Kallir nodded and moved toward his tent, still feeling a sense of unease.
He would pray and soon enough he would know if his prayers were answered.
Sixteen
In his dreams the stranger before Teagus was dour and hard and spoke for the gods. “Etrilla steps aside now. It is time for Kanheer to come forward and save his children.”
He should have felt fear at the idea that war had come, and yet there was a savage joy in his breast.
“How can this be when Kanheer has slept for so long?”
The Pilgrim stood before him with the dust of a thousand miles of walking on his clothes. He was gritty and he was grim and he carried his sword drawn and ready for combat. He was hard where Teagus was soft. He was hardened and tested in combat. The only time Teagus had attempted to fight in the last decade had resulted in a beating and being locked in chains.
“Kanheer was preparing for this time, as gods do. There were people to place just so, and forces to gather in the right places.” Despite his harsh features and the cruel set of his mouth, the man spoke calmly and patiently. His voice soothed the worries in Teagus’s soul. “You are where you are because Kanheer needed you to be in this place at this time. I am where I am because the god of war summoned me from my sleep and told me to gather an army.”
“You have an army? You’ll fight these Sa’ba Taalor?” Was it possible that a few words from a man he’d never met before could make Teagus so optimistic? No. It wasn't the words, but who said them. He could not have said exactly why the Pilgrim filled him with hope, but there was something about the weathered features and rough strength of the figure that did just that. Here was a man who spoke with the authority of the gods themselves. Here was a man whose purpose was righteous. “What must I do?”
“Prepare yourself. Say your prayers to Etrilla. Say more prayers to Kanheer. It is time for us to save the faithful. It is what we were created to do, Teagus of Tyrne. We must remember the dead and protect the living. It is what our gods want of us.”
“But I am in a cell. How can I help from a locked room?”
“There are no prisons for the faithful. When the time is right, come to the Eastern Gate and wait for me. We will meet in the flesh soon enough.”
Teagus opened his eyes in the darkness. There was light, yes, in the distance. The flickering light from the guard’s lantern down the corridor. He looked toward that light, his eyes drawn to any form of illumination as he contemplated the dream. The exact same dream he’d had the night before. At least he believed it was the same. The sleep was over; the dream was fading and left little beyond a strong sense of hope.
His eyes studied the light for a moment before he realized that he should not have been able to see the light at all from his cell. There was normally a door in the way. The door was missing. Not open. Gone. Missing.
Teagus considered that for several seconds and then rose from his narrow cot and moved toward the hallway.
Faith means believing in miracles, especially when they happen before your very eyes.
An army came to Canhoon, led by a Pilgrim and summoned by gods. Here, at last, there was hope.
The passage was clear. Leaving was unsettlingly easy.
The day broke clear and sunny, with a gentle breeze from the east and a low enough temperature to keep the bugs slow and sluggish. That by itself was a start for a good day in the eyes of most.
Still, war was upon the land and new orders had been given. The great gates leading to Canhoon were shut and barred, and guards were placed at the smaller entrances near each of the gates. The City Guard reigned within the city, but at the walls the soldiers were picked and carefully instructed by Merros Dulver himself. There would be no mistakes.
The northern gates were closed after Cullen made her way into the city. The sight of the great wood and steel barriers being shut and then barricaded with heavy oak arms caused a great deal of whispered discussion.
A vast river offered fresh waters to Canhoon. The waters ran deep and wide and flowed along a series of docks set just outside of the massive wall that surrounded the city. One area allowed greater access. A section of the barrier had been cut away to permit boats greater access, but as she looked on she could see the soldiers fortifying that spot with massive wooden barriers that had apparently been cared for over the years. The wooden walls were slipped into place and locked together. She might have doubted that they could hold off the grayskins but she could also see the massive iron bands that helped keep the shapes in place. Guards bellowed and a hundred men or more hauled the barriers along a series of rails that looked freshly greased. She wondered idly why they did not have animals pulling the massive structures. There was not a horse to be seen anywhere and she’d expected a great number of them from the tales she’d heard growing up.
“Have you ever seen such a town, Cullen?” Deltrea’s ghostly voice sounded as overwhelmed as Cullen felt.
The buildings started low, mostly hidden behind the vast walls around the city. Each wall was of a different era and while all had been kept in good repair, the styles were as different as the times. The first was made of massive stones that had been placed together close to the heart of the city. Each stone was cut and polished until the whole of the thing looked like one piece, save only for the differences in the color of each enormous stone. She could not begin to understand how they had been assembled. It would take armies of men just to slide one piece, let alone to raise them on top of each other.
“Sorcery,” Deltrea said. “It must be.”
Further out the second wall was slightly lower and made of bricks cast from the clay of the river. Time had not been kind, but the wall still stood, and even from a great distance she could see how thick the structure was, how very solid.
