by Ben Blake
*
Ailiss began teaching Farajalla the next morning.
The Book of Breathing was made up of ancient writings by a man who had known Adjai, the God-Son of the All-Church, when he was alive. Or who had claimed to. Ailiss admitted there was a degree of uncertainty, and some of the texts might have been amended later, perhaps by as much as a generation. It was hard to be sure. The book had been lost for many centuries, and in that great span of time much more had been forgotten.
But the bulk of it was genuine. Ailiss was certain of that. It formed the first part of the Unfurling of Spirit, the tome which lay at the centre of Dualism. It was there that God and the Adversary battled, there that God created the souls of men in purity and light, only for Belial to cloak them in sinful flesh and so corrupt them. The words of all the holy men were written on those pages, words spoken in strange tongues from forgotten lands and yet which echoed across as much as three thousand years since. Farajalla read parts of them, just to gain some idea of what they contained, and they made little impression on her. She had been raised by Madai servant women, in a court dominated by soldier men of the All-Church faith, and she found it hard to think of the tales as anything more than just another myth system, no more or less likely than either of those she had grown up with.
The Opening of the Ways was different.
This was a collection of ancient texts from all over the world, often from cultures Farajalla had never heard of in lands she could not place. Some she did know, such as Magan, the ancient desert civilisation that survived today only in a few blasted ruins in the sand, and in legend. Others were new to her, like the Long Barrow Men, who wrote in angular glyphs she couldn’t understand; or the Gesantes, whose script was narrow and flowing and just as unfamiliar. The texts covered a wide range of subjects, many on the art of geomancy, more on the gift of second sight, which the writers claimed could be learned as easily as language by those who knew how. The Long Barrow Men spoke of stone circles and the forces they harnessed, and of earthlights and the powers which drove them. The Gesantes’ writings were full of references to theurgy and scrying, divination and even alchemy, unlikely as that seemed. It was almost all gibberish to Farajalla. Even when Ailiss translated a page for her, the words taken together made very little sense.
Back in Harenc, the old servant women would have called the book a grimoire, and made quick warding signs against evil with gnarled fingers. But evil or otherwise, known or unknown, all the writers traced the beginnings of their knowledge, the originators of the Lore, back to the same source. To the long-ago navigators who had sailed the world on currents nobody else knew, bringing learning and wisdom in their foaming wake, and who were known by a hundred names in as many lands. They were the Oarsmen to one people, the Seafarers to another, simply the Watermen in Magan. The Long Barrow Men called them by a complicated curly glyph that Ailiss said meant Windjammers. But it was all the same people, and Farajalla knew them without any need for Ailiss to explain.
The Gondoliers.
“All that we know comes from them,” Ailiss said. She and Farajalla were seated facing each other in a cell in the north wall, with tallow candles burning to increase the light that crept in through the high window. “All the Lore, every trick and art and deception. All the raptures I know. Some of them have come through other peoples, by such twisted routes that their origins were forgotten by the writers, but still they come from the Gondoliers.”
“Who were they?”
“Oh, such a question,” Ailiss chuckled. “Who were the Gondoliers? They were the first to build, the first to carve, the first to write. The first to remember. Before them, men were half-clever creatures who ate wild berries and gathered in tribes for protection, and quivered with terror when the thunder boomed. The Gondoliers took that skin-clad savage and showed him what he could be, if he freed the spirit inside him.”
Farajalla frowned, thinking the answer over. “That doesn’t actually tell me anything at all.”
“In the Dualism we believe that men and women are born in sin,” the old woman said. “How could it be different, when we’re clothed in flesh, like a cage built around us by the Adversary? But inside shines our spirit, our soul, which was given to us by God. With that we can become whatever we choose to be. Pure, honourable, forgiving: anything at all. The Elite say that if we bring forth what is inside us, it will save us. The Gondoliers taught the same.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then learn,” Ailiss said, as she always did when Farajalla pressed her too directly. “Learn, and the answers will be yours. Only learn.”
