"What just happened?" Joti said. "I thought you said that thing was ready for action!"
"It appears the improvements they made weren't as impressive as they believed." Enexiyo's tone was musing. "It is a strange thing to feel joy and disappointment at the same time."
"You wanted my friends to get roasted like potatoes in a pan?"
"I wanted LinLaugh to fail. But I wish more than anything for the dragons to succeed."
Deciding Enexiyo was a crazy person, Joti said nothing more. A hunched silhouette appeared on the steps ahead of them: Wit, seated like an old drunk on a street corner.
Joti stopped two steps above him, sparing a glance behind to ensure they hadn't been followed. "If this is what wizards consider effective fighting, I don't know why you're so feared."
"Oh, was it you who crashed the dragon? Let me offer my congratulations." Propping himself up with an arcane-looking staff, Wit pushed himself to his feet. "I saw Wa'llach."
Uncertain why the wizard would be concerned about his former slave, Joti brushed this off. "LinLaugh is dead. Youngkent has been raided by orcs. Have we saved the wall?"
"And the Alliance. If I wasn't a traitor, and you weren't orcs, we'd probably be in for an award of some kind."
"Then our work is done. We need to get out of here before the castle guards remember what their brains are for."
"It's probably not a great idea for me to leave in your company. I'll find my own way out and try to locate you in the city. But if I don't see you again…"
Joti smiled. "We have ways to find you."
The wizard seemed ready to say more, but the No-Clan had driven off the latest attack and was now running deeper into the maze of the castle. Joti took the stairs as fast as he could. The bailey was an ongoing disaster of soldiers who couldn't seem to be able to decide whether to go after the orcs, tend to the wounded the No-Clan had scattered across the grounds, or go put out the fire smoldering from the wreck of the mechanical dragon.
Joti dropped to a brisk walk, tugging up his hood. From the cliffs, he'd had a tactical view of the entire bailey, but he now found himself in a maze of granite buildings. After thirty seconds of aimless wandering, a man shouted out from ahead. Steel clashed. Someone screamed. Joti broke into a run.
He swung around the corner and tripped over Brakk, who was cringing at the rear of the No-Clan.
Brakk made a squealing noise, then came to the realization he wasn't being stabbed. "Young Joti!"
"Joti?" Shain detached from the group. She carried a bloody sword in one hand, her left pressed to the bandages around her gut. "We've searched half the damn castle. Can't find LinLaugh anywhere."
"Try looking in what's left of the mechanical dragon."
"He was piloting it?"
"About the same way you'd pilot a boulder."
Shain chuckled. A bit loopily. "Then I'd say we upheld our end of the bargain. Where's the wizard?"
"He'll meet us outside."
"Then I suppose our next task is to get outside. Let's move!"
She headed west toward the shorter wall protecting the castle's flank. Joti fell in with the others. Three of them were missing. Several others were bleeding, including Nod, who had a slash across her cheek and a bleeding knot rising on her forehead. One of them, a squire named Habo, was limping so heavily that he had to be supported by Gogg. They were moving at a decent jog, but Joti wasn't sure they could go any faster than that. Not without leaving the injured behind.
They left a row of buildings and scurried across a courtyard. The air smelled like frost and charred metal. Shain's steps were getting stiffer. Her smile tightened. She drifted to a walk. As her knee buckled beneath her, Gogg shoved Habo into another squire's hands and caught Shain mid-collapse.
Nod grabbed Shain's face, peeling back an eyelid. "She's out. Pushed too hard. I warned her!"
Gogg hoisted Shain up. "I carry. You lead."
Nod whispered a choice oath and snaked her way through four quick turns; she'd memorized the layout, which was probably the only reason they hadn't been cornered and slaughtered already. The final turn expelled them from the maze of buildings. A wide expanse of cobbled ground separated them from the wall and the tunnel they'd come in through.
Nod studied it. Everything looked quiet. She nodded to the others and started across the open space in a fast walk.
"Orcs!" A woman's voice rang out from a fourth-story window. "The orcs are in the yard!"
