by Tim Stead
“We did,” the Berashi said. “Cain devised something that held their ladders off the wall, a sort of box and a bar,” he made no further attempt to explain. “You’ll see it tomorrow.”
The next five seconds passed in a blur. The tent flap lifted, and Skal thought the servant had returned with his food, and was half turned, keen to see what was on offer, when he felt an arrow flash past his face. He flinched back, but it had not been aimed at him. A glance across the tent revealed an extraordinary scene. The arrow was stopped in mid air no more that six inches from the Durander woman’s throat, and it was gripped in the fist of the red haired woman.
She had caught the arrow in flight. That was simply not possible.
Skal’s reactions took over even as the sight of the caught arrow fixed itself in his mind. He rolled backwards, continuing the motion started by the arrow, and came to his feet with his sword drawn. He stepped through the tent flap into the hammering rain, and his eyes caught the motion of a running man, already twenty yards away, ducking out of sight around another tent. He ran in pursuit.
Within twenty steps he thought better of it. He was chasing a bowman through the camp. He had no armour and only a sword. If the man was half way competent he could stop and put an arrow in Skal before he was within twenty feet. Even as he began to slow he half saw something fly past him, something on four legs. A wolf? He followed the wolf at a slower pace. If it took an arrow he would not go further. Two others caught up with him; the red haired woman and the Durander officer. He had to run faster to keep up with them, and discovered that he was getting wet again.
The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt, and he almost stumbled. She must be one of the Benetheon to have caught an arrow like that. He’d heard stories, but not given them much credence. He dragged up memories from his schooling. There were few women in the Benetheon, and only one with red hair. She must be Passerina, the god of sparrows. He knew little more than that. He had not paid attention when his teachers talked of gods. They had never seen one, and neither had he. He had never expected to.
They caught up with the wolf. It had run the man to ground and flattened him. It now stood astride his back with its jaws clamped around the back of his neck, holding him face down in the mud.
Passerina reached him first and eased the wolf to one side. She picked the man up by his neck and his waistband as easily as she might have picked up a basket of fruit, held him struggling in the air. Skal was impressed and more than a little troubled.
“Don’t wriggle so.” She said to the prisoner. “The only reason you still live is to answer questions, and you don’t need unbroken limbs for that.”
The man went quite still, and the sparrow god carried him back through the lines of tents like an errant puppy, depositing him on the floor of Arbak’s tent. Skal noticed that the man was soaked and thickly spattered with mud, and Passerina appeared untouched by the rain. More magic.
“Hammerdan’s work,” she said.
“But Hammerdan is an ally,” Arbak ventured, not too keen, it seemed to Skal, to contradict the god.
“Not to this one.” She pointed.
The Durander woman looked pale, if it was possible to look pale with such coloured skin. She was composed, though. She glanced at Arbak in a way that told Skal she had been somehow dishonest with him, and was now caught out.
“Sheyani?” Arbak asked for an explanation.
Passerina laughed. It was not a particularly pleasant laugh. “What a fine body we are,” she said. “A god who does not want to be a god, a major who lost his command, a soldier pretending to be an innkeeper pretending to be a soldier, a disgraced noble trying to make up for his father’s treachery, a colonel denying the wishes of his king and a dead king’s daughter.”
Skal flinched at the description of himself, but none of the others seemed to notice. They were too distracted by the other things she said. A dead king’s daughter? The Durander woman was a king’s daughter?
He could see the surprise on Cain Arbak’s face. It was news to him, too, and the general clearly thought he knew her. He had moved to the woman’s side.
“That was unkind,” Sheyani said. Her voice was deeper than he’d expected, and lightly accented.
“What king?” Arbak asked.
“Baradan,” Passerina said. “The previous king of Durandar. There is a right of challenge to any holder of the occult throne, but it’s customary only to challenge an heir considered unworthy. Hammerdan found a different way. He provoked Baradan into challenging him. Baradan was a peerless Halith, but having made the challenge he ceded choice of combat, and Hammerdan chose swords. Baradan was about as useful with a sword as I am with a kitchen mop. Hammerdan butchered him and ordered that his family be killed, brothers, wife and children. It seems that one escaped.”
“Then you are…”
“A fugitive,” Sheyani cut the general off. “I am hunted. I hide among people other than my own because I am safer there.”
“And yet you came here with me. You risked your life.”
Sheyani did not answer.
“No matter what Durander politics may suggest, it was not a clever move,” Passerina went on. “The wolf is furious. Hammerdan will pay for this.”
Skal raised an eyebrow. Of course. If the woman was a Halith, and a powerful one, she would be invaluable to Arbak’s army, and Narak needed that army to succeed. What puzzled him was her use of the present tense: the wolf is furious. It had been a wolf than ran the man down, and only Narak could control wolves. How had he known so quickly?
“It changes things,” the Durander colonel added.
