His fellow fighters were all members of Solis’ band, of course. The western spur was their realm and they guarded it jealously. The dark youth himself led the squadron operating the catapult. Tymon had expected to be treated with suspicion and blame by the young Nurians who shared his assignment. In his current mood of self-recrimination, he almost welcomed the prospect as a form of penance. It was a surprise to him when he learned that the boy guards had specifically asked for him to join their team. What he had assumed to be Laska’s decision in the arena turned out to be a request made by Solis himself, with the support of his fellows.
‘I bring you here for purpose, Argosi,’ the young captain explained as he directed Tymon to his post at the catapult’s loading station. ‘You stay with us—live or die with us. Show quality.’
Tymon was happy enough with this arrangement. He was willing to die on the Freehold defences, he told himself, if it would help Samiha. It was a refreshing change to be accepted by the Nurians, if only on probation. With the brief exception of Oren in Marak city, he had not had the opportunity to associate with lads his own age since he left the seminary. The boys on the catapult platform talked and joked with him in broken Argosian as they uncovered the Flea and prepped it for use. They were inordinately proud of their position on the vanguard of defence, the trust placed in them by the Freehold judges. Just let the putar come, they gloated. Just let them come and taste the fury of the Flea.
As the minutes slipped by with no hint of the Argosian ships, however, their jokes petered out and their gaze turned more often and more anxiously towards the west. The bright point of the watch fires shone changeless on the horizon. Surely a half hour had passed already? Where was the Argosian armada? Had the lookout been mistaken? The youths hunched their shoulders against the breeze and squinted at the dark clouds forming over the lower canopy; even the promise of an end to the drought provoked little commentary among them. For there was now no doubt that the day would see rain. The western horizon had darkened to a deep purple and the wind was hard, driving the clouds before it. Tymon shivered where he stood at the edge of the platform, shading his eyes. Pale flecks had materialised against the backdrop of rolling grey. He wondered whether they were wind-funnels like the ones he had seen from on board the greatship. A moment later, he knew that they were not.
Delicate, deceptively small, a bloom of green and white sails appeared on the horizon, the colours of the Argosian fleet. And still the young people about him said nothing, staring at the approaching ships. Each one knew what the others were thinking. There was no need to comment, no need to put words to their dismay. There were so many—no one had expected so many. The line of flecks expanded, spread out and solidified to reveal no less than thirty vessels on course for the promontory. Every one of them was a greatship, the finest and fastest in the Council’s line. It was a disproportionate force, more suited to a wholesale invasion than a raid. No longer in any way delicate, the greatships swept past the watch fires ahead of the storm, snuffing them out. By the time the dirigibles were ranged in impressive formation about a mile from the promontory, they seemed to take up the entire sky. It was clear that the Council meant to crush the Freehold once and for all.
The fleet did not immediately attack the village. Secure in their display of strength, the Argosian dirigibles simply hung there out of range of the Freehold defences, dropping tethers to the lower canopy. Another age seemed to pass and the cold wind picked up, penetrating Tymon’s bones. At last one vessel, smaller than the rest, moved towards the promontory. It flew the green flag of parley. With a shudder, the boy recognised the Envoy’s sleek ship. A delegation of Freeholders headed by Kosta and Laska walked out to meet it on the spur, accompanied by a group of seasoned warriors, all older and sterner than Solis’ crowd. They passed directly below the Flea on their way to the docking port. The Envoy’s dirigible descended to just above the tip of the spur, suspended over the heads of the Nurians. It hovered perhaps a hundred feet away from the youths on their platform. Argosian soldiers armed with crossbows lined the deck.
Tymon could not hear the parley through the noise of slowly venting ether, but someone must have issued a challenge. Kosta and Laska moved up to the side of the ship. He felt, rather than saw, the familiar black-coated figure step up to the side of the deck in answer. The Envoy leaned easily against the rail, talking down to the men on the spur. Tymon shrank behind the squat form of the Flea. It was impossible for Lace to see him, veiled by the net of vines and the bulk of the catapult, but he had a sense of being exposed on his little outcrop of twigs, as if a hungry beast were sniffing him out.
