by Myke Cole
One of the sentries aimed a spear thrust at Heloise’s face. She leaned out of the way, almost losing hold of one of the gate doors, which shook as the guards redoubled their efforts to push it closed. The guard grinned, and drew back for another thrust, lining his spear point up with the machine’s eye slits, and then he was bowled head over heels as Barnard nearly rode him down, sweeping his flail in great arcs, driving the spearmen back. The Sojourner stumbled away, waved his Pilgrims on.
As Barnard swept past and reined around, the guards closed back in, aiming another spear thrust at Heloise, another, then another. Heloise jerked back and forth, releasing the door long enough to knock a spearhead aside, then frantically reaching out to stop the door again before the guards could slam it shut.
“Hold her!” the Sojourner shouted, no longer squeaking. “Keep her there!”
The guards reached out more slowly now, driving their spears into the machine’s metal arms, pushing hard on the wooden shafts to pin them against the doors. Behind them, the Pilgrims came up, swinging their flail heads into a blur.
Heloise jerked the machine’s arms free of the spearheads, knocked the shafts down, but the guards behind the doors gave a great shout and swung them closed, so that she had to reach back out to hold them open once again. The guards stepped forward, pinning her arms once more, and the Pilgrims advanced. I can hold open the gates, or I can fight off the spearmen, or I can defend against the Pilgrims, but I cannot do all three at once.
She kicked, driving the Pilgrims back, and the machine stumbled, the arms nearly losing contact with the doors. The Pilgrims leapt forward just as she found her feet, raising their flails to flick the heads inside the cage.
Her father exploded past her. Samson held a rock in both hands, bigger than his head. He brought it down hard on one Pilgrim, sending him stumbling back into his fellows, the flail flying from his hands. Gunnar came behind him, striking the spear from a guard’s hands with his forge hammer. The villagers streamed past Heloise, and the guards gave ground, a few dropping their spears and bolting for the town’s interior. The Sojourner shouted, trying to herd them back, but they brushed past him, fleeing from Danad and Chunsia, both of them red-faced and screaming, and wielding Sindi hooked knives. Leuba came with them, and Heloise blinked at the sight of her mother, her quiet, peaceful mother, laying about her with a fragment of the cart’s broken rail.
Heloise watched them, all the fear and desperation of the last few days boiling up in this moment, poured out against the town’s defenders. They know these walls are our only chance, she thought. They know what it means if we lose.
The Sojourner succeeded in turning the Pilgrims, who hefted their flails and shouted a war cry, advancing to meet the villagers. Harald Brewer was felled nearly as quickly as he appeared, skidding to his knees, curled up around a flail haft. Sigir leapt over him, kicking the Pilgrim square in the chest. Poch darted forward and snatched up one of the fallen flails, dragging it back behind Heloise.
Over the Pilgrim’s shoulders, Heloise could see the citizens of Lyse, just like the villagers of Lutet, bakers and butchers and fencemenders. A few wore silks, and some gold, but most looked little different from the people she had grown up with, now fighting like devils around the metal legs of her machine. The Lyse townsfolk stared open-mouthed, parting here and there to admit the fleeing sentries. None moved to help the Order. None stopped the fleeing guards or called on them to get back in the fight.
The Sojourner was shouting, waving his long staff from behind his brothers, making no move to engage the swelling body of villagers inside his gates. It was just like the last man in a fancy red cloak. She’d hit him in the head with a rock. He had looked first to his men to avenge him, and only dealt with Heloise himself when they refused. Why do people follow such cowards?
She released the gate. The guards had fled from behind them, and the villagers were inside anyway. Closing them now would do no good.
A Pilgrim swung his flail at her, trying to do as Tone had done, catching the chain on the edge of the frame to send the spiked head inside. Heloise leaned into the blow, catching the head full on the machine’s chest, the iron spikes screeching off the painted sigil. She let the momentum carry her, and the machine took a long stride into the midst of the Pilgrims, scattering them. The man who had struck her tried to leap aside, and succeeded in throwing himself sideways under the machine’s metal foot, which came down with a sickening crunch. Heloise ignored the soft resistance of his body as she stepped off, reaching the Sojourner, punching down with the knife Onas had made.
