by Lori Martin
Mejalna became dogged by Mistress Pillyn, who seemed, for all her solicitude, scarcely to believe her claims about Paither. “You didn’t even seem to like each other,” she kept saying.
Mejalna calculated and recalculated how long they could hold out, trying to stretch in theory supplies that could not, in reality, go much further. After a time her hunger became tolerable, a dull constant ache, but she couldn’t get enough rest. She felt her energies draining into the child, and she worried that she would have no milk.
Fifty or so of the people with her were Feimennas. The three language savers came to her to say that they had voted among themselves. With all respect, they must tell her that, whatever the Lindahnes did, they themselves could not surrender. They could not allow themselves to fall into the hands of the blasphemers; after all, they were here to wipe the stain of impiety from their people. They preferred death, which would be pure.
Mejalna nodded. She’d seen this attitude already in battle. The Feimennas numbered the middle-aged in their ranks; men and women who took the time to consider their options. Her own Defiers had the fierce impulsiveness of youth, and they were furious at their predicament. They concocted wild schemes for escape and revenge, and vowed never to give in; at the same time they muttered in shamed undertones about surrender. Though brave on the field, they were impatient, and had no endurance for slow suffering. Mejalna understood. She was just twenty herself.
One of the horses disappeared overnight. Angry soldiers reported someone who’d been cooking, someone else who looked sleek and full, and accusations rang in the air. She ordered the slaughter of half the remaining animals, and set the rest loose in the gardens to find what poor grazing they could. She might yet need them. When the horse-feast was over, she set a muster of older Feimennas to guard the rest of the animals. But if some of her Defiers tried to force the issue, what should she order? Would they have to spill each other’s blood, before Renasi got through?
If Renasi got through.
In search of some kind of comfort she asked Baili to point out which of the many apartments Paither had occupied here, during his brief stay. She took to sleeping in his bed, trying to find the remembered warmth of his body in the chilly linen.
Another dreary moon passed. Once every three days Tribune Haol rode up to the front gates, and called up to ask if they were ready to end this foolishness. From the walls Mejalna shouted back that it was he who looked foolish, locked out of his own House. Come, come, he answered good-humoredly. Why not give in? Was the building worth starving for? “We’ll have it in the end, you know,” he shouted.
“Will you? How goes the war, Tribune?”
She meant it only as a taunt, hoping to startle him into giving them news. But something – anger, perplexity, perhaps even fear – crossed his plump face before he hid it. He rode off abruptly. Behind her she heard those with sharp eyes speculating in excitement; perhaps Renasi was winning. One unhappy voice carried too far in reply. The word “surrender” reached her ears clearly.
She pivoted. The soldiers nearby fell suddenly silent. She searched faces. They were all crimsoning; they all looked guilty.
Only the day before she had asked about among the archers. There was only one young Nialian with them, a sixteen-year-old girl afraid of her own small powers, who had had no prophecy to give her. Mejalna had dismissed her, and with her all hopes of Renasi.
“Understand this,” she said now to the staring soldiers. “We are holding this building in the name of the relas of Lindahne. We will keep it until he comes to claim it.”
She clambered down, clumsy in her bulkiness, and slapped away a supportive hand. As she stormed inside a buzzing ran along the walls. The relas! they said to each other. Who knew where he was?
Early the next morning she went into labor. She told no one until after high-sun. Mistress Pillyn fussed, but she was glad to have her care. When the pains grew hard she sent for the Nialian girl, merely as a distraction. To her surprise the girl opened wide eyes and said, “You’re going to have a boy.”
Pillyn, fluffing pillows behind her, laughed. By nightfall the little prophecy had come true.
Chapter 29
Nearly a moon later a sentry named Phiiies was on watch above the bricked-up Main Gate. As the first light grew he glanced around for his guard relief; he was due to break fast. Since no
one trusted another to carry over his rations any longer, they were all on short shifts. It was a bitter joke that the less food they were allowed, the more breaks they were given to fetch it.