‘They offer terms,’ Solis observed scathingly from his post nearby. ‘They offer, just like before. Accept tithe, and all well! Sell children, you go free.’
Tymon shuddered again. Even at a distance the sight of the Envoy provoked a deep unease in him, a visceral reaction. He cowered behind the catapult, annoyed at himself for losing his nerve. What was wrong with him?
‘I not understand why we even listen,’ grumbled Solis, more to himself than to his companions. He spat meditatively off the edge of the platform.
Tymon forced himself to look through the vines, to concentrate on what was happening below instead of his own discomfort. As far as he could tell, no negotiation was taking place at all. Once the preliminary words were over, the Envoy did not appear interested in the parley. He lolled on the rail as if he were out on a relaxed excursion from the seminary. The boy squinted in disbelief at the scene. Something was wrong. The tone of the judges’ voices had changed. The Freeholders were arguing with each other instead of the enemy. Although he could not make out the exact words, he saw that Kosta was behaving oddly, shouting at Laska. The captain’s responses were quiet, cajoling. He seemed to be trying to calm his colleague. Kosta almost screamed in response. With an effort, Tymon shook off the leeching fear that had taken hold of him.
‘Something’s not right,’ he blurted. Oren’s pendant pulsed briefly about his neck as if the orah agreed with him. ‘That shouldn’t be happening. It’s not—’
He faltered. He had been about to say, not as it should be.
The note of concern in his voice roused Solis. The dark youth peered through the net of vines, his brow furrowed. ‘Why judges talk like enemies?’ he muttered.
A giddy certainty gripped Tymon. He scrambled to his feet.
‘Because Lace is a sorcerer!’ he exclaimed. He hastened to Solis’ side, his fear forgotten. ‘That man’s one of the Council’s Grafters, I’d bet my life on it. He’s done something to the judges—I felt it all the way up here. Look at them arguing with each other! I’d swear—I’d swear it was a Seeming!’
Solis tensed. He looked searchingly at Tymon’s face, and down again at Kosta. Then he turned abruptly to his companions and barked out an order in his own tongue. The guards leapt into action. In a trice the Flea was locked and loaded, a dull grey gum-ball in its maw. Solis’ lips moved in silent prayer. He struck a fire-stick and lit the shot.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Tymon, belatedly aware of what was happening behind him.
He was too late. The safety had been released and the catapult arm whistled through the air, launching the flaming shot in a high arc.
‘Save Freehold,’ declared Solis. He watched with grim satisfaction as the gum-ball made contact with the sacks on the Envoy’s ship, burying itself in the soft folds almost without a sound.
There was an instant of shocked silence. Then a sheet of flame burst over the vessel and chaos erupted on the spur. The soldiers next to Lace fired their crossbows in a mosquito whine at the judges, and the Freeholders fell back, forming a protective shield about their leaders. Several succumbed to the Argosian crossbows. One of the fallen might have been Kosta, but Tymon could not be sure what was happening before the group had passed below the Flea in a welter of voices and hurried on towards the heart of the promontory. A tall figure separated itself out from the villagers and climbed swiftly up the
long ladder towards the Flea. Laska pulled himself over the edge of platform seven; his gaze took in the guilty faces of the boy guards, the smoking catapult, the released safety.
‘What’s going on here?’ he roared. ‘You broke parley!’
‘My fault, syor,’ announced Solis, without hesitation. ‘My mistake. Punish only me.’ He bent his head like a prisoner awaiting execution.
Laska frowned at him. ‘You are responsible for our dishonour—’ he began.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ put in Tymon. He stepped forward to join the dark youth, his chin stuck out stubbornly as he faced Laska. ‘I told him the Envoy was a Grafter. He was using his power. Solis just did what he had to do to save the Freehold. If you’re going to punish anyone, it should be me.’
‘Not listen to him!’ cried Solis, jumping up. ‘It was me! He have nothing to do!’
Laska stared in surprise at the two unlikely allies. He gave a rueful smile.