Nod broke into a run. Gogg and Habo did their best to keep up, but were falling behind with each step. Human soldiers streamed across the courtyard behind them. Others ran down the stairs from the wall. The opening cut through the wall seemed to belch forth an inky darkness that consumed Joti's whole field of view. He blinked and the vision disappeared.
"They'll catch us," Joti said. "We won't make it out."
Nod didn't look away from the wall. "I know."
"We have to think of something!"
"I know!"
The idea hit him like cold water flooding past his legs. "Get them out the other side. Find a cart. I'll hold the tunnel."
She shot him a look. "Alone?"
"That's all it will take."
He moved to the end of the column of warriors. Nod entered the tunnel first, sword drawn. A cry of pain echoed from the tight-walled chamber. The No-Clan filed inside. By the time Joti entered, the closest soldiers were less than forty feet away. He stepped over a human body, boot squelching in blood. A cold wind whistled down the passage. He came to the exit, where one of the others had propped open the door. Gogg waited there with a drawn bow. Joti spun about, unshouldering his bow and fitting an arrow to the string.
Gogg loosed his arrow, the missile zipping down the tunnel and into the upper chest of a guardsman. As the man fell, revealing a second soldier right behind him, Joti fired, sending the new target down on top of the first. The next man bore a shield; Gogg's shot thocked into its center. Joti lowered his aim to the man's leg. The arrow took him through the shin.
Yet he'd lasted long enough for those coming in behind him to get too close for Joti to risk another shot. He tossed his bow away, waving Gogg to the side. He stepped into the mouth of the tunnel and drew his blade.
Fire leaped from the sword. The oncoming soldier threw his arm over his eyes. Caught completely off guard, Joti nearly dropped his sword, then recovered and swung it into the man's exposed armpit. The steel cut through the enemy's chain and through his ribs, stopping against his spine.
Joti withdrew the weapon to the stink of burning flesh and dragon's breath. Down the hallway, the next soldier stopped in his tracks, eyes darting between Joti's eyes and still-flaming blade. Another man pushed past him, mouth set in a grim mask, the light of the fire reflecting from his eyes.
He drove his sword toward Joti's center. Joti made to parry it, meaning to launch a riposte at the man's throat, but the strike was a feint. The soldier stepped to the side, flicking his blade horizontally. Joti's left shoulder seared, then went numb.
He dropped back a step, beating back the followup attack. His counter went nowhere. The human thrust again. This time, Joti recognized the feint, but couldn't slip his weapon past the enemy's guard. For a time, they battled back and forth, the hallway too close for anyone else to intercede. The fire on Joti's sword dimmed to a dying candle. His shoulder throbbed. Frustration built in his gut, indistinguishable from the sensation of the need to vomit.
Pressing hard, he drove the human back a step. The man's heel struck one of the corpses, dropping him on his ass. With a thrill in his heart, Joti lunged, poised to pierce the man's heart. The soldier grinned and rolled to the side, swiping a backhand at Joti's extended arm. The weapon deflected from the dragonscale bracer and gouged across his unprotected inner forearm.
He staggered back, nearly dropping his sword. He couldn't seem to close his hand all the way. As the soldier rolled to his feet, a second guard charged past him, sword cocked back. Joti flipped his blade to his left h
and and ran the man through. As he shoved the man aside, the first human advanced on him, attacking with methodical strikes that Joti was barely able to turn away with his left-handed parries.
He gave ground toward the tunnel mouth. If he fell, or they pushed him outside, they'd overwhelm him, kill Gogg, run down the others. Those who weren't slaughtered on the spot would be tortured for information. Just for a moment, he was back at the ford: the rain beating his shoulders and head; the slavers clambering over the rocks toward him; his family and friends rushing to escape. Joti had stopped the raiders for as long as he could, but he'd never known whether that had been long enough.
The soldier forced him back another step. He felt the wind on his back, the sense of open space behind him. As the human angled his sword for the final strike, a thread appeared in the air, laying out the path the sword would take toward Joti's gut.
And then he understood.