A deep rumble, like thunder, sounded in the distance. But the sky was clear – a pretty morning, if you were free to enjoy it. The gathering noise grew.
Phiies, listless as all his companions, tried to listen. All at once he realized what it was. He leaped up and raised the alarm, roaring, but at that moment the thundering Mendale horses broke into the open before the walls. While he was still shouting they formed quickly into position. Two huge battering rams of stout oak, swinging from siege machines, were being dragged up into position. “Attack!” he screamed again. “They’re attacking!”
The cry went up everywhere. Mejalna ran up the spiraling stairs to the House roof, panting and slipping; her legs were heavy and weak and her breasts swollen with milk. The archers on top had already lined up well, but were unable to shoot as yet; the heads of their own soldiers on the outside wall blocked their aim. They could be only the second line of defense, if the walls were breeched.
The battering rams were already at work, booming. She seemed to feel the vibrations in her heart. She grabbed at the highest gable and climbed up. The women protested. “You’re a mark up there, Mejalna! They may have archers with them!”
She turned this way and that, looking beyond the town avenues, the artisan buildings, and the small houses. What had happened? Why had Haol determined on murdering them now, when he must know how desperate they were becoming? Had his patience simply run out?
Men below were screaming. The Defiers poured boiling water on the besiegers, but the rams kept up their crashing attack. She realized there was one bombarding the Southeast Gate, too. In the welcome-yard the Feimennas formed into their hunting wedge.
Her officers were shouting up questions. The horizon in her view stretched to the plains beyond the city boundaries. Clouds of dust were rising. More horses? More Mendales?
At the far eastern side of the capital she could see swordsmen crashing together. Horses reared. Dark flashes which she knew to be arrows whizzed through the air. It was like a pantomime; she could hear nothing of it over the din just below. The officers, panicked, clamored for her attention, but she ignored them.
A wide banner, half-hidden in dust clouds, was unfurled to the sky. She strained her eyes, but the banner was in blurred motion, carried on galloping hooves. It was too far off to see the device. But it shone blue: the blue of the royals.
So Haol was moving against her now because he knew the Lindahne army was upon him. Why? Did he want to stand his own defense from the Assemblage? What did it matter? For one exultant moment she stood to throw her hands up in thankfulness to the heavens. Then she jumped down, calling on the officers, resuming the fight. Rescue was coming. But they would have to live long enough to receive it.
As her gaunt men and women, suddenly finding energy, rushed to obey her orders, she paused to wonder if she might be seeing visions. It seemed impossible Paither could really be here.
In truth, the Second and Third Hills had finally fallen to him two moons before. Lindahne earth was once more in Lindahne control. Once satisfied of this, he had been free to turn on Mendale. With Samalas he had subdued the southern foothills, taken the passage, and driven northwest at breakneck pace straight to MenDas, leaving the southern plains of the country untouched but in a ferment. He left Ennilyn behind to govern as regent. She was to settle Lindahne and hold off further Mendale forays.
In the time that Mejalna had been forced to count her provisions and wai
t, brooding, without news, Mendale Commander Dirrl had successfully kept Renasi’s forces pinned down beyond the city. When news came of the disaster roaring out of Lindahne, however, she was nearly overwhelmed. Her troops seemed to be backed on to the water’s edge, feeling the tide rushing out and the sand come up, a warning of the great wave gathering itself behind them. She had mustered them bravely, and turned them to advance on the new threat. Then the great southern flood had broken over their heads.
From that day’s first light Tribune Haol had been possessed of three facts: that the insufferable lin royal had dared to attack the very heart of Mendale; that the demon army was poised to move in on the other side; and that Nichos was one of the people shut up in the Assemblage House. One of his spies had glimpsed him on the roof.
If Paither managed to take the city – unthinkable as it was – they would be helpless. But Haol was not a man to give in. He would need a bargaining point, a hostage.