It was halfway through the third day, and Farajalla was no further forward than she had been on the first, when Gaudin tapped on the door to tell them visitors were coming.
Rissaun was at the gates when Ailiss and Farajalla reached them. He had opened the postern gate set into the wall to one side, but left the main doors shut. He shrugged when Farajalla gave him a questioning glance.
“We opened the big gates for the Lady,” he said. “Or we would have done, if one of them hadn’t jammed. Whoever these new people are, they’re not important enough for that.”
Or perhaps, Farajalla thought, the main gate was still jammed.
The new people were still half a mile down the trail, and advancing slowly and with frequent pauses. There were only five of them, all leading their horses. Most wore the livery of the Hand of the Lord, and Farajalla searched eagerly for the age-green armour of her husband before she admitted to herself that he wasn’t there. One person she knew was though, a small woman walking in the middle of the group with a baby in a sling across her chest.
“That’s Kendra,” she said, realising. “That’s Raigal’s wife and child. He must have sent them here for safety.”
“Very wise,” Ailiss said.
“I’d hoped it would be Calesh, or Luthien,” the old soldier complained. “I haven’t seen them since they left for Tura d’Madai.”
“You know them?” Farajalla asked, surprised.
“Know them? I taught them,” Rissaun said. “I was in charge of training their group, when they first joined the Hand. You could see straight away that Luthien had a rare ability. As quick as lightning, he was, and he never made the same mistake twice. Or once, usually. I’ve never seen a more naturally talented boy, and I doubt I ever will. Raigal Tai could make him work, though. It was hard for Luthien to get inside the sweep of that great axe.”
“And Calesh?” she asked, when she had the chance.
“Clumsy as a three-legged cow at first,” Rissaun told her cheerfully. “He had a mailshirt with holes in it and a sword that would have broken with the first blow, and it was obvious he’d never used either. But he learned fast. He could never get near Luthien, but then, nobody could. Still, he was a decent swordsman by the time he sailed. He knew enough to stay alive, anyway.”
“He’s the one that matters,” Ailiss murmured, breaking into the flow of the old soldier’s words. Rissaun sometimes seemed he could talk forever if he wasn’t interrupted. “The other three are important – giant, wise man, soldier – but it’s the king that makes them special.”
Rissaun looked at her in evident confusion, but Farajalla knew enough now to understand. A little, anyway. Certain motifs recurred in myths and beliefs, just as certain numbers did: forty-nine was significant for some reason, as was seventy-two, though she hadn’t yet learned why. The combination of giant, wise man, soldier and king appeared in Sarténi legends, among others around the world, and was always thought to stand at the centre of great events. Sometimes it even influenced them. Most of all, though, the quartet was said to bring luck. Farajalla hoped it did this time. They were going to need it.
My husband, a king, she thought, and had to stifle a bubble of wild laughter. She would have taken him if he’d been a common soldier, or the pig farmer his father had once been. She would prefer him to be either now, and safe, than riding into danger, king or no.
; Kendra and her escort of soldiers reached the shadow of the wall, turned to follow it, and came to the gate a moment later. Raigal’s wife looked very tired. Dark circles lurked under her eyes and she was waxy pale. In his sling across her chest little Segarn slept, oblivious to it all. His cap of blond hair looked to have thickened even in the few days since Farajalla saw him last.
“They told me you would be here,” Kendra said to her. Weariness laced her voice with heavy threads. “You landed yourself in some adventure when you married your man, didn’t you?”
“It looks that way,” Farajalla said with a wry smile. “You too, with Raigal Tai. And I’ll bet you don’t regret it.”
“Not for a moment,” Kendra admitted. “How could I, with this little one still nursing?” She indicated Segarn, then turned to Ailiss. “You must be the Lady of the Hidden House. I’m pleased to meet you at last, but the truth is I’m too tired to greet you properly. I need to rest. These men were kind enough to see me safely here, and they need to rest too.”
The foremost of the soldiers shook his head. “No thank you, mistress Kendra. We have to get back to Mayence as quickly as we can.”