Joti thrust his sword into the path of the enemy's weapon. The blades met with a clang. A new thread reared up like a worm of fog. Joti blocked the man's followup and countered with a diving thrust that pierced his front leg just above the knee. The man grunted and dropped back from the exit. Another thread appeared between the soldier's sword and Joti's left hip. He stepped to his right, guiding the enemy's blade past him and then jamming his own all the way through the human's gut.
The man's eyes widened in fear, then cold resignation. Joti shoved him aside, stepping forward to meet the next soldier. The man shuffled forward, then danced back. An arcing thread materialized above his head. Joti lunged in and ran him through before the blow began.
Once, Joti had fallen. He would not do so again.
He fought on, lost within the Warp. What felt like a minute later, hooves rattled behind him. Plated knights come to cut him down from behind?
"Joti!" Nod's voice rang through the night. "Across the way!"
Joti surged forward, knocking yet another soldier onto the carpet of bodies, then turned and ran. A silhouette waved from across the plaza, then darted behind the corner of a building. Arrows rattled into the cobbles to Joti's right and left. Men shouted from the wall. Others streamed from the now-open passage. Joti was three-quarters of the way across the plaza when something struck the back of his left leg as hard as a kicking wozzit.
He fell on his face, palms stinging against the frosty ground. An arrow protruded from his leg. Humans ran toward him with naked blades, the mist of their breath swirling from their mouths.
Joti pushed himself to his knees and hopped on his right leg toward the corner of the building. Arrows hissed from ahead—members of the No-Clan had come around the structure to fire on his pursuit. A half dozen of the closest humans dropped before a barrage from the walls forced the orcs back into cover.
Joti glanced behind him. They'd be on him in moments. When his grandfather had died fighting Gru on the borders of the plains, his dad had once told him you did not choose when you died; you only chose whether your death would be good.
He turned to face the soldiers, sword in hand.
Heavy footsteps pounded behind him. Another hail of arrows flew from the building, taking out the closest soldiers. Something wrapped around Joti's chest—an arm, and a big one—and lifted him from his feet.
Gogg turned and ran at close to full speed, holding his free arm above his head as arrows launched from the walls pinged the ground around them. "Why you let them shoot your leg?"
"Well, they asked so nicely."
"Good thing Gogg got the strength."
Gogg reached the building and swung around it. The cart was right there, its gate lowered, a dozen of the No-Clan already up in its bed, including an unconscious Shain. Gogg tossed Joti inside and climbed up behind him.
The cart pulled away, wheels clattering over the pavement. Joti let himself rest against the cart wall. He was bleeding a lot, and there was an arrow in his leg, but it was snowing again, and soon the fields would be quiet and at peace.
37
A Bound page came for Haniel in the morning, a few hours after sunrise. She followed the page, surprised that he did not take her to the hall, or one of the larger chambers on the lower floors, but rather led her up to the higher floors where wizards had their personal rooms. The page stopped at Cardozo's door and nodded at it. Haniel knocked and went in.
Cardozo was reclining on a couch; his injured arm was resting in a basin of warm water and oozing green pus. He pointed to a chair and Haniel sat down. They were both silent for a while.
"Do you know how this happened?" he asked, after a while, indicating his arm.
Haniel shook her head.
"Few do. Wit's father did it."
"Why?"
"Wit is from the Aubrey, the sea people—nearly all of whom can do magic. Some twenty years ago, they got hit by a bad storm, and many of their ships ran aground on the coast near the frontier. The orcs saw them and started to march on them—the horde would get there before they could put to sea, and their ships would be burned and their people massacred.
"There was an Alliance outpost not far from where they were run aground, and the army there could have cut off the orcish horde. They could not have stopped them, but they could have delayed them long enough for the Aubrey to put to sea—although it would have cost a great many lives.
"Wit's father was their chief. He set sail in a small boat for the Alliance outpost to beg for our help. He brought his infant son with him—he hoped that if we would not aid him, we would at least hold on to Wit, and give him over to the other part of their fleet, which was in a different part of the ocean, commanded, I believe, by Wit's mother.
