by Ted Neill
And the people of Karrith had shown hope since the arrival of the Antans. They had mobilized to build wooden hoardings to increase the height of the castle walls. Darid had been chief architect, stretching what little wood they had to design ramparts to crown the stone battlements. Wooden buildings had been disassembled, kitchen tables, chairs, beds, even school desks had been contributed to the effort. Gail sat upon the result now as she listened to Lorne slurp the last of her porridge into his mouth. The proverbial plows had been hammered into swords, pitch forks into spears. Piles of rocks lined windowsills and rooftops, ready to be tossed down upon invaders. If—when—the Maurvant did try to attack, they would find every inch of city streets turned against them: a gauntlet of soldiers and citizens ready to defend their homes.
Once the preparations had been completed, however, the waiting had begun. Weeks went by in which the few trees that lined the boulevards had turned from green, to yellow, to orange, and finally were cut down completely for firewood, rendering once leafy avenues barren. It saddened Gail to look out upon them, and a city, once renowned for its beauty, now so stark. As the trees went, the wood rationing had begun, followed by food, followed by water. Entire neighborhoods had been laid low by starvation and illness, neither of which showed signs of stopping.
And yet, amid the disease, the starvation, and the constant anxiety, King Talamar would ride out daily to visit the sick, to speak with soldiers and citizens both who manned the bulwarks and barricades. As he did each morning, Gail would stretch over the arrow slits of the rampart to watch him. Cantering on his war steed, his purple cloak draped behind him, his helm shining in the slanting, late autumn sunlight, he looked like a figure from song.
“He is only a man,” Darid would say to her. “You know that now more than others. You’ve seen the wound he still recovers from.”
It only makes the effort that more noble, she thought.
She and Darid had become constant companions, walking the rampart each day as he inspected men and the structure itself. She had come to know its strong points, its weaknesses, and its idiosyncrasies: the places where boards teetered and squeaked, and the places where shield walls obscured gaps in construction—and her favorite—the places where the marks on the wood timbers and panels revealed what they had been in peacetime: a front door now serving as a walkway; a kitchen table hacked so that it now offered arrow slits; and even a child’s school desk turned into the steps in a stairway. Two children had exchanged insults by carving them on the face of the desk in choppy, crooked letters:
Daisy eats mud pies.
Billy kisses dog lips.
Daisy loves Strommer
Billy loves Heather
Daisy loves Jules
Billy loves dogs
Daisy loves dog shite
Billy loves to eat cow dung
Daisy loves old farmer Fats
She hoped Billy and Daisy grew up to be great lovers one day. She wondered if they were exchanging insults and pulling one another’s hair at this very moment. She dreamed about them, about all the Karrithian children she saw, managing to play in the alleyways and courtyards, wherever they could find space to toss a ball, jump a rope, and scratch drawings in the dirt. They merged with faces of children she had betrayed and sold into slavery, staring at her by turns pleading and by turns accusing.
Then she would wake. Always Darid was beside her, watching over her when she took her rest. It was hard to sleep well during the siege, always expecting an attack as they were. The constant state of readiness took its toll. Men looked weary, red in their eyes, rings beneath. Gail felt always drowsy, never refreshed. Perhaps this was part of the Maurvant’s strategy, to simply wear them down into lethargy, weakness, sickness, and surrender.
Talamar made his rounds this morning like all others. Gail stretched to her tiptoes to look, Darid reminded her that he was just a man, Lorne asked to finish her gruel. One day into the next, they wore on.
That afternoon Patrick and Kevin came to visit her.
“Care for a walk? We are going down to the lower city,” Patrick said. His face was leaner since the last time she had seen him, Kevin’s too. She looked to Darid who nodded his approval.
“What if there is an attack?” she asked him.
“Then it comes. We can’t always live in fear,” he said.
“After all, King Talamar still tours the city,” Kevin pointed out
“He certainly does,” Gail said. “A leader who knows his men.”
She took Darid’s leave and walked with her friends down to the ladders that reached into the inner bailey of the castle where a few nobles—lucky enough to have their houses within the curtain walls—lent their homes out for officers’ quarters.
“Wish I were lucky enough to be stationed there,” Kevin said as they descended past a balcony where an officer relaxed with his feet up, a pipe in his hand, and the shadow of a woman moving against the wall of the room behind him.
“Aye,” Patrick said, his eyes peering into the room, eager to spy the lady, but he was disappointed. “It sure is better than the shite we’ve be stationed in.”
“Has it been so bad in the lower city?” Gail asked.
“We’ll show you.”
They passed through check points, some official, others manned by citizens volunteering, doing their best to ensure order and protect their families. Generally, with their Antan garb, Patrick and Kevin passed through without trouble, the Northerners still seen as saviors even though they had done no more than hole up with the rest of the Karrithians in the overflowing capital. The thought made Gail spit. But she was still glad to be with her friends. She lacked an Antan surcoat—one could not be found that was small enough for her—and her size otherwise might have kept her from being allowed to the forward-most streets that would be the front lines in any assault.
