by J. S. Bangs
“Yes, Sadja-dar,” the boy answered. In a moment he had strapped Navran into a wooden helmet and a breastplate of quilted leather reinforced with bronze straps. It was uncomfortable, but he could move freely. In a moment he forgot the awkward way that the breastplate encumbered his breathing and the wood pressed into his head.
Sadja nodded at Navran’s armor. “You’ll survive the day, I hope.” Then Sadja widened his stance and shouted, “Good men of Davrakhanda and faithful Uluriya! We go to put down a riot within our city. I lead you myself, and the Heir of Manjur will run with us into battle!”
A cheer rose up from the companies around them. Sadja waved his arms for silence then shouted again, “Form up with your captains. As soon as there is order, we march out.”
For a few minutes there was chaos as the narrow, orderly marching lines were reassembled into actual military formations. Navran stayed next to Sadja. He had no idea what the order of battle was, or if an action to put down a riot could even be considered a battle. As soon as the first ranks of the companies had passed them, Sadja marched forward so his banner stood at the head of the line. The captain and the ranks of the first company marched ahead of him.
Shouts filled the streets. As the militia advanced, the people who had come for the acclamation scattered off the road and into the alleys and gutters. Catcalls and grumbles assaulted them from scattered places. Navran clutched the hilt of his sword and kept his eyes ahead. These were the outliers. A few hundred paces ahead of them was the main body of the rioters, and the militia marched ahead to them.
“Halt,” Sadja called when they were thirty paces away. The men at the front of the mob held torches, long knives, and a few tarnished spears. They drew together into a solid line, with a chaotic mass of shouting and jeering behind them. They made no move to attack Sadja’s men.
“Men of Virnas!” Sadja called out. “What is the meaning of this disorder?”
“Death to the false Heir!” one of the torch-wielding men in the front shouted.
“The Heir is with me,” Sadja said, “well-guarded and equipped to fight. He saves your city from the fire of Ruyam. Submit to him for your own sakes.”
“Let him speak!” another man shouted. But his demand was drowned out by a mass of people behind them yelling Death to the false Heir and We do not submit. Navran’s stomach sank and he felt his palm grow sweaty against the hilt of the sword.
“Quiet!” Sadja screamed. The shouting of the mob did not abate, but the leaders at the front stopped yelling. “Cease this rebellion at once, or the militia will cease it for you. This is your only chance to recant.”
One of the leaders stepped forward and raised the torch above his head. He had a full beard but a shaved lip. The man was Uluriya. Navran’s blood grew leaden.
“We will not follow the false Heir, the Heir who is not a son of Manjur,” the man said. “Turn him over to us, and we will deal with him justly.”
“By betraying him to Ruyam?” Sadja snorted. “That is not justice.”
“And what do you know, Sadja-dar, of the man you support as Heir?” The man looked through the crowd and spotted Navran. He pointed the torch at Navran. “This is not the one we will submit to. Give him to us.”
Navran’s heart shuddered, and his hands shook. If the Uluriya turned against him, then he had failed, whether he escaped Ruyam or not. His face felt like an icy mask.
But Sadja seemed not to notice. “You will be cut down,” Sadja said. He looked at the militia arrayed behind him. “Attack, and spare none who resist.”
The eyes of the Uluriya man grew wide, and he threw his torch onto the roof of the nearest building, where the palm thatch burst into flame. Sadja’s men charged, and the mob began to scream and retreat. Sadja grabbed Navran’s hand.
“Come,” he said insistently. “If you’re here, you should be seen fighting.”
They ran into the mob, which scattered like sheep before a tiger. Stones and torches were hurled out of the riot, striking harmlessly against the ground and hitting one soldier in the face. The soldiers ran forward, spearing rioters who couldn’t flee quickly enough. Navran ran, following the line of battle between the mob and the militia.
He nearly tripped over a body that lay bleeding in the middle of the road. The man groaned and screamed when Navran’s foot hit him. His gut had been split by a spear, and his entrails spilled out onto the road. Ulaur, purify. Navran ran forward.