“You should rest,” Ailiss put in. “Even if only for long enough to eat. The heights can drain you before you’re aware of it.”
“Even so, Lady.” The soldier offered her a bow, but he shook his head. “We all must take risks. We’ll head straight back.”
They would take Calesh’s orders ahead of the Lady’s, Farajalla thought. She doubted there were many men who had denied Ailiss, since she took up residence in the Hidden House. Well, the older woman had wanted a king, so she could hardly complain when he acted like one. “Is my husband well?”
“Well, and driving himself and the whole city hard. More than hard. Riyand spends half his time cursing the Commander’s name, and the other half sulking.” The soldier’s lips cracked in a grin. “I’ll hardly be surprised if he steals from his own treasury and slips away to the Jaidi kingdoms one night, to while away his days with no thoughts of battle in his mind.”
“Calesh would hunt him down and kill him,” Farajalla said, “If it took ten years, he would.”
“I know, Lady,” the soldier said, “and so does Riyand. That’s why he won’t do it, in truth. With your permission?”
She nodded, and he turned the party around and set off back down the trail, leaving Kendra’s bags standing in the road. Rissaun beckoned someone to come and fetch them, while Farajalla struggled with the urge to fetch her horse and ride after the soldiers, back to her husband so she could aid him when he so clearly needed her. Driving himself hard, indeed: she knew Calesh, and suspected that if other soldiers said hard, she would say savagely.
But he was alive, and not in immediate danger by the sound of it. Besides, she had promised to come to Adour with Ailiss, and learn what she could of the Lore in such time as they were given. She made herself turn back into the fortress. Half an hour later she was settling back down in that gloomy cell, the Opening of the Ways in front of her and the Lady of the Hidden House seated across the table with a pot of tea at her elbow.
“Perhaps it would be best,” Ailiss said as she handed Farajalla a cup, “if you first learned to scry, and could watch your husband from afar.”
Farajalla stared at her. That had never occurred to her, even while she was trying to push worries over Calesh out of her mind for long enough to concentrate on the text. It still wasn’t as good as being there with him, but to see his face and know he was well would ease her heart considerably. Even if the ability came and went unreliably, as Ailiss said most of them did, it would help. She could hardly believe she hadn’t thought of it herself.
“Then let’s get started,” she suggested, and bent over the book.
Sixteen
No Room for Strays
Parrien was always busy in late afternoon, shoppers flocking to the markets looking for the bargains that always came just before the vendors packed up for the day. Empty wagons should have been making their way out of the town, or been parked idle in side streets while their drivers laid the day’s dust with a tankard or two of well-earned ale. Everything ran at its own pace, humming but not hurrying, and there was rarely any great rush.
Today Parrien was almost bursting.
Japh and Athar could see it from the ridge, two miles west of the town where the road emerged from the hills. The gates in the west and north walls were half hidden by heaving, sweating swarms of people, huge numbers of them jostling and shoving as they tried to enter all at once. Most of the men carried boxes and balanced bags, or had burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, or all three at once, filled with every possession they could carry when they fled their homes. The women usually carried infants and held older children by the hand, trying not to lose them in the crush. Many of the younger children were crying in fear and dismay, clinging tight to their mothers. Japh saw several goats amidst the press, and once a cow. Squawking chickens scattered from a pile of splintered wood that had once been a cage as a fight broke out in the wreckage. The noise was incredible, and the smell worse. Japh wanted to wince just looking at it all.
“The whole countryside has come here,” he said, awed. “We’re never going to get through all that.”
Athar shifted his shoulders, settling his black and white shield more squarely on his back. “We’re going to try.”
It was a struggle from the start, but their big horses gave them an advantage. They tried to ease their way along, pushing gently into gaps as they opened and not forcing people aside, but it was useless. The crowd shoved and shouted and swore, everyone sure his need was more urgent than the next man’s, eager get inside the town quickly so there would still be lodgings to rent and food to buy when they made it. Japh doubted there would be any of either. The first wave of this swarm would have filled all the inns already, filled them to bursting; innkeepers had probably sold pallets in their parlours and piles of straw in the stables, and there was no more room. But there were more refugees, still trying to cram themselves into the town before the All-Church came.
