by Vale Aida
As if reading his mind, Savonn said, “Master Emaris? Might we attack through a postern?”
Emaris unlocked his jaw. His father would have chided him for being rude. “No. The postern’s round the back, facing away from the road. Nikas showed us on his maps.” Nikas was a Saraian defector, the offspring of Terinean slaves, who had attached himself to their host at Medrai. He drew maps, and sometimes portraits, if they asked nicely enough. “We’d have to march round to the far side of the fort. They’d hear us before we got halfway there.”
“Then we could climb the wall,” said the tall black boy. He gave Emaris a hopeful look. “I climbed over the wall of my uncle’s farm once. It wasn’t hard.”
“You’re all out of your minds,” said a third boy. This one came no higher than Emaris’s chin. He had light yellow-brown hair, like a fawn, and a dusting of freckles on windburnt cheeks. “Didn’t you look at Nikas’s map? The fort’s got a main keep, two other wings, and two gate towers, all three storeys high. They could have a thousand men in there for all we know.”
To Emaris’s annoyance, Savonn looked at him once more. “Do they?”
“No,” said Emaris, scowling. “Look how dark the ringwall is. If they were at full strength, they’d have sentries posted all along its length, with lanterns and watchfires and all. We probably outnumber them.”
“Which won’t do us any good when they’re behind that wall,” said the small boy, peering up at Emaris with unbearable earnestness. “A couple of crossbows and well-placed boulders could take us all out. We’d have to get inside for numbers to tell.”
“How perturbing,” said Savonn, looking not at all perturbed. “Oh, well. Maybe we’ll just walk through the front gate. Hold my hat, Vion.”
He plunked the sunhat over the small boy’s head, so that the brim fell down over his eyes like a visor, and started towards his tent. There was a minor stampede to get there before him; Vion held the tent flap open, and the others ushered Savonn over the threshold with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal investiture. Emaris stared, incredulous. He was seventeen, and above such petty jockeying. He knew Savonn, after all. He had served him for years. Surely there was no need to fall all over oneself for his attention.
Emaris stuck his chin in the air, bustled officiously to the tent, paused in the entrance to savour the envious eyes on him, and ducked in after Savonn.
Hiraen and Daine were waiting inside with Nikas. The latter was ostensibly their guide, though why Savonn needed one when he knew the Farfallens better than any of them was beyond Emaris. Nikas, at least, was no peasant boy. He was about Savonn’s age, if a lot taller and broader in the shoulders, with choppy black hair that looked as if it had recently been savaged with a rusty knife. They said he had been a slave in some kind of assassin cult in Sarei before he escaped. “Well?” he asked, looking up from the blueprint they were studying. “Have the unweaned boys been persuaded to walk headlong into the jaws of death?”
Savonn did not join them on the camp stools, but stood over them with an air of mild reproof. With a pang, Emaris saw that they had left a place empty in their circle, a gesture so subtle it could have been an accident. “You tell me.”
Hiraen glanced up. Since Cassarah, he had been keeping an eye on Emaris with a concern that bordered on the absurd. Tempted as he was to desert out of sheer pique, Emaris had done nothing more drastic than write letter after long letter to Shandei, none of which he sent. The fact was that he had always looked up to Savonn as an example, and if the Captain could bear his bereavement with a smile and a sharp-edged quip, so could he. “It’s Midsummer,” said Hiraen. “Your eager children will fling themselves off a cliff if you so much as gesture with your pinkie toe, but the others won’t.”
“It’s bad luck,” Daine agreed, “shedding blood on a sacred night.”
Nikas smiled placidly. He was always smiling, just as his big callused fingers were always smeared with charcoal. “We could promise them a belated celebration in Astorre. The city of mischief, license, and artifice. Milord Silvertongue knows it well, I believe.” He reached up to put a scrap of parchment in Savonn’s hand. “I was watching you from the tent flap.”
Savonn’s face was unrevealing. Burning with an impatient curiosity he would not admit, Emaris came closer to look over his shoulder.