The second stories of most of the houses had been deconstructed, even demolished, the debris tossed into the street for barricades or to be used as missiles to throw at raiders. Red clay tiles that had covered roofs had been removed, stacked in wheelbarrows, and carted off to the city walls also to serve as projectiles. As a result, many of the houses of the lower city now were covered by tent canvases.
“The locals have taken to calling their neighborhood ‘Canvas Town,’” Patrick said.
“Do any locals remain? It seems mostly soldiers billeted here,” Gail asked as they threaded their way between piles of rock left in the street to slow any invaders
“A few,” Patrick said. “They’ve stayed behind to protect their own homes. A few patriotic grand-mothers have remained as well to cook for soldiers.”
“The rest of them have doubled up in blocks in the upper city, closer to the castle walls,” Kevin said.
Gail watched as an old woman emerged from the dark interior of a house, its upper-story stones chipped loose and rearranged into a sort of improvised guard tower where a mix of regular troops—Karrithian and Antan—and un-uniformed volunteers sat joking as they made arrows and strung bows. The woman dumped a chamber pot into the gutter, which was already overflowing with gray waste. The smell here in the streets was overpowering as gutters everywhere Whichever way the wind blew there came no relief—noxious smells and eye watering smoke assaulted the senses as residents burned trash that usually was hauled outside the city walls and burnt in middens, but which were now too close to the range of the Maurvants’ arrows.
A few small children had slipped around the barricades and played in the empty alleyways. They were mostly boys, too young to fight, but that did not keep them from clacking together wooden swords and calling out shrill war cries at one another. Gail stood arrested by the sight. She had trained children just the same age to be killers, brainwashing them until the souls were absent from their eyes. She had made their minds race with heady brews to make them wild berserkers in battle, forgetting themselves so that they would slay their own kin. And she had plied them with drink at night to forget the nightmares tha
t had dogged them. They all had become more coldblooded than any of her father’s henchmen.
Now she felt sick at the thought, her stomach roiling. Each clack of the boys’ wooden swords was like a hammer on her head. “What are these children doing down here?”
“Searching for glory, I suppose,” Kevin said.
They would find nothing but ankle-deep shite and blood strewn across the streets if they stayed too long. They would see grown men crying out for comfort like children themselves, for their wives, for their mothers.
“Gail are you all right? You look pale,” Patrick said.
“Those children shouldn’t be here,” she said, steadying herself against a wall, her other arm across her stomach.
“Let’s go get some air on the city wall,” Patrick said.
The city walls, unlike the castle’s, were too long to build up with wooden hoardings. Instead they were lined with men, nearly every foot soldier of the Karrithian army, racks and racks of arrows and spears, and cauldrons of oil. Patrick had been right, the air here was far less foul as a fresh breeze blew over from the no-man’s-land between the outer walls and the Maurvant lines, but it carried with it the scent of the thousands of campfires burning. The sick heavy feeling that had come over Gail felt no lighter.
They squeezed between bunches of men and even a few stalwart-looking women who had taken up arms themselves. Gail envied them, not only for their openness of their gender and the liberties they had seized, but the signs of full womanhood on their bodies, full breasts and hips.
It did nothing to improve her mood.
They eventually came to a drum tower where the wall began to angle away from the front lines and backwards toward the castle hill. As if by unspoken agreement they all three stopped, staring wordlessly at the gathered host.
“Perhaps they will wait us out, wait for the food to run low, the shite to pile higher, and the bodies too from starvation, from the flux,” Patrick finally said.
“I’d rather die fighting than in a bed of my own filth,” Kevin said, picking at some loose mortar between stones. Before, Gail would have accused him of bluster, but he had seen battle now, up close, and sickness, too. Faced with such alternatives, she would choose the same. But perhaps Patrick was right. Perhaps the Maurvant planned to wait them out.
“No,” Kevin said, the bits of mortar scattering about his boots as he brushed one hand off with the other, “Why gather such numbers then. It’s been long enough. Look how they have been spreading their ranks today, how they have tapered their lines. I think they are preparing to attack, as soon as tomorrow.”
Gail didn’t know whether to hope he was right or wrong.
She wandered back to their position on the castle wall alone, her arms crossed over her chest. The soft, soothing notes of worship chants drifted out of one of the houses she passed. Karrith was no place for Inquisitors. The people here openly practiced old beliefs, praying to gods, putting out charms for fairies, and talismans to ward off demons. The Antans, being visitors, turned a blind eye to it. Gail was not sure what to believe in. She’d mostly shunned superstition until she had seen the font and while she could not explain what had happened to save the slave girl—Katlyn—the font had failed her. She pictured the fountain as it had looked to her while she had knelt in the pool, full of hope, freezing cold, either too late, too unworthy, or simply too stupid. She was her same old, freakish, self.
Fool, she thought. What would be would be. Their fates were already sealed, unchanging, just like herself.
Or was it? Were not actions a measure of a man—or woman? Even if she could not imagine herself different, when she had met Darid, Patrick, Kevin, even the king’s eyes, she knew they saw something different, someone else, someone who was just short of honorable.
