Amwell's face went white. He gasped, eyes frogging, and pawed at his chest. He fell and was still.
"What did you just do?" Blays asked softly. "You said you'd let him live if he helped you."
Dante frowned. "He killed Cally."
"But you made him a promise."
"The man who killed Cally doesn't deserve promises. He deserves death."
Blays flung out his hands. "Then tell him that from the start! Don't lie to him. Don't promise him life when you mean to give him death. This isn't a game."
"I know that," Dante said. "Games have rules. We can't afford to."
"Well, maybe we should. Maybe if we did, I wouldn't lie awake thinking about that guy's face."
"Rules are a luxury for those with the power to play by them. I'll start worrying about what's fair as soon as King Moddegan stops forcing me to scramble for my life."
Blays shook his head. "You know, nobody makes you do anything. You always have a choice."
The rest of the room watched in silence. Dante turned away from Blays and met Kav's eye. "I'm sorry I thought it was you. Things are moving so fast. I moved too fast as well."
"I can't damn you without damning myself for the same sin." The hard planes and regal curves of Kav's face aligned into a single pained look. "We can't seek peace with the people who killed Cally. Do we have any chance of winning this war?"
"Hell if I know," Dante said. "But if we don't, at least we'll all die together. Should we get started?"
27
From atop the city's outer Pridegate, Dante let out a yell and scrambled down the stairs. Five hundred men shouted and pursued him up the boulevard. Sunlight struck the cobbles as hard as his own boots. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Faces snarled. Swords and spears glinted. Dante pushed harder uphill, sweating in the stagnant summer swelter. Footsteps rang closer and closer. He had nothing more to give. The first troops caught him, falling in beside him with taunts and jokes.
He grinned back. The citizen conscripts had been learning fast. Not that it took any great discipline to retreat from a hypothetically breached Pridegate to the next line of defenses at the Ingate. But it wasn't the most straightforward activity in the world, either. The sprinters had to lead the way and ensure the route ahead was clear while the main body of conscripts had to stay cohesive enough to reform if they were overtaken by cavalry. Then came the issue of what to do once they reached the Ingate—learning to make their way through it in a reasonably orderly fashion, to rush up the stairs to take fresh positions, to call out when they were ready to close the gates behind them.
Which the conscripts quickly did, with a minimum of fumbling or confusion. Pretty good, considering the Citadel guards had just rounded them up this morning.
"Well done!" Dante called from the tower flanking the main passage through the Ingate. "Soon enough we'll be the finest retreaters in all the land. See your sergeants for your next instructions."
He continued uphill to the Citadel. He had an appointment with Kav. Nothing major. Just to decide how they'd spend the few days they had left.
Dante detoured to his room for long enough to towel off the worst of his sweat before continuing to Kav's. There, Kav glanced up from a desk laden with messages, marching orders, and maps.
"I've recalled Olivander," he said. "The messenger should reach him within two days. Assume he'll require an equal amount of time to finalize his recruitment and three more days to return with whomever he's been able to muster."
"A week," Dante said. "Should beat the king's armies here, at least. Any word what they're up to?"
"Conquering. At an alarming rate. And northward-bound, to boot. They could beat Olivander here if they wished, but it appears they're content to spend no more than half of each day marching and the rest quashing all norren in reach."
"Sounds like we'll owe the norren a monument before this is done."
"If we have any stone left after our graveyard is finished." Kav brushed dust from his doublet. "So where are your brilliant, beyond-the-bend-in-the-river strategies for overcoming the inevitable?"
"Should I have some of those?"
"I have been led to believe it is your stock in trade."
"I don't know anything about defending a city from an army the size of another city. Quite frankly, I'd be looking to Olivander's lead on that front." Dante rubbed his eyes. "Anyway, absurd and half-assed schemes are Blays' specialty. If I can pry him away from Lira, I'll see what he has to offer."