The gate guards must have lost control, or simply stood aside and let the tide of people flow past them. Japh couldn’t see the gate house clearly enough to tell whether any were still at their posts. He swore as someone seized his foot, but the hand was torn away before he could see who it belonged to.
“This isn’t working!” he shouted to Athar. “We’ll still be here at nightfall if we don’t go faster!”
Ahead, the other man cupped a hand around his ear and shrugged, unable to hear him in the din.
Easing along was no good though. They would make their way a few yards forward, then find themselves pushed to the side before going back a pace or two. Athar began to curse repeatedly, the oaths given form only by the shape of his lips: Japh couldn’t hear a word of them. And Athar had it better than Japh, because he wore the surcoat and shield of the Hand and that made people marginally more willing to move out of his way, when they retained the sense to notice it. Japh wore neither. The recruiting sergeant had said he hadn’t grown the muscle to support a coat of mail all day yet, and there weren’t enough shields or surcoats either, so here’s a sword and good luck. Japh was wearing a boiled leather vest over his old stable clothes, and trying not to be annoyed about it. It wasn’t how he’d thought soldiering would be. He leaned forward to whisper reassuringly in his gelding’s ear, feeling its growing tension just a moment before it gave a snort and stamped angrily. But he was good with horses and it responded to his voice, at least to the extent that it didn’t kick someone. It would soon, whatever he did.
“Easy now, boy,” he soothed. The gelding had once been a stallion, after all, and if he still was he would have laid about him with his steel-shod hooves by now. “This isn’t how I thought it would be either, so be easy and we’ll get through together, what do you say?”
He had actually thought that being in the Hand of the Lord would be fun. Adventure could wait a whil
e, perhaps until he went to Tura d’Madai or Alinaur, and had a chance to make his name. But still, in the last fleet years before he reached adolescence he’d wanted to be Calesh Saissan, or at least be with him, riding to battle on a great black warhorse to thrash the wretched Madai yet again. Calesh was the greatest soldier alive – or so the lads of Parrien assured each other, their voices awed to whispers – laughing at death, and sharpening his blade on the rays of the rising sun. Everyone wanted to grow up to be Calesh, except the girls, who just wanted to grow up to marry him.
Sitting an increasingly fractious horse amid a screaming throng was not what he’d expected when he joined.
“The hell with this,” Athar bellowed. The crush had driven him back until he was more beside Japh than ahead of him. “Are you willing to shove through? We’ll still be here at midnight if we don’t get a move on.”
About time you realised that, Japh thought, but he was still stroking his mount’s neck and whispering soothing words, and he wasn’t sure they were working. He spared the other man a nod.
“Right,” Athar said, and shortened his reins. “Here we go.” He drove forward into the throng.
Before his dreams of heroism in the desert, Japh had wanted to be Abhara the Sailor, exploring the wide seas with his brave crew, all dressed in flaring trousers and colourful shirts with cutlasses at their belts. He would fight pirates and sea monsters, battle evil sorcerers, and sail home with a hold full of ancient treasure to spend on women and wine, until it was time to sail out again. Because the point of the journeys wasn’t the gold, or the women. It was the journey itself, the thrill of sailing unexplored waters to the mysteries that lay beyond them. Japh would sit on the thatched roof of the stable in the evening, his work done, and looking out over the mast-crowded harbour he would dream of the day when he and his crew of likely lads would steal a ship and go adventuring at last.
If he was honest, a little of that longing had still been alive inside him on the day the horizon sprouted a field of sails and the Hand of the Lord returned from Tura d’Madai. The dreaming remnant of that boy had been breathless with excitement when Calesh Saissan himself – Calesh Saissan! – walked along the quay to speak with him. And there was hardly any romance at all. Calesh simply asked to be taken to Raigal Tai, while all around him hard-faced soldiers worked efficiently to unload crates and horses from the ships. Japh hadn’t even realised the owner of the tavern next door knew Calesh. Much less that Raigal Tai was his friend, and a hero himself besides.