The rat-faced man managed to parry the blow with his staff, turning his body away from the point, but he was powerless against the seethestone-powered strength that drove it. Heloise knocked him flat on his back, the blade sinking into the earth over his shoulder, his staff pressed against his chest. Heloise pushed, gently. The bulk of the metal fist put pressure on the staff. The Sojourner screamed, then wheezed, then struggled for breath.
“Drop your weapons!” she shouted. “Drop them and I give you back your Holy Father, and all of you can walk out of here with your skins still on.”
She eased the pressure off the Sojourner’s chest, letting him draw breath enough to speak, to beg for his life, to order his men to save him. Instead, he coughed out a laugh. “Do you think we who live in the Emperor’s shadow hold our lives so precious? I am proud to die for Him. Holy Brothers! Kill every one of these heretics! Sell your lives dearly! Do not let…”
The Pilgrims were already racing to their master’s defense, and Heloise pushed off with her fist, feeling the Sojourner’s chest collapse beneath the pressure as she pushed the machine back to standing.
The first Pilgrim reached her, his flail tangling around her knife point even as she drove it into his head, spiking him straight down, like an apple on a stick, then flinging his limp body away with a flick of the machine’s metal arm.
Another Pilgrim took advantage of the opening, driving hard for her, then suddenly crumpling as Barnard trotted past, dealing him a blow with his stolen flail that struck the Pilgrim’s back hard enough to make him dance before he dropped.
The remaining Pilgrims hesitated, and the villagers washed over them. Gunnar and Chunsia and Ingomer and Sigir and her parents, blades and hammers and sticks rising and falling, rising and falling, until Heloise could no longer tell the red from the gray.
And then, it was quiet.
The townsfolk stared, the remaining sentries leaning on their spears, eyes wary, unsure if they should press the fight now that the Pilgrims were finished.
Barnard reined his horse around again and shook his bloody flail at the townsfolk. “Is that all of them?”
Silence.
“Damn you, is that all!?” Barnard asked again. “Is that all the Order has in Lyse?”
The silence stretched another moment before a woman broke it. She was well fed and wore a thick woolen shift with a gold chain around her waist. “Yes … that is all. The rest are but warriors.”
“There’s a difference?” Poch panted.
“The Order,” Samson said, “gives a speech before they try to kill you.”
Heloise took a step toward the remaining sentries, the blood pattering from her knife blade and down the machine’s metal leg. “Do you give in?” she asked. “Must we finish this?”
The sentries said nothing, but neither did they drop their spears.
Heloise took another step, raising the machine’s metal arms. “Lyse is taken! Will any of you negotiate with me?”
One of the sentries stood forward. He looked no different from the others, perhaps a bit older, gray hair straggling from beneath his helmet. “I am Wolfun. I am the Wall of Lyse.”
“Not anymore,” Heloise answered him, surprised at the sound of her own voice, deep and strong. “They are my walls now. They belong to my village.”
“What do you want?” the woman with the gold chain asked. “What will you do?”
Barna
rd looked as if he might speak, so Heloise spoke first, shaking her knife in the air. “We have no quarrel with this town. Our fight is with the Order. We have taken the walls and we’ll hold them, but we won’t hurt you, and we won’t rob you.”
“What, then?” Wolfun said. “Shall we just live with you while you bar the gates and hold the town?”
“If you like,” Heloise said. “We are good people. We hold to the Emperor’s Writ.”
“How can you say you hold to the Writ?” Wolfun gestured at the Sojourner’s corpse, the crushed indentation of his chest.
“The Order are brigands,” Barnard said. “We are free of them, and now we have freed you of them. It is not holy to grovel beneath their boots.”
“If you would rather hold to men who quote the Writ while they spit on you”—Heloise gestured to the gate—“we will not stop you. But, if you would rather hold to the Writ itself, consider staying with us.”