A boy of thirteen was ahead of him with a rock, running away. He looked back once, spotted Navran, and with a sudden burst of courage turned and heaved the stone at Navran’s head. Navran ducked aside then swiped at the boy with the sword. The flat of the blade only slapped the boy’s calf, or so Navran thought, but the boy cried out and fell to the ground, revealing a long thin gash on the back of his leg. In a single long stride Navran reached the boy and put the sword to his throat.
The boy began to cry. “Leave me,” he said. “For Ulaur’s sake, leave me.”
“You’re Uluriya?” Navran asked. The furious energy of the fight was draining out his fingertips, and his hands began to shake.
“Yes. Please, please let me go.”
Navran looked around. Militia were running past him on each side, and Sadja with the banner was getting farther away as the militia cut through the unarmed rioters. If he left the boy, someone else would kill him. With a groan he reached down and picked up the boy by his collar and dragged him to the nearest building, a home painted with the tanner’s mark. He threw the boy through the curtain over the front door.
“Stay there!” he shouted. “And throw no more stones.” He ran to catch up with Sadja.
Sadja was standing in the center of the street with his sword dangling loosely from his fingers, watching the rest of his militia disperse into alleys and side-streets after fleeing rioters. The main body of the mob seemed to have dissipated, but the riot was not finished. From every alley came shouts and the sound of stones striking walls. Smoke rose from the fire on the roofs behind them, joined by blackening towers of smoke elsewhere in the city. Three dead bodies lay bleeding in the street. Two of them were Uluriya.
“Ugly work,” Navran said.
“It always is,” Sadja said. “But we’ve dispersed the main body. It’ll take hours to subdue the entire city.” He walked over to one of the dead and wiped his sword clean of blood on the dead man’s shirt.
Navran grunted. “The rioters were Uluriya.”
“Many of them certainly were.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“What in particular?”
“They said I was not a son of Manjur,” he said in a low voice.
“The sort of thing that rioters say. Some years ago I had to put down a riot in the sailor’s quarter in my city, and my ancestry was described in the most creative and unlikely ways.”
Navran shook his head. “Uluriya were supposed to be loyal. I was to be acclaimed today.”
Sadja tapped the tip of his sword against the ground. “Something went wrong with that, obviously.”
A black suspicion crept up from the shadows of Navran’s thoughts. He should return to the estate soon. The saghada would still be there, and perhaps he could salvage something.
His train of thought was broken by the sound of footsteps pounding on dirt. A message boy wearing Sadja’s green appeared sprinting towards them on the main street. “Sadja-dar!” he shouted. “Sadja-dar!”
“What is it?” Sadja said.
The boy stopped and bowed to Sadja, gasping for breath. “Bhargasa sends news,” he said. “He says to bring reinforcements. Thudra’s men have broken through the east gate.”
* * *
They came upon the battle with no warning, just a sudden turn in the street and Thudra’s men were there with spears and swords brandished. There was a moment of surprise on both parts, as Navran’s and Sadja’s men startled at the sight of the invading militia, and Thudra’s forces gawked at the sudden appearance of a mixed company of
Uluriya and Davrakhanda soldiers.
Sadja recovered first. “Spears about!” he shouted, and his men responded instantly. The points of their spears lowered, and they hunched together, shoulder to shoulder, forming a line across the wide east-bound street. The Uluriya irregulars filled in the gaps with their inexpertly pointed spears.
Navran scrambled to Sadja’s side behind the line of soldiers. He lifted his sword and glanced over to Sadja for reassurance.
“Put that down,” Sadja said quietly. “You’re not going to charge in there waving your sword around. Stay with me.”
The invaders were forming their own line, but they were a few moments too late. Sadja shouted, “Charge!”