“How?” Arbak again.
“To attempt to kill someone, well, you can’t make a challenge plainer than that. If Esh Baradan can get to the mage court Hammerdan has no choice but to meet the challenge on her terms.”
Arbak’s face showed he had not caught up with the argument.
“If she defeats Hammerdan she will be Queen of Durandar.”
Sheyani would not meet Arbak’s eyes. “It does not matter. I would be dead long before I reached the court; Hammerdan has eyes everywhere, and men willing to do his will.”
“So what are we to do with this?” Passerina asked, waving a hand at the crumpled figure of the would-be assassin on the floor.
“Kill him,” the Berashi major suggested. “He’s an assassin.” Skal was inclined to agree, and said so. The Durander shook his head.
“In the eyes of Durander law he has committed no crime, and he is one of my men, bound under that law.”
“And you are bound under your oath to General Arbak,” Passerina said. “The decision is his.”
“Mine?”
They all looked at Arbak, and for a moment he looked like the innkeeper that Skal took him to be, an affable man surprised by responsibility, a man’s life in his hands. It was only a moment, though. His face hardened.
Skal would have had the man killed, for certain. It was a simple matter of discipline. If one man under your command tried to kill another, especially someone of noble birth or officer rank, then the sentence was death. Anything else invited mutiny.
Arbak prodded the culprit with his foot. “What do you say?” he demanded. The man raised his head. Skal could see that he was bleeding from his neck where the wolf had gripped him, and he was pale with the expectation of his death.
“I am the king’s man,” he said. “I do the king’s will.”
Arbak seemed to study his face for a moment. “Then go to your king,” he said. “Major Tragil, put him over the wall. I won’t have him on this side of it.”
“It is a death sentence,” The Durander officer said. “Seth Yarra will kill him.”
“After dark,” Arbak replied. “Put him over when the sun is well set. Then at least he will have a chance. Keep him bound and guarded until then. Give him food and a weapon, but not until he’s on the other side.”
It was clever, Skal thought. The man had little chance of survival, but
there was just the slimmest possibility that he would succeed. Hammerdan could not take offence because Arbak had not killed him. Discipline was served because nobody would want to take that chance, and whatever happened to the man he would be unable to do any more harm. It was not an innkeeper’s decision; it was the measured response of a commander. Either that or he had the luckiest thoughts.
Arbak turned to Skal. “Now, you wanted details, I assume?” he asked. “Dusadil! Where’s that food?”
* * * *
Narak found himself once again in the great chamber of the occult court of Hammerdan. He stood beneath the water fire light, before the great stone table, and examined the mages.
“Mighty God of Wolves, I am pleased that you grace us once more with your presence.” Hammerdan greeted him cordially, but he was sensitive enough to know that this was a different presence from the one that had been so easily pleased a month ago.
“Your men serve our cause well at the green road,” Narak said. His voice carried no warmth. Instead there was an edge to it that made a couple of the seated mages shift in their seats as if they wanted to look at his face, but they did not. Hammerdan tried again.
“Will you take the ninth seat?”
“I will not.” It was a flat rejection of what they considered a great honour, and this time one of the mages did turn.
“You are discourteous,” Hammerdan said.
“It is because I am angry, Hammerdan. You act against me.”
“I deny it.”
The denial was too quick, just a little too quick. Narak was silent, and he sensed growing agitation among the mages, and in Hammerdan himself.
“Tell me who accuses me,” the king demanded.
“Does the name Sheyani Esh Baradan al Dasham tickle your memory?”
Now there was a general stirring among the mages. The name clearly meant a great deal to all of them.
“The daughter of the old King,” Hammerdan was dismissive.
“She stands with my army at the gate in Fal Verdan. She deploys her talents in my cause. One of your men tried to kill her. He failed, but in failing he evoked your name to excuse his treachery.”
The king shrugged. “It is internal politics, Great Wolf. For many years …”
“There are no internal politics in this war, Hammerdan. I know your history. I know hers. If you wish to pursue your cowardly vendetta in the midst of this war then I shall accept your challenge on her behalf, and as her champion I will give you the choice of weapons.”
Narak could detect a smile on one of the mage’s faces, turned away from the king. A secret smile that said Sheyani still had friends even here. It was not a surprise. Hammerdan blanched at his suggestion.
“There is no need for excess, Wolf Narak. I will rescind the order. She will not be troubled for the duration of the war, as long as she serves your cause.”
“And at the end of the war,” Narak said. “You will honour the challenge that you have issued.”
Hammerdan nodded slowly. “If we have all survived to see it so,” he said.
“You may count on it,” Narak said. A moment later they were looking at a wolf. Narak was gone. The hooded mages looked at their king. Hammerdan did not return their gaze, but stared at a place inside his mind and tugged gently at his lower lip.