“Mind where you’re going!” a large man with a bulging bag in each hand snarled. Japh’s gelding had just sent him stumbling out of the way: the man was big, but no match for a horse. “Or I’ll pull you out of that saddle and ram your head down your neck, you hear?”
“Important business,” Athar called, leaning across. He pulled his cloak around so the man couldn’t miss the black-and-white circle emblazoned on the chest. “Hand of the Lord. Shut up and clear the way.”
The man scowled, which he surely wouldn’t have done a week ago, but he did step aside. Japh wished he had a cloak in the Order’s colours, at least. He was going to get stomped on because of the lack of one at this rate. A fine start to his life as a soldier that would be.
Calesh had turned out to be ordinary, but a greater shock still had been the sight of Farajalla, and the realisation that she was Calesh’s wife. So much for the doe-eyed dreams of all Parrien’s girls; the man whose face they imagined in the night was already married, and to a Madai besides. It was then that Japh had begun to realise, perhaps belatedly, that his childhood imaginings were wrong in almost every way possible. Using his horse to shove helpless refugees aside in the road, he could hardly doubt it any longer.
They were within twenty feet of the gates before the guards saw them. They were still at their posts after all, a thin line of blood and gold livery strung across the open gates. One pointed them out and yelled something, and though the words were lost in the cacophony two men emerged from the gatehouse and dashed up to the line. With shouts and blows from their cudgels they drove the throng back, just for a moment, but that was all the horsemen needed. Athar urged his horse into the gap and Japh followed, so close that his gelding could have taken a bite out of Athar’s saddle. The crowd roared angrily and surged forward again, pressing in from all around the gate.
“You have to close it!” Athar screamed at the nearest soldier. “Close the gates, and just let people in through the portal door. If you don’t they’ll trample right over you in the end!”
The guard shrugged. He had a livid bruise on one temple, and the hint of blood under his dark hair. “Mayor wants the gates kept open!”
“But the All-Church army –”
“If it was up to me I’d send the whole lot of them back to the farms.” The guard jerked a thumb at the throng to show who he meant. “But it isn’t my choice. Now get moving friend, you’re blocking the way.”
Athar hesitated, his head turning as he searched along the line of guards. Looking for the officer, no doubt. Japh reined closer to him. “It isn’t our problem, Athar. We’ve more important work to do.”
For a moment Athar didn’t move, but then his lips twisted in a grimace and he pulled his horse around. The animal huffed through its nose, but once it was heading away from the heaving mayhem outside the gate it calmed considerably. Japh rode up alongside, glad to be in the relative calm and shade of the passage under the wall, but it was only a few steps until they emerged back into sunlight, and the crowded town streets.
They weren’t as busy as the road outside, but this was Japh’s home, and he’d never seen Parrien so full. People were everywhere, standing thick as wheat along the pavements, leaning out of windows, huddling in doorways or in clusters down narrow, dank alleys. Most buildings had their windows boarded up, but a good many of those boards had been broken down and the windows used as makeshift entrances, the shops as temporary shelter. Japh wondered how many families would be sleeping twelve to a room tonight, on a floor that wasn’t theirs. Then he looked at the pallid faces of the people on the pavement and wondered how many would sleep in the open, each resting his head on his neighbour’s shoulder.
“How will they eat?” he asked aloud, horrified. “When the army comes, I mean. Parrien can’t hold enough food for so many.”
Athar’s mouth twisted again, and he heeled his horse forward without replying. The two men rode down the middle of the street, followed all the way by turning heads and wide, fearful eyes. Behind them still more refugees made their way through the gate tunnel and into the town, those the guards had thought deserved a place or who had the money to pay a bribe. Probably the latter, Japh thought sourly: the guards at least would be doing very well out of this, like crows feasting on the dead. But he felt little better than them, riding past all this misery as though it didn’t concern him. It did, it turned his stomach, and he wasn’t sure that duty was enough of an excuse to keep riding.