“You’re the brigands!” someone in the crowd shouted. “How can you say you serve the Emperor if you—”
“Because she is a Palantine!” Barnard shouted. “She killed a devil, and every one of us saw her do it. She is more pleasing to the Emperor than a thousand of these cloaked bastards…”
“Lies!” another man shouted. “No one has ever killed a—”
But Barnard was already wheeling his horse around to the machine’s side, and Heloise was already kneeling down to offer him easier reach to the reliquary on her shoulder. “I do not know that I am a Palantine, but it is true I killed a devil, and if that will make you believe that I serve the Emperor, then you may call me whatever you wish.”
8
THE WALLS
They say the Gold Coast’s the richest pickings in the Empire. Ain’t gold, though, Captain-General says. Sandy shore’s no good for mines, it’s named for how all that sand glitters in the sun. The money’s in fish, he says, and in the red rocks that make the cliffs farther inland. The so-called free peoples grind these up to make a fine red dye, and they color every scrap of cloth they wear with it. “Bloody-handed, bloody-clothed,” the Captain-General calls them. Hard to argue.
—From the journal of Samson Factor
Lyse was easily four times the size of Lutet, the houses tall and narrow. The roofs were slate instead of thatch, the walls built of timber and plaster instead of wattle and daub. The streets were strewn with crushed stone clearly swept clean. But it still reminded Heloise of Lutet, and the simple sight of smoke puffing from chimneys, or lanterns hung by transoms, made her heart swell. Lyse might be a town, with a market and a chapter house, but it was still an Imperial settlement, and that gave it a touch of home.
“This is foolish, your eminence,” Sigir said, watching the townsfolk assemble their goods. A few had carts, or laden horses, but most simply took what they could carry on their backs. They looked frightened, but clean and healthy. Heloise surveyed the ragged ranks of her own people and knew that, on the road, cleanliness and health didn’t last long.
Wolfun stood with a small knot of the townsfolk around a pile of weapons. It was the one thing Heloise had insisted the townsfolk leave behind, and the one thing she gave her own people leave to plunder. They would have need of it before long.
“If we are to hold these walls, it may be a long siege,” Sigir went on, “we should make them leave their food and warm clothing behind. Gold, too, if we’re to have the means to hire free-lances, or to purchase what we need, or even to bribe—”
“No,” Heloise cut him off. “I gave my word. Save the weapons, we won’t take anything else.”
“We will regret this.” Sigir shook his head.
“I know,” she said, “but we have to … we have to be good. We can’t curse the Order as plunderers and then plunder.”
“Your eminence, I have been a soldier. Your father too. Sometimes … sometimes you must do things you don’t want to do in order to win. It doesn’t change who you are.”
“Doesn’t it?” Heloise asked. “If we’re not fighting to be better than the Order, then why are we fighting at all?”
“To live,” Poch grumbled, looking at his feet.
“You’re alive, ain’t you, Poch Drover?” Leuba asked. “You all thought that taking the walls would be impossible, and here we are holding them. All because we listened to her. If my daughter says that not acting like thieves is the best way to keep us all alive, then it’s the best way. She’s earned that much from you.”
Poch nodded to her and stalked off, Danad at his side.
The sight of the devil’s severed head had been enough for most of the townsfolk. Those standing around the weapons kept glancing up at her, and Heloise could see awe on their faces, the same fear and adoration she saw on many of the faces of her own people.
As soon as they saw her looking at them, several of them dipped their heads, tugged their forelocks. A few took a knee. “Palantine,” they muttered, “savior.”
My name is Heloise, she wanted to yell at them, but she held her tongue. So long as they worshipped her, they would take up arms and stand the walls when the Order came. She couldn’t afford to compromise that.
But not all of the townsfolk were so awed.
“Tasha,” Wolfun called to the woman with the gold chain, sitting in the drover’s chair of a small cart hitched to a couple of mules. An older man, probably her husband, was loading an iron-bound chest into the back. “Don’t be foolish. Where will you go?”