46. At the Wall
Skal was frustrated. He crouched with his sword drawn, one knee on the ground, waiting while the battle raged above his head. He and fifty picked men waited beneath the fighting platform, ready at any moment to rush up the steep stairs and engage the enemy. They were the first reserve, and Skal had thought such a role would be called early, that he would be fighting early, but two hours had passed, and still he waited.
Arbak was no better off. The general paced up and down below the wall, far enough from it that he could see the general ebb and flow of the battle above, but not so far that he could be taken by an arrow. The innkeeper constantly fingered the hilt of his sword and then took his hand away, but he could not keep free of it for long, and his fingers would find their way back to the leather grip, close around it, then release yet again.
Skal had been up on the wall that morning. The rain had stopped during the night, and there was a certainty that Seth Yarra would attack. At first light all the commanders had been on top, looking towards the enemy across a sea of mud. It was the first chance that Skal had been given to examine Arbak’s device. It was a simple thing. Each was a box that fitted more or less around the higher teeth of wall between the crenels, and was extended outward from there by a second box that reached towards the enemy, ending in a heavy bar of hard wood (Arbak had wanted iron or steel, but they had none) and the bar served to make it impossible to lay a ladder against the top of the wall. Either the ladder must rest below the bar, in which case the attacker must climb through the gap, a feat requiring two hands, or it must be rested against the bar, and that meant the attacker must cross a yard of empty space to reach the wall, with a good drop below him.
The device was proving highly effective. Some of the bars had succumbed to sword strokes, but Arbak had carpenters constantly building the boxes, and no sooner was one destroyed than another appeared to take its place. It tipped the balance further in favour of the defenders.
Skal had watched as the attackers had emerged from the woods in good order, shield bearers first, then archers, then lines of men carrying ladders. They looked effective, organised, and determined. Their steps did not falter, but they advanced to the point of bowshot and stopped. There was a flash in the sky above his head and one of the men fell.
“The sparrow takes her tax,” Arbak said beside him. “One man a minute. It is time for us to leave here.”
He followed Arbak down the steep, makeshift steps to where his squad of men waited, and less than a minute later the archery duel began in earnest, with volleys from the Seth Yarra sweeping the walls and the replies cutting into the advancing ranks of fighters and ladder men. He could see none of it, but now and then a man fell from the walls above, injured or dead or dying. He counted them.
The Durander woman, Sheyani, was also beneath the walls, playing her pipes, and Skal was instantly impressed. She played music that strengthened the wall, or that was how it sounded. While she played the wall seemed unbreachable. It seemed higher and somehow steeper than vertical. If the assassin had succeeded it would have been a blow indeed.
Ten men had fallen when the first step was called. It meant that Seth Yarra soldiers had crossed the wall and stood upon the fighting platform. Archers readied themselves below, but the attackers were driven back over the wall again.
The noise was incredible. It was like the battle in Henfray, but much louder. For some reason men seemed to need to shout when they were fighting, and with the thousands on the other side of the wall it was as though a sea of noise lapped at the stone. Just a few yards away through that impenetrable barrier were hundreds of men who wanted to kill him, and Skal rested his hand against the cool stone, then patted it like a favoured hound.
A second step was called, and was closed. Another two men fell from the wall, one dead and one injured. The injured man was dragged to safety and helped as best they could. They propped him up against the wall and he muttered to himself. Skal saw that he was Avilian, one of Arbak’s volunteers. He was wounded beyond use, but not beyond mending. He was in considerable pain, though, and continued to pull faces and grit his teeth while others tended to him until Arbak approached.
“General,” he said, and tried to straighten his back into a sitting approximation of attention. It cost him, but he maintained the position. “Don’t you worry, General,” he said. “We’ve got the measure of them.”
Arbak gave the man a cup of water and exchanged looks with the men around him. They nodded. They thought he would survive.
“You’ve done your part, soldier,” he said. “You leave the rest to us.”
The call went up for a third step, and this time it did not close. More Set
h Yarra were on the walls and they fought hard to hold their place. The archers positioned themselves, and at Arbak’s command a horn was sounded. The soldiers on the wall stepped away from the attackers, leaving a clear passage across the wall for them to flood into, and at the same time the archers loosed their arrows, two volleys, three seconds apart. The Seth Yarra on the walls were cut down, and after the second volley the Avilians and Berashi on the walls rushed in on them again, and the step was closed.
“Your men are well drilled, General,” Skal said. “I have never seen men fight in patterns like that.”
“A thing of my own devising,” Arbak said with a shrug. “They do not expect it, so it seems to work. The Seth Yarra adapt very poorly.”
After two hours the enemy withdrew, abandoning the ladders that they had brought, and leaving behind them their heaped dead at the foot of the wall. Tragil came down the steps slowly. He looked very tired, and Skal could see blood on his face and arms, dried and fresh, black and red. His armour was dented in a dozen new places.