The line of spears swept forward through the street. Navran ran behind them. The soldiers of the opposing line tried to hold their positions, but at the last moment several of them blanched and dropped their spears. The clash came as a chaos of grunting and the sound of metal against groan, and Navran lost all notion of the logic of the battle. Someone screamed. All around him bodies were moving. He raised his sword against a man who approached—he had no idea if it was friend or foe—but another spear caught the man in the side. A spray of blood splattered his face, and then Sadja’s voice bellowed, “Cease! Cease!”
The chaos slowed. Two men lay dead on the ground, their blood pooling beneath them, and a third was curled up cradling a gash across his bicep, swearing incessantly. Navran became aware of his blood pounding in his ears. The wounded man, he was Uluriya. The dead looked like Thudra’s.
“We won?” he asked.
“Bind that,” Sadja was shouting, “and get him out of here.” He whirled to face Navran and spat, “No, we didn’t win. We bested one skirmish. On to the gate. We have to take the gate!”
He turned and berated the rest of their mixed company to continue forward, and with shaky order the men resumed their formation, save one who remained to tend his fallen comrade. Navran followed the soldiers, feeling chastened. Perhaps he should have remained at the estate. What was he doing here? He looked down at the sword trembling in his hand and regretted having come.
There were men shouting and screaming in the alleys, and little petals of fire rose here and there above rooftops. Sadja herded the men forward. Then suddenly a cry came from somewhere to their right, “Sadja-dar! Sadja-dar!”
A young man with a gash above his eye came running from a wide side street, followed by a little knot of a dozen men. Among them was a tall man with a wide nose, and when Sadja saw him he immediately called out, “Bhargasa!”
Bhargasa bowed, running to Sadja’s side. “Finally,” he said. “We have to take the gate.”
“I know,” Sadja said. “What happened here?”
“The rioters in the East Quarter overran the gate tower and opened the door. I had enough to hold the north streets, but I couldn’t assault the gate, and they’ve been pouring through and going into the River Quarter. I don’t think they were expecting the gate to open, but it won’t take them much longer to come through in real force. But the ones in this first wave don’t seem to have much order to them.”
“Yes, we met and drove off a band of them,” Sadja said dismissively. “But never mind the River Quarter. We retake the gate, we can mop up later.”
Bhargasa nodded. “They have a standing line around the gate, disciplined, the only solid line they have. But if I assault the front, then a small group on the flank could get to the guard tower and close the gate.”
“No, I’ll lead the assault the gate,” Sadja said. “Do you have a band that you can trust? A route?”
“A narrow road in the shadow of the wall,” Bhargasa said with a grin. “I found it in my reconnaissance. They have it guarded, of course, but we can push through it. Just these men with me.”
“Do it.” Sadja saluted Bhargasa, who bowed again and ran back into the side street with his men.
“And what about me?” Navran said.
“Just stay close,” Sadja said. He added more quietly, “You’re here to appear brave, not to be brave. Let these men do the fighting.”
Right. To pretend, as he pretended to be the Heir and pretended to know what he was doing.
As they approached the gate, they heard shouts from the alleys and side streets, and their little company grew with the additions of the scattered outposts of Bhargasa’s command. Sadja told them only that they were going to assault the gates, never mentioning that their attack was a cover for Bhargasa’s raid on the tower.
They turned around the last bend in the street and came within sight of the tower, and Navran swore. Thudra’s men stood in ranks three deep, in lines that ran from one side of the plaza before the East Gate to the other. On the roofs of the houses behind them stood archers, who nocked arrows to their bowstrings at the moment they saw Sadja’s troops. The gate was a narrow space, twenty paces wide, but they were perhaps the twenty best-defended paces outside of Majasravi.
“Do we have a chance?” he said.
“We don’t need a chance,” Sadja said. “If Bhargasa controls the gate tower and gets the gate closed, they’ll surrender to us. Now stay back.”
Navran stood uselessly behind the lines of spears that formed up to fight. This time there was no benefit of first movement to Sadja’s men, nor the advantage of numbers. The men took position grimly at Sadja’s command, just beyond the reach of the arrows.
Sadja shouted the order to charge.