Kav nodded, then pursed his mouth in a way that showed the tips of his teeth. "I am not sure of the most graceful way to broach this. But I want you to know that, for whatever role I might be currently occupying within this madness, I intend for it to be temporary. If the Citadel's still standing once this is over, its next leader will be decided through the standard channels."
"By murdering the current leader and snatching up his mantle?"
Kav chuckled. "Preferably something a hair more civilized than Cally's methods."
Dante went to the dungeons to seal up the tunnel he'd bored between the Citadel and the outside, then made a circuit of all three of the city's main walls—Sealed Citadel, Ingate, and Pridegate—to ensure they were intact and sound. He finished his rounds just before nightfall. Somburr came to his room minutes later. Inside, the man fished into his pocket and produced the letters Dante had copied from Kav, along with an additional set of papers: translations.
"I'd forgotten all about those," Dante said. "What do they say?"
Somburr gave him a sharp look. "Can't you read? Do you spend all that time propped up over books just to trick anyone watching into thinking you're literate?"
"I can read. I just figured you can, too, and had already applied that heroic skill to the contents of these letters."
"Okay. They're love letters."
"Love letters? Why would he bother to encrypt those? I've never seen anything about celibacy in the Cycle."
Somburr tapped the folded papers. "They're from a man."
"Oh."
"Yes. Do you want to blackmail him?"
"What?" Dante reached for the letters. "My plan from here is to put them back and never mention them again."
"I can take care of that." The letters disappeared in Somburr's pocket. "Are you sure you don't want to blackmail him?"
"Double sure."
"Well, have it your way. Maybe another time."
Somburr departed. Day by day, the city grew more quiet and more loud. Quieter because those citizens unwilling to defend it began to leave it, dispersing to the far eastern hills or by boat to Yallen or even driving their wagons into the hinterlands of the Norren Territories. Louder because as the daily clamor diminished, what few sounds remained rang all the harsher: the constant clank of blacksmith's hammers, the shouts of sergeants drilling volunteers, the occasional thunder of a rider bearing some new message from the lands beyond the walls.
With the institutions of the Council and city guard kicking in to oversee the bulk of the logistics, Dante found himself with an unfamiliar abundance of free time. Working with the commander of the guard, he helped raise a few new earthworks to shore up the city's most vulnerable points, such as down on the bay where there were no walls against a seaborne invasion, but he could only work for so long before the nether gave out. Then he was just one more man with a shovel. Instead, he selfishly left the digs to spend his time as he pleased.
Some he spent walking. Enjoying the warmth and the sunlight. Twice, he went to the ocean to watch the fish from the docks and to wash off the suffocating humidity in the cold northern waters. He went to visit the marker on Cally's grave at the top of the hill. If they had a future, a stone monument would be erected in its place, but for now it was nothing more than a wooden pole. When Blays and Lira weren't busy in their rooms, he spent time with them. Lira insisted on teaching them some of her most desperate grappling techniques. Dante appreciated it, and went through her drills and sparring with as much energy as he could must
er, but a thick fatalism had settled over his shoulders. Two or three weeks from now, it would all be over. What could he learn in two or three weeks that would make any difference? At this phase, what could it possibly matter?
Rather than depressing him, this feeling liberated him. He began to see the small things. The sharpness of the leaves backlit by sunlight. The skitter of sand crabs dislodged by the break of the waves. The shine of sweat on a woman's neck as she lifted her arms to clip clothes to a line. At times the sharpness of the world stole his breath. These sights were everywhere. Thousands of them in a single day. There weren't enough eyes to see them all. Perhaps that was the worst of what was to come: soon enough those eyes, already too few, would be lessened by another few thousand, leaving that many fewer witnesses to the world's golden wonder.
And sometimes life felt no different at all. The specter of war shuttered businesses across the city, but had no appreciable effect on Narashtovik's public houses. If anything, they grew more boisterous than ever, with laughing drunks spilling out the front doors by noon and by night. It was just such a place Dante and Blays found themselves on one of those summer nights when the sun threatens to never set at all—it was past nine o'clock, by the cathedral bells, yet the sun still hovered above the western forests, splashing the tavern with yellows and reds. To combat the too-snug humidity, Blays ordered mugs of summer ales, light and sweet and basement-cooled. They drank within the shade of the wall, fanned by the breeze through the open windows.