The wall that surrounded the entirety of the city was made from smaller stones and not as perfectly put together. She could see handholds all along the thing. The outer lip of the wall, however, rose at a sharp angle and offered shelter from the sun for a dozen feet or more. Anyone attempting to scale that wall would be stopped by the massive outcropping. At over sixty feet in height she had doubts that anyone could scale it easily. There were a few, survivors of Trecharch who were used to scaling rough surfaces, but even the most inventive would have to hang like a spider scaling a ceiling to manage the underside of the angled walkway at the top of the wall.
Guards walked that wall, a dozen or more in plain view and she assumed many more besides. Cullen studied them for several moments and then moved on.
Hunger was a new force inside of her and she dug around her clothes until she found her small satchel of coins. It had belonged to someone else on the road, but that someone had died holding it. She suspected they tried to barter with the grayskins and died for the attempt. In any case one of the coins bought her several pieces of fruit and a slice of fresh roasted beef on a slap of hard bread.
Cullen chewed slowly but took big bites. Her stomach demanded no less.
While she ate she stared at the men building their wooden wall and watched the people trying to get past it as quickly as they could. Most seemed calm but a few were eager to get past and locked within the confines of the city.
One of the City Guard looked at her for a moment, saw the bow and arrows, the food at her side and nodded before moving on.
Deltrea said, “He wants to know if you can use a bow, I bet.”
Cullen shrugged and ate.
“I hear that only a few women in this area can fight for themselves. Most are pampered and kept safe from any possible harm.”
Cullen managed not to laugh pabba fruit out of her nose, but it was an effort. “Do you see anyone here who looks pampered, Deltrea?”
She looked around herself to prove her point. There were too many people. That was the first thing worth noting. Many were dirty from days on the road, and most wore expressions of exhaustion and desperation. She knew, because she had seen the same look on her own face when she was cleanin
g herself at the river earlier in the day. “They are hungry and they are scared.”
“Of course they are, because they cannot fight and they cannot hunt.” Deltrea’s voice sounded petulant. “They come from places where they’ve never had to survive a fight with enemies that wanted them dead.”
Despite knowing better, Cullen took the bait. “Have you lost your senses? Look at them!” She tossed aside the remains of her pabba fruit and waved her hands to encompass everyone. “These are our people, and more besides! There are Roathians here, and the remains of Tyrne! They have nothing! They have less than nothing!”
In her guts the heat from the Mother-Vine roiled and curled and stretched and she grunted. The heat wanted food and so she shut her mouth and grabbed up her slab of beef, chewing on the meat and the hard baked bread under it. It stopped her from making more of a fool of herself. She could see the people around her still eyeing her warily, this girl who talked to the air and argued besides.
The men who walked past were dressed in military finery. She did not know the ranks, but she could see they were in the upper echelons. They had too many shiny buttons and cords of gold on their clothes to be otherwise. The leader of them was a man who walked with the confidence of a killer. He pointed and spoke, and the others around him nodded and obeyed his orders.
“General Dulver, a moment if you would, sir.” A man had come from where they worked on constructing the barrier against the river and what lay beyond it. He practically simpered.
The man she was watching nodded and listened as the details were laid out. There were problems with the tracks that the wall was supposed to slide along. Too much debris had built up over the years and even with the grease they ran into obstructions.
“Durst, please walk with Kermon here and show him how to clear the tracks.” Durst looked like he should have been on the team moving the sections of the wall, or just possibly as if he should have been a section of that wall himself. He scowled at the interloper and nodded. Kermon looked like he wished he were anywhere else, or possibly as if he should have considered fixing the issue without asking for assistance.
Life in the military did not change. She had spent years listening to orders fall from lead tongues onto lead ears.
The general looked her way and nodded politely, then quickly looked a second time, examining the bow and arrows at her side. She looked at them herself. The bow was standard enough. The arrows were whatever she could find on the road and some were from the enemy.
“You are coming from the north? From Trecharch?’
She squinted up at him, and nodded, even as she swallowed the lump of chewed beef. She had not been expecting conversation.
“I am sorry for your losses. We were not fast enough.”
Cullen shook her head. “They came with Pra-Moresh and stranger things. They came in great numbers. There would have been nothing to do, especially after they killed the Mother-Vine.”
“We are looking for soldiers if you need employment and can use that bow.”
“My friend Deltrea was saying how the likes of people from Canhoon don’t much need female soldiers.”
The general smiled. “I am not from Canhoon. And I need every solider I can find who is willing to fight.”
“I’m to find a wizard first. A man named Krohan.”
The general looked at her for a long moment with a half-smile on his face. He was handsome in his way, but aged by the mantle of his duties. The smile made him seem younger again.
“You seek Desh Krohan?”
“He’s the one. You know him?”
“Oh, aye, everyone knows him or at least of him. In my case I’ve met him several times and will be seeing him within the hour.”
“Can you get me to him?”