She chided herself. Honorable! She could only dream that the scales would tip so far as that. No, when the curtain closed on this life, and the veil opened on the next, she knew the faces that would be waiting for her. Yet, even now as she climbed the rampart ladder, a step at a time, she noted the carvings by Billy and Daisy: Daisy eats mud pies. Billy kisses dog lips . . . and she felt a fierce urge to protect that innocence that still existed in the form of children squeezed in between their parents and soldiers in the city below. If for no other reason than to atone for Avenger Red.
She found her master leaning against the parapet of the south tower. He was not alone. A statuesque woman with long curly hair and glowing ebony skin stood beside him. A yellow dress draped loosely over her frame and a silver chain-belt hung on her ample hips encircling a tiny waist. Her eyes turned on Gail and glittered over sharp cheekbones. A silver necklace balanced a green jewel that winked like an eye on her breasts. Gail felt short of breath. The envy she usually felt for women in the prime of beauty was absent, replaced fully by a sense of inadequacy—even worse than when she had first met the king. She felt grubby, dirty, and as opposite of feminine as water was to fire, earth was to air. A faint scent of lilac water enveloped Gail like a gentle embrace. The woman smiled, her teeth all the brighter in her dark complexioned face.
“You must be Alex. Darid has told me so much about you. I am Celine,” she said in a smooth voice.
Darid smiled, wiping a drop of juice from his chin. Celine cradled a glazed bowl of melon slices in her arms that he had already helped himself to. “Alex, take one,” he said.
“Fruit, during a siege, is a rare thing,” she said, taking a cool, dripping slice, conscious of her calloused, dirty hands.
“I’ve been saving it for today,” Celine said. “It’s Darid’s naming-day.”
“Today? I didn’t know. Happy day and blessings to you, Darid.”
“He’d never celebrate it if it weren’t for others,” Celine said.
“I don’t like a fuss.” Darid, uncharacteristically, blushed. “I don’t know what to do with all the attention.”
“Enjoy it. It’s just once a year,” Celine said.
“I should share these with some of the men.”
“You do that, Alex and I need to talk,” then she added in a low voice, “woman to woman.”
Gail felt her throat flutter. Compared to Celine, she was about as much a woman as a caterpillar was a butterfly, yet a part of her was still thrilled to openly share anything—title, gender, or words—with Celine. Celine took her by the elbow and they walked together to a point between sentries where their words would not be overheard.
“Darid has told me your story, Gail, if I might call you that.”
That this woman would even utter her name made Gail’s face flush.
“Of course, madam.”
“Call me Celine,”
“Celine,” Gail said. The name was as beautiful as she was and one that could not be said without an involuntary smile. Her next words caught Gail off guard.
“I admire you, even envy you, living, fighting your way in a man’s world.”
The notion that Celine would envy her anything she found absurd.
“I hardly feel I have anything to envy. How much I wish I was like you my lady, I cannot even say,” Gail heard herself saying.
“‘My lady,’ hush, I am no noble.”
“You carry yourself as one.”
“My mother would have it no other way. She raised me to be strong, independent, self-possessed. ‘We’re all queens in our own right,’ she would say. ‘We just need to act like it.’ I’m glad it shows, but you, young lady, have broken new ground.”
Gail was not so young, perhaps she was even similar in age with Celine, but she was not about to admit her condition or declare herself any less worthy than she already was to Celine.
“Only because I had to. It was either go back to an old life, being someone I did not want to be any longer, or this.”
Celine turned to her, those bright moon eyes in a face of night. “You are brave Gail, in so many ways.”
“Am I? Sometimes I think I’m just afraid of what I was. I’m running away from that towards so
mething . . . I don’t know . . . something better I hope. I’m not sure that counts as brave or not.”
“Counts as something. The most dire fights are the ones we engage within. Now do me a favor,” she said as Darid approached with the empty bowl. “Keep him safe for me.”
Gail found herself desperate to please Celine in any way, much the same way she was desperate to please Darid or the king. These were people better than she, and perhaps she could banish her old self by serving them.
“He’s my whole world,” Celine continued. “Even if he does not realize it.”
“I will,” Gail said quickly just as Darid came within earshot.
“You will what?” he asked, his eyes swimming with a happiness she had never seen in him.
Celine laughed, a bright cheery sound that broke the tension, the dreariness of waiting for their doom. “She might be your apprentice but there are some secrets between women that even masters are not privy to.”
“As long as her—his loyalties are not divided.”
“Hmmph, I think you will find Alex here more than loyal.”
Gail could not help her own smile from the simple comradery of a woman who accepted her as she was. Darid accompanied Celine down the length of the rampart. She negotiated the steep steps, bowl in hand, with alarming alacrity, making Gail realize she was likely more than gowns and flower-scented water. Darid returned, his gaze distant, the smile lines about his mouth deep, while the men gave him a gentle ribbing. But when he came to her side, he grew stony faced, his gaze inward.
“This is your home, but you fight for her as much as you do your king,” Gail said.