"We could tell the redshirts we surrendered last month." Blays wiped foam from his upper lip. "Just tell them to turn around and go home. Maybe by the time they got all the way to Setteven they'd be too tired and sweaty to bother coming back."
"Sure," Dante said. "Hoist a few of the king's banners over the Citadel, smile a bit, offer them our nicest teas."
"I'm not giving them any tea."
"Our third-finest, then. Those barbarians will never notice the difference."
"Consider it added to the list." Blays appeared to be taking actual notes. He squinted over his parchment, lips moving soundlessly. He dotted the sheet with his quill. "Now then. Alternately, we burn the city to the ground ourselves—quite safely, of course—then spread the rumor Arawn's already taken his vengeance on his treacherous servants."
Dante sipped his beer. "No good. That would just entice them to march in and piss on the ashes. Which I assume we'd be hiding in."
"You can't hide in ashes. One wrong sneeze and the jig is up."
"Fine. We'll hide in smoke instead. Very difficult to piss effectively on smoke."
Blays' quill scribbled. "Piss...on...smoke."
"It's called the Dead City, right? Maybe we can convince them it's full of deadly, deadly ghosts."
"Why don't you build a few tunnels beneath the city for us to move around through?"
"Could be useful," Dante said.
Blays snapped his fingers. "Got it. Build big old pits and camouflage them so the redshirts just march right into them. Like giant tiger traps."
"That could work on the front ranks. But after they've fallen, that will be the end of it. Anyone who's too stupid to not wander into a giant hole would have already stabbed themselves to death trying to eat dinner."
"So pair it with a giant distraction. A two-hundred-foot naked lady blazed across the sky! They'll be too busy goggling at the heavens to see the hole right in front of them."
Dante took a long drink. "This is not getting us any closer to not being murdered."
"You've gotten pretty good at digging ditches without a shovel, aren't you? Why don't you bury their whole army under an avalanche?"
"I don't have that kind of power. Anyway, we'd have to lure them under a giant cliff or something, and Narashtovik is sadly lacking in giant cliffs." Dante rubbed his eyes. "What did we learn at Dollendun?"
Blays narrowed his eyes. "That explosions are fun and hordes of armed men on horseback aren't."
"Cavalry will still be a problem. The city's too big to block all the streets. What can we do about that?"
Blays drove his finger down into the table. "That's when you spring the tiger trap."
"That might work. What else?"
"Man, I don't know. How many tiger trap-related ideas can one man come up with?"
"It pains me to say this, but will you forget the tiger traps? So we don't have any bombs. We don't have any loons. What do we have that they don't?"
Blays shrugged. "Two giant sets of balls."
Dante rolled his eyes. "Unless we plan to roll them down the hill at the redshirts, I don't see how that's useful."
"And one giant penis."
"Is that all we've got? Tiger traps and courage?"
Blays drank contemplatively. "Seems to me the real lesson in Dollendun is when they've got ten thousand men, tricks can only take you so far."
"Narashtovik's only got a standing army of about two thousand," Dante said. "And half of those troops were more of a sitting-army as recently as last year. Their training's not going to match Setteven's soldiers. I don't know how many men Olivander will bring back—a few hundred? At least they'll know which end of a sword is which. That's more than can be said for some of the citizens we've conscripted."
"Oh well," Blays said.
"Oh well?"
"As in 'Oh well, not much we can do about it now but have a drink.'" Blays did just that, then laughed. "Sorry. Is that obnoxious? For some reason I just can't convince myself to care."
Dante grinned. "Same here. It's like this is happening to another person."
"Another person who I also don't care about."
"Have we seen too much? Become jaded to even the worst horrors?"