‘Bas, Solis,’ he said. ‘And no, Tymon. The Council’s Envoy is no Grafter. A Grafter tries to help the world. That man was concerned only with controlling or destroying it.’
‘But he did a Seeming!’ objected Tymon. ‘He made Kosta angry with you—’
‘I do not deny what he did.’ Laska’s voice was sharp, cautionary. ‘As to syor Kosta, he was a better man than you or I. Who knows how we would have fared under similar pressure.’
He paused, as if weary. ‘Would that the Focals were here,’ he muttered. ‘I have no strength for such contests.’
He fell silent, his eyes on the Envoy’s dirigible. Lace was gone from the deck, Tymon saw with relief. The flames to the aft of the vessel had been extinguished and the ship was already leaving, rising in a graceful arc from the spur, its green flag at half-mast. Nothing remained of the attack but a pall of blue smoke over the branch. Far away, the fleet’s signal drums thundered out, irrevocable.
‘Syor Kosta is dead,’ sighed the captain. ‘I am now Speaker for the Freehold. There is much to do. Do not think you will not be punished for your conduct, you two. If we get through this you’ll both face a disciplinary hearing. But since you precipitated hostilities, as it were, we now have a battle to fight. A battle that was inevitable from the start, unfortunately. Back to your posts, all of you.’
He motioned Solis away with a gesture and sent the guards scurrying to their positions with a single glance.
‘Please, sir.’ Tymon hesitated behind the others, curious. He was itching to know what had taken place on the spur. ‘Did the enemy negotiate? What were their demands?’
Laska strode back to the ladder and swung himself over the edge of the platform.
‘They wanted Samiha,’ he answered, simply. ‘You have your orders,’ he called to the youths. ‘We are few but this is our home. Defend it well. Sav vay.’
Then he was gone. Tymon hurried to his own post by the Flea. The Envoy’s vessel had reached the other dirigibles now and the Argosian ships were breaking ranks, spreading into attack formation. The fleet bore down on the promontory under a darkened sky. Everything seemed to be happening very quickly after the long wait, and the boy realised that he was afraid of the coming battle, afraid of dying. It was a very different fear from the one he had experienced under the Envoy’s influence—a sharp, mindful fear, as bracing as the breeze. It was a tonic to his spirit. If people like the Envoy were sorcerers in the employ of the Council, then his duty was clear. This practical Grafting, rather than grandiose prophecies, was what he could believe in. He was happy his ability allowed him to frustrate his enemies.
‘Well,’ he said to Solis, ‘let’s do this properly. I don’t care to meet that Father Lace again.’
The Nurian youth gave him a rakish grin. ‘Most certain, Argosi,’ he replied. ‘You not meet putar sorcerer again. You die right here with us, no problem. Beni!’
The sound was the worst. It was like the night of the attack on the Governor’s palace, only louder, a hundred times louder, and continuous. The planks beneath Tymon’s feet shook with every hit as if the platform would fall apart. The twig-thickets, the catapult, even the sky trembled. His bones groaned and his teeth rattled in his jaw. He had not understood why the enemy shot made so much noise until he saw the first explosion. One moment he was staring at the docking port on the spur, the next it had evaporated, leaving nothing but a glowing crater on the shortened tip of the branch. The Argosian ships were firing blast-poison, battering the promontory with round after round of explosive shot. Nothing and no one could stand in their way.
The Freeholders put up a staunch resistance but their static catapults were useless in the face of the new Argosian firepower. No one had ever heard of blast-poison being used in such a manner before, as a projectile weapon. There were no catapults to be seen on board the Argosian greatships that flanked the promontory, but the dirigibles were fitted with snub-nosed engines, black snouts that poked through portholes and spat out the devastating shot by some unseen mechanism. The Hornet and the Wasp, the Flea’s larger siblings, barely had time to take down one enemy ship in a concerted rain of bark-shot before they were both blown out of the Tree in smithereens.