“Possibly, but he’s busy and not likely to see a woman with a weapon aimed his way. I might have to take that from you until after the meeting.” He kept a light tone in his voice. She liked that. Too many people seemed to find it important to make demands instead of simply explaining themselves.
“I expect I can approach without a weapon.”
He stayed where he was expectantly and after a moment Cullen realized he was waiting on her to join him. Flustered, she grabbed her food and slipped it into a fold of her oversized blouse, then grabbed her weapons.
As they walked he asked her questions about what had happened in Trecharch and she answered them truthfully. There was no point in lying.
She spoke of the deaths of her friends, including Deltrea, but he made no worrisome noises as she’d feared he might. He was a soldier. He had been in combat. He very likely had a few ghosts of his own he spoke to when the time was right. Or who spoke to him, for that matter. She could tell that by the way he moved and the way he looked around. He did not strut like so many of the younger soldiers. He did not puff out his chest or scowl at the people around. As they spoke they moved across the streets and hills of the city and Cullen ate her food. By the time they reached the gates of the palace – and had there ever been a city with so many walls? So many gates? She had her doubts – he had likely gleaned as much information as he had hoped.
The general smiled at her. “In all of this I’ve forgotten to ask you your name. Who is it I’m to say wishes to see Desh Krohan, the First Advisor to the Empress?” His tone had not changed and Cullen wondered idly if she was supposed to be impressed by the title he offered.
“My name is Cullen.” Her hand moved over her abdomen to where the endless heat moved and pulsed inside of her. “My message for Desh Krohan comes from Moale Deneshi. He will know the name.”
Truer words had seldom, if ever, been uttered.
Captain Callan did not enter the city. He stayed with his ship and watched on as the great wall was assembled. He had been given passage to leave as he pleased or to enter, but he doubted that he would stay.
In addition to the offer of safe passage he had also been given a commission and if Callan could be said to have any god it was the coin of the realm, regardless of which realm he was in.
Vondum chewed at a sliver of dried beef that was likely as hard as steel. He did so without bothering to taste the stuff, but merely so that he would have something to do as he watched the laborers build their wall.
“It’s not that I’m not enjoying watching a herd of men try to replace horses, because I have coin on at least one being crushed before this day is done and I like my coin – but why are we still here, Callan?”
Callan’s face had a heavy growth of beard on it at the moment and he was contemplating scraping it away. His skin itched and he hated that feeling.
Along the docks he could see heavy gratings that ran under the wooden platforms. He knew from past experience that those grates filtered the water going into the city and stopped anything larger than a mouse from creeping in.
There were other boats and ships around him. Most were readying for leaving the area.
He frowned. “There were four boats due in from Freeholdt. None of them have come round.”
“And they won’t and you know it. We’ve all heard the stories. The black ships are on the water and waiting for their signal to come in.” Vondum shrugged. “We stay here, and half the crew goes into the city and we remain here. We leave now, we might have a chance to slip past them. Or we go round the city and take the river east.”
Callan nodded. “East is sounding like a fine notion to me, lad. How about you?”
“East is a destination I can find some good thoughts about. West and south do not bode a good day.” Vondum switched the dried beef to the other side of his mouth and looked toward the water. “Today, Callan. If it’s not today, I’ll take my chances in the city.”
“You’d leave?”
“Coin only spends if you are alive to spend it. I’ve heard the stories. You’ve heard them too. Time to leave or tuck ourselves in a safe place. The Sa’ba Taalor are coming.”
“We go south, we can meet up with the Brellar.” Callan rose and
dusted off the seat of his pants and walked to the edge of the deck , looking down into the waters. “We get more coin and an army of savages to fight against the black ships.”
“Really, it’s much the same answer. We can’t spend the coin if we’re dead.”
Callan sighed. “Off the ship with you then. I’ll find new bodies to take with me. I think it’s time to fight against these bastards. They’ve killed half the ports we sail from and they’re aiming to kill this one, too. They keep it up we have nowhere left to sell our wares.”
Vondum considered that for a moment and then spat his dried beef into the water. An instant later a fish snapped at the meat. Callan hoped it enjoyed the meal.
“It makes me grouchy when you’re right, Captain. So let’s go the way you want, but let’s do it quickly, before I change my mind.”
“What about the lads?”
“They’ll mind, long as there’s coin involved.”
“I thought you couldn’t spend if you were dead.”
Vondum looked at him and smirked. “Aye. But the lads don’t think that far ahead.”
“Fair enough.”
Half an hour later the ship was on its way. They took a wide turn and headed back out toward the waters of the south, toward dead, ruined Freeholdt and the waters beyond, where black ships sailed and demons waited.
He should have been terrified, but Callan felt alive. He always felt best when he was heading to the sea.
The horns would sound soon. Swech nodded her head. There were hours at most before the war came to Canhoon and when it did she would be ready. The time to wait had never really come to pass. She had been far too busy. That was the advantage of staying busy.
Jost would likely be back soon to report on the activities of the others.
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