"I don't think that's it." Blays stood, mug in hand. "I mean, if I find out the keg is empty, I'm still going to scream pretty damn loud."
That was the last they spoke of the invasion that night. Dante spent the next few days wandering around the city looking for opportune places to sink tunnels and tiger traps. Hammers rapped constantly as men boarded up their houses. Grocers began to shutter their empty shops, too; the remaining citizens had begun to hoard, buying up all foodstuffs in sight. Kav assigned the monks to update the decades-old system of rationing Narashtovik's granary. Dante began a tunnel to link the Citadel's basements to the far-off catacombs of the carneterium. An escape hatch, should worse come to worst.
Olivander rode into the city, the banners of Barden flying from his troop of 120 horsemen and another six hundred foot soldiers gathered from the east. He'd heard the gist of the recent infighting—Wint's betrayal, the attempt to set the Council against itself, Dante's proof and Wint's subsequent suicide—yet was still shocked to hear the story in whole.
"It sounds like the king's already half ruined Narashtovik," he said in his steady baritone. "Now he sends his army to finish the job."
"Think they'll have enough to do it?" Dante said.
From the steps to the Citadel's front door, Olivander gazed over the men being shuffled across the courtyard for the barracks and stables. There were clearly too many; some would have to be quartered in the abandoned houses beyond the gates.
"I got fewer men than I'd like," Olivander said. "But we may have enough. If the walls hold. If the people fight back. If the Council, depleted as it is, holds strong." The goateed man glanced down at Dante. "What do you think?"
"I have no idea. Something this big is beyond my capacity to predict."
Olivander grinned. "You admit not knowing something? Are we sure Wint didn't kill you and replace you with an impostor before he died?"
"Perhaps I'm getting older," Dante scowled. "But I suppose you'd know better than me."
Olivander snorted, but he was pleased to see Dante and the guards' progress drilling the conscripts. He took over from there to march the fresh soldiers around Narashtovik's boulevards, leaving Dante with even less to do. Men toiled in the streets from sunup to sundown, dragging rubble across the thoroughfares, erecting wooden walls with
spiked prongs at key junctures.
Dante finished up his tunnel and, after consultation with Olivander, set to work on a tiger trap just before the intersection of a deliberately unblocked street halfway between the Pridegate and the Ingate. There, he convinced the stones to roll away, the dirt to part and hold. By the next day, it was twenty feet deep, ten across, and a full forty feet wide. Men sawed thin planks and laid them over the gap. It would hardly divert the enemy, but with a little luck, it might cripple a cavalry charge at a key moment.
The latest scouts returned. The king's army was marching north. If they didn't slow down, they'd be on Narashtovik within three days.
The buzz of activity became an ear-drilling whine. Dante went to the outskirts of the city to ruin the roads, littering them with ditches and holes. The day before the redshirts were expected to arrive, a man ran in from the outlying houses, screaming and waving his staff above his head.
"They're coming! The enemy is here! The king's army is upon us!"
The nether leapt unbidden to Dante's hands. His heart leapt unbidden to his throat. A quarter mile of low houses blocked the view between himself and the southbound road. He jogged to the road and headed out among the deserted homes, many of which had been abandoned decades and decades ago during the repeated sackings of Narashtovik. Some were no more than empty lots, weeds growing among the teeth-like foundation stones. He peeled off his shirt, a light doublet emblazoned with the sigil of Narashtovik. The redshirts might ignore a shirtless commoner. An official of Narashtovik would face a much more critical reception.
He passed a row of pine trees, their scent thick on the sun-baked air. Three hundred yards down the road, a legion of men marched into the hinterlands of the city, hundreds strong.
He turned to dash back to the walls and raise the alarm, then stopped dead in his tracks. The men weren't wearing uniforms. There was something wrong with their builds, too. Their heads were too high, their shoulders too bulky. Dante turned to meet them. He carried the nether, too, but as he grew closer, he let it fizzle away. When he saw the man at their front, he broke into a grin.
The Cycle of Arawn: The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy Page 101