"Wizard Wendell and I were at that outpost. At the time, we took a great interest in the Aubrey and kept a close eye on their movements. When we saw that they were run aground, Wendell and I had flown to the area on griffins.
"Wit's father was willing to offer the services of the Aubrey fleet to the Alliance. His first offer was that they would take our orders for fifty years, and he immediately increased it to a hundred—I don't doubt that he would have pledged his sails to us for a thousand years, if that would have saved his people.
"But the sails were of little interest to us. Fifty years ago, perhaps, but we have grown good at building roads, and the advantages of sea commerce are less than they were. And the Aubrey, of course, have that which is most precious to us of all."
"The Gift."
"Aye. And by my reasoning, we did not even have to do anything to get it. One of the First Principles of our Order is that all children with the Gift in Alliance territory belong to the Order. And there Wit was, in a basket, on our beach."
"Is it so certain that an Aubrey is Gifted? If Wit was a baby, you can't have known for sure."
"Yes, and that's what Wit's father said. I said that if it turned out that Wit did not have the Gift in ten years, we would be happy to give him back. Then I told him to leave the Order's property, meaning his son, where it was, and go back to his ships. He threw a harpoon that pierced my arm, my staff, and my hand. He said he would kill me and Wendell both, and sail with his son to die at the hands of the orcish horde with a smile on his face.
"Wendell interceded. He said that my reliance on the Principles was misplaced; that we had no interest in his sails, but a great deal of interest in his son; that we would order the army to intercept the orcs, and fight until his ships had sailed or our last man fell, if he would pledge Wit to the Order. Maybe he had known that that was what it would take all along, and that was why he brought Wit. He did not think long: he kissed Wit, got in his boat and went; several hundred soldiers died holding off the orcish horde, but his ships set sail. And the Order got Wit." They watched each other in silence. "What do you think of it?" asked Cardozo, after a while.
Haniel waited for a moment. She had realized, sometime ago, that she must have at least a chance of being spared, or else Cardozo wouldn't be talking to her. But the wizard wanted an answer and she could think of none to give h
im, except for what was in her heart.
She took a breath, and spoke. "I think that you got even, sir, and then some."
"What do you mean?"
"That's a bad wound you have, still oozing twenty years later. I'm sure that it hurts now, and has hurt worse. But you brought up his boy so that he would never know his father, wouldn't even recognize him, and lived nearly twenty years without any idea who he was, or where he was from. I think that you paid Wit's father back for that wound—handsomely."
"Do you think that that is all this is? Personal grudges and hatred?"
"I am not sure what else it could be, sir."
"We are the Order, pledged to use the greatest power ever known, to bring peace to the lands of the Alliance."
"We are Gifted humans, and not gods. We bring peace, but we bring pain with it. We tell ourselves that it is only the peace we delight in, but that cannot be true: if the wizards of the Order did not take pleasure in the pain that they cause, I am sure we would all go quite insane."
"When you came to the capital, Master Bour wrote to Us of your fondness for heretics and tendency to blasphemy."
Haniel snorted. She was as good as dead. "Master Bour is a repulsive coward."
Cardozo looked at her with a strange expression. "Master Bour saw it as one of your strongest traits. You are referring to the incident with the Mad Dwarf?"
"I'm referring to the time when a gang of ruffians murdered a loved citizen of Bour's region in cold blood, never bothered to deny it, and he sat around with his staff up his ass and did nothing."
"I don't know the story first hand, but I do know that you are grotesquely oversimplifying both what happened and the choices Bour was faced with. In any event, he emerged from it very pleased with you."
"I tried to kill him with an axe."
"You were not successful."
"I was only eleven, so I don't feel too bad about it—failing, that is."
"Well, it left a very positive impression on him, and I have always respected Bour greatly. What Bour understood is that heresy can be more important to the health of the Order than orthodoxy. You might recall that he never thwarted your association with the Mad Dwarf, only your…questionable efforts to avenge him. And you were under Bour for four years after that."
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