The avenue gave suddenly into a square, and the silent crowd thinned. After the tight press outside it seemed like open countryside, though refugees still stood here and there in ragged clumps. From here on progress should be easier though. Japh prayed it would be. He didn’t even want to think about feeling those hungry eyes on him again.
“Thank God for that,” Athar said. “Right, then. You grew up here. What’s the fastest way to the dovecote?”
For a moment Japh couldn’t remember. Part of it was just the shock of all those fugitives, but the rest was surprise at being asked. Athar hadn’t shown much interest in his opinions before. He was only a few years older than Japh was, twenty perhaps, but he was a full member of the Hand of the Lord, even if he hadn’t seen battle yet. Until now he’d behaved as though that gave him the right to make all the decisions without bothering to ask what his companion thought. Japh supposed it did at that, and he’d tried not to be annoyed. But Athar was a Mayencer, born and bred in the city in the hills, so of course he didn’t know his way a
round Parrien very well. At least he wasn’t too proud to ask when the need was there. Japh looked around and tried to think.
“Come on,” Athar prompted impatiently. “Make your mind up before that mob gets through the gate, will you?”
Japh took a moment longer to check he was right, then nodded to himself. “Down that street on the left, and then we hang a right just before the Theatre. The Hand’s dovecote is just inland from the harbour. Not too far from where I used to work, in fact.”
“I didn’t ask for a geography lesson,” Athar grumbled. He turned his horse with clicks of his tongue and set off, leaving Japh to scowl at his back and hurry to make up the distance.
Athar rode straight past the turning by the Theatre, which gave Japh the satisfaction of shouting at him to come back. He asked innocently if the other man would benefit from a geography lesson. Athar muttered something indistinct and then broke into a reluctant grin. Sometimes, when he forgot to be serious, he really did seem no more than twenty.
They clattered down a cobbled street, beyond the end of which a paltry few masts bobbed against the shining sea. Japh supposed most ship owners must have left already, heading for ports a long, safe distance away. Just before they would have reached the quayside road they turned left again, and drew rein in front of a wide doorway set in the base of a white-plastered tower. A bearded man was looking out of a window above the door, his face tight. The noise of the crowd was a murmur here, but it turned the air febrile, and when the man noticed two riders dismounting below his expression turned to suspicion in an instant.
“I’ve no room for strays,” he began, and broke off when his eyes caught the black and white of Athar’s cloak.
“Yes,” the soldier said. “We’re Hand men, and if nobody’s found a uniform yet for Japh here, you can blame that on a whole lot of hurry and not on him. Now open the door. We’re here to check for messages.”
“Right,” the man said. He vanished from view and the window banged down. Japh stroked his gelding’s broad nose and led it towards the door. He had to wait what seemed a long time before a bolt rattled and a key turned, and the door swung open to reveal a straw-floored room the same size as the tower. It was divided into half a dozen horse stalls, only one of them occupied. The bearded soldier ushered them inside and locked the door again. He looked about forty to Japh. When he moved he dragged his right leg behind him.
“The horses need water, and oats if you’ve got them,” Athar said briskly as he handed over his reins. “We’ll take some fruit and cheese, and a bit of bread. Are there any messages?”
“Only one,” the man said. “It came in two mornings ago.”
“And you didn’t send it on?”
The bearded man looked at him. “Send it on? Usually there’s three men at this post, but when Commander Saissan rode out he took the other two. Every single one of my birds had been sent out by then. So tell me, son, how was I supposed to send the message on, eh?”
“All right,” Athar muttered. “Sorry, then. Now where’s the message?”
“Slots by the door of the loft,” the older man told him sourly. “By God, son, you can make an apology sound like a complaint. Is that the best manners the sergeants teach you these days?”
“I said I’m sorry,” Athar snapped back.