It was another of Nikas’s portraits. The sight struck him dumb for a few breathless moments. This one was of Savonn’s head in profile, startlingly lifelike in detail for all that it must have been drawn in haste. The acute contour of the cheekbones, adroitly shaded. The flounce of the large, liquid curls. The knowing gloss to the sylphlike eyes, bright with silent laughter. It was a hugely flattering likeness. But to Emaris’s disappointment, Savonn only glanced briefly at the picture, then folded it up and gave it to him to hold. “Didn’t I mention,” he said, “that we aren’t passing through Astorre?”
There was a new-honed crispness to his voice. “What?” said Emaris, distracted. He had never been to Astorre. It was the one thing he had been looking forward to. “Why not?”
“He doesn’t want us to be led astray into vice and lechery,” said Hiraen. “Like he was.”
It was the same desultory tone Hiraen used for talking about everything, from the weather to the Queen of Sarei, but for some reason Savonn’s stare took on a narrow, dangerous cast. Hiraen met it levelly. “What?” Emaris asked again, looking back and forth between them.
Nikas made his eyes big and round. Daine cleared his throat. “You’ve seen the gate, Savonn,” he said, bringing the discussion firmly back on track. “Five thousand men couldn’t breach it without cannon.”
“And we have no cannon,” said Savonn. He turned his back on Hiraen. “Pity we didn’t think to carry off the Council’s on our way out. Nikas, show them the matter we discussed.”
“Oh,” said Nikas, snapping back to attention. For someone who had spent all his life in Sarei, he spoke excellent Falwynian. “Onaressi was built around a natural spring. It bubbles into the courtyard year-round and never freezes over, as far as anyone knows. Bad news for besiegers, good news for spies.”
He tapped a finger on the blueprint he had drawn. Along the ringwall that encircled the fort, just north of the gate, a spot had been circled twice in a light hand. “There’s a muddy channel under the wall here, where the springwater flows out. It’s just a glorified rabbit’s burrow. Theoretically, you could get in there if you don’t mind wallowing in the mud like an earthworm.”
Hiraen laughed. “Fighting on Midsummer, and no jaunt to Astorre? This lot’ll mutiny.”
In the light from the brazier, Savonn’s eyes were pigeon-blue and perfectly dispassionate. “Might I remind you that we are not the only people in the realm to celebrate Midsummer? If you will all leave off being pessimistic, surely a solution now presents itself. Master Emaris?”
Emaris jumped. He was still thinking of Astorre, the portrait clutched loosely in his hand. “Me?” Then his mind caught up with his tongue. “If it’s Midsummer’s eve…”
“Yes?”
“The bandits—Saraians—whatever they are—will be celebrating. There’ll be a feast. That’s why the ringwall is dark. Most of them are probably indoors, roaring drunk.”
Savonn twirled a finger in a carry on, carry on gesture, as if he were conducting an orchestra. Suddenly alert, Hiraen sat back on his heels. “We could take an advance force in, surprise the guards and open the gate.”
“It’s not so simple,” said Nikas. He pointed to the two gate towers on the map. “The gate is worked by a special winch mechanism. To open it—”
“—we have to turn the winch in each tower at the same time,” said Savonn. “I know. I’ve been here. So we have to assail both towers, and hope for a miracle of timing.” He turned to Emaris, a smile glimmering on his lips. “I don’t suppose you’ll let Vion and his friends lead the van?”
Dumbfounded silence. Then, with the air of one acquiescing to the inevitable, Hiraen said, “How lucky
they have us to do it for them.”
He grinned at Savonn, the hostility of a moment before quite forgotten. “I know what you’re thinking. Five thousand men couldn’t force that gate. Five could.”
Emaris gazed at him, bug-eyed. Daine said, “Mother Above.”
“Well done, Lord Safin,” said Savonn. “This must be why I keep you around. I count five of us. Shall we go?”
* * *
An hour later, cursing himself and Savonn and all the capricious forces of fate and destiny that had conspired to bring him to this place and time, Emaris found himself creeping under the ringwall with four other madmen.
Savonn had put an officer called Anyas in command of the troop they left behind, with long and explicit instructions delivered in the siege-breaking voice no one dared contradict. They climbed a winding track, overgrown with weeds and mangy grass, to the top of the cliff. The ringwall was eighteen feet of old stone and crumbling mortar. Beneath it, the wind buffeted them with the force of a boxer’s blows, and even in his armour Emaris found himself shivering. They could see nothing of the camp below. The top of the wall was dark, but faint voices drifted to them from the gate towers, and somewhere ahead a brook was babbling to itself.