After that first, gaping loss there had been a moment of mad hope when the Lyla materialised over the fleet, drawing a glorious arc of black smoke through the air. It flew like a stinging insect between the greatships, releasing a volley of fiery arrows. One of the Argosian vessels went down in a blaze while another lost its port sacks, and had to withdraw. The youths around Tymon cheered until they were hoarse. At one point the air-chariot flew close to the Flea, its complement of four archers waving merrily to the boys on their platform. Tymon saw Samiha leaning out of a porthole with the rest. Her bright hair was caught up under a hardwood helmet and she held her bow triumphantly aloft, shouting a rallying cry that made his heart beat and his spirit soar, though he did not understand the words. The sight of her out there, risking all, left him both proud and terrified. What use was his post on the front lines, he thought, irrationally, if she died before him?
For it soon became obvious that the air-chariot was simply too small to take on the entire Argosian fleet. Some of the stubby engines turned their snouts to the sky and the Lyla was chased away, beaten down every time it emerged from the protective cover of the thickets. At length it disappeared completely and the dirigibles resumed their task of pummelling the village and the promontory to ash. After that, the battle was over with bewildering rapidity. It did not seem to Tymon as if he had stood there for more than an hour, loading the dull grey gum-balls into the catapult as fast as they could be aimed and fired—hardly seemed any time at all before the slow boom of the arena drums told them to withdraw, to fall back to the Tree-caves. The resistance had ended. The Freeholders were in retreat.
The explosion came just as the boys had turned their backs on the platform, silent and dispirited, and begun descending the ladder to the western spur. The thickets sheltering the Flea took a direct hit. Suddenly the platform was gone, vaporised, and with it the catapult. The ladder sprang out of Tymon’s hands; he was briefly aware of his companions frozen on the rungs, teetering in midair, before he fell, spun, plummeted through broken twig-ends and flying planks into the abyss.
And then—miraculously—it stopped. Someone grabbed hold of his arm and arrested his fall. He dangled, gasping, about fifty feet above the surface of the spur, the yawning drop between his legs. He looked up to see Solis above him, clinging to the ladder. The young guard clutched Tymon’s left elbow with one hand and strained to keep his own grip on the rungs with the other. The ladder had dropped perhaps twenty feet, snagging itself against an undamaged stand of twigs. It lay at a drunken angle, balanced precariously on the creaking stems. Solis puffed out his cheeks with exertion.
‘Catch ladder with other hand, Argosi!’ he called.
Tymon reached out desperately towards the rungs but they were too far away. He was aware that Solis was not strong enough to pull him up. The guard was already flagging und
er his weight, his fingers slipping on the ladder.
‘Swing legs!’ Solis ordered through gritted teeth.
‘Let me go!’ cried Tymon. ‘I’ll just pull you down with me!’
‘Swing legs, fool Argosi!’ shouted the Nurian furiously.
So Tymon did. He kicked and flailed like a netted bird, swung himself back and forth until he built up his momentum. Solis grimaced with pain as he struggled to keep his hold. One of the other guards on the ladder clambered down to the aid of his captain, bracing an arm about Solis’ chest and allowing him to take Tymon’s weight with both hands. One large swing, and Tymon’s fingers brushed the side of the ladder; another and his right hand grasped the rungs. At last he half hauled himself, half scrambled over the bodies of the others to cling to the shaking wood.
‘Thank you,’ he breathed, as he faced Solis. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Not to mention,’ grinned the guard, rubbing the feeling back into his hand. ‘You eat well in Argos. We fat you up for slaughter, maybe.’
The boys’ mirth faded as they descended to the spur, however. A sad sight greeted them there. The bodies of two young soldiers lay inert on the surface of the branch and two more rolled and groaned on the bark. It was a smaller group than before that crept back along the path to the arena. Their progress was slow, interrupted every time an explosion shook the village. They were obliged to use the short, anxious intervals between assaults to stumble from one makeshift shelter to another, supporting their injured comrades between them. The village itself was almost obliterated. The majority of the light, strawframe buildings had been blown away by the explosions or consumed in the subsequent fire. Whole sections had been gouged out of the twig-thickets; gigantic holes ringed with flame showed clear through to the lowering sky, as if some huge, burning beast had taken bites out of the Tree. Only the arena remained relatively untouched, the terraces strewn with hot ash.
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