Japh left them bickering and went to the far door, then up the wooden steps that ran around the walls of the tower. After the second flight he passed another door on his left, through which he caught a glimpse of a table and simple chairs beside a window – where the bearded man had been sitting when they arrived, he assumed. A hearth was set in the far wall, with a tin chimney flue above it. That was all he had time to register before he went on, his boots clattering as he took the steps two at a time. A second door gave into a bedroom with six narrow cots and small lockers. Japh went on climbing, and finally he turned left and stepped onto a platform with a wide window sill on one side and a long, high pigeon cote on the other. The solitary bird perched within fluttered its wings and cooed, its head bobbing back and forth as it tried to focus on him.
Beside the cote half a dozen slots had been cut into the wall. Japh hunted along them until his fingers closed on a tiny roll of paper, sealed with a shapeless blob of green wax. He turned to go back down, hesitated, and then went over to the window and looked out over Parrien.
He wasn’t high enough to see the streets unless the angle was such that he looked directly along them. But all of those were lined with ranks of refugees, the plazas were thronged, and even the flatter rooftops were crowded. The noise was incredible. People fleeing from the farms and villages were still crowding into Parrien, pouring into the city in their thousands, and it seemed the guards on the west gate were doing a better job of keeping them out than some. Most of the people who could leave had already gone, so there were empty houses all over the town, but Japh thought every one of them would be home to five families before night fell. All the boarding houses would be full, all the inns bursting with patrons sleeping pressed together on the floor or on benches, propped against each other for support. People would pay high prices for a place on a stable floor, or leaning against the stove in a kitchen. And still there would be people on the streets, huddled in doorways or against the walls of fountains, clustered under trees, laid head to toe across the parks like some vast breathing carpet. He wondered if Parrien could actually hold them all, or if it would burst, breaking open under the strain like a ripe tomato.
He raised his eyes and froze.
Outside Parrien, over the low wall to the east, was what the refugees had fled from. The afternoon sunlight gleamed off breastplates and pikes, helmets and the points of spears. It was too far for Japh to make out details, but the orderliness of the groups of men, and those tell-tale glints, were enough: the All-Church was here. Japh would not have thought it possible for them to arrive so soon. His appalled gaze followed the army around, from the east to the north and further yet. Cavalry were hurrying west to encircle the town. His breath stopped dead. He and Athar were very nearly cut off.
He turned and flung himself down the stairs, clattering madly as he slipped and skidded from one landing to the next. One shoulder banged hard off the wall and he grunted, but he didn’t stop. Once he dropped the tight-rolled paper and had to go back for it, cursing at the wasted time. Every moment might count now. Finally he bounced off the wall and shot into the stable like an arrow from a bow, panting as much with excitement as exertion. Athar and the bearded man were still glowering at once another, but both broke off their staring match and turned to Japh in surprise as he burst in.
“What –?” Athar began.
“Army,” Japh broke in, still gasping. “Already halfway round the town. We have to go!”
Athar stared at him. “Are you sure?”
“I saw it!” He leaned a hand against the wall for support. The bearded man pushed past him with a snort and vanished up the stairs. “I saw it, Athar, and those idiots at the gates will never get them shut in time. If we don’t ride now, we’ll never get out.”
“All right,” Athar said slowly. “What was the message?”
Japh gaped at him for a moment before he remembered. He slit the wax seal with one fingernail and unrolled the scroll, and as he read it he felt the blood leave his face. Athar plucked it from his hands and read quickly. When he looked up his eyes were wide.
“No time to eat,” he said. “We have to get this out right away, even if it kills the horses. Are you fit for another ride?”
Japh was already going to his gelding. He hoped the animal’s flared nostrils meant he could draw in more air, because he was likely to need it before the day was done. One of them, he or Athar, had to get through. The message, written on paper headed with the lion-flanked cross of the Basilica, was proof enough of that.
A Justified Highbinder has been sent to kill Calesh Saissan. He is posing as a mercenary from Alinaur, come north to offer his services, and may have accomplices. His name is E
lizur Mandain. Be wary.
Japh had heard the name. Elizur Mandain, said to be the finest swordsman in the world. If he reached Calesh undetected, Japh was very much afraid the Commander would die before he knew he was in danger.