They halted. Nikas, who was in front, motioned to a spot just ahead.
Emaris saw with a sinking heart the hole in the wall they meant to infiltrate. The brook had carved for itself a flute-thin conduit under the ringwall, from which it splashed down the mountainside in a series of tiny falls and rapids. The passage was as narrow as Nikas had warned. They would have to go on hands and knees, in utter silence, and pray the guards at the towers did not hear them. “Best Midsummer of my life,” Hiraen murmured, hand cupped over his mouth so the sound would not carry. “Shall I go first?”
“Nikas first,” said Savonn. “Then you.”
Nikas’s dimples winked. For the first time, Emaris wondered if Savonn did not trust him. “I live to serve.”
He waded out into the middle of the stream, water swirling calf-deep around his legs. A moment later he crouched down and disappeared into the hole. Hiraen cocked a brow at Savonn. “Cheers,” he said, and vanished after.
After him went Daine. Then it was Emaris’s turn. He stepped with trepidation into the stream, expecting the worst, but the water was warmer than he expected. Savonn, who did not even seem to be armed, waded in behind him. “The ringwall is only twelve feet thick,” he whispered.
Emaris held on to that knowledge all the way through the tunnel, scrabbling along in a darkness so complete he could not even see where he was putting his hands. The air was alive with reek and rot. Twice he cracked his head on a jutting stone, and once something slimy eeled past him in the water. His bow and quiver kept scraping the roof of the tunnel with a thin rattling noise he was sure would rouse every bandit in the fort, but to keep them dry, he could not hunker all the way down. Twelve feet felt like a mile.
Just as his legs were beginning to seize up, a hand closed over the scruff of his neck, making him jump. Daine hauled him to his feet. “We’re in.”
Emaris staggered out of the stream, dripping, and put his back against the wall. The upper windows of the main keep were lit, and snatches of music drifted to them across the yard. Closer at hand was the idle chatter of restless men on watch in the towers, interrupted now and then by bursts of laughter. Savonn emerged noiselessly behind him. Hiraen, now in the lead, asked a question with his eyes, and Savonn gestured back. Then they were moving along the wall towards the closer of the towers, a hulking monolith rising black against the sky. A single window glimmered near its base, also lit.
Dear Casteia, Emaris prayed, please let them all be drunk.
Daine caught his arm, and they came to a sudden stop. Hiraen had drawn an arrow from his quiver, studying the ground where they were standing. The ringwall cast a solid rectangular shadow across the grass near their feet, and along its rim, several yards from where they were huddled, a man-shaped figure was moving. “Sentry above,” Hiraen whispered.
“Can you hit him?” asked Savonn.
“If I can see it, I can hit it.”
He fitted the arrow to his bow. Emaris gripped the pommel of his sword with sweaty fingers, pulse hammering a furious paean. Watching the moving figure, his hands on the bowstring, Hiraen was so still he could have been cast from stone. Then, in a single swift motion, he launched himself out from the wall and drew.
He loosed so fast Emaris almost missed the flight of the arrow. The twang of the string was echoed by a second from above. At the same time, there was a gurgle like a cut-off shout. Another shaft struck the ground inches from where Hiraen stood. Then, with a series of muffled thumps, a sentry toppled over the parapet and landed at their feet, still clutching a bow. An arrow, feathered with orange fletching, protruded from his windpipe.
The laughing voices did not cease. After a breathless moment Daine and Emaris each grabbed one of the fallen man’s arms and propped him up against the wall, where—if luck permitted—he might go undiscovered for quite some time. Hiraen retrieved the arrow in the grass and stuck it in his quiver. “He was the only one. Probably came out for a breath of fresh air. A second later and he would’ve brought all the others running.” He glanced towards the towers. “We’ll need to split up. I can do the first tower, and Savonn—”
They looked to where Savonn had been standing. They looked around them, at the dark courtyard and the bright windows of the keep. Then they looked at one another. “Oh,” said Nikas with interest. “Has our valiant leader deserted?”