Navran remained where he stood, but even from the distance he flinched at the collision of the line with the defensive rank. Spears crunched against flesh, there was a great bashing of armor and weapons, and arrows rained down. Men cried out. Blood splattered the stones. Barely had the first line ground itself against the defense than Sadja ordered the second to charge, and they ran.
Navran maintained a crouch, his sword at the ready should anyone break through the lines and attempt a counterattack. Sadja was next to him, screaming and urging into the fray every man who fell back. The second wave filled in the holes broken by the first. Bodies and spearheads pushed the defensive line, and the men fell and were trampled under the feet of the advancing skirmishers.
But the line held. He saw Uluriya impaled on spears and hurled back by the shields of the defenders. The stones were slick with blood.
“We can’t take it,” he whispered. “We lose.”
Sadja grabbed his shoulder. “We win. Look.”
He heard it before he could see it: the deep groan of the gate mechanism. The massive doors of the gate were swinging shut, slowly, far too slowly, but they closed. He straightened and watched them expectantly.
Sadja slapped him and pulled him down. “No! Don’t alert them.”
Of course. Yet it seemed that Sadja’s warning was unnecessary, because when Navran glanced at the doors, he heard shouts of dismay and warning from Thudra’s men. A few of those in the line before the gate looked and saw they would soon be trapped. The rear rank fled.
At their flight Sadja leapt to his feet and shouted, “Go!”
The reserve line standing behind him surged forward. Sadja followed them, and Navran scrambled after. The defenders were in retreat now, running towards their escape. The door was nearly shut. The remnants of the front line wouldn’t make it, he could see them—they would surely surrender, just as Sadja had said—and then….
Go back.
Terror like a blow to the head. His blood boiled with fear. He fell to his knees. On every side of him men covered their faces and screamed.
Go back.
Those nearest the door scrambled away like rabbits fleeing a fire. Thudra’s men, Sadja’s men, the Uluriya—their allegiances were forgotten, weapons left on the ground. They all fled the gate as one. It was a compulsion as strong as the one which had cleared the bridge at Jaitha. Stronger, perhaps, as it carried with it an irresistible fear and an undercurrent of fire.
A man in a red sash appeared in the narrow crack between the doors. He squeezed between and stood in
the emptied space before the gate with his head lifted high. A young man, with a handsome face and narrow eyes, but when he opened his mouth there was a sound like the cawing of crows. In the shrieking Navran could barely make out words.
“Where is the Heir of Manjur?”
Sadja was curled on the ground next to him, his hands covering his ears, his eyes wide with horror. No one else seemed to have heard. The messenger opened his mouth ahead, and the men nearest him wept and crawled away.
Before the demand could be repeated, Navran rose to his feet and said, “Here.”
“Tomorrow the city burns,” the man cawed. “But you may save it. Do not flee like your predecessors who wore the ring. None will be spared if you do. Come to Ruyam alone.”
The man lifted the sash over his shoulders and let it drop to the ground. Navran’s gut lurched, for on the man’s chest were five warped burns, forming a twisted and blasphemous pentacle. Without turning, the messenger reached back until his hands found the beams of the nearly-closed doors behind him.
“The gate is Ruyam’s,” the messenger said. “Tomorrow he enters here, unless you come.”
Fire bloomed from the man’s chest. It swallowed him in an instant, turning him into a screaming effigy. It spread like spilled pitch over the doors and up the stones of the gate. Bright white, bright enough to hurt the eyes, but tinged with bloody red at its edges. Navran covered his face.
The sound of burning flesh, creaking beams, and terrible screams endured for a moment. Then the light lessened. Navran opened his eyes.
A blackened skeleton covered with charred fat lay between the doors. The beams of the doors glowed as embers, and the bronze rivets holding the door together were warped and melted. The hinges were bent. The doors barely hung in their frame, never to be closed again.
Quiet.
Sadja stirred beside Navran. Navran gave him his hand, and Sadja regained his feet, brushing dirt and flakes of ash from his clothing.