“To Mielce,” Tasha said, “the Burgher there is a cousin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no place for you outside the valley.”
“That’s enough from you,” Tasha’s husband said, settling the chest into the cart and coming around to take the reins.
“Surely you can talk some sense into her, Karl,” Wolfun said. “You saw the devil’s head yourself. You saw her kill the Pilgrims. She is surely touched by the Sacred Throne.”
“Saw the same things you did,” Karl answered, “and she’s surely touched by something, which is why we’re going.”
“You fared well against a chapter house,” Tasha added, “but you will have a rougher time of it against the Pentarchy. They’ll come at the head of an army once word reaches them. They won’t leave any of you alive.”
“And what will they do to you?” Wolfun answered. “You who let your town be taken? You who looked on the face of a devil? You who were close enough to catch the blight? They’ll kill you no matter how you protest your loyalty. They’ll Knit any town you rest at. You condemn every other person you meet.”
“So what are we to do?” Tasha asked. “Stay here and die with you?”
“If you are to die,” Heloise said, “you may as well do it on your feet with a weapon in your hand.”
“Dying is dying,” Tasha said. “We’ll put it off as long as possible, thank you.” She flicked the reins and the cart rolled off.
A group of Traveling People made their way across the town common, led by an ancient woman in a scarlet cloak. Where the Sindi Mothers clasped theirs with the trefoil symbol of their band, this woman’s brooch was shaped like a cooking pot over a blazing campfire. Heloise turned to her and forced the machine into an awkward bow. “You would be a Mother of the Hapti band.”
The Traveling People all froze, eyes collectively widening. The old woman’s voice was dry and so soft that Heloise had to strain to hear it over the din of the townsfolk packing to leave. “I am Mother Florea of the Hapti, yes. I have never heard a villager call us by our proper name.”
“The Sindi band saved us from the Order.”
“From what I have seen, you do not need saving.”
“Everyone needs saving, Mother Florea,” Samson said. “The weak appeal to the strong, the strong to the mighty, and the mighty to the Sacred Throne.”
“We appeal to our feet, and our wheels, and the road. They have not failed us for as long as I can remember.”
“That does not mean they will not fail you now, Mother,” Hel
oise said. “Will you stay with us? Help us hold the walls against the Order.”
“The Traveling People are not fighters, young lady.”
Heloise smiled. “I have seen the knife-dance. I know what your people can do.”
“You have seen what the Sindi can do. My people care only for trade.”
Heloise nodded at the gray knives belted around the Hapti men’s waists. These had straight, flat blades, but looked every bit as deadly as the Sindi weapons. “Perhaps your women, yes. But your men go armed, as I can plainly see.”
Florea smiled, her face sinking into a pool of wrinkles. “You know our ways very well, I see, and I like you, but my people cannot remain. The Order is no friend to Traveling People. I am afraid that … when they retake this town, it will go badly for us.”
“It will go badly for you if you are caught outside the walls, too.”
“We will not be caught.”
“That is what the Sindi said. I am not so sure.”
“All the same, we would go, if you will permit it.”
“I am not the Order,” Heloise said. “You may come and go as you please.”
“That is not what your soldiers say.” Florea looked at her hands.
“What are you talking about? We are villagers driven from our homes. I have no soldiers.”
“When armed men accost Traveling People, they are always one of two things. With cloaks, they are Pilgrims. Without them, they are soldiers.”
“What is…” Sigir began.
One of the Hapti men spoke up from behind Mother Florea. “Your men have stopped our wagons at the postern gate.”
Heloise was moving before she knew what she was doing, the machine taking long strides across the trampled common green, between two houses that were modest for the town, but still would have dwarfed even the Imperial Shrine in Lutet, and toward the postern gate. Sure enough, the traffic there was choked by three Hapti wagons, drawn up in single file before the wooden doors.
Three sentries stood with Poch and two Hapti men, red-faced and shouting. Danad appeared from beneath the canvas canopy of one of the wagons with a double armload of thick animal hides.