Emaris stared. “He was there a moment ago!”
Under his breath, Hiraen pronounced a curt, precise curse. “He does that sometimes. Leave him. Let’s go.”
“But—”
“He’s right,” said Daine. “Savonn knows what he’s doing. The job won’t wait.”
Still looking around wildly, Emaris made himself listen. “The towers are identical,” Nikas was saying. “The guards will be in the common room on the first floor. Second floor’s where the winch for the gate is. Remember, both sides have to be cranked together or it’ll jam.”
“I’ll take this one,” said Hiraen. “Emaris, with me. Daine, go with Nikas.”
They split up. Treading silently, Hiraen led the way to the closer of the towers, until they were close enough to see through the ground-floor window. It looked into a small round room, where four or five men sat dicing at a table. They were clearly supposed to be on duty—each wore a mail shirt, and several spears leaned on the wall by the table. But Savonn had been right. The fort was not at full strength, or there would have been more of them. “Listen,” said Hiraen. “Some of them are Falwynians.”
This close, they could make out the thread of the conversation. The men spoke a rough pidgin that sounded like a melting-pot of both Falwynian and Saraian, of which Emaris could understand maybe two in three words. “So, a mixed force,” he said. “Bandits from either side of the border. How do we get in?”
“Front door,” said Hiraen. A minute pause, as though he was sizing Emaris up, considering the likelihood that he might keel over. Before his father’s death, this would never have happened. “Do you see any other way?”
The tower walls were too smooth to climb, and in any case they could not get closer without being seen from the window. “No,” said Emaris. “But I haven’t got a death wish.”
Hiraen grinned. “I’ll distract them, you’ll work the winch.”
“How?”
“We’ll see,” Hiraen said, and set off at a saunter for the tower.
The door stood ajar, the edges limned in faint warm light. Not long ago, Emaris had crossed a threshold like this in Daine’s house. The crippling horror lasted only a moment, after which he managed to move his feet. He could hardly be afraid to walk through open doors for the rest of his life. Hiraen knocked cursorily and pushed it open, and Emaris, preventing his hand from straying to his sword by sheer force of will, nearly ran into him as he pau
sed in the entryway to survey the common room.
The five guards at the table barely looked up from their game. One of them, an older man with a broad barrel chest and a wrinkled face like tanned oxhide, hawked and spat on the rushes. “Did them feasting numbnuts up at the keep send you here with more beer? If not, ye can get lost.”
“No,” said Hiraen, matching to perfection their tone of sullen discontentment, if not the rough pidgin. “Thrice-damned misers, the lot of them.”
Oaths and insults were universally understood. A chorus of curses arose in agreement, and the men settled into a half-hearted army grouse. “Hoarding all the best food for himself,” someone said. Another added, “And our pay’s late!”
“Got thrown out of the feast hall, didya?” said a big pasty fellow with a hairy mole on his nose, looking Hiraen up and down. “Didn’t like you talking all posh up there?”
“Eh,” said the man with the barrel chest, who did not seem inclined to chase them out after all. “The Empath’s gone and showed up at last?”
Hiraen’s hesitation was brief. “Think so. Milord said something about opening the gate?” He pulled up one of the empty chairs at the foot of the table and slid into it, stretching out his long legs. His boots were still dripping muddy water from the stream. So were Emaris’s. “Mother Above, what wouldn’t I do for some beer now.”
Barrelchest huffed something incomprehensible. “Brought an army with him, has he? All them high lords and generals, marching to and fro like they own the world.” He made no move to get up and signal the other tower to open the gate. “Might be if we make him wait, he’ll have Mordel’s head on a pike. You stop eyeing my drink, boy, we ain’t got enough as it is.”
“I’ll dice you for it,” said Hiraen. “Winner takes it all.”
This spurred a round of general laughter. “What’d ye got to bet, posh-talker?” said Mole. His gaze slid sideways to Emaris, hovering at Hiraen’s elbow like a cupbearer without a cup. “This little dandelion of yours?”
A pallid hand snaked out. Even through his cuirass Emaris felt it embark, rough and heavy, on the small of his back, and quest down to the vicinity of his rear.