’t understand what had happened. Gio, on the other hand, had known it well. He took advantage and cut at Wrenn’s f
orehead, drawing a red line across his temple to blind him with blood.
Wrenn came to and tried to defend himself but, concentration lost, all he could do was retreat. Gio pushed him back, slashing at his face to further unnerve him.
“Serein!” Lightning raised his bow again, arced an arrow up high over the entire rebels’ column.
I just had time to see that someone had grabbed Wrenn from behind. Wrenn, still confused, struggled to free himself. The arrow came straight down into the top of the assailant’s head; he crumpled up.
“One.” Lightning fitted his penultimate arrow to the binding on his bowstring. Behind Wrenn a man in a painted leather jacket brandishing a curved falchion leapt at him. Lightning drew and loosed; the arrow pierced the man’s forehead and his body fell, knocking Wrenn. The crowd realized that anyone who closed with Wrenn received an arrow between the eyes. They left the duelists alone.
The Archer gasped, “Serein is an Eszai and must win his own duel. But I made it an even fight; there won’t be two Eszai murdered today.”
His shirt hem was soaked with blood; it was spreading to the tops of his trousers.
At the place where Mist’s dismembered body was being trodden underfoot, someone raised a halberd, her head on the spike. I could only tell by the short white hair, because it was crushed and gashed. The pole turned and the head jigged around to face us. Its indigo eyes were turned up, its mouth open, its nose flattened and bloody.
Lightning’s legs buckled. He staggered back to the rotunda wall, sat down against it, then collapsed sideways leaving a smear of blood. I helped him sit upright with the bow across his knees. He pulled the leather tab off his right hand with his teeth and dropped it. His face was ashen. “The animals. How could they do that-tear her apart? An Eszai, and Cyan’s mother…Immortality’s pointless in the crush. We’re too used to Insects. They don’t throw spears. Damn, don’t you feel like you’ve died? I hate feeling someone else’s death and the years I’ve cheated catching up with me. You know…we all become a second older before San mends the Circle.” He bowed his head. “You know that with me it adds up to minutes…”
No Present Like Time Page 37