The Commander and her tightly disciplined Band had taken the field; when he decided to order an immediate break into the Assemblage House he had to call on its own former troop of guards, who had been left behind by the army to safeguard the Tribunes. In his hurry, he did not bother to search out the senior officer to give his commands face-to-face; he sent word by a message-runner, adding, “Be sure to tell him to take prisoners. I want Nichos alive.” The boy, overawed by his mission, rushed out to find the harassed officer, who was trying to barricade the street. An overturned lamp had started a small fire. Everyone charged about with buckets; the boy joined in. By the time it was over the guards had marched off on their mission. The officer was nowhere to be found, and the boy could not deliver the Tribune’s message.
The Main Gate of the Assemblage House shuddered and split. Mendales and Lindahnes alike rushed into the gap. Hand to hand fighting broke out everywhere. Mejalna ordered the horses drawn up in front of the steps, with her own at the center. She was glad to have saved the animals; gaunt and sickly as they were, they were still a strong blockade to the Mendale footsoldiers. Like lightning bolts, intermittent flashes came of her baby, left in Pillyn’s care, and of Paither, somewhere out in the dustclouds. Her weakness was gone; she was ready to fight.
The Mendales were bursting in. She took aim and shot her first arrow; the archers followed her lead. The first line of footsoldiers went down but more poured in. Figures grappled on the walls. Enemy archers craned their heads over the rubble, uttering shrill war cries. She drew back her bow and aimed at a cluster of women directly opposite. Before she could release the arrow, something whispered beside her. The next moment pain exploded across her body.
She crashed sideways off her horse. An arrow was embedded at the base of her throat, sticking out between her collarbone and right shoulder. Her hard impact with the ground jarred the shaft and flamed her flesh into a harsher burning agony. She had a confused sight of her own bow flying up over her before it crashed down. Someone stooped over her, but she no longer knew enemy from friend.
In a shadowy back room of the House Pillyn looked up from the baby cradled in her lap and said sharply, “Where’s Nichos?”
Baili turned. His hands were still fumbling at his swordbelt. He had lost his own weapon months before; he had taken this one from the Arms Room. “He was just here.”
They both looked at the empty space of air where Nichos had been. Horses outside neighed and screamed. A woman’s shriek sounded above the clamor.
Pillyn stood up. She brought the baby to a divan by the wall and arranged protective pillows around him. Calli came over to watch. “Did you find a bow for me?”
“No. The Arms Room was ransacked. Do you still have your dagger?”
“Yes.” Baili was too distracted to notice her tone. “You’d better stay here,” she said softly.
He tightened his buckles and reached for the shield. “No, I’ve got to get out into the fighting. You should be all right here, this room’s well back. Nichos should be back any minute, I can’t think where he’s –”
The door clicked shut. Baili looked up. She was gone. Calli, suddenly alerted, turned despairing dark eyes on him. The baby kicked among the pillows. “Name of Nialia,” he exclaimed. Now he was trapped, unable to leave the children alone.
Moving fast, Pillyn panted down the corridors. Room after room was deserted. Her cry echoed hollowly. “Nichos!” she shouted. “Nichos!”
He had slipped away deliberately, she knew Who was he running to? Or from? His own people had imprisoned him, named him traitor, threatened his life. Yet, in their days here with the Lindahnes, he had walked in a cloud of suspicion. As the relas’s foster father he deserved respect, but after all, people murmured, the man was once a Mendale Tribune. Nor would the Feimennas associate with him: he was a blasphemer.
In the last war he had been a trusted herald of the Assembly, and a ranking who had led his Band well. She knew he loved his homeland, loved the long earth of yellow-green plains and farmland, loved the flat open miles (so different from her own rolling Hills!) where his flighters could gallop freely on their powerful legs. But he loved Paither, too. And he loved her.
She rounded a corner into an outer corridor. Sunlight burst through the many-paved windows and flooded her eyes. After the dimness she was blinded. If she kept on this way she’d reach the main doors. The fighting was nearby now. Surely, by the racket, it had broken into the building.
Twenty years of marriage, twenty years, and she could not guess where he had gone. Or if he were coming back.
There was a huge crash, so deafening that her ears rang. The main doors had toppled inward. Dark furious bodies, shining blades clutched in their fists, exploded into the passage. They were Mendales; the Lindahnes in the welcome-yard must have been overcome. For a half-minute she was paralyzed.
Rough voices shouted: someone had seen her. Men hurled themselves forward. She ran through the slanting sunlight, her boots skidding on the slick floor, and flung herself around a corner into the shadows of another hallway. At the far end, which turned beyond her sight, she heard swords clashing. A strange yodeling cry, the hunting-paean of the Feimennas, sent shivers down her skin. Footsteps were chasing her.
She shoved at the nearest door, which opened on to a small room used for storage, where the House servants had once stacked linen and dishes. It was nearly untouched, crowded with silver goblets and discarded fabrics piled in a corner. She slammed the door behind her.
There was no table, no solid furniture, nothing to pull across. She clutched her dagger and pressed herself to the wall, listening.
One pursuer only. She could hear him now, trying other doors. But he was a swordsman. Her dagger would be no match.
Suddenly the door was kicked in, so fast she had to leap sideways. She had never been a fighter, never served in an army, never killed. But she would have only one chance to save herself, and she took it. She threw herself at him, dagger-first.
He had been braced for attack. He turned her blow with hard swiftness, but she fastened herself on him. This close in his sword only hampered him, and he couldn’t get clear. They stumbled together in a grotesque dance.
She tried desperately to bring up her dagger, but he was too strong. The Mendale took a powerful hold of her hair with his left hand and yanked her head back. With his right he lifted his sword.
She saw a blur of ceiling, a bristling beard, and vicious eyes which locked in triumph on her own. Before the blade swung down he suddenly checked. The eyes widened in shocked pain. His jaw opened as if to speak, but only a trickle of blood came out.
His heavy-boned body began to slide down, slowly, as if it knew there was no need of hurry now, its crushing weight nearly dragging her with it. Then, all at once, it toppled free to the floor. Blood gushed from a gaping wound in his back, and ceased.
Nichos stood beside her with a red-smeared sword. “Are you all right? I heard you scream.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t know I had. I was... I was looking for you.”
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He put a comforting hand on her arm, but in distraction, staring down at the figure in black-robed army clothes. Some unspoken argument was going on in his head. “I’ve been at war. I’ve killed before this,” he said, as if making a point.
“Never a Mendale,” she said.
Their eyes met. Nichos said, “I was pushed back from the doors. This whole section’s in chaos, they’re fighting everywhere. Where’s Calli?”
“I left her and the baby with Baili. They’re in the east back wing. He’s armed, at least. If anyone can protect them, he can. Can we get back to him?”
“I doubt it.” He risked a glance outside. The Feimennas had retreated farther off, or been silenced; they heard only ringing Mendale voices. Several raised a shout, calling a name, coming closer. “They’re looking for him,” Nichos said, jerking his chin at the body. “Take his sword.”
“I don’t know how to handle one. I wish I had my bow.”
“Take it anyway.”
She stooped over the corpse, averting her eyes. “Should we stay here? Maybe they’ll go past us.”
“I think –” he broke off.
“Nichos?”
“They’ve seen me.” He crashed the door closed, spotted the high bolt she had missed, and shot it across. He was a strong man, but there were seven or eight soldiers shouting outside.
“Didn’t they see who you are? Tell them. Tell them you’re a Mendale, a listtel.”
“Come out, lin!” the voices roared. Swordbutts hammered on the door. “Come out and fight!”
“Nichos! Tell them.”
His dark eyes opened wider, showing white against his black skin. His look flickered to the dead man and back to her. She swallowed her words.
One of the soldiers threw himself against the door. It rattled; the others urged him to try again. Nichos, backed against the door, turned his head to look at her. Her pale gold hair was flung back from her face. It was still a young face; only a few faint lines had yet appeared at the corner of her eyes. Almost stupidly, she was clutching the forgotten dagger in one hand, the